VOLUME XVI SLICE IV Lefebvre, Tanneguy to Letronne, Jean Antoine (continued 3)

See Victoria County History, Leicester; M. Bateson, Records of Borough of Leicester (Cambridge, 1899).

LEICESTERSHIRE, a midland county of England, bounded N. by Nottinghamshire, E. by Lincolnshire and Rutland, S.E. by Northamptonshire, S.W. by Warwickshire, and N.W. by Derbyshire, also touching Staffordshire on the W. The area is 823.6 sq. m. The surface of the county is an undulating tableland, the highest eminences being the rugged hills of Charnwood Forest (q.v.) in the north-west, one of which, Bardon Hill, has an elevation of 912 ft. The county belongs chiefly to the basin of the Trent, which forms for a short distance its boundary with Derbyshire. The principal tributary of the Trent in Leicestershire is the Soar, from whose old designation the Leire the county is said to derive its name, and which rises near Hinckley in the S.E., and forms the boundary with Nottinghamshire for some distance above its junction with the Trent. The Wreak, which, under the name of the Eye, rises on the borders of Rutland, flows S.W. to the Soar. Besides the Soar the other tributaries of the Trent are the Anker, touching the boundary with Warwickshire, the Devon and the Mease. A portion of the county in the S. drains to the Avon, which forms part of the boundary with Northamptonshire, and receives the Swift. The Welland forms for some distance the boundary with Northamptonshire.

Geology.—The oldest rocks in the county belong to the Charnian System, a Pre-Cambrian series of volcanic ashes, grits and slates, into which porphyroid and syenite were afterwards intruded. These rocks emerge from the plain formed by the Keuper Marls of the Triassic System as a group of isolated hills and peaks (known as Charnwood Forest); these are the tops of an old mountain-range, the lower slopes of which are still buried under the surrounding Keuper Marls. West of this district lies the Leicestershire coalfield, where the poor state of development of the Carboniferous Limestone shows that the Charnian rocks formed shoals or islands in the Carboniferous Limestone sea. The Millstone Grit just enters the county to the north of the same region, while the Coal Measures occupy a considerable area round Ashby-de-la-Zouch and contain valuable coal-seams. The rest of the county is almost equally divided between the red Keuper Marls of the Trias on the west and the grey limestones and shales of the Lias on the east. The former were deposited in lagoons into which the land was gradually lowered after a prolonged period of desert conditions. The Rhaetic beds which follow the Keuper mark the incoming of the sea and introduce the fossiliferous Liassic deposits. On the eastern margin of the county a few small outliers of the Inferior Oolite sands and limestones are present. The Glacial Period has left boulder-clay, gravel and erratic blocks scattered over the surface, while later gravels, with remains of mammoth, reindeer, &c., border some of the present streams.

Slates, honestones, setts and roadstone from the Charnian rocks, limestone and cement from the Carboniferous and Lias, and coal from the Coal Measures are the chief mineral products.

Agriculture.—The climate is mild, and, on account of the inland position of the county, and the absence of any very high elevations, the rainfall is very moderate. The soil is of a loamy character, the richest district being that east of the Soar, which is occupied by pasture, while the corn crops are grown chiefly on a lighter soil resting above the Red Sandstone formation. About nine-tenths of the total area is under cultivation. The proportion of pasture land is large and increasing. It is especially rich along the river-banks. Dairy-farming is extensively carried on, the famous Stilton cheese being produced near Melton Mowbray. Cattle are reared in large numbers, while of sheep the New Leicester breed is well known. It was introduced by Robert Bakewell the agriculturist, who was born near Loughborough in 1725. He also improved the breed of horses by the importation of mares from Flanders.

The county is especially famed for fox-hunting, Leicester and Melton Mowbray being favourite centres, while the kennels of the Quorn hunt are located at Quorndon near Mount Sorrel. For this reason Leicestershire is rich in good riding horses.

Other Industries.—Coal is worked in the districts about Moira, Coleorton and Coalville. Limestone is worked in various parts, freestone is plentiful, gypsum is found, and a kind of granite, extensively used for paving, is obtained in the Charnwood district, as at Bardon and Mount Sorrel, and at Sapcote and Stoney Stanton in the south-west. Apart from the mining industries, the staple manufacture of Leicestershire is hosiery, for which the wool is obtained principally from home-bred sheep. Its principal seats are Leicester, Loughborough, Hinckley and Castle Donington. Cotton hose are likewise made, and other industries include the manufacture of boots and shoes, as at Market Harborough, elastic webbing, and bricks, also iron founding. Melton Mowbray gives name to a well-known manufacture of pork pies.

Communications.—The main line of the Midland railway serves Market Harborough, Leicester, and Loughborough, having an important junction at Trent (on that river) for Derby and Nottingham. Branches radiate from Leicester to Melton Mowbray, to Coalville, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Moira and Burton-upon-Trent, with others through the mining district of the N.W., which is also served by the branch of the London & North-Western railway from Nuneaton to Market Bosworth, Coalville and Loughborough. This company serves Market Harborough from Rugby, and branches of the Great Northern serve Market Harborough, Leicester and Melton Mowbray. The main line of the Great Central railway passes through Lutterworth, Leicester and Loughborough. The principal canals are the Union and Grand Union, with which various branches are connected with the Grand Junction, and the Ashby-de-la-Zouch canal, which joins the Coventry canal at Nuneaton. The Loughborough canal serves that town, connecting with the river Soar.

Population and Administration.—The area of the ancient county is 527,123 acres; pop. (1891) 373,584, (1901) 434,019. The area of the administrative county is 532,788 acres. The county contains six hundreds. The municipal boroughs are: Leicester, the county town and a county borough (pop. 211,579), Loughborough (21,508). The urban districts are: Ashby-de-la-Zouch (4726), Ashby Woulds (2799), Coalville (15,281), Hinckley (11,304), Market Harborough (7735), Melton Mowbray (7454), Quorndon (2173), Shepshed (5293). Thurmaston (1732), Wigston Magna (8404). The county is in the Midland circuit, has one court of quarter sessions, and is divided into 9 petty sessional divisions. The county borough of Leicester has a separate court of quarter sessions and a separate commission of the peace. There are 327 civil parishes. The county is divided into four parliamentary divisions (Eastern or Melton, Mid or Loughborough, Western or Bosworth, Southern or Harborough), each returning one member; and the parliamentary borough of Leicester returns 2 members. The county is in the diocese of Peterborough, with the exception of small parts in those of Southwell and Worcester; and contains 255 ecclesiastical parishes or districts, wholly or in part.

History.—The district which is now Leicestershire was reached in the 6th century by Anglian invaders who, making their way across the Trent, penetrated Charnwood Forest as far as Leicester, the fall of which may be dated at about 556. In 679 the district formed the kingdom of the Middle Angles within the kingdom of Mercia, and on the subdivision of the Mercian see in that year was formed into a separate bishopric having its see at Leicester. In the 9th century the district was subjugated by the Danes, and Leicester became one of the five Danish boroughs. It was recovered by Æthelflaed in 918, but the Northmen regained their supremacy shortly after, and the prevalence of Scandinavian place-names in the county bears evidence of the extent of their settlement.

