VOLUME XVI SLICE II Lamennais, Robert de to Latini, Brunetto (continued 11)

LASAULX, ARNOLD CONSTANTIN PETER FRANZ VON (1839-1886), German mineralogist and petrographer, was born at Castellaun near Coblenz on the 14th of June 1839. He was educated at Berlin, where he took his Ph. D. in 1868. In 1875 he became professor of mineralogy at Breslau, and in 1880 professor of mineralogy and geology at Bonn. He was distinguished for his researches on minerals and on crystallography, and he was one of the earlier workers on microscopic petrography. He described in 1878 the eruptive rocks of the district of Saar and Moselle. In 1880 he edited Der Aetna from the MSS. of Dr W. Sartorius von Waltershausen, the results of observations made between the years 1834-1869. He was author of Elemente der Petrographie (1875), Einführung in die Gesteinslehre (1885), and Précis de pétrographie (1887). He died at Bonn on the 25th of January 1886.

LASCAR, the name in common use for all oriental, and especially Indian, sailors, which has been adopted in England into the Merchant Shipping Acts, though without any definition. It is derived from the Persian lashkar = army, or camp, in which sense it is still used in India, e.g. Lashkar, originally the camp, now the permanent capital, of Sindhia at Gwalior. It would seem to have been applied by the Portuguese, first to an inferior class of men in military service (cf. “gun-lascars”), and then to sailors as early as the 17th century. The form askari on the east coast of Africa, equivalent to “sepoy,” comes from the Arabic ‘askar = army, which is believed to be itself taken from the Persian.

LASCARIS, CONSTANTINE (d. 1493 or 1500), Greek scholar and grammarian, one of the promoters of the revival of Greek learning in Italy, was born at Constantinople. He was a member of the noble Bithynian family, which had furnished three emperors of Nicaea during the 13th century. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, he took refuge first in Corfu and then in Italy, where Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, appointed him Greek tutor to his daughter. Here was published his Grammatica Graeca, sive compendium octo orationis partium, remarkable as being the first book entirely in Greek issued from the printing press. After leaving Milan, Lascaris taught in Rome under the patronage of Cardinal Bessarion, and in Naples, whither he had been summoned by Ferdinand I. to deliver a course of lectures on Greece. Ultimately, on the invitation of the inhabitants, he settled in Messina, Sicily, where he continued to teach publicly until his death. Among his numerous pupils here was Pietro Bembo. Lascaris bequeathed his library of valuable MSS. to the senate of Messina; the collection was afterwards carried to Spain and lodged in the Escurial.

The Grammatica, which has often been reprinted, is the only work of value produced by Lascaris. Some of his letters are given by J. Iriarte in the Regiae Bibliothecae Matritensis codices Graeci manuscripti, i. (Madrid, 1769). His name is known to modern readers in the romance of A. F. Villemain, Lascaris, ou les Grecs du quinzième siècle (1825). See also J. E. Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol., ed. 2, vol. ii. (1908), pp. 76 foll.

LASCARIS, JOANNES [John], or Janus (c. 1445-1535), Greek scholar, probably the younger brother of Constantine Lascaris, surnamed Rhyndacenus from the river Rhyndacus in Bithynia, his native province. After the fall of Constantinople he was taken to the Peloponnese, thence to Crete, and ultimately found refuge in Florence at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose intermediary he was with the sultan Bayezid II. in the purchase of Greek MSS. for the Medicean library. On the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, at the invitation of Charles VIII. of France, Lascaris removed to Paris (1495), where he gave public instruction in Greek. By Louis XII. he was several times employed on public missions, amongst others to Venice (1503-1508), and in 1515 he appears to have accepted the invitation of Leo X. to take charge of the Greek college he had founded at Rome. We afterwards (1518) find Lascaris employed along with Budaeus (Budé) by Francis I. in the formation of the royal library at Fontainebleau, and also again sent in the service of the French crown to Venice. He died at Rome, whither he had been summoned by Pope Paul III., in 1535. Among his pupils was Musurus.

Amongst other works, Lascaris edited or wrote: Anthologia epigrammatum Graecorum (1494), in which he ascribed the collection of the Anthology to Agathias, not to Planudes; Didymi Alexandrini scholia in Iliadem (1517); Porphyrius of Tyre’s Homericarum quaestionum liber (1518); De veris Graecarum litterarum formis ac causis apud antiquos (Paris, 1556). See H. Hody, De Graecis illustribus (London, 1742); W. Roscoe, Life of Leo X. ii. (1846); C. F. Börner, De doctis hominibus Graecis (Leipzig, 1750); A. Horawitz in Ersch & Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyclopädie; J. E. Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol., ed. 2, vols. ii. (1908), p. 78.

LAS CASAS, BARTOLOMÉ DE (1474-1566), for some time bishop of Chiapa in Mexico, and known to posterity as “The Apostle of the Indies,” was a native of Seville. His father, one of the companions of Columbus in the voyage which resulted in the discovery of the New World, sent him to Salamanca, where he graduated. In 1498 he accompanied his father in an expedition under Columbus to the West Indies, and in 1502 he went with Nicolás de Ovando, the governor, to Hayti, where in 1510 he was admitted to holy orders, being the first priest ordained in the American colonies. In 1511 he passed over to Cuba to take part in the work of “population and pacification,” and in 1513 or 1514 he witnessed and vainly endeavoured to check the massacre of Indians at Caonao. Soon afterwards there was assigned to him and his friend Renteria a large village in the neighbourhood of Zagua, with a number of Indians attached to it in what was known as repartimiento (allotment); like the rest of his countrymen he made the most of this opportunity for growing rich, but occasionally celebrated mass and preached. Soon, however, having become convinced of the injustice connected with the repartimiento system, he began to preach against it, at the same time giving up his own slaves. With the consent of his partner he resolved to go to Spain on behalf of the oppressed natives, and the result of his representations was that in 1516 Cardinal Jimenes caused a commission to be sent out for the reform of abuses, Las Casas himself, with the title of “protector of the Indians,” being appointed to advise and report on them. This commission had not been long at San Domingo before Las Casas perceived the indifference of his coadjutors to the cause which he himself had at heart, and July 1517 found him again in Spain, where he developed his scheme for the complete liberation of the Indians—a scheme which not only included facilities for emigration from Spain, but was intended to give to each Spanish resident in the colonies the right of importing twelve negro slaves. The emigration movement proved a failure, and Las Casas lived long enough to express his shame for having been so slow to see that Africans were as much entitled to freedom as were the natives of the New World. Overwhelmed with disappointment, he retired to the Dominican monastery in Haiti; he joined the order in 1522 and devoted eight years to study. About 1530 he appears to have revisited the Spanish court, but on what precise errand is not known; the confusion concerning this period of his life extends to the time when, after visits to Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Guatemala, he undertook an expedition in 1537 into Tuzulutlan, the inhabitants of which were, chiefly through his tact, peaceably converted to Christianity, mass being celebrated for the first time amongst them in the newly founded town of Rabinal in 1538. In 1539 Las Casas was sent to Spain to obtain Dominican recruits, and through Loaysa, general of the order, and confessor of Charles V., he was successful in obtaining royal orders and letters favouring his enterprise. During this stay in Europe, which lasted more than four years, he visited Germany to see the emperor; he also (1542) wrote his Veynte Razones, in defence of the liberties of the Indians and the Brevisima Relacion de la Destruycion des las Indias occidentales, the latter of which was published some twelve years later. In 1543 he refused the Mexican bishopric of Cuzco, but was prevailed upon to accept that of Chiapa, for which he sailed in 1544. Thwarted at every point by the officials, and outraged by his countrymen in his attempt to carry out the new laws which his humanity had procured, he returned to Spain and resigned his dignity (1547). In 1550 he met Sepúlveda in public debate on the theses drawn from the recently published Apologia pro libro de justis belli causis, in which the latter had maintained the lawfulness of waging unprovoked war upon the natives of the New World. The course of the discussion may be traced in the account of the Disputa contained in the Obras (1552). In 1565 Las Casas successfully remonstrated with Philip II. against the financial project for selling the reversion of the encomiendas—a project which would have involved the Indians in hopeless bondage. In July of the following year he died at Madrid, whither he had gone to urge (and with success) the necessity of restoring a court of justice which had been suppressed in Guatemala. His Historia de las Indias was not published till 1875-1876.

Sir Arthur Helps’ Life of Las Casas (London, 1868) has not been superseded; but see also F. A. MacNutt, Bartholomew de Las Casas (1909).

LAS CASES, EMMANUEL AUGUSTIN DIEUDONNÉ MARIN JOSEPH, Marquis (1766-1842), French official, was born at the castle of Las Cases near Revel in Languedoc. He was educated at the military schools of Vendôme and Paris; he entered the navy and took part in various engagements of the years 1781-1782. The outbreak of the Revolution in 1789 caused him to “emigrate,” and he spent some years in Germany and England, sharing in the disastrous Quiberon expedition (1795). He was one of the few survivors and returned to London, where he lived in poverty. He returned to France during the Consulate with other royalists who rallied to the side of Napoleon, and stated afterwards to the emperor that he was “conquered by his glory.” Not until 1810 did he receive much notice from Napoleon, who then made him a chamberlain and created him a count of the empire (he was marquis by hereditary right). After the first abdication of the emperor (11th of April 1814), Las Cases retired to England, but returned to serve Napoleon during the Hundred Days. The second abdication opened up for Las Cases the most noteworthy part of his career. He withdrew with the ex-emperor and a few other trusty followers to Rochefort; and it was Las Cases who first proposed and strongly urged the emperor to throw himself on the generosity of the British nation. Las Cases made the first overtures to Captain Maitland of H.M.S. “Bellerophon” and received a guarded reply, the nature of which he afterwards misrepresented. Las Cases accompanied the ex-emperor to St Helena and acted informally but very assiduously as his secretary, taking down numerous notes of his conversations which thereafter took form in the famous Mémorial de Ste Hélène. The limits of this article preclude an attempt at assessing the value of this work. It should be read with great caution, as the compiler did not scruple to insert his own thoughts and to colour the expressions of his master. In some cases he misstated facts and even fabricated documents. It is far less trustworthy than the record penned by Gourgaud in his Journal. Disliked by Montholon and Gourgaud, Las Cases seems to have sought an opportunity to leave the island when he had accumulated sufficient literary material. However that may be, he infringed the British regulations in such a way as to lead to his expulsion by the governor, Sir Hudson Lowe (November, 1816). He was sent first to the Cape of Good Hope and thence to Europe, but was not at first allowed by the government of Louis XVIII. to enter France. He resided at Brussels; but, gaining permission to come to Paris after the death of Napoleon, he took up his residence there, published the Mémorial, and soon gained an enormous sum from it. He died in 1842 at Passy.