Leicestershire probably originated as a shire in the 10th century, and at the time of the Domesday Survey was divided into the four wapentakes of Guthlaxton, Framland, Goscote and Gartree. The Leicestershire Survey of the 12th century shows an additional grouping of the vills into small local hundreds, manorial rather than administrative divisions, which have completely disappeared. In the reign of Edward I. the divisions appear as hundreds, and in the reign of Edward III. the additional hundred of Sparkenhoe was formed out of Guthlaxton. Before the 17th century Goscote was divided into East and West Goscote, and since then the hundreds have undergone little change. Until 1566 Leicestershire and Warwickshire had a common sheriff, the shire-court for the former being held at Leicester.

Leicestershire constituted an archdeaconry within the diocese of Lincoln from 1092 until its transference to Peterborough in 1837. In 1291 it comprised the deaneries of Akeley, Leicester (now Christianity), Framland, Gartree, Goscote, Guthlaxton and Sparkenhoe. The deaneries remained unaltered until 1865. Since 1894 they have been as follows: East, South and West Akeley, Christianity, Framland (3 portions), Sparkenhoe (2 portions), Gartree (3 portions), Goscote (2 portions), Guthlaxton (3 portions).

Among the earliest historical events connected with the county were the siege and capture of Leicester by Henry II. in 1173 on the rebellion of the earl of Leicester; the surrender of Leicester to Prince Edward in 1264; and the parliament held at Leicester in 1414. During the Wars of the Roses Leicester was a great Lancastrian stronghold. In 1485 the battle of Bosworth was fought in the county. In the Civil War of the 17th century the greater part of the county favoured the parliament, though the mayor and some members of the corporation of Leicester sided with the king, and in 1642 the citizens of Leicester on a summons from Prince Rupert lent Charles £500. In 1645 Leicester was twice captured by the Royalist forces.

Before the Conquest large estates in Leicestershire were held by Earls Ralf, Morcar, Waltheof and Harold, but the Domesday Survey of 1086 reveals an almost total displacement of English by Norman landholders, only a few estates being retained by Englishmen as under-tenants. The first lay-tenant mentioned in the survey is Robert, count of Meulan, ancestor of the Beaumont family and afterwards earl of Leicester, to whose fief was afterwards annexed the vast holding of Hugh de Grantmesnil, lord high steward of England. Robert de Toeni, another Domesday tenant, founded Belvoir Castle and Priory. The fief of Robert de Buci was bestowed on Richard Basset, founder of Laund Abbey, in the reign of Henry I. Loughborough was an ancient seat of the Despenser family, and Brookesby was the seat of the Villiers and the birthplace of George Villiers, the famous duke of Buckingham. Melton Mowbray was named from its former lords, the Mowbrays, descendants of Nigel de Albini, the founder of Axholme Priory. Lady Jane Grey was born at Bradgate near Leicester, and Bishop Latimer was born at Thurcaston.

The woollen industry flourished in Leicestershire in Norman times, and in 1343 Leicestershire wool was rated at a higher value than that of most other counties. Coal was worked at Coleorton in the early 15th century and at Measham in the 17th century. The famous blue slate of Swithland has been quarried from time immemorial, and the limestone quarry at Barrow-on-Soar is also of very ancient repute, the monks of the abbey of St Mary de Pré formerly enjoying the tithe of its produce. The staple manufacture of the county, that of hosiery, originated in the 17th century, the chief centres being Leicester, Hinckley and Loughborough, and before the development of steam-driven frames in the 19th century hand framework knitting of hose and gloves was carried on in about a hundred villages. Wool-carding was also an extensive industry before 1840.

In 1290 Leicestershire returned two members to parliament, and in 1295 Leicester was also represented by two members. Under the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned four members in two divisions until the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, under which it returned four members in four divisions.

Antiquities.—Remains of monastic foundations are slight, though there were a considerable number of these. There are traces of Leicester Abbey and of Gracedieu near Coalville, while at Ulverscroft in Charnwood, where there was an Augustinian priory of the 12th century, there are fine Decorated remains, including a tower. The most noteworthy churches are found in the towns, as at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Hinckley, Leicester, Loughborough, Lutterworth, Market Bosworth, Market Harborough, and Melton Mowbray (qq.v.). The principal old castle is that of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, while at Kirby Muxloe there is a picturesque fortified mansion of Tudor date. There are several good Elizabethan mansions, as that at Laund in the E. of the county. Among modern mansions that of the dukes of Rutland, Belvoir Castle in the extreme N.E., is a massive mansion of the early 19th century, finely placed on the summit of a hill.

See Victoria County History, Leicestershire; W. Burton, Description of Leicestershire (London, 1622; 2nd ed., Lynn, 1777); John Nicholls, History and Antiquities of The County of Leicester (4 vols., London, 1795-1815); John Curtis, A Topographical History of the County of Leicester (Ashby-de-la-Zouch, 1831).

LEIDEN or Leyden, a city in the province of South Holland, the kingdom of the Netherlands, on the Old Rhine, and a junction station 18 m. by rail S.S.W. of Haarlem. It is connected by steam tramway with Haarlem and The Hague respectively, and with the seaside resorts of Katwyk and Noordwyk. There is also regular steamboat connexion with Katwyk, Noordwyk, Amsterdam and Gouda. The population of Leiden which, it is estimated, reached 100,000 in 1640, had sunk to 30,000 between 1796 and 1811, and in 1904 was 56,044. The two branches of the Rhine which enter Leiden on the east unite in the centre of the town, which is further intersected by numerous small and sombre canals, with tree-bordered quays and old houses. On the south side of the town pleasant gardens extend along the old Singel, or outer canal, and there is a large open space, the Van der Werf Park, named after the burgomaster, Pieter Andriaanszoon van der Werf, who defended the town against the Spaniards in 1574. This open space was formed by the accidental explosion of a powdership in 1807, hundreds of houses being demolished, including that of the Elzevir family of printers. At the junction of the two arms of the Rhine stands the old castle (De Burcht), a circular tower built on an earthen mound. Its origin is unknown, but some connect it with Roman days and others with the Saxon Hengist. Of Leiden’s old gateways only two—both dating from the end of the 17th century—are standing. Of the numerous churches the chief are the Hooglandsche Kerk, or the church of St Pancras, built in the 15th century and restored in 1885-1902, containing the monument of Pieter Andriaanszoon van der Werf, and the Pieterskerk (1315) with monuments to Scaliger, Boerhaave and other famous scholars. The most interesting buildings are the town hall (Stadhuis), a fine example of 16th-century Dutch building; the Gemeenlandshuis van Rynland (1596, restored 1878); the weight-house built by Pieter Post (1658); the former court-house, now a military storehouse; and the ancient gymnasium (1599) and the so-called city timber-house (Stads Timmerhuis) (1612), both built by Lieven de Key (c. 1560-1627).