See Mémoires de E. A. D., comte de Las Cases (Brussels, 1818); Mémorial de Ste Hélène (4 vols., London and Paris, 1823; often republished and translated); Suite au mémorial de Ste Hélène, ou observations critiques, &c. (2 vols., Paris, 1824), anonymous, but known to be by Grille and Musset-Pathay. See too Gourgaud, Montholon, and Lowe, Sir Hudson.

(J. Hl. R.)

LASHIO, the headquarters of the superintendent, northern Shan States, Burma, situated in 22° 56′ N. and 97° 45′ E. at an altitude of 3100 ft., on a low spur overlooking the valley of the Nam Yao. It is the present terminus of the Mandalay-Kun Long railway and of the government cart road from Mandalay, from which it is 178 m. distant. It consists of the European station, with court house and quarters for the civil officers; the military police post, the headquarters of the Lashio battalion of military police; the native station, in which the various nationalities, Shans, Burmans, Hindus and Mahommedans, are divided into separate quarters, with reserves for government servants and for the temporary residences of the five sawbwas of the northern Shan States; and a bazaar. Under Burmese rule Lashio was also the centre of authority for the northern Shan States, but the Burmese post in the valley was close to the Nam Yao, in an old Chinese fortified camp. The Lashio valley was formerly very populous; but a rebellion, started by the sawbwa of Hsenwi, about ten years before the British occupation, ruined it, and it is only slowly approaching the prosperity it formerly enjoyed; pop. (1901) 2565. The annual rainfall averages 54 in. The average maximum temperature is 80.5° and the average minimum 55.5°.

LASKER, EDUARD (1829-1884), German publicist, was born on the 14th of October 1829, at Jarotschin, a village in Posen, being the son of a Jewish tradesman. He attended the gymnasium, and afterwards the university of Breslau. In 1848, after the outbreak of the revolution, he went to Vienna and entered the students’ legion which took so prominent a part in the disturbances; he fought against the imperial troops during the siege of the city in October. He then continued his legal studies at Breslau and Berlin, and after a visit of three years to England, then the model state for German liberals, entered the Prussian judicial service. In 1870 he left the government service, and in 1873 was appointed to an administrative post in the service of the city of Berlin. He had been brought to the notice of the political world by some articles he wrote from 1861 to 1864, which were afterwards published under the title Zur Verfassungsgeschichte Preussens (Leipzig, 1874), and in 1865 he was elected member for one of the divisions of Berlin in the Prussian parliament. He joined the radical or Fortschritts party, and in 1867 was also elected to the German parliament, but he helped to form the national liberal party, and in consequence lost his seat in Berlin, which remained faithful to the radicals; after this he represented Magdeburg and Frankfort-on-Main in the Prussian, and Meiningen in the German, parliament. He threw himself with great energy into his parliamentary duties, and quickly became one of its most popular and most influential members. An optimist and idealist, he joined to a fervent belief in liberty an equal enthusiasm for German unity and the idea of the German state. His motion that Baden should be included in the North German Confederation in January 1870 caused much embarrassment to Bismarck, but was not without effect in hastening the crisis of 1870. His great work, however, was the share he took in the judicial reform during the ten years 1867-1877. To him more than to any other single individual is due the great codification of the law. While he again and again was able to compel the government to withdraw or amend proposals which seemed dangerous to liberty, he opposed those liberals who, unable to obtain all the concessions which they called for, refused to vote for the new laws as a whole. A speech made by Lasker on the 7th of February 1873, in which he attacked the management of the Pomeranian railway, caused a great sensation, and his exposure of the financial mismanagement brought about the fall of Hermann Wagener, one of Bismarck’s most trusted assistants. By this action he caused, however, some embarrassment to his party. This is generally regarded as the beginning of the reaction against economic liberalism by which he and his party were to be deprived of their influence. He refused to follow Bismarck in his financial and economic policy after 1878; always unsympathetic to the chancellor, he was now selected for his most bitter attacks. Between the radicals and socialists on the one side and the government on the other, like many of his friends, he was unable to maintain himself. In 1879 he lost his seat in the Prussian parliament; he joined the Sezession, but was ill at ease in his new position. Broken in health and spirits by the incessant labours of the time when he did “half the work of the Reichstag,” he went in 1883 for a tour in America, and died suddenly in New York on the 5th of January 1884.

Lasker’s death was the occasion of a curious episode, which caused much discussion at the time. The American House of Representatives adopted a motion of regret, and added to it these words: “That his loss is not alone to be mourned by the people of his native land, where his firm and constant exposition of, and devotion to, free and liberal ideas have materially advanced the social, political and economic conditions of these people, but by the lovers of liberty throughout the world.” This motion was sent through the American minister at Berlin to the German foreign office, with a request that it might be communicated to the president of the Reichstag. It was to ask Bismarck officially to communicate a resolution in which a foreign parliament expressed an opinion in German affairs exactly opposed to that which the emperor at his advice had always followed. Bismarck therefore refused to communicate the resolution, and returned it through the German minister at Washington.

Among Lasker’s writings may be mentioned: Zur Geschichte der parlamentarischen Entwickelung Preussens (Leipzig, 1873), Die Zukunft des Deutschen Reichs (Leipzig, 1877) and Wege und Ziele der Kulturentwickelung (Leipzig, 1881). After his death his Fünfzehn Jahre parlamentarischer Geschichte 1866-1880 appeared edited by W. Cahn (Berlin, 1902). See also L. Bamberger, Eduard Lasker, Gedenkrede (Leipzig, 1884); A. Wolff, Zur Erinnerung an Eduard Lasker (Berlin, 1884); Freund, Einiges über Eduard Lasker (Leipzig, 1885); and Eduard Lasker, seine Biographie und letzte öffentliche Rede, by various writers (Stuttgart, 1884).

(J. W. He.)

LASKI, the name of a noble and powerful Polish family, is taken from the town of Lask, the seat of their lordship.

Jan Laski, the elder (1456-1531), Polish statesman and ecclesiastic, appears to have been largely self-taught and to have owed everything to the remarkable mental alertness which was hereditary in the Laski family. He took orders betimes, and in 1495 was secretary to the Polish chancellor Zawisza Kurozwecki, in which position he acquired both influence and experience. The aged chancellor entrusted the sharp-witted young ecclesiastic with the conduct of several important missions. Twice, in 1495 and again in 1500, he was sent to Rome, and once on a special embassy to Flanders, of which he has left an account. On these occasions he had the opportunity of displaying diplomatic talent of a high order. On the accession to the Polish throne in 1501 of the indolent Alexander, who had little knowledge of Polish affairs and chiefly resided in Lithuania, Laski was appointed by the senate the king’s secretary, in which capacity he successfully opposed the growing separatist tendencies of the grand-duchy and maintained the influence of Catholicism, now seriously threatened there by the Muscovite propaganda. So struck was the king by his ability that on the death of the Polish chancellor in 1503 he passed over the vice-chancellor Macics Dzewicki and confided the great seal to Laski. As chancellor Laski supported the szlachta, or country-gentlemen, against the lower orders, going so far as to pass an edict excluding henceforth all plebeians from the higher benefices of the church. Nevertheless he approved himself such an excellent public servant that the new king, Sigismund I., made him one of his chief counsellors. In 1511 the chancellor, who ecclesiastically was still only a canon of Cracow, obtained the coveted dignity of archbishop of Gnesen which carried with it the primacy of the Polish church. In the long negotiations with the restive and semi-rebellious Teutonic Order, Laski rendered Sigismund most important political services, proposing as a solution of the question that Sigismund should be elected grand master, while he, Laski, should surrender the primacy to the new candidate of the knights, Albert of Brandenburg, a solution which would have been far more profitable to Poland than the ultimate settlement of 1525. In 1513 Laski was sent to the Lateran council, convened by Pope Julius II., to plead the cause of Poland against the knights, where both as an orator and as a diplomatist he brilliantly distinguished himself. This mission was equally profitable to his country and himself, and he succeeded in obtaining from the pope for the archbishops of Gnesen the title of legati nati. In his old age Laski’s partiality for his nephew, Hieronymus, led him to support the candidature of John Zapolya, the protégé of the Turks, for the Hungarian crown so vehemently against the Habsburgs that Clement VII. excommunicated him, and the shock of this disgrace was the cause of his sudden death in 1531. Of his numerous works the most noteworthy are his collection of Polish statutes entitled: Statuta provinciae gnesnensis antiqua, &c. (Cracow, 1525-1528) and De Ruthenorum nationibus eorumque erroribus, printed at Nuremberg.

See Heinrich R. von Zeissberg, Joh. Laski, Erzbischof in Gnesen (Vienna, 1874); and Jan Korytkowski, Jan Laski, Archbishop of Gnesen (Gnesen, 1880).