In spite of a certain industrial activity and the periodical bustle of its cattle and dairy markets, Leiden remains essentially an academic city. The university is a flourishing institution. It was founded by William of Orange in 1575 as a reward for the heroic defence of the previous year, the tradition being that the citizens were offered the choice between a university and a certain exemption from taxes. Originally located in the convent of St Barbara, the university was removed in 1581 to the convent of the White Nuns, the site of which it still occupies, though that building was destroyed in 1616. The presence within half a century of the date of its foundation of such scholars as Justus Lipsius, Joseph Scaliger, Francis Gomarus, Hugo Grotius, Jacobus Arminius, Daniel Heinsius and Guardas Johannes Vossius at once raised Leiden university to the highest European fame, a position which the learning and reputation of Jacobus Gronovius, Hermann Boerhaave, Tiberius Hemsterhuis and David Ruhnken, among others, enabled it to maintain down to the end of the 18th century. The portraits of many famous professors since the earliest days hang in the university aula, one of the most memorable places, as Niebuhr called it, in the history of science. The university library contains upwards of 190,000 volumes and 6000 MSS. and pamphlet portfolios, and is very rich in Oriental and Greek MSS. and old Dutch travels. Among the institutions connected with the university are the national institution for East Indian languages, ethnology and geography; the fine botanical gardens, founded in 1587; the observatory (1860); the natural history museum, with a very complete anatomical cabinet; the museum of antiquities (Museum van Oudheden), with specially valuable Egyptian and Indian departments; a museum of Dutch antiquities from the earliest times; and three ethnographical museums, of which the nucleus was P. F. von Siebold’s Japanese collections. The anatomical and pathological laboratories of the university are modern, and the museums of geology and mineralogy have been restored. The university has now five faculties, of which those of law and medicine are the most celebrated, and is attended by about 1200 students.

The municipal museum, founded in 1869 and located in the old cloth-hall (Laeckenhalle) (1640), contains a varied collection of antiquities connected with Leiden, as well as some paintings including works by the elder van Swanenburgh, Cornelius Engelbrechtszoon, Lucas van Leiden and Jan Steen, who were all natives of Leiden. Jan van Goyen, Gabriel Metsu, Gerard Dou and Rembrandt were also natives of this town. There is also a small collection of paintings in the Meermansburg. The Thysian library occupies an old Renaissance building of the year 1655, and is especially rich in legal works and native chronicles. Noteworthy also are the collection of the Society of Dutch Literature (1766); the collections of casts and of engravings; the seamen’s training school; the Remonstrant seminary, transferred hither from Amsterdam in 1873; the two hospitals (one of which is private); the house of correction; and the court-house.

Leiden is an ancient town, although it is not the Lugdunum Batavorum of the Romans. Its early name was Leithen, and it was governed until 1420 by burgraves, the representatives of the courts of Holland. The most celebrated event in its history is its siege by the Spaniards in 1574. Besieged from May until October, it was at length relieved by the cutting of the dikes, thus enabling ships to carry provisions to the inhabitants of the flooded town. The weaving establishments (mainly broadcloth) of Leiden at the close of the 15th century were very important, and after the expulsion of the Spaniards Leiden cloth, Leiden baize and Leiden camlet were familiar terms. These industries afterwards declined, and in the beginning of the 19th century the baize manufacture was altogether given up. Linen and woollen manufactures are now the most important industries, while there is a considerable transit trade in butter and cheese.

Katwyk, or Katwijk, 6 m. N.W. of Leiden, is a popular seaside resort and fishing village. Close by are the great locks constructed in 1807 by the engineer, F. W. Conrad (d. 1808), through which the Rhine (here called the Katwyk canal) is admitted into the sea at low tide. The shore and the entrance to the canal are strengthened by huge dikes. In 1520 an ancient Roman camp known as the Brittenburg was discovered here. It was square in shape, each side measuring 82 yds., and the remains stood about 10 ft. high. By the middle of the 18th century it had been destroyed and covered by the sea.

See P. J. Blok, Eine hollandsche stad in de middeleeuwen (The Hague, 1883); and for the siege see J. L. Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1896).

LEIDY, JOSEPH (1823-1891), American naturalist and palaeontologist, was born in Philadelphia on the 9th of September 1823. He studied mineralogy and botany without an instructor, and graduated in medicine at the university of Pennsylvania in 1844. Continuing his work in anatomy and physiology, he visited Europe in 1848, but both before and after this period of foreign study lectured and taught in American medical colleges. In 1853 he was appointed professor of anatomy in the university of Pennsylvania, paying special attention to comparative anatomy. In 1884 he promoted the establishment in the same institution of the department of biology, of which he became director, and meanwhile taught natural history in Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia. His papers on biology and palaeontology were very numerous, covering both fauna and flora, and ranging from microscopic forms of animal life to the higher vertebrates. He wrote also occasional papers on minerals. He was an active member of the Boston Society of Natural History and of the American Philosophical Society; and was the recipient of various American and foreign degrees and honours. His Cretaceous Reptiles of the United States (1865) and Contributions to the Extinct Vertebrate Fauna of the Western Territories (1873) were the most important of his larger works; the best known and most widely circulated was an Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy (1860, afterwards revised in new editions). He died in Philadelphia on the 30th of April 1891.

See Memoir and portrait in Amer. Geologist, vol. ix. (Jan. 1892) and Bibliography in vol. viii. (Nov. 1891) and Memoir by H. C. Chapman in Proc. Acad. Nat. Sc. (Philadelphia, 1891), p. 342.

LEIF ERICSSON [Leifr Eiriksson] (fl. 999-1000), Scandinavian explorer, of Icelandic family, the first known European discoverer of “Vinland,” “Vineland” or “Wineland, the Good,” in North America. He was a son of Eric the Red (Eirikr hinn raudi Thorvaldsson), the founder of the earliest Scandinavian settlements—from Iceland—in Greenland (985). In 999 he went from Greenland to the court of King Olaf Tryggvason in Norway, stopping in the Hebrides on the way. On his departure from Norway in 1000, the king commissioned him to proclaim Christianity in Greenland. As on his outward voyage, Leif was again driven far out of his course by contrary weather—this time to lands (in America) “of which he had previously had no knowledge,” where “self-sown” wheat grew, and vines, and “mösur” (maple?) wood. Leif took specimens of all these, and sailing away came home safely to his father’s home in Brattahlid on Ericsfiord in Greenland. On his voyage from this Vineland to Greenland, Leif rescued some shipwrecked men, and from this, and his discoveries, gained his name of “The Lucky” (hinn heppni). On the subsequent expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefni for the further exploration and settlement of the Far Western vine-country, it is recorded that certain Gaels, incredibly fleet of foot, who had been given to Leif by Olaf Tryggvason, and whom Leif had offered to Thorfinn, were put on shore to scout.

Such is the account of the Saga of Eric the Red, supported by a number of briefer references in early Icelandic and other literature. The less trustworthy history of the Flatey Book makes Biarni Heriulfsson in 985 discover Helluland (Labrador?) as well as other western lands which he does not explore, not even permitting his men to land; while Leif Ericsson follows up Biarni’s discoveries, begins the exploration of Helluland, Markland and Vinland, and realizes some of the charms of the last named, where he winters. But this secondary authority (the Flatey Book narrative), which till lately formed the basis of all general knowledge as to Vinland, abounds in contradictions and difficulties from which Eric the Red Saga is comparatively free. Thus (in Flatey) the grapes of Vinland are found in winter and gathered in spring; the man who first finds them, Leif’s foster-father Tyrker the German, gets drunk from eating the fruit; and the vines themselves are spoken of as big trees affording timber. Looking at the record in Eric the Red Saga, it would seem probable that Leif’s Vinland answers to some part of southern Nova Scotia. See Vinland. (As to Helluland and Markland see Thorfinn Karlsefni.)