Hieronymus Jaroslaw Laski (1496-1542), Polish diplomatist, nephew of Archbishop Laski, was successively palatine of Inowroclaw and of Sieradia. His first important mission was to Paris in 1524, ostensibly to contract an anti-Turkish league with the French king, but really to bring about a matrimonial alliance between the dauphin, afterwards Henry II., and the daughter of King Sigismund I., a project which failed through no fault of Laski’s. The collapse of the Hungarian monarchy at Mohacs (1526) first opened up a wider career to Laski’s adventurous activity. Contrary to the wishes of his own sovereign, Sigismund I., whose pro-Austrian policy he detested, Laski entered the service of John Zapolya, the Magyar competitor for the Hungarian throne, thereby seriously compromising Poland both with the emperor and the pope. Zapolya despatched him on an embassy to Paris, Copenhagen and Munich for help, but on his return he found his patron a refugee in Transylvania, whither he had retired after his defeat by the German king Ferdinand I. at Tokay in 1527. In his extremity Zapolya placed himself under the protection of the sultan, Laski being sent to Constantinople as his intermediary. On his way thither he was attacked and robbed of everything, including his credentials and the rich presents without which no negotiations were deemed possible at the Porte. But Laski was nothing if not audacious. Proceeding on his way to the Turkish capital empty-handed, he nevertheless succeeded in gaining the confidence of Gritti, the favourite of the grand vizier, and ultimately persuaded the sultan to befriend Zapolya and to proclaim him king of Hungary. He went still further, and without the slightest authority for his action concluded a ten years’ truce between his old master King Sigismund of Poland and the Porte. He then returned to Hungary at the head of 10,000 men, with whose aid he enabled Zapolya to re-establish his position and defeat Ferdinand at Saros-Patak. He was rewarded with the countship of Zips and the governor-generalship of Transylvania. But his influence excited the jealousy of the Magyars, and Zapolya was persuaded to imprison him. On being released by the interposition of the Polish grand hetman, Tarnowski, he became the most violent opponent of Zapolya. Shortly after his return to Poland, Laski died suddenly at Cracow, probably poisoned by one of his innumerable enemies.

See Alexander Hirschberg, Hieronymus Laski (Pol.) (Lemberg, 1888).

Jan Laski, the younger (1499-1560), also known as Johannes a Lasco, Polish reformer, son of Jaroslaw (d. 1523), voivode of Sieradia and nephew of the famous Archbishop Laski. During his academical course abroad he made the acquaintance of Zwingli and Erasmus and returned to Poland in 1526 saturated with the new doctrines. Nevertheless he took orders, and owing to the influence of his uncle obtained the bishopric of Veszprem in Hungary from King John Zapolya, besides holding a canonry of Cracow and the office of royal secretary. In 1531 he resigned all his benefices rather than give up a woman whom he had secretly married, and having incurred general reprobation and the lasting displeasure of his uncle the archbishop, he fled to Germany, where ultimately (1543) he adopted the Augsburg Confession. For the next thirteen years Laski was a wandering apostle of the new doctrines. He was successively superintendent at Emden and in Friesland, passed from thence to London where he became a member of the so-called ecclesia peregrinorum, a congregation of foreign Protestants exiled in consequence of the Augsburg Interim of 1548 and, on being expelled by Queen Mary, took refuge first in Denmark and subsequently at Frankfort-on-Main, where he was greatly esteemed. From Frankfort he addressed three letters (printed at Basel) to King Sigismund, Augustus, and the Polish gentry and people, urging the conversion of Poland to Protestantism. In 1556, during the brief triumph of the anti-catholics, he returned to his native land, took part in the synod of Brzesc, and published a number of polemical works, the most noteworthy of which were Forma ac ratio tota ecclesiastici ministerii in peregrinorum Ecclesiae instituta (Pinczow, 1560), and in Polish, History of the Cruel Persecution of the Church of God in 1567, republished in his Opera, edited by A. Kuyper at Amsterdam in 1866. He died at Pinczow in January 1560 and was buried with great pomp by the Polish Protestants, who also struck a medal in his honour. Twice married, he left two sons and two daughters. His nephew (?) Albert Laski, who visited England in 1583, wasted a fortune in aid of Dr Dee’s craze for the “philosopher’s stone.” Laski’s writings are important for the organization of the ecclesia peregrinorum, and he was concerned in the Polish version of the Bible, not published till 1563.

See H. Dalton, Johannes a Lasco (1881), English version of the earlier portion by J. Evans (1886); Bartels, Johannes a Lasco (1860); Harboe, Schicksale des Johannes a Lasco (1758); R. Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography (1850); Bonet-Maury, Early Sources of Eng. Unit. Christianity (1884); W. A. J. Archbold in Dict. Nat. Biog. (1892) under “Laski,” George Pascal, Jean de Lasco (Paris, 1894); Life in Polish by Antoni Walewski (Warsaw, 1872); and Julian Bukowski, History of the Reformation in Poland (Pol.) (Cracow, 1883).

(R. N. B.)

LAS PALMAS, the capital of the Spanish island of Grand Canary, in the Canary archipelago, and of an administrative district which also comprises the islands of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura; on the east coast, in 28° 7′ N. and 5° 24′ W. Pop. (1900) 44,517. Las Palmas is the largest city in the Canary Islands, of which it was the capital until 1833. It is the seat of a court of appeal, of a brigadier, who commands the military forces in the district, of a civil lieutenant-governor, who is independent of the governor-general except in connexion with elections and municipal administration, and of a bishop, who is subordinate to the archbishop of Seville. The palms from which the city derives its name are still characteristic of the fertile valley which it occupies. Las Palmas is built on both banks of a small river, and although parts of it date from the 16th century, it is on the whole a clean and modern city, well drained, and supplied with pure water, conveyed by an aqueduct from the highlands of the interior. Its principal buildings include a handsome cathedral, founded in the 16th century but only completed in the 19th, a theatre, a museum, an academy of art, and several hospitals and good schools. The modern development of Las Palmas is largely due to the foreign merchants, and especially to the British who control the greater portion of the local commerce. La Luz, the port, is connected with Las Palmas by a railway 4 m. long; it is a free port and harbour of refuge, officially considered the third in importance of Spanish ports, but actually the first in the matter of tonnage. It is strongly fortified. The harbour, protected by the promontory of La Isleta, which is connected with the mainland by a narrow bar of sand, can accommodate the largest ships, and affords secure anchorage in all weathers. Ships can discharge at the breakwater (1257 yds. long) or at the Santa Catalina mole, constructed in 1883-1902. The minimum depth of water alongside the quays is 4½ ft. There are floating water-tanks, numerous lighters, titan and other cranes, repairing workshops, and very large supplies of coal afloat and ashore. La Luz is one of the principal Atlantic coaling stations, and the coal-trade is entirely in British hands. Other important industries are shipbuilding, fishing, and the manufacture of glass, leather and hats. The chief exports are fruit, vegetables, sugar, wine and cochineal; coal, iron, cement, timber, petroleum, manure, textiles and provisions are the chief imports. (See also Canary Islands.)

LASSALLE, FERDINAND (1825-1864), German socialist, was born at Breslau on the 11th of April 1825, of Jewish extraction. His father, a prosperous merchant in Breslau, intended Ferdinand for a business career, and sent him to the commercial school at Leipzig; but the boy got himself transferred to the university, first at Breslau, and afterwards at Berlin. His favourite studies were philology and philosophy; he became an ardent Hegelian. Having completed his university studies in 1845, he began to write a work on Heraclitus from the Hegelian point of view; but it was soon interrupted by more stirring interests, and did not see the light for many years. It was in Berlin, towards the end of 1845, that he met the lady with whom his life was to be associated in so remarkable a way, the Countess Hatzfeldt. She had been separated from her husband for many years, and was at feud with him on questions of property and the custody of their children. Lassalle attached himself to the cause of the countess, whom he believed to have been outrageously wronged, made special study of law, and, after bringing the case before thirty-six tribunals, reduced the powerful count to a compromise on terms most favourable to his client. The process, which lasted ten years, gave rise to not a little scandal, especially that of the Cassettengeschichte which pursued Lassalle all the rest of his life. This “affair of the casket” arose out of an attempt by the countess’s friends to get possession of a bond for a large life annuity settled by the count on his mistress, a Baroness Meyendorf, to the prejudice of the countess and her children. Two of Lassalle’s comrades succeeded in carrying off the casket, which contained the lady’s jewels, from the baroness’s room at an hotel in Cologne. They were prosecuted for theft, one of them being condemned to six months’ imprisonment. Lassalle, accused of moral complicity, was acquitted on appeal. He was not so fortunate in 1849, when he underwent a year’s durance for resistance to the authorities of Düsseldorf during the troubles of that stormy period. But going to prison was a familiar experience in Lassalle’s life. Till 1859 Lassalle resided mostly in the Rhine country, prosecuting the suit of the countess, finishing the work on Heraclitus, which was not published till 1858, taking little part in political agitation, but ever a helpful friend of the working men. He was not allowed to live in Berlin because of his connexion with the disturbances of ’48. In 1859, however, he entered the city disguised as a carter, and, through the influence of Humboldt with the king, got permission to stay there. The same year he published a remarkable pamphlet on the Italian War and the Mission of Prussia, in which he warned his countrymen against going to the rescue of Austria in her war with France. He pointed out that if France drove Austria out of Italy she might annex Savoy, but could not prevent the restoration of Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel. France was doing the work of Germany by weakening Austria; Prussia should form an alliance with France to drive out Austria and make herself supreme in Germany. After their realization by Bismarck these ideas have become sufficiently commonplace; but they were nowise obvious when thus published by Lassalle. In 1861 he published a great work in two volumes, System der erworbenen Rechte (System of Acquired Rights).

Now began the short-lived activity which was to give him an historical significance. It was early in 1862, when the struggle of Bismarck with the Prussian liberals was already begun. Lassalle, a democrat of the most advanced type, saw that an opportunity had come for asserting a third great cause—that of the working men—which would outflank the liberalism of the middle classes, and might even command the sympathy of the government. His political programme was, however, entirely subordinate to the social, that of bettering the condition of the working classes, for which he believed the schemes of Schulze-Delitzsch were utterly inadequate. Lassalle flung himself into the career of agitator with his accustomed vigour. His worst difficulties were with the working men themselves, among whom he met the most discouraging apathy. His mission as organizer and emancipator of the working class lasted only two years and a half. In that period he issued about twenty separate publications, most of them speeches and pamphlets, but one of them, that against Schulze-Delitzsch, a considerable treatise, and all full of keen and vigorous thought. He founded the “Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein,” was its president and almost single-handed champion, conducted its affairs, and carried on a vast correspondence, not to mention about a dozen state prosecutions in which he was during that period involved. Berlin, Leipzig, Frankfort and the industrial centres on the Rhine were the chief scenes of his activity. His greatest success was on the Rhine, where in the summers of 1863 and 1864 his travels as missionary of the new gospel resembled a triumphal procession. The agitation was growing rapidly, but he had achieved little substantial success when a most unworthy death closed his career.

While posing as the messiah of the poor, Lassalle was a man of decidedly fashionable and luxurious habits. His suppers were well known as among the most exquisite in Berlin. It was the most piquant feature of his life that he, one of the gilded youth, a connoisseur in wines, and a learned man to boot, had become agitator and the champion of the working man. In one of the literary and fashionable circles of Berlin he had met a Fräulein von Dönniges, for whom he at once felt a passion, which was ardently reciprocated. In the summer of 1864 he met her again on the Rigi, when they resolved to marry. She was a young lady of twenty, decidedly unconventional and original in character, but the daughter of a Bavarian diplomatist then resident at Geneva, who would have nothing to do with Lassalle. The lady was imprisoned in her own room, and soon, apparently under the influence of very questionable pressure, renounced Lassalle in favour of another admirer, a Wallachian, Count von Racowitza. Lassalle sent a challenge both to the lady’s father and her betrothed, which was accepted by the latter. At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, the meeting took place on the morning of August 28, 1864, when Lassalle was mortally wounded, and he died on the 31st of August. In spite of such a foolish ending, his funeral was that of a martyr, and by many of his adherents he has been regarded since with feelings almost of religious devotion.

Lassalle did not lay claim to any special originality as a socialistic thinker, nor did he publish any systematic statement of his views. Yet his leading ideas are sufficiently clear and simple. Like a true Hegelian he saw three stages in the development of labour: the ancient and feudal period, which, through the subjection of the labourer, sought solidarity without freedom; the reign of capital and the middle classes, established in 1789, which sought freedom by destroying solidarity; and the new era, beginning in 1848, which would reconcile solidarity with freedom by introducing the principle of association. It was the basis and starting-point of his opinions that, under the empire of capital and so long as the working man was merely a receiver of wages, no improvement in his condition could be expected. This position he founded on the law of wages formulated by Ricardo, and accepted by all the leading economists, that wages are controlled by the ordinary relations of supply and demand, that a rise in wages leads to an increase in the labouring population, which, by increasing the supply of labour, is followed by a corresponding fall of wages. Thus population increases or decreases in fixed relation to the rise or fall of wages. The condition of the working man will never permanently rise above the mere standard of living required for his subsistence, and the continued supply of his kind. Lassalle held that the co-operative schemes of Schulze-Delitzsch on the principle of “self-help” were utterly inadequate, for the obvious reason that the working classes were destitute of capital. The struggle of the working man helping himself with his empty pockets against the capitalists he compared to a battle with teeth and nails against modern artillery. In short, Lassalle accepted the orthodox political economy to show that the inevitable operation of its laws left no hope for the working classes, and that no remedy could be found but by abolishing the conditions in which these laws had their validity—in other words, by abolishing the present relations of labour and capital altogether. And this could only be done by the productive association of the working men with money provided by the state. And he held that such association should be the voluntary act of the working men, the government merely reserving the right to examine the books of the various societies. All the arrangements should be carried out according to the rules of business usually followed in such transactions. But how move the government to grant such a loan? Simply by introducing (direct) universal suffrage. The working men were an overwhelming majority; they were the state, and should control the government. The aim of Lassalle, then, was to organize the working classes into a great political power, which in the way thus indicated, by peaceful resolute agitation, without violence or insurrection, might attain the goal of productive association. In this way the fourth estate would be emancipated from the despotism of the capitalist, and a great step taken in the solution of the great “social question.”

It will be seen that the net result of Lassalle’s life was to produce a European scandal, and to originate a socialistic movement in Germany, which, at the election of 1903, returned to the Reichstag eighty-one members and polled 3,010,771 votes, and at the election of 1907 returned forty-three members and polled 3,258,968 votes. (The diminution in the number of members returned in 1907 was due mostly to combination among the different political groups.) This result, great as it was, would hardly have been commensurate with his ambition, which was boundless. In the heyday of his passion for Fräulein von Dönniges, his dream was to be enthroned as the president of the German republic with her seated at his side. With his energy, ability and gift of dominating and organizing, he might indeed have done a great deal. Bismarck coquetted with him as the representative of a force that might help him to combat the Prussian liberals; in 1878, in a speech before the Reichstag, he spoke of him with deep respect, as a man of the greatest amiability and ability from whom much could be learned. Even Bishop Ketteler of Mainz had declared his sympathy for the cause he advocated.

Lassalle’s Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen von Ephesos (Berlin, 1858), and the System der erworbenen Rechte (Leipzig, 1861) are both marked by great learning and intellectual power. But of far more historical interest are the speeches and pamphlets connected with his socialistic agitation, of which the most important are—Ueber Verfassungswesen; Arbeiterprogramm; Offenes Antwortschreiben; Zur Arbeiterfrage; Arbeiterlesebuch; Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, oder Kapital und Arbeit. His drama, Franz von Sickingen, published in 1859, is a work of no poetic value. His Collected Works were issued at Leipzig in 1899-1901.

The best biography of Lassalle is H. Oncken’s Lassalle (Stuttgart, 1904); another excellent work on his life and writings is George Brandes’s Danish work, Ferdinand Lassalle (German translation, 4th ed., Leipzig, 1900). See also A. Aaberg, Ferdinand Lassalle (Leipzig, 1883); C. v. Plener, Lassalle (Leipzig, 1884); G. Meyer, Lassalle als Sozialökonom (Berlin, 1894); Brandt, F. Lassalles sozialökonomische Anschauungen und praktische Vorschläge (Jena, 1895); Seillière, Études sur Ferdinand Lassalle (Paris, 1897); E. Bernstein, Ferd. Lassalle und seine Bedeutung für die Arbeiterklasse (Berlin, 1904). There is a considerable literature on his love affair and death; the most notable books are: Meine Beziehungen zu F. Lassalle, by Helene von Racowitza, a very strange book; Enthüllungen über das tragische Lebensende F. Lassalle’s by B. Becker; Im Anschluss an die Memoiren der H. von Racowitza, by A. Kutschbach, and George Meredith’s Tragic Comedians (1880).

(T. K.)

LASSEN, CHRISTIAN (1800-1876), German orientalist, was born on the 22nd of October 1800, at Bergen in Norway. Having received his earliest university education at Christiania, he went to Germany, and continued his studies at Heidelberg and Bonn. In the latter university Lassen acquired a sound knowledge of Sanskrit. He next spent three years in Paris and London, engaged in copying and collating MSS., and collecting materials for future research, especially in reference to the Hindu drama and philosophy. During this period he published, jointly with E. Burnouf, his first work, Essai sur le Pâli (Paris, 1826). On his return to Bonn he studied Arabic, and took the degree of Ph.D., his dissertation discussing the Arabic notices of the geography of the Punjab (Commentatio geographica atque historica de Pentapotamia Indica, Bonn, 1827). Soon after he was admitted Privatdozent, and in 1830 was appointed extraordinary and in 1840 ordinary professor of Old Indian language and literature. In spite of a tempting offer from Copenhagen, in 1841, Lassen remained faithful to the university of his adoption to the end of his life. He died at Bonn on the 8th of May 1876, having been affected with almost total blindness for many years. As early as 1864 he was relieved of the duty of lecturing.

In 1829-1831 he brought out, in conjunction with August W. von Schlegel, a critical annotated edition of the Hitopadeśa. The appearance of this edition marks the starting-point of the critical study of Sanskrit literature. At the same time Lassen assisted von Schlegel in editing and translating the first two cantos of the epic Rāmāyana (1829-1838). In 1832 he brought out the text of the first act of Bhavabhūti’s drama, Mālatīmādhava, and a complete edition, with a Latin translation, of the Sānkhya-kārikā. In 1837 followed his edition and translation of Jayadeva’s charming lyrical drama, Gītagovinda and his Institutiones linguae Pracriticae. His Anthologia Sanscritica, which came out the following year (new ed. by Johann Gildemeister, 1868), contained several hitherto unpublished texts, and did much to stimulate the study of Sanskrit in German universities. In 1846 Lassen brought out an improved edition of Schlegel’s text and translation of the “Bhagavadgītā.” He did not confine himself to the study of Indian languages, but acted likewise as a scientific pioneer in other fields of philological inquiry. In his Beiträge zur Deutung der Eugubinischen Tafeln (1833) he prepared the way for the correct interpretation of the Umbrian inscriptions; and the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (7 vols., 1837-1850), started and largely conducted by him, contains, among other valuable papers from his pen, grammatical sketches of the Beluchi and Brahui languages, and an essay on the Lycian inscriptions.

Soon after the appearance of Burnouf’s Commentaire sur le Yaçna (1833), Lassen also directed his attention to the Zend, and to Iranian studies generally; and in Die altpersischen Keilinschriften von Persepolis (1836) he first made known the true character of the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions, thereby anticipating, by one month, Burnouf’s Mémoire on the same subject, while Sir Henry Rawlinson’s famous memoir on the Behistun inscription, though drawn up in Persia, independently of contemporaneous European research, at about the same time, did not reach the Royal Asiatic Society until three years later. Subsequently Lassen published, in the sixth volume of his journal (1845), a collection of all the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions known up to that date. He also was the first scholar in Europe who took up, with signal success, the decipherment of the newly-discovered Bactrian coins, which furnished him the materials for Zur Geschichte der griechischen und indo-skythischen Könige in Bakterien, Kabul, und Indien (1838). He contemplated bringing out a critical edition of the Vendidad; but, after publishing the first five fargards (1852), he felt that his whole energies were required for the successful accomplishment of the great undertaking of his life—his Indische Altertumskunde. In this work—completed in four volumes, published respectively in 1847 (2nd ed., 1867), 1849 (2nd ed., 1874), 1858 and 1861—which forms one of the greatest monuments of untiring industry and critical scholarship, everything that could be gathered from native and foreign sources, relative to the political, social and intellectual development of India, from the earliest times down to the Mahommedan invasion, was worked up by him into a connected historical account.