The MSS. of Eric the Red’s Saga are Nos. 544 and 557 of the Arne-Magnaean collection in Copenhagen; the MS. of the Flatey Book, so called because it was long the property of a family living on Flat Island in Broad Firth (Flatey in Breiðafjord [B-eidafj-d]), on the north-west coast of Iceland, was presented in 1662 to the Royal Library of Denmark, of which it is still one of the chief treasures. These leading narratives are supplemented by Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, chap. 38 (247 Lappenberg) of book iv. (often separately entitled Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis; Adam’s is the earliest extant reference to Vinland, c. 1070): we have also notices of Vinland in the Libellus Islandorum of Ari Frodi (c. 1120), the oldest Icelandic historian; in the Kristni Saga (repeated in Snorri Sturlason’s Heimskringla); in Eyrbyggia Saga (c. 1250); in Gretti Saga (c. 1290); and in an Icelandic chorography of the 14th century, or earlier, partly derived from the famous traveller Abbot Nicolas of Thing-eyrar (†1159).

See Gustav Storm, “Studies on the Vineland Voyages,” in the Mémoires de la Société royale des Antiquaires du Nord (Copenhagen, 1888); and Eiriks Saga Raudha (Copenhagen, 1891); A. M. Reeves, Finding of Wineland the Good: the History of the Icelandic Discovery of America (London, 1890); in this work the original authorities are given in full, with photographic facsimiles, English translations and adequate commentary; Rafn’s Antiquitates Americanae (Copenhagen, 1837) contains all the sources, but the editor’s personal views have in many cases failed to satisfy criticism; the Flatey text is printed also by Vigfusson and Unger in Flateyjar-bok, vol. i. (Christiania, 1860). There are also translations of Flatey and Red Eric Saga in Beamish, Discovery of North America, by the Northmen (Lond., 1841); E. F. Slafter, Voyages of the Northmen (Boston, 1877); B. F. de Costa, Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen (Albany, 1901); and Original Narratives of Early American History; The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, pp. 1-66 (New York, 1906). See also C. Raymond Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography ii. 48-83 (London, 1901); Josef Fischer, Die Entdeckungen der Normannen in Amerika (Freiburg i. B., 1902); John Fiske, Discovery of America, vol. i.; Juul Dieserud, “Norse Discoveries in America,” in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society (February, 1901); G. Vigfusson, Origines Islandicae (1905), which strangely expresses a preference for the Flatey Book “account of the first sighting of the American continent” by the Norsemen.

(C. R. B.)

LEIGH, EDWARD (1602-1671), English Puritan and theologian, was born at Shawell, Leicestershire. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, from 1616, and subsequently became a member of the Middle Temple. In 1636 he entered parliament as member for Stafford, and during the Civil War held a colonelcy in the parliamentary army. He has sometimes been confounded with John Ley (1583-1662), and so represented as having sat in the Westminster Assembly. The public career of Leigh terminated with his expulsion from parliament with the rest of the Presbyterian party in 1648. From an early age he had studied theology and produced numerous compilations, the most important being the Critica Sacra, containing Observations on all the Radices of the Hebrew Words of the Old and the Greek of the New Testament (1639-1644; new ed., with supplement, 1662), for which the author received the thanks of the Westminster Assembly, to whom it was dedicated. His other works include Select and Choice Observations concerning the First Twelve Caesars (1635); A Treatise of Divinity (1646-1651); Annotations upon the New Testament (1650), of which a Latin translation by Arnold was published at Leipzig in 1732; A Body of Divinity (1654); A Treatise of Religion and Learning (1656); Annotations of the Five Poetical Books of the Old Testament (1657). Leigh died in Staffordshire in June 1671.

LEIGH, a market town and municipal borough in the Leigh parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 11 m. W. by N. from Manchester by the London & North-Western railway. Pop. (1891) 30,882, (1901) 40,001. The ancient parish church of St Mary the Virgin was, with the exception of the tower, rebuilt in 1873 in the Perpendicular style. The grammar school, the date of whose foundation is unknown, received its principal endowments in 1655, 1662 and 1681. The staple manufactures are silk and cotton; there are also glass works, foundries, breweries, and flour mills, with extensive collieries. Though the neighbourhood is principally an industrial district, several fine old houses are left near Leigh. The town was incorporated in 1899, and the corporation consists of a mayor, 8 aldermen and 24 councillors. Area, 6358 acres.

LEIGHTON, FREDERICK LEIGHTON, Baron (1830-1896), English painter and sculptor, the son of a physician, was born at Scarborough on the 3rd of December 1830. His grandfather, Sir James Leighton, also a physician, was long resident at the court of St Petersburg. Frederick Leighton was taken abroad at a very early age. In 1840 he learnt drawing at Rome under Signor Meli. The family moved to Dresden and Berlin, where he attended classes at the Academy. In 1843 he was sent to school at Frankfort, and in the winter of 1844 accompanied his family to Florence, where his future career as an artist was decided. There he studied under Bezzuoli and Segnolini at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, and attended anatomy classes under Zanetti; but he soon returned to complete his general education at Frankfort, receiving no further direct instruction in art for five years. He went to Brussels in 1848, where he met Wiertz and Gallait, and painted some pictures, including “Cimabue finding Giotto,” and a portrait of himself. In 1849 he studied for a few months in Paris, where he copied Titian and Correggio in the Louvre, and then returned to Frankfort, where he settled down to serious art work under Edward Steinle, whose pupil he declared he was “in the fullest sense of the term.” Though his artistic training was mainly German, and his master belonged to the same school as Cornelius and Overbeck, he loved Italian art and Italy and the first picture by which he became known to the British public was “Cimabue’s Madonna carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence,” which appeared at the Royal Academy in 1855. At this time the works of the Pre-Raphaelites almost absorbed public interest in art—it was the year of Holman Hunt’s “Light of the World,” and the “Rescue,” by Millais. Yet Leighton’s picture, painted in quite a different style, created a sensation, and was purchased by Queen Victoria. Although, since his infancy, he had only visited England once (in 1851, when he came to see the Great Exhibition), he was not quite unknown in the cultured and artistic world of London, as he had made many friends during a residence in Rome of some two years or more after he left Frankfort in 1852. Amongst these were Giovanni Costa, Robert Browning, James Knowles, George Mason and Sir Edward Poynter, then a youth, whom he allowed to work in his studio. He also met Thackeray, who wrote from Rome to the young Millais: “Here is a versatile young dog, who will run you close for the presidentship one of these days.” During these years he painted several Florentine subjects—“Tybalt and Romeo,” “The Death of Brunelleschi,” a cartoon of “The Pest in Florence according to Boccaccio,” and “The Reconciliation of the Montagues and the Capulets.” He now turned his attention to themes of classic legend, which at first he treated in a “Romantic spirit.” His next picture, exhibited in 1856, was “The Triumph of Music: Orpheus by the Power of his Art redeems his Wife from Hades.” It was not a success, and he did not again exhibit till 1858, when he sent a little picture of “The Fisherman and the Syren” to the Royal Academy, and “Samson and Delilah” to the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street. In 1858 he visited London and made the acquaintance of the leading Pre-Raphaelites—Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Millais. In the spring of 1859 he was at Capri, always a favourite resort of his, and made many studies from nature, including a very famous drawing of a lemon tree. It was not till 1860 that he settled in London, when he took up his quarters at 2 Orme Square, Bayswater, where he stayed till, in 1860, he moved to his celebrated house in Holland Park Road, with its Arab hall decorated with Damascus tiles. There he lived till his death. He now began to fulfil the promise of his “Cimabue,” and by such pictures as “Paolo e Francesca,” “The Star of Bethlehem,” “Jezebel and Ahab taking Possession of Naboth’s Vineyard,” “Michael Angelo musing over his Dying Servant,” “A Girl feeding Peacocks,” and “The Odalisque,” all exhibited in 1861-1863, rose rapidly to the head of his profession. The two latter pictures were marked by the rhythm of line and luxury of colour which are among the most constant attributes of his art, and may be regarded as his first dreams of Oriental beauty, with which he afterwards showed so great a sympathy. In 1864 he exhibited “Dante in Exile” (the greatest of his Italian pictures), “Orpheus and Eurydice” and “Golden Hours.” In the winter of the same year he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. After this the main effort of his life was to realize visions of beauty suggested by classic myth and history. If we add to pictures of this class a few Scriptural subjects, a few Oriental dreams, one or two of tender sentiment like “Wedded” (one of the most popular of his pictures, and well known by not only an engraving, but a statuette modelled by an Italian sculptor), a number of studies of very various types of female beauty, “Teresina,” “Biondina,” “Bianca,” “Moretta,” &c., and an occasional portrait, we shall nearly exhaust the two classes into which Lord Leighton’s work (as a painter) can be divided.