LASSEN, EDUARD (1830-1904), Belgian musical composer, was born in Copenhagen, but was taken as a child to Brussels and educated at the Brussels Conservatoire. He won the prix de Rome in 1851, and went for a long tour in Germany and Italy. He settled at Weimar, where in 1861 he succeeded Liszt as conductor of the opera, and he died there on the 15th of January 1904. Besides many well-known songs, he wrote operas—Landgraf Ludwig’s Brautfahrt (1857), Frauenlob (1861), Le Captif (1868)—instrumental music to dramas, notably to Goethe’s Faust (1876), two symphonies and various choral works.

LASSO (Lassus), ORLANDO (c. 1530-1594), Belgian musical composer, whose real name was probably Roland Delattre, was born at Mons, in Hainault, probably not much earlier than 1532, the date given by the epitaph printed at the end of the volumes of the Magnum opus musicum; though already in the 16th century the opinions of his biographers were divided between the years 1520 and 1530. Much is reported, but very little known, of his connexions and his early career. The discrepancy as to the date of his birth appears also in connexion with his appointment at the church of St John Lateran in Rome. If he was born in 1530 or 1532 he could not have obtained that appointment in 1541. What is certain is that his first book of madrigals was published in Venice in 1555, and that in the same year he speaks of himself in the preface of Italian and French songs and Latin motets as if he had recently come from Rome. He seems to have visited England in 1554 and to have been introduced to Cardinal Pole, to whom an adulatory motet appears in 1556. (This is not, as might hastily be supposed, a confusion resulting from the fact that the ambassador from Ferdinand, king of the Romans, Don Pedro de Lasso, attended the marriage of Philip and Mary in England in the same year.) His first book of motets appeared at Antwerp in 1556, containing the motet in honour of Cardinal Pole. The style of Orlando had already begun to purify itself from the speculative and chaotic elements that led Burney, who seems to have known only his earlier works, to call him “a dwarf on stilts” as compared with Palestrina. But where he is orthodox he is as yet stiff, and his secular compositions are, so far, better than his more serious efforts.

In 1557, if not before, he was invited by Albrecht IV., duke of Bavaria, to go to Munich. The duke was a most intelligent patron of all the fine arts, a notable athlete, and a man of strict principles. Munich from henceforth never ceased to be Orlando’s home; though he sometimes paid long visits to Italy and France, whether in response to royal invitations or with projects of his own. In 1558 he made a very happy marriage by which he had four sons and two daughters. The four sons all became good musicians, and we owe an inestimable debt to the pious industry of the two eldest sons, who (under the patronage of Duke Maximilian I., the second successor of Orlando’s master) published the enormous collection of Orlando’s Latin motets known as the Magnum opus musicum.

Probably no composer has ever had more ideal circumstances for artistic inspiration and expression than had Orlando. His duty was to make music all day and every day, and to make it according to his own taste. Nothing was too good, too severe or too new for the duke. Church music was not more in demand than secular. Instrumental music, which in the 16th century had hardly any independent existence, accompanied the meals of the court; and Orlando would rise from dessert to sing trios and quartets with picked voices. The daily prayers included a full mass with polyphonic music. This amazing state of things becomes more intelligible and less alarming when we consider that 16th-century music was no sooner written than it could be performed. With such material as Orlando had at his disposal, musical performance was as unattended by expense and tedious preliminaries as a game of billiards in a good billiard room. Not even Haydn’s position at Esterhaz can have enabled him, as has been said, to “ring the bell” for musicians to come and try a new orchestral effect with such ease as that with which Orlando could produce his work at Munich. His fame soon became world-wide, and every contemporary authority is full of the acclamation with which Orlando was greeted wherever his travels took him.

Very soon, with this rapid means of acquiring experience, Orlando’s style became as pure as Palestrina’s; while he always retained his originality and versatility. His relations to the literary culture of the time are intimate and fascinating; and during his stay at the court of France in 1571 he became a friend of the poet Ronsard. In 1579 Duke Albrecht died. Orlando’s salary had already been guaranteed to him for life, so that his outward circumstances did not change, and the new duke was very kind to him. But the loss of his master was a great grief and seems to have checked his activity for some time. In 1589, after the publication of six Masses, ending with a beautiful Missa pro defunctis, his strength began to fail; and a sudden serious illness left him alarmingly depressed and inactive until his death on the 14th of June 1594.

If Palestrina represents the supreme height attained by 16th-century music, Orlando represents the whole century. It is impossible to exaggerate the range and variety of his style, so long as we recognise the limits of 16th-century musical language. Even critics to whom this language is unfamiliar cannot fail to notice the glaring differences between Orlando’s numerous types of art, though such critics may believe all those types to be equally crude and archaic. The swiftness of Orlando’s intellectual and artistic development is astonishing. His first four volumes of madrigals show a very intermittent sense of beauty. Many a number in them is one compact mass of the fashionable harsh play upon the “false relation” between twin major and minor chords, which is usually believed to be the unenviable distinction of the English madrigal style from that of the Italians. It must be confessed that in the Italian madrigal (as distinguished from the villanella and other light forms), Orlando never attained complete certainty of touch, though some of his later madrigals are indeed glorious. But in his French chansons, many of which are settings of the poems of his friend Ronsard, his wit and lightness of touch are unfailing. In setting other French poems he is sometimes unfortunately most witty where the words are most gross, for he is as free from modern scruples as any of his Elizabethan contemporaries. In 1562, when the Council of Trent was censuring the abuses of Flemish church music, Orlando had already purified his ecclesiastical style; though he did not go so far as to Italianize it in order to oblige those modern critics who are unwilling to believe that anything appreciably unlike Palestrina can be legitimate. At the same time Orlando’s Masses are not among his greatest works. This is possibly partly due to the fact that the proportions of a musical Mass are at the mercy of the local practice of the liturgy; and that perhaps the uses of the court at Munich were not quite so favourable to broadly designed proportion (not length) as the uses of Rome. Differences which might cramp the 16th-century composer need not amount to anything that would draw down the censure of ecclesiastical authorities. Be this as it may, Orlando’s other church music is always markedly different from Palestrina’s, and often fully as sublime. It is also in many ways far more modern in resource. We frequently come upon things like the Justorum animae [Magnum Opus, No. 260 (301)] which in their way are as overpoweringly touching as, for example, the Benedictus of Beethoven’s Mass in D or the soprano solo in Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem.

No one has approached Orlando in the ingenuity, quaintness and humour of his tone-painting. He sometimes descends to extremely elaborate musical puns, carrying farther than any other composer since the dark ages the absurd device of setting syllables that happened to coincide with the sol-fa system to the corresponding sol-fa notes. But in the most absurd of such cases he evidently enjoys twisting these notes into a theme of pregnant musical meaning. The quaintest instance is the motet Quid estis pusillanimes [Magnum Opus, No. 92 (69)] where extra sol-fa syllables are introduced into the text to make a good theme in combination with the syllables already there by accident! (An nescitis Justitiae Ut Sol [Fa Mi] Re Laxatas habenas possit denuo cohibere?). The significance of these euphuistic jokes is that they always make good music in Orlando’s hands. There is musical fun even in his voluminous parody of the stammering style of word-setting in the burlesque motet S.U.Su. PER. per. super F.L.U., which gets through one verse of a psalm in fifteen minutes.

When it was a question of purely musical high spirits Orlando was unrivalled; and his setting of Walter de Mape’s Fertur in conviviis (given in the Magnum opus with a stupid moral derangement of the text), and most of his French chansons, are among the most deeply humorous music in the world.

But it is in the tests of the sublime that Orlando shows himself one of the greatest minds that ever found expression in art. Nothing sublime was too unfamiliar to frighten him into repressing his quaint fancy, though he early repressed all that thwarted his musical nature. His Penitential Psalms stand with Josquin’s Miserere and Palestrina’s first book of Lamentations as artistic monuments of 16th-century penitential religion, just as Bach’s Matthew Passion stands alone among such monuments in later art. Yet the passage (quoted by Sir Hubert Parry in vol. 3 of the Oxford History of Music) “Nolite fieri sicut mulus” is one among many traits which are ingeniously and grotesquely descriptive without losing harmony with the austere profundity of the huge works in which they occur. It is impossible to read any large quantity of Orlando’s mature music without feeling that a mind like his would in modern times have covered a wider field of mature art than any one classical or modern composer known to us. Yet we cannot say that anything has been lost by his belonging to the 16th century. His music, if only from its peculiar technique of crossing parts and unexpected intervals, is exceptionally difficult to read; and hence intelligent conducting and performance of it is rare. But its impressiveness is beyond dispute; and there are many things which, like the Justorum animae cannot even be read, much less heard, without emotion.

Orlando’s works as shown by the plan of Messrs Breitkopf & Härtel’s complete critical edition (begun in 1894) comprise: (1) the Magnum opus musicum, a posthumous collection containing Latin pieces for from two to twelve voices, 516 in number (or, counting by single movements, over 700). Not all of these are to the original texts. The Magnum opus fills eleven volumes. (2) Five volumes of madrigals, containing six books, and a large number of single madrigals, and about half a volume of lighter Italian songs (villanellas, &c.). (3) Three volumes (not four as in the prospectus) of French chansons. (4) Two volumes of German four-part and five-part Lieder. (5) Serial church music: three volumes, containing Lessons from the Book of Job (two settings). Passion according to St Matthew (i.e. like the Passions of Victoria and Soriano, a setting of the words of the crowds and of the disciples); Lamentations of Jeremiah; Morning Lessons; the Officia printed in the third volume of the Patroncinium (a publication suggested and supported by Orlando’s patrons and containing eight entire volumes of his works); the Seven Penitential Psalms; German Psalms and Prophetiae Sibyllarum, (6) one hundred Magnificats (Jubilus B. M. Virginis) 3 vols., (7) eight volumes of Masses, (8) two volumes of Latin songs not in the Magnum opus, (9) five volumes of unpublished works.

(D. F. T.)

LASSO (Span. lazo, snare, ultimately from Lat. laqueus, cf. “lace”), a rope 60 to 100 ft. in length with a slip-noose at one end, used in the Spanish and Portuguese parts of America and in the western United States for catching wild horses and cattle. It is now less employed in South America than in the vast grazing country west of the Mississippi river, where the herders, called locally cow-boys or cow-punchers, are provided with it. When not in use, the lasso, called rope in the West, is coiled at the right of the saddle in front of the rider. When an animal is to be caught the herder, galloping after it, swings the coiled lasso round his head and casts it straight forward in such a manner that the noose settles over the head or round the legs of the quarry, when it is speedily brought into submission. A shorter rope called lariat (Span. la reata) is used to picket horses.

LAST. 1. (A syncopated form of “latest,” the superlative of O.E. laét, late), an adjective applied to the conclusion of anything, all that remains after everything else has gone, or that which has just occurred. In theology the “four last things” denote the final scenes of Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell; the “last day” means the Day of Judgment (see Eschatology).

2. (O.E. lást, footstep; the word appears in many Teutonic languages, meaning foot, footstep, track, &c.; it is usually referred to a Teutonic root lais, cognate with Lat. lira, a furrow; from this root, used figuratively, came “learn” and “lore”), originally a footstep, trace or track, now only used of the model of a foot in wood on which a shoemaker makes boots and shoes; hence the proverb “let the cobbler stick to his last,” “ne sutor ultra crepidam.”

3. (O.E. hlaest; the work is connected with the root seen in “lade,” and is used in German and Dutch of a weight; it is also seen in “ballast”), a commercial weight or measure of quantity, varying according to the commodity and locality; originally applied to the load of goods carried by the boat or wagon used in carrying any particular commodity in any particular locality, it is now chiefly used as a weight for fish, a “last” of herrings being equal to from 10,000 to 12,000 fish. The German Last = 4000 ℔, and this is frequently taken as the nominal weight of an English “last.” A “last” of wool = 12 sacks, and of beer = 12 barrels.

LASUS, Greek lyric poet, of Hermione in Argolis, flourished about 510 B.C. A member of the literary and artistic circle of the Peisistratidae, he was the instructor of Pindar in music and poetry and the rival of Simonides. The dithyramb (of which he was sometimes considered the actual inventor) was developed by him, by the aid of various changes in music and rhythm, into an artistically constructed choral song, with an accompaniment of several flutes. It became more artificial and mimetic in character, and its range of subjects was no longer confined to the adventures of Dionysus. Lasus further increased its popularity by introducing prize contests for the best poem of the kind. His over-refinement is shown by his avoidance of the letter sigma (on account of its hissing sound) in several of his poems, of one of which (a hymn to Demeter of Hermione) a few lines have been preserved in Athenaeus (xiv. 624 E). Lasus was also the author of the first theoretical treatise on music.

See Suïdas s.v.; Aristophanes, Wasps, 1410, Birds, 1403 and schol.; Plutarch, De Musica, xxix.; Müller and Donaldson, Hist. of Greek Literature, i. 284; G. H. Bode, Geschichte der hellenischen Dichtkunst, ii. pt. 2, p. 111; F. W. Schneidewin, De Laso Hermionensi Comment. (Göttingen, 1842); Fragm. in Bergk, Poet. Lyr.

LAS VEGAS, a city and the county-seat of San Miguel county, New Mexico, U.S.A., in the north central part of New Mexico, on the Gallinas river, and 83 m. by rail E. of Santa Fé. Though usually designated as a single municipality, Las Vegas consists of two distinct corporations, the old town on the W. bank of the river and the city proper on the E. bank. Pop. of the city (1890) 2385; (1900) 3552 (340 being foreign-born and 116 negroes); (1910) 3755. According to local estimates, the combined population of the city and the old town in 1908 was 10,000. Las Vegas is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé railway, and is its division headquarters in New Mexico. The city lies in a valley at the foot of the main range of the Rocky Mountains, and is about 6400 ft. above the sea. There are high peaks to the W. and within a short distance of the city much beautiful mountain scenery, especially along the “Scenic Route,” a highway from Las Vegas to Santa Fé, traversing the Las Vegas canyon and the Pecos Valley forest reserve. The country E. of the city consists of level plains. The small amount of rainfall, the great elevation and the southern latitude give the region a dry and rarified air, and Las Vegas is a noted health resort. Six miles distant, and connected with the city by rail, are the Las Vegas Hot Springs. The old town on the W. bank of the Gallinas river retains many features of a Mexican village, with low adobe houses facing narrow and crooked streets. Its inhabitants are largely of Spanish-American descent. The part on the E. bank or city proper is thoroughly modern, with well-graded streets, many of them bordered with trees. The most important public institutions are the New Mexico insane asylum, the New Mexico normal university (chartered 1893, opened 1898), the county court house (in the old town), the academy of the Immaculate Conception, conducted by the Sisters of Loretto, Saint Anthony’s sanatorium, maintained by the Sisters of Charity, La Salle institute, conducted by the Christian Brothers, a Presbyterian mission school and a Methodist manual training and commercial school. There are railway machine-shops, and various manufactories. Las Vegas lies in the centre of an extensive grazing region, has large stockyards and annually ships great quantities of wool. Three of the local newspapers are published in Spanish. Las Vegas was founded in 1835, under the government of the Mexican Republic. On the 15th of August 1846, during the war between Mexico and the United States, Gen. Stephen W. Kearny entered the town, and its alcalde took the oath of allegiance to the United States. There was but little progress or development until the arrival of the railway in 1879. In 1888 the part east of the river was incorporated as a town under the name of East Las Vegas, and in 1896 it was chartered as the city of Las Vegas. The old Las Vegas, west of the river, was incorporated as a town in 1903.

LASWARI, one of the decisive battles of India. It was fought on the 1st of November 1803 between the British under General Lake, and the Mahratta troops of Sindia, consisting of the remnant of Perron’s battalions. Laswari is a village in the state of Alwar some 80 m. S. of Delhi, and here Lake overtook the enemy and attacked them with his cavalry before the infantry arrived. The result was indecisive, but when the infantry came up there ensued one of the most evenly contested battles ever fought between the British and the natives of India, which ended in a complete victory for the British.

LATACUNGA (Llactacunga, or, in local parlance, Tacunga), a plateau town of Ecuador, capital of the province of Léon, 46 m. S. of Quito, near the confluence of the Alagues and Cutuchi to form the Patate, the headstream of the Pastaza. Pop. (1900, estimate) 12,000, largely Indian. Latacunga stands on the old road between Guayaquil and Quito and has a station on the railway between those cities. It is 9141 ft. above sea-level; and its climate is cold and unpleasant, owing to the winds from the neighbouring snowclad heights, and the barren, pumice-covered table-land on which it stands. Cotopaxi is only 25 m. distant, and the town has suffered repeatedly from eruptions. Founded in 1534, it was four times destroyed by earthquakes between 1698 and 1798. The neighbouring ruins of an older native town are said to date from the Incas.

LA TAILLE, JEAN DE (c. 1540-1608), French poet and dramatist, was born at Bondaroy. He studied the humanities in Paris under Muret, and law at Orleans under Anne de Bourg. He began his career as a Huguenot, but afterwards adopted a mild Catholicism. He was wounded at the battle of Arnay-le Duc in 1570, and retired to his estate at Bondaroy, where he wrote a political pamphlet entitled Histoire abrégée des singeries de la ligue, often published with the Satire Ménippée. His chief poem is a satire on the follies of court life, Le Courtisan retiré; he also wrote a political poem, Le Prince nécessaire. But his fame rests on his achievements in drama. In 1572 appeared the tragedy of Saül le furieux, with a preface on L’ Art de la tragédie. Like Jodelle, Grévin, La Péruse and their followers, he wrote, not for the general public to which the mysteries and farces had addressed themselves, but for the limited audience of a lettered aristocracy. He therefore depreciated the native drama and insisted on the Senecan model. In his preface La Taille enunciates the unities of place, time and action; he maintains that each act should have a unity of its own and that the scenes composing it should be continuous; he objects to deaths on the stage on the ground that the representation is unconvincing, and he requires as subject of the tragedy an incident really terrible, developed, if possible, by elaborate intrigue. He criticizes e.g. the subject of the sacrifice of Abraham, chosen by Théodore de Bèze for his tragedy (1551), as unsuitable because “pity and terror” are evoked from the spectators without real cause. If in Saül le furieux he did not completely carry out his own convictions he developed his principal character with great ability. A second tragedy, La Famine ou les Gabéonites (1573), is inferior in construction, but is redeemed by the character of Rizpah. He was also the author of two comedies, Le Négromant and Les Corrivaux, both written apparently by 1562 but not published until 1573. Les Corrivaux is remarkable for its colloquial prose dialogue, which foreshadows the excellence of later French comedy.

His brother, Jacques de la Taille (1542-1562), composed a number of tragedies, of which La Mort de Daire and La Mort d’Alexandre (both published in 1573) are the chief. He is best known by his Manière de faire des vers en français comme en grec et en latin, an attempt to regulate French verse by quantity. He died of plague at the age of 20. His Poésies diverses were published in 1572.

The works of Jean de la Taille were edited by René de Maulde (4 vols., 1878-1882). See also É. Faguet, La Tragédie française au XVIe siècle (1883).

LATAKIA (anc. Laodicea), the chief town of a sanjak in the Beirut vilayet of Syria, situated on the coast, opposite the island of Cyprus. The oldest name of the town, according to Philo Herennius, was Ράμιθα or Λευκὴ ἀκτή it received that of Laodicea (ad mare) from Seleucus Nicator, who refounded it in honour of his mother as one of the four “sister” cities of the Syrian Tetrapolis (Antioch, Seleucia, Apamea, Laodicea). In the Roman period it was favoured by Caesar, and took the name of Julia; and, though it suffered severely when the fugitive Dolabella stood his last siege within its walls (43 B.C.), Strabo describes it as a flourishing port, which supplied, from the vineyards on the mountains, the greater part of the wine imported to Alexandria. The town received the privileges of an Italian colony from Severus, for taking his part against Antioch in the struggle with Niger. Laodicea was the seat of an ancient bishopric, and even had some claim to metropolitan rights. At the time of the crusades, “Liche,” as Jacques de Vitry says it was popularly called, was a wealthy city. It fell to Tancred with Antioch in 1102, and was recovered by Saladin in 1188. A Christian settlement was afterwards permitted to establish itself in the town, and to protect itself by fortifications; but it was expelled by Sultan Kala’ūn and the defences destroyed. By the 16th century Laodicea had sunk very low; the revival in the beginning of the 17th was due to the new trade in tobacco. The town has several times been almost destroyed by earthquakes—in 1170, 1287 and 1822.