Amongst the finest of his classical pictures were—“Syracusan Bride leading Wild Beasts in Procession to the Temple of Diana” (1866), “Venus disrobing for the Bath” (1867), “Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon,” and “Helios and Rhodos” (1869), “Hercules wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis” (1871), “Clytemnestra” (1874), “The Daphnephoria” (1876), “Nausicaa” (1878), “An Idyll” (1881), two lovers under a spreading oak listening to the piping of a shepherd and gazing on the rich plain below; “Phryne” (1882), a nude figure standing in the sun; “Cymon and Iphigenia” (1884), “Captive Andromache” (1888), now in the Manchester Art Gallery; with the “Last Watch of Hero” (1887), “The Bath of Psyche” (1890), now in the Chantrey Bequest collection; “The Garden of the Hesperides” (1892), “Perseus and Andromeda” and “The Return of Persephone,” now in the Leeds Gallery (1891); and “Clytie,” his last work (1896). All these pictures are characterized by nobility of conception, by almost perfect draughtsmanship, by colour which, if not of the highest quality, is always original, choice and effective. They often reach distinction and dignity of attitude and gesture, and occasionally, as in the “Hercules and Death,” the “Electra” and the “Clytemnestra,” a noble intensity of feeling. Perhaps, amidst the great variety of qualities which they possess, none is more universal and more characteristic than a rich elegance, combined with an almost fastidious selection of beautiful forms. It is the super-eminence of these qualities, associated with great decorative skill, that make the splendid pageant of the “Daphnephoria” the most perfect expression of his individual genius. Here we have his composition, his colour, his sense of the joy and movement of life, his love of art and nature at their purest and most spontaneous, and the result is a work without a rival of its kind in the British School.

Leighton was one of the most thorough draughtsmen of his day. His sketches and studies for his pictures are numerous and very highly esteemed. They contain the essence of his conceptions, and much of their spiritual beauty and subtlety of expression was often lost in the elaboration of the finished picture. He seldom succeeded in retaining the freshness of his first idea more completely than in his last picture—“Clytie”—which was left unfinished on his easel. He rarely painted sacred subjects. The most beautiful of his few pictures of this kind was the “David musing on the Housetop” (1865). Others were “Elijah in the Wilderness” (1879), “Elisha raising the Son of the Shunammite” (1881) and a design intended for the decoration of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, “And the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it” (1892), now in the Tate Gallery, and the terrible “Rizpah” of 1893. His diploma picture was “St Jerome,” exhibited in 1869. Besides these pictures of sacred subjects, he made some designs for Dalziel’s Bible, which for force of imagination excel the paintings. The finest of these are “Cain and Abel,” and “Samson with the Gates of Gaza.”

Not so easily to be classed, but among the most individual and beautiful of his pictures, are a few of which the motive was purely aesthetic. Amongst these may specially be noted “The Summer Moon,” two Greek girls sleeping on a marble bench, and “The Music Lesson,” in which a lovely little girl is seated on her lovely young mother’s lap learning to play the lute. With these, as a work produced without any literary suggestion, though very different in feeling, may be associated the “Eastern Slinger scaring Birds in the Harvest-time: Moon-rise” (1875), a nude figure standing on a raised platform in a field of wheat.

Leighton also painted a few portraits, including those of Signor Costa, the Italian landscape painter, Mr F. P. Cockerell, Mrs Sutherland Orr (his sister), Amy, Lady Coleridge, Mrs Stephen Ralli and (the finest of all) Sir Richard Burton, the traveller and Eastern scholar, which was exhibited in 1876 and is now in the National Portrait Gallery.

Like other painters of the day, notably G. F. Watts, Lord Leighton executed a few pieces of sculpture. His “Athlete struggling with a Python” was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877, and was purchased for the Chantrey Bequest collection. Another statue, “The Sluggard,” of equal merit, was exhibited in 1886; and a charming statuette of a nude figure of a girl looking over her shoulder at a frog, called “Needless Alarms,” was completed in the same year, and presented by the artist to Sir John Millais in acknowledgment of the gift by the latter of his picture, “Shelling Peas.” He made the beautiful design for the reverse of the Jubilee Medal of 1887. It was also his habit to make sketch models in wax for the figures in his pictures, many of which are in the possession of the Royal Academy. As an illustrator in black and white he also deserves to be remembered, especially for the cuts to Dalziel’s Bible, already mentioned, and his illustrations to George Eliot’s Romola, which appeared in the Cornhill Magazine. The latter are full of the spirit of Florence and the Florentines, and show a keen sense of humour, elsewhere excluded from his work. Of his decorative paintings, the best known are the elegant compositions (in spirit fresco) on the walls of the Victoria and Albert Museum, representing “The Industrial Arts of War and Peace.” There, also, is the refined and spirited figure of “Cimabue” in mosaic. In Lyndhurst church are mural decorations to the memory of Mr Pepys Cockerell, illustrating “The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins.”

Leighton’s life was throughout marked by distinction, artistic and social. Though not tall, he had a fine presence and manners, at once genial and courtly. He was welcomed in all societies, from the palace to the studio. He spoke German, Italian and French, as well as English. He had much taste and love for music, and considerable gifts as an orator of a florid type. His Presidential Discourses (published, London, 1896) were full of elegance and culture. For seven years (1876-1883) he commanded the 20th Middlesex (Artists) Rifle Volunteers, retiring with the rank of honorary colonel, and subsequently receiving the Volunteer Decoration. Yet no social attractions or successes diverted him from his devotion to his profession, the welfare of his brethren in art or of the Royal Academy. As president he was punctilious in the discharge of his duties, ready to give help and encouragement to artists young and old, and his tenure of the office was marked by some wise and liberal reforms. He frequently went abroad, generally to Italy, where he was well known and appreciated. He visited Spain in 1866, Egypt in 1868, when he went up the Nile with Ferdinand de Lesseps in a steamer lent by the Khedive. He was at Damascus for a short time in 1873. It was his custom on all these trips to make little lively sketches of landscape and buildings. These fresh little flowers of his leisure used to decorate the walls of his studio, and at the sale of its contents after his death realized considerable prices. It was when he was in the full tide of his popularity and success, and apparently in the full tide of his personal vigour also, that he was struck with angina pectoris. For a long time he struggled bravely with this cruel disease, never omitting except from absolute necessity any of his official duties except during a brief period of rest abroad, which failed to produce the desired effect. His death occurred on the 25th of January 1896.

Leighton was elected an Academician in 1868, and succeeded Sir Francis Grant as President in 1878, when he was knighted. He was created a baronet in 1886, and was raised to the peerage in 1896, a few days before his death. He held honorary degrees at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh and Durham, was an Associate of the Institute of France; a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and of the Order of Leopold. He was a Knight of the Coburg Order, “Dem Verdienste,” and of the Prussian Order, “Pour le Mérite,” and a member of at least ten foreign Academies. In 1859 he won a medal of the second class at the Paris Salon, and at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 a gold medal. As a sculptor he was awarded a medal of the first class in 1878 and the Grand Prix in 1889.

See Art Annual (Mrs A. Lang), 1884; Royal Academy Catalogue, Winter Exhibition, 1897; National Gallery of British Art Catalogue; C. Monkhouse, British Contemporary Artists (London, 1899); Ernest Rhys, Frederick, Lord Leighton (London, 1898, 1900).

(C. Mo.)

LEIGHTON, ROBERT (1611-1684), archbishop of Glasgow, was born, probably in London (others say at Ulishaven, Forfarshire), in 1611, the eldest son of Dr Alexander Leighton, the author of Zion’s Plea against the Prelacie, whose terrible sufferings for having dared to question the divine right of Episcopacy, under the persecution of Laud, form one of the most disgraceful incidents of the reign of Charles I. Dr Leighton is said to have been of the old family of Ulishaven in Forfarshire. From his earliest childhood, according to Burnet, Robert Leighton was distinguished for his saintly disposition. In his sixteenth year (1627) he was sent to the university of Edinburgh, where, after studying with distinguished success for four years, he took the degree of M.A. in 1631. His father then sent him to travel abroad, and he is understood to have spent several years in France, where he acquired a complete mastery of the French language. While there he passed a good deal of time with relatives at Douai who had become Roman Catholics, and with whom he kept up a correspondence for many years afterwards. Either at this time or on some subsequent visit he had also a good deal of intercourse with members of the Jansenist party. This intercourse contributed to the charity towards those who differed from him in religious opinion, which ever afterwards formed a feature in his character. The exact period of his return to Scotland has not been ascertained; but in 1641 he was ordained Presbyterian minister of Newbattle in Midlothian. In 1652 he resigned his charge and went to reside in Edinburgh. What led him to take this step does not distinctly appear. The account given is that he had little sympathy with the fiery zeal of his brother clergymen on certain political questions, and that this led to severe censures on their part.

Early in 1653 he was appointed principal of the university of Edinburgh, and primarius professor of divinity. In this post he continued for seven or eight years. A considerable number of his Latin prelections and other addresses (published after his death) are remarkable for the purity and elegance of their Latinity, and their subdued and meditative eloquence. They are valuable instructions in the art of living a holy life rather than a body of scientific divinity. Throughout, however, they bear the marks of a deeply learned and accomplished mind, saturated with both classical and patristic reading, and like all his works they breathe the spirit of one who lived very much above the world. His mental temper was too unlike the temper of his time to secure success as a teacher.

In 1661, when Charles II. had resolved to force Episcopacy once more upon Scotland, he fixed upon Leighton for one of his bishops (see Scotland, Church of). Leighton, living very much out of the world, and being somewhat deficient in what may be called the political sense, was too open to the persuasions used to induce him to enter a sphere for which he instinctively felt he was ill qualified. The Episcopacy which he contemplated was that modified form which had been suggested by Archbishop Ussher, and to which Baxter and many of the best of the English Nonconformists would have readily given their adherence. It is significant that he always refused to be addressed as “my lord,” and it is stated that when dining with his clergy on one occasion he wished to seat himself at the foot of the table.

Leighton soon began to discover the sort of men with whom he was to be associated in the episcopate. He travelled with them in the same coach from London towards Scotland, but having become, as he told Burnet, very weary of their company (as he doubted not they were of his), and having found that they intended to make a kind of triumphal entrance into Edinburgh, he left them at Morpeth and retired to the earl of Lothian’s at Newbattle. He very soon lost all hope of being able to build up the church by the means which the government had set on foot, and his work, as he confessed to Burnet, “seemed to him a fighting against God.” He did, however, what he could, governing his diocese (that of Dunblane) with the utmost mildness, as far as he could, preventing the persecuting measures in active operation elsewhere, and endeavouring to persuade the Presbyterian clergy to come to an accommodation with their Episcopal brethren. After a hopeless struggle of three or four years to induce the government to put a stop to their fierce persecution of the Covenanters, he determined to resign his bishopric, and went up to London in 1665 for this purpose. He so far worked upon the mind of Charles that he promised to enforce the adoption of milder measures, but it does not appear that any material improvement took place. In 1669 Leighton again went to London and made fresh representations on the subject, but little result followed. The slight disposition, however, shown by the government to accommodate matters appears to have inspired Leighton with so much hope that in the following year he agreed, though with a good deal of hesitation, to accept the archbishopric of Glasgow. In this higher sphere he redoubled his efforts with the Presbyterians to bring about some degree of conciliation with Episcopacy, but the only result was to embroil himself with the hot-headed Episcopal party as well as with the Presbyterians. In utter despair, therefore, of being able to be of any further service to the cause of religion, he resigned the archbishopric in 1674 and retired to the house of his widowed sister, Mrs Lightmaker, at Broadhurst in Sussex. Here he spent the remaining ten years, probably the happiest of his life, and died suddenly on a visit to London in 1684.

It is difficult to form a just or at least a full estimate of Leighton’s character. He stands almost alone in his age. In some respects he was immeasurably superior both in intellect and in piety to most of the Scottish ecclesiastics of his time; and yet he seems to have had almost no influence in moulding the characters or conduct of his contemporaries. So intense was his absorption in the love of God that little room seems to have been left in his heart for human sympathy or affection. Can it be that there was after all something to repel in his outward manner? Burnet tells us that he had never seen him laugh, and very seldom even smile. In other respects, too, he gives the impression of standing aloof from human interests and ties. It may go for little that he never married, but it was surely a curious idiosyncrasy that he habitually cherished the wish (which was granted him) that he might die in an inn. In fact, holy meditation seems to have been the one absorbing interest of his life. At Dunblane tradition preserved the memory of “the good bishop,” silent and companionless, pacing up and down the sloping walk by the river’s bank under the beautiful west window of his cathedral. And from a letter of the earl of Lothian to his countess it appears that, whatever other reasons Leighton might have had for resigning his charge at Newbattle, the main object which he had in view was to be left to his own thoughts. It is therefore not very wonderful that he was completely misjudged and even disliked both by the Presbyterian and by the Episcopal party.

It was characteristic of him that he could never be made to understand that anything which he wrote possessed the smallest value. None of his works were published by himself, and it is stated that he left orders that all his MSS. should be destroyed after his death. But fortunately for the world this charge was disregarded. Like all the best writing, it seems to flow without effort; it is the easy unaffected outcome of his saintly nature. Throughout, however, it is the language of a scholar and a man of perfect literary taste; and with all its spirituality of thought there are no mystical raptures, such as are often found mingled with the Scottish practical theology of the 17th century. It was a common reproach against Leighton that he had leanings towards Roman Catholicism, and perhaps this is so far true that he had formed himself in some degree upon the model of some of the saintly persons of that faith, such as Pascal and Thomas à Kempis.