The people are chiefly employed in tobacco cultivation, silk and oil culture, poultry rearing and the sponge fishery. There is a large export of eggs to Alexandria; but the wealth of the place depends most on the famous “Latakia” tobacco, grown in the plain behind the town and on the Ansarieh hills. There are three main varieties, of which the worst is dark in colour and strong in flavour; the best, grown in the districts of Diryus and Amamareh, is light and aromatic, and is exported mainly to Alexandria; but much goes also to Constantinople, Cyprus and direct to Europe. After the construction of a road through Jebel Ansarieh to Hamah, Latakia drew a good deal of traffic from upper Syria; but the Hamah-Homs railway has now diverted much of this again. The products of the surrounding district, however, cause the town to increase steadily, and it is a regular port of call for the main Levantine lines of steamers. The only notable object of antiquity is a triumphal arch, probably of the early 3rd century, in the S.E. quarter of the modern town. Latakia and its neighbourhood formerly produced a very beautiful type of rug, examples of which are highly prized.

(D. G. H.)

LATEEN (the Anglicized form of Fr. latine, i.e. voile latine, Latin sail, so-called as the chief form of rig in the Mediterranean), a certain kind of triangular sail, having a long yard by which it is suspended to the mast. A “lateener” is a vessel rigged with a lateen sail and yard. This rig was formerly much used, and is still the typical sail of the felucca of the Mediterranean, and dhow of the Arabian Sea.

LA TÈNE (Lat. tenuis, shallow), the site of a lake-dwelling at the north end of Lake Neuchâtel, between Marin and Préfargier. According to some, it was originally a Helvetic oppidum; according to others, a Gallic commercial settlement. R. Forrer distinguishes an older semi-military, and a younger civilian settlement, the former a Gallic customs station, the latter, which may be compared to the canabae of the Roman camps, containing the booths and taverns used by soldiers and sailors. He also considers the older station to have been, not as usually supposed, Helvetic, but pre- or proto-Helvetic, the character of which changed with the advance of the Helvetii into Switzerland (c. 110-100 B.C.). La Tène has given its name to a period of culture (c. 500 B.C.-A.D. 100), the phase of the Iron age succeeding the Hallstatt phase, not as being its starting-point, but because the finds are the best known of their kind. The latter are divided into early (c. 500-250 B.C.), middle (250-100 B.C.) and late (100 B.C.-A.D. 100), and chiefly belong to the middle period. They are mostly of iron, and consist of swords, spear-heads, axes, scythes and knives, which exhibit a remarkable agreement with the description of the weapons of the southern Celts given by Diodorus Siculus. There are also brooches, bronze kettles, torques, small bronze ear-rings with little glass pearls of various colours, belt-hooks and pins for fastening articles of clothing. The La Tène culture made its way through France across to England, where it has received the name of “late Celtic”; a remarkable find has been made at Aylesford in Kent.

See F. Keller, Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, vi. (Eng. trans., 1878); V. Gross, La Tène un oppidum helvète (1886); E. Vouga, Les Helvètes à La Tène (1886); P. Reinecke, Zur Kenntnis der la Tène Denkmäler der Zone nordwärts der Alpen (Mainzer Festschrift, 1902); R. Forrer, Reallexikon der prähistorischen ... Altertümer (1907), where many illustrations are given.

LATERAN COUNCILS, the ecclesiastical councils or synods held at Rome in the Lateran basilica which was dedicated to Christ under the title of Salvator, and further called the basilica of Constantine or the church of John the Baptist. Ranking as a papal cathedral, this became a much-favoured place of assembly for ecclesiastical councils both in antiquity (313, 487) and more especially during the middle ages. Among these numerous synods the most prominent are those which the tradition of the Roman Catholic church has classed as ecumenical councils.

1. The first Lateran council (the ninth ecumenical) was opened by Pope Calixtus II. on the 18th of March 1123; its primary object being to confirm the concordat of Worms, and so close the conflict on the question of investiture (q.v.). In addition to this, canons were enacted against simony and the marriage of priests; while resolutions were passed in favour of the crusaders, of pilgrims to Rome and in the interests of the truce of God. More than three hundred bishops are reported to have been present.

For the resolutions see Monumenta Germaniae, Leges, iv., i. 574-576 (1893); Mansi, Collectio Conciliorum, xxi. p. 281 sq.; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, v. 378-384 (ed. 2, 1886).

2. The second Lateran, and tenth ecumenical, council was held by Pope Innocent II. in April 1139, and was attended by close on a thousand clerics. Its immediate task was to neutralize the after-effects of the schism, which had only been terminated in the previous year by the death of Anacletus II. (d. 25th January 1138). All consecrations received at his hands were declared invalid, his adherents were deposed, and King Roger of Sicily was excommunicated. Arnold of Brescia, too, was removed from office and banished from Italy.

Resolutions, ap. Mansi, op. cit. xxi., 525 sq.; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, v. 438-445 (ed. 2).

3. At the third Lateran council (eleventh ecumenical), which met in March 1179 under Pope Alexander III., the clergy present again numbered about one thousand. The council formed a sequel to the peace of Venice (1177), which marked the close of the struggle between the papacy and the emperor Frederick I. Barbarossa; its main object being to repair the direct or indirect injuries which the schism had inflicted on the life of the church and to display to Christendom the power of the see of Rome. Among the enactments of the council, the most important concerned the appointment to the papal throne (Canon 1), the electoral law of 1059 being supplemented by a further provision declaring a two-thirds majority to be requisite for the validity of the cardinals’ choice. Of the participation of the Roman clergy and populace, or of the imperial ratification, there was no longer any question. Another resolution, of importance for the history of the treatment of heresy, was the canon which decreed that armed force should be employed against the Cathari in southern France, that their goods were liable to confiscation and their persons to enslavement by the princes, and that all who took up weapons against them should receive a two years’ remission of their penance and be placed—like the crusaders—under the direct protection of the church.

Resolutions, ap. Mansi, op. cit. xxii. 212 sq.; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, v. 710-719 (ed. 2).

4. The fourth Lateran council (twelfth ecumenical), convened by Pope Innocent III. in 1215, was the most brilliant and the most numerously attended of all, and marks the culminating point of a pontificate which itself represents the zenith attained by the medieval papacy. Prelates assembled from every country in Christendom, and with them the deputies of numerous princes. The total included 412 bishops, with 800 priors and abbots, besides the representatives of absent prelates and a number of inferior clerics. The seventy decrees of the council begin with a confession of faith directed against the Cathari and Waldenses, which is significant if only for the mention of a transubstantiation of the elements in the Lord’s Supper. A series of resolutions provided in detail for the organized suppression of heresy and for the institution of the episcopal inquisition (Canon 3). On every Christian, of either sex, arrived at years of discretion, the duty was imposed of confessing at least once annually and of receiving the Eucharist at least at Easter (Canon 21). Enactments were also passed touching procedure in the ecclesiastical courts, the creation of new monastic orders, appointments to offices in the church, marriage-law, conventual discipline, the veneration of relics, pilgrimages and intercourse with Jews and Saracens. Finally, a great crusade was resolved upon, to defray the expenses of which it was determined that the clergy should lay aside one-twentieth—the pope and the cardinals one-tenth—of their revenues for the next three years; while the crusaders were to be held free of all burdens during the period of their absence.

Resolutions, ap. Mansi, op. cit. xxii. 953 sq.; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, v. 872-905 (ed. 2). See also Innocent III.

5. The fifth Lateran council (eighteenth ecumenical) was convened by Pope Julius II. and continued by Leo X. It met from the 3rd of May 1512 to the 16th of March 1517, and was the last great council anterior to the Reformation. The change in the government of the church, the rival council of Pisa, the ecclesiastical and political dissensions within and without the council, and the lack of disinterestedness on the part of its members, all combined to frustrate the hopes which its convocation had awakened. Its resolutions comprised the rejection of the pragmatic sanction, the proclamation of the pope’s superiority over the council, and the renewal of the bull Unam sanctam of Boniface VIII. The theory that it is possible for a thing to be theologically true and philosophically false, and the doctrine of the mortality of the human soul, were both repudiated; while a three years’ tithe on all church property was set apart to provide funds for a war against the Turks.

See Hardouin, Coll. Conc. ix. 1570 sq.; Hefele-Hergenröther, Conciliengeschichte, viii. 454 sq.; (1887). Cf. bibliography under Leo X.

(C. M.)

LATERITE (Lat. later, a brick), in petrology, a red or brown superficial deposit of clay or earth which gathers on the surface of rocks and has been produced by their decomposition; it is very common in tropical regions. In consistency it is generally soft and friable, but hard masses, nodules and bands often occur in it. These are usually rich in iron. The superficial layers of laterite deposits are often indurated and smooth black or dark-brown crusts occur where the clays have long been exposed to a dry atmosphere; in other cases the soft clays are full of hard nodules, and in general the laterite is perforated by tubules, sometimes with veins of different composition and appearance from the main mass. The depth of the laterite beds varies up to 30 or 40 ft., the deeper layers often being soft when the surface is hard or stony; the transition to fresh, sound rock below may be very sudden. That laterite is merely rotted crystalline rock is proved by its often preserving the structures, veins and even the outlines of the minerals of the parent mass below; the felspars and other components of granite gneiss having evidently been converted in situ into a soft argillaceous material.