The best account of Leighton’s character is that of Bishop Burnet in Hist. of his Own Times (1723-1734). No perfectly satisfactory edition of Leighton’s works exists. After his death his Commentary on Peter and several of his other works were published under the editorship of his friend Dr Fall, and those early editions may be said to be, with some drawbacks, by far the best. His later editors have been possessed by the mania of reducing his good archaic and nervous language to the bald feebleness of modern phraseology. It is unfortunately impossible to exempt from this criticism even the edition, in other respects very valuable and meritorious, published under the superintendence of the Rev. W. West (7 vols., London, 1869-1875); see also volume of selections (with biography) by Dr Blair of Dunblane (1883), who also contributed “Bibliography of Archbishop Leighton” to the British and Foreign Evangelical Review (July 1883); Andrew Lang, History of Scotland (1902).

(J. T. Br.; D. Mn.)

LEIGHTON BUZZARD, a market town in the southern parliamentary division of Bedfordshire, England, 40 m. N.W. of London by the London & North-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 6331. It lies in the flat valley of the Ouzel, a tributary of the Ouse, sheltered to east and west by low hills. The river here forms the county boundary with Buckinghamshire. The Grand Junction canal follows its course, and gives the town extensive water-communications. The church of All Saints is cruciform, with central tower and spire. It is mainly Early English, and a fine example of the style; but some of the windows including the nave clerestory, and the beautiful carved wooden roof, are Perpendicular. The west door has good early iron-work; and on one of the tower-arch pillars are some remarkable early carvings of jocular character, one of which represents a man assaulted by a woman with a ladle. The market cross is of the 14th century, much restored, having an open arcade supporting a pinnacle, with flying buttresses. The statues in its niches are modern, but the originals are placed on the exterior of the town hall. Leighton has a considerable agricultural trade, and some industry in straw-plaiting. Across the Ouzel in Buckinghamshire, where Leighton railway station is situated, is the urban district of Linslade (pop. 2157).

LEININGEN, the name of an old German family, whose lands lay principally in Alsace and Lorraine. The first count of Leiningen about whom anything certain is known was a certain Emicho (d. 1117), whose family became extinct in the male line when Count Frederick, a Minnesinger, died about 1220. Frederick’s sister, Liutgarde, married Simon, count of Saarbrücken, and Frederick, one of their sons, inheriting the lands of the counts of Leiningen, took their arms and their name. Having increased its possessions the Leiningen family was divided about 1317 into two branches; the elder of these, whose head was a landgrave, died out in 1467. On this event its lands fell to a female, the last landgrave’s sister Margaret, wife of Reinhard, lord of Westerburg, and their descendants were known as the family of Leiningen-Westerburg. Later this family was divided into two branches, those of Alt-Leiningen-Westerburg and Neu-Leiningen-Westerburg, both of which are represented to-day.

Meanwhile the younger branch of the Leiningens, known as the family of Leiningen-Dagsburg, was flourishing, and in 1560 this was divided into the lines of Leiningen-Dagsburg-Hartenburg, founded by Count John Philip (d. 1562), and Leiningen-Dagsburg-Heidesheim or Falkenburg, founded by Count Emicho (d. 1593). In 1779 the head of the former line was raised to the rank of a prince of the Empire. In 1801 this family was deprived of its lands on the left bank of the Rhine by France, but in 1803 it received ample compensation for these losses. A few years later its possessions were mediatized, and they are now included mainly in Baden, but partly in Bavaria and in Hesse. A former head of this family, Prince Emich Charles, married Maria Louisa Victoria, princess of Saxe-Coburg; after his death in 1814 the princess married George III.’s son, the duke of Kent, by whom she became the mother of Queen Victoria. In 1910 the head of the family was Prince Emich (b. 1866).

The family of Leiningen-Dagsburg-Heidesheim was divided into three branches, the two senior of which became extinct during the 18th century. At present it is represented by the counts of Leiningen-Guntersblum and Leiningen-Heidesheim, called also Leiningen-Billigheim and Leiningen-Neidenau.

See Brinckmeier, Genealogische Geschichte des Hauses Leiningen (Brunswick, 1890-1891).

LEINSTER, a province of Ireland, occupying the middle and south-eastern portion of the island, and extending to the left bank of the Shannon. It includes counties Longford, Westmeath, Meath, Louth, King’s County, Kildare, Dublin, Queen’s County, Carlow, Wicklow, Kilkenny and Wexford (q.v. for topography, &c.). Leinster (Laighen) was one of the early Milesian provinces of Ireland. Meath, the modern county of which is included in Leinster, was the name of a separate province created in the 2nd century A.D. The kings of Leinster retained their position until 1171, and their descendants maintained independence within a circumscribed territory as late as the 16th century. In 1170 Richard Strongbow married Aoife, daughter of the last king Diarmid, and thus acquired the nominal right to the kingdom of Leinster. Henry II. confirmed him in powers of jurisdiction equivalent to those of a palatinate. His daughter Isabel married William Marshal, earl of Pembroke. Their five daughters shared the territory of Leinster, which was now divided into five liberties carrying the same extensive privileges as the undivided territory, namely, Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, Kildare and Leix. The history of Leinster thereafter passes to the several divisions which were gradually organized into the present counties.

LEIPZIG, a city of Germany, the second town of the kingdom of Saxony in size and the first in commercial importance, 70 m. N.W. of Dresden and 111 m. S.W. of Berlin by rail, and 6 m. from the Prussian frontier. It lies 350 ft. above the sea-level, In a broad and fertile plain, just above the junction of three small rivers, the Pleisse, the Parthe and the Elster, which flow in various branches through or round the town and afterwards under the name of the Elster, discharge themselves into the Saale. The climate, though not generally unhealthy, may be inclement in winter and hot in summer.

Leipzig is one of the most enterprising and prosperous of German towns, and in point of trade and industries ranks among German cities immediately after Berlin and Hamburg. It possesses the third largest German university, is the seat of the supreme tribunal of the German empire and the headquarters of the XIX. (Saxon) army corps, and forms one of the most prominent literary and musical centres in Europe. Its general aspect is imposing, owing to the number of new public buildings erected during the last 20 years of the 19th century. It consists of the old, or inner city, surrounded by a wide and pleasant promenade laid out on the site of the old fortifications, and of the very much more extensive inner and outer suburbs. Many thriving suburban villages, such as Reudnitz, Volkmarsdorf, Gohlis, Eutritzsch, Plagwitz and Lindenau, have been incorporated with the city, and with these accretions the population in 1905 amounted to 502,570. On the north-west the town is bordered by the fine public park and woods of the Rosenthal, and on the west by the Johanna Park and by pleasant groves leading along the banks of the Pleisse.