Laterite occurs in practically every tropical region of the earth, and is very abundant in Ceylon, India, Burma, Central and West Africa, Central America, &c. It is especially well developed where the underlying rock is crystalline and felspathic (as granite gneiss, syenite and diorite), but occurs also on basalts in the Deccan and in other places, and is found even on mica schist, sandstone and quartzite, though in such cases it tends to be more sandy than argillaceous. Many varieties have been recognized. In India a calcareous laterite with large concretionary blocks of carbonate of lime is called kankar (kunkar), and has been much used in building bridges, &c., because it serves as a hydraulic cement. In some districts (e.g. W. Indies) similar types of laterite have been called “puzzuolana” and are also used as mortar and cement. Kankar is also known and worked in British East Africa. The clay called cabook in Ceylon is essentially a variety of laterite. Common laterite contains very little lime, and it seems that in districts which have an excessive rainfall that component may be dissolved out by percolating water, while kankar, or calcareous laterite, is formed in districts which have a smaller rainfall. In India also a distinction is made between “high-level” and “low-level” laterites. The former are found at all elevations up to 5000 ft. and more, and are the products of the decomposition of rock in situ; they are often fine-grained and sometimes have a very well-marked concretionary structure. These laterites are subject to removal by running water, and are thus carried to lower grounds forming transported or “low-level” laterites. The finer particles tend to be carried away into the rivers, while the sand is left behind and with it much of the heavy iron oxides. In such situations the laterites are sandy and ferruginous, with a smaller proportion of clay, and are not intimately connected with the rocks on which they lie. On steep slopes laterite also may creep or slip when soaked with rain, and if exposed in sections on roadsides or river banks has a bedded appearance, the stratification being parallel to the surface of the ground.

Chemical and microscopical investigations show that laterite is not a clay like those which are so familiar in temperate regions; it does not consist of hydrous silicate of alumina, but is a mechanical mixture of fine grains of quartz with minute scales of hydrates of alumina. The latter are easily soluble in acid while clay is not, and after treating laterite with acids the alumina and iron leave the silica as a residue in the form of quartz. The alumina seems to be combined with variable proportions of water, probably as the minerals hydrargillite, diaspore and gibbsite, while the iron occurs as goethite, turgite, limonite, haematite. As already remarked, there is a tendency for the superficial layers to become hard, probably by a loss of the water contained in these aluminous minerals. These chemical changes may be the cause of the frequent concretionary structure and veining in the laterite. The great abundance of alumina in some varieties of laterite is a consequence of the removal of the fine particles of gibbsite, &c., from the quartz by the action of gentle currents of water. We may also point out the essential chemical similarity between laterite and the seams of bauxite which occur, for example, in the north of Ireland as reddish clays between flows of Tertiary basalt. The bauxite is rich in alumina combined with water, and is used as an ore of aluminium. It is often very ferruginous. Similar deposits occur at Vogelsberg in Germany, and we may infer that the bauxite beds are layers of laterite produced by sub-aerial decomposition in the same manner as the thick laterite deposits which are now in course of formation in the plateau basalts of the Deccan in India.

The conditions under which laterite are formed include, first, a high seasonal temperature, for it occurs only in tropical districts and in plains or mountains up to about 5000 ft. in height; secondly, a heavy rainfall, with well-marked alternation of wet and dry seasons (in arid countries laterite is seldom seen, and where the rainfall is moderate the laterite is often calcareous); third, the presence of rocks containing aluminous minerals such as felspar, augite, hornblende and mica. On pure limestones such as coral rocks and on quartzites laterite deposits do not originate except where the material has been transported.

Many hypotheses have been advanced to account for the essential difference between lateritization and the weathering processes exhibited by rocks in temperate and arctic climates. In the tropics the rank growth of vegetation produces large amounts of humus and carbonic acid which greatly promote rock decomposition; igneous and crystalline rocks of all kinds are deeply covered under rich dark soils, so that in tropical forests the underlying rocks are rarely to be seen. In the warm soil nitrification proceeds rapidly and bacteria of many kinds flourish. It has also been argued that the frequent thunderstorms produce much nitric acid in the atmosphere and that this may be a cause of lateritization, but it is certainly not a necessary factor, as beds of laterite occur in oceanic islands lying in regions of the ocean where lightning is rarely seen. Sir Thomas Holland has brought forward the suggestion that the development of laterite may depend on the presence in the soil of bacteria which are able to decompose silicate of alumina into quartz and hydrates of alumina. The restricted distribution of laterite deposits might then be due to the inhibiting effect of low temperatures on the reproduction of these organisms. This very ingenious hypothesis has not yet received the experimental confirmation which seems necessary before it can be regarded as established. Malcolm Maclaren, rejecting the bacterial theory, directs special attention to the alternate saturation of the soil with rain water in the wet season and desiccation in the subsequent drought. The laterite beds are porous, in fact they are traversed by innumerable tubules which are often lined with deposits of iron oxide and aluminous minerals. We may be certain that, as in all soils during dry weather, there is an ascent of water by capillary action towards the surface, where it is gradually dissipated by evaporation. The soil water brings with it mineral matter in solution, which is deposited in the upper part of the beds. If the alumina be at one time in a soluble condition it will be drawn upwards and concentrated near the surface. This process explains many peculiarities of laterites, such as their porous and slaggy structure, which is often so marked that they have been mistaken for slaggy volcanic rocks. The concretionary structure is undoubtedly due to chemical rearrangements, among which the escape of water is probably one of the most important; and many writers have recognized that the hard ferruginous crust, like the induration which many soft laterites undergo when dug up and exposed to the air, is the result of desiccation and exposure to the hot sun of tropical countries. The brecciated structure which many laterites show may be produced by great expansion of the mass consequent on absorption of water after heavy rains, followed by contraction during the subsequent dry season.

Laterites are not of much economic use. They usually form a poor soil, full of hard concretionary lumps and very unfertile because the potash and phosphates have been removed in solution, while only alumina, iron and silica are left behind. They are used as clays for puddling, for making tiles, and as a mortar in rough work. Kankar has filled an important part as a cement in many large engineering works in India. Where the iron concretions have been washed out by rains or by artificial treatment (often in the form of small shot-like pellets) they serve as an iron ore in parts of India and Africa. Attempts are being made to utilize laterite as an ore of aluminium, a purpose for which some varieties seem well adapted. There are also deposits of manganese associated with some laterites in India which may ultimately be valuable as mineral ores.

(J. S. F.)

LATH (O. Eng. laett, Mid. Eng. lappe, a form possibly due to the Welsh llath; the word appears in many Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch lat, Ger. Latte, and has passed into Romanic, cf. Ital. latta, Fr. latte), a thin flat strip of wood or other material used in building to form a base or groundwork for plaster, or for tiles, slates or other covering for roofs. Such strips of wood are employed to form lattice-work, or for the bars of venetian blinds or shutters. A “lattice” (O. Fr. lattis) is an interlaced structure of laths fastened together so as to form a screen with diamond-shaped or square interstices. Such a screen was used, as it still is in the East, as a shutter for a window admitting air rather than light; it was hence used of the window closed by such a screen. In modern usage the term is applied to a window with diamond-shaped panes set in lead-work. A window with a lattice painted red was formerly a common inn-sign (cf. Shakespeare, 2 Hen. IV. ii. 2. 86); frequently the window was dispensed with, and the sign remained painted on a board.

LATHE. (1) A mechanical appliance in which material is held and rotated against a tool for cutting, scraping, polishing or other purpose (see Tools). This word is of obscure origin. It may be a modified form of “lath,” for in an early form of lathe the rotation is given by a treadle or spring lath attached to the ceiling. The New English Dictionary points out a possible source of the word in Dan. lad, meaning apparently a supporting framework, found in the name of the turning-lathe, drejelad, and also in savelad, saw-bench, vaeverlad, loom, &c. (2) One of five, formerly six, districts containing three or more hundreds, into which the county of Kent was divided. Though the division survives, it no longer serves any administrative purpose. It was formerly a judicial division, the court of the lathe being superior to that of the hundred. In this it differs from the rape (q.v.) of Sussex, which was a geographical rather than an administrative division. In O. Eng. the word was laéð, the origin of which is doubtful. The New English Dictionary considers it almost certainly identical with O. Norse lad, landed possessions, territory, with a possible association in meaning with such words as leið, court, mótlaeaða, attendance at a meeting or moot, or with Mod. Dan. laegd, a division of the country for military purposes.

LATHROP, FRANCIS (1849-1909), American artist, was born at sea, near the Hawaiian Islands, on the 22nd of June 1849, being the great-grandson of Samuel Holden Parsons, and the son of George Alfred Lathrop (1819-1877), who for some time was United States consul at Honolulu. He was a pupil of T. C. Farrar (1838-1891) in New York, and studied at the Royal academy of Dresden. In 1870-1873 he was in England, studying under Ford Madox Brown and Burne-Jones, and working in the school of William Morris, where he devoted particular attention to stained glass. Returning to America in 1873, he became known as an illustrator, painted portraits, designed stained glass, and subsequently confined himself to decorative work. He designed the chancel of Trinity church, Boston, and decorated the interior of Bowdoin college chapel, at Brunswick, Maine, and several churches in New York. The Marquand memorial window, Princeton chapel, is an example of his work in stained glass. His latest work was a series of medallions for the building of the Hispanic-American society in New York. He was one of the charter members of the Society of American Artists, and became an associate of the National Academy of Design, New York, of which also William L. Lathrop (b. 1859) an artist who is to be distinguished from him, became a member in 1907. He died at Woodcliff, New Jersey, on the 18th of October 1909.

His younger brother, George Parsona Lathrop (1851-1898), born near Honolulu on the 25th of August 1851, took up literature as a profession. He was an assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly in 1875-1877, and editor of the Boston Courier in 1877-1879. He was one of the founders (1883) of the American copyright league, was prominent in the movement for Roman Catholic summer schools, and wrote several novels, some verse and critical essays. He was the author of A Study of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1876), and edited the standard edition (Boston, 1883) of Hawthorne’s works. In 1871 he married in London the second daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne—Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (b. 1851). After his death Mrs Lathrop devoted herself entirely to charity. She was instrumental in establishing (1896) and subsequently conducted St Rose’s free home for cancer in New York City. In 1900 she joined the Dominican order, taking the name of Mother Mary Alphonsa and becoming superioress of the Dominican community of the third order; and she established in 1901 and subsequently conducted this order’s Rosary Hill home (for cancerous patients) at Hawthorne, N.Y. She published a volume of poems (1888); Memories of Hawthorne (1897); and, with her husband, A Story of Courage: Annals of the Georgetown Convent of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1894).