The old town, with its narrow streets and numerous houses of the 16th and 17th centuries, with their high-pitched roofs, preserves much of its quaint medieval aspect. The market square, lying almost in its centre, is of great interest. Upon it the four main business streets, the Grimmaische-, the Peters-, the Hain- and the Katharinen-strassen, converge, and its north side is occupied by the beautiful old Rathaus, a Gothic edifice built by the burgomaster Hieronymus Lotter in 1556, and containing life-size portraits of the Saxon rulers. Superseded by the new Rathaus, it has been restored and accommodates a municipal museum. Behind the market square and the main street lie a labyrinth of narrow streets interconnected by covered courtyards and alleys, with extensive warehouses and cellars. The whole, in the time of the great fairs, when every available place is packed with merchandise and thronged with a motley crowd, presents the semblance of an oriental bazaar. Close to the old Rathaus is Auerbach’s Hof, built about 1530 and interesting as being immortalized in Goethe’s Faust. It has a curious old wine vault (Keller) which contains a series of mural paintings of the 16th century, representing the legend on which the play is based. Near by is the picturesque Königshaus, for several centuries the palace of the Saxon monarchs in Leipzig and in which King Frederick Augustus I. was made prisoner by the Allies after the battle of Leipzig in October 1813. At the end of the Petersstrasse, in the south-west corner of the inner town and on the promenade, lay the Pleissenburg, or citadel, modelled, according to tradition, on that of Milan, and built early in the 13th century. Here Luther in 1519 held his momentous disputation. The round tower was long used as an observatory and the building as a barrack. With the exception of the tower, which has been encased and raised to double its former height—to 300 ft.—the citadel has been removed and its site is occupied by the majestic pile of the new Rathaus in Renaissance style, with the tower as its central feature. The business of Leipzig is chiefly concentrated in the inner city, but the headquarters of the book trade lie in the eastern suburb. Between the inner town and the latter lies the magnificent Augustusplatz, one of the most spacious squares in Europe. Upon it, on the side of the inner town and included within it, is the Augusteum, or main building of the university, a handsome edifice containing a splendid hall (1900), lecture rooms and archaeological collections; adjoining it is the Paulinerkirche, the university church. The other sides of the square are occupied by the new theatre, an imposing Renaissance structure, designed by C. F. Langhans, the post office and the museum of sculpture and painting, the latter faced by the Mende fountain. The churches of Leipzig are comparatively uninteresting. The oldest, in its present form, is the Paulinerkirche, built in 1229-1240, and restored in 1900, with a curiously grooved cloister; the largest in the inner town is the Thomaskirche, with a high-pitched roof dating from 1496, and memorable for its association with J. Sebastian Bach, who was organist here. Among others may be mentioned the new Gothic Petrikirche, with a lofty spire, in the south suburb. On the east is the Johanniskirche, round which raged the last conflict in the battle of 1813, when it suffered severely from cannon shot. In it is the tomb of Bach, and outside that of the poet Gellert. Opposite its main entrance is the Reformation monument, with bronze statues of Luther and Melanchthon, by Johann Schilling, unveiled in 1883. In the Johanna Park is the Lutherkirche (1886), and close at hand the Roman Catholic and English churches. To the south-west of the new Rathaus, lying beyond the Pleisse and between it and the Johanna Park, is the new academic quarter. Along the fine thoroughfares, noticeable among which is the Karl Tauchnitz Strasse, are closely grouped many striking buildings. Here is the new Gewandhaus, or Konzerthaus, built in 1880-1884, in which the famous concerts called after its name are given, the old Gewandhaus, or Drapers’ Hall, in the inner town having again been devoted to commercial use as a market hall during the fairs. Immediately opposite to it is the new university library, built in 1891, removed hither from the old monasterial buildings behind the Augusteum, and containing some 500,000 volumes and 5000 MSS. Behind that again is the academy of art, one wing of which accommodates the industrial art school; and close beside it are the school of technical arts and the conservatoire of music. Between the university library and the new Gewandhaus stands a monument of Mendelssohn (1892). Immediately to the east of the school of arts rises the grand pile of the supreme tribunal of the German empire, the Reichsgericht, which compares with the Reichstag building in Berlin. It was built in 1888-1895 from plans by Ludwig Hoffmann, and is distinguished for the symmetry and harmony of its proportions. It bears an imposing dome, 225 ft. high, crowned by a bronze figure of Truth by O. Lessing, 18 ft. high. Opposite, on the outer side of the Pleisse, are the district law-courts, large and substantial, though not specially imposing edifices. In the same quarter stands the Grassi Museum (1893-1896) for industrial art and ethnology, and a short distance away are the palatial buildings of the Reichs and Deutsche Banks. Farther east and lying in the centre of the book-trade quarter stand close together the Buchhändlerhaus (booksellers’ exchange), the great hall decorated with allegorical pictures by Sascha Schneider, and the Buchgewerbehaus, a museum of the book trade, both handsome red brick edifices in the German Renaissance style, erected in 1886-1890. South-west of these buildings, on the other side of the Johannisthal Park, are clustered the medical institutes and hospitals of the university—the infirmary, clinical and other hospitals, the physico-chemical institute, pathological institute, physiological institute, ophthalmic hospital, pharmacological institute, the schools of anatomy, the chemical laboratory, the zoological institute, the physico-mineralogical institute, the botanical garden and also the veterinary schools, deaf and dumb asylum, agricultural college and astronomical observatory. Among other noteworthy buildings in this quarter must be noted the Johannisstift, an asylum for the relief of the aged poor, with a handsome front and slender spire. On the north side of the inner town and on the promenade are the handsome exchange with library, and the reformed church, a pleasing edifice in late Gothic.

Leipzig has some interesting monuments; the Siegesdenkmal, commemorative of the wars of 1866 and 1870, on the market square, statues of Goethe, Leibnitz, Gellert, J. Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, Hahnemann, the homeopathist, and Bismarck. There are also many memorials of the battle of Leipzig, including an obelisk on the Randstädter-Steinweg, on the site of the bridge which was prematurely blown up, when Prince Poniatowski was drowned; a monument of cannon balls collected after the battle; a “relief” to Major Friccius, who stormed the outer Grimma gate; while on the battle plain itself and close to “Napoleonstein,” which commemorates Napoleon’s position on the last day of the battle, a gigantic obelisk surrounded by a garden has been planned for dedication on the hundredth anniversary of the battle (October 19, 1913).

The University and Education.—The university of Leipzig, founded in 1409 by a secession of four hundred German students from Prague, is one of the most influential universities in the world. It was a few years since the most numerously attended of any university in Germany, but it has since been outstripped by those of Berlin and of Munich. Its large revenues, derived to a great extent from house property in Leipzig and estates in Saxony, enable it, in conjunction with a handsome state subvention, to provide rich endowments for the professorial chairs. To the several faculties also belong various collegiate buildings, notably, to the legal, that of the Collegium beatae Virginis in the Petersstrasse, and to the philosophical the Rothe Haus on the promenade facing the theatre. The other educational institutions of Leipzig include the Nicolai and Thomas gymnasia, several “Realschulen,” a commercial academy (Handelsschule), high schools for girls, and a large number of public and private schools of all grades.

Art and Literature.—The city has a large number of literary, scientific and artistic institutions. One of the most important is the museum, which contains about four hundred modern paintings, a large number of casts, a few pieces of original sculpture and a well-arranged collection of drawings and engravings. The collection of the historical society and the ethnographical and art-industrial collections in the Grassi Museum are also of considerable interest. The museum was erected with part of the munificent bequest made to the city by Dominic Grassi in 1881. As a musical centre Leipzig is known all over the world for its excellent conservatorium, founded in 1843 by Mendelssohn. The series of concerts given annually in the Gewandhaus is also of world-wide reputation, and the operatic stage of Leipzig is deservedly ranked among the finest in Germany. There are numerous vocal and orchestral societies, some of which have brought their art to a very high pitch of perfection. The prominence of the publishing interest has attracted to Leipzig a large number of gifted authors, and made it a literary centre of considerable importance. Over five hundred newspapers and periodicals are published here, including several of the most widely circulated in Germany. Intellectual interests of a high order have always characterized Leipzig, and what Karl von Holtei once said of it is true to-day: “There is only one city in Germany that represents Germany; only a single city where one can forget that he is a Hessian, a Bavarian, a Swabian, a Prussian or a Saxon; only one city where, amid the opulence of the commercial world with which science is so gloriously allied, even the man who possesses nothing but his personality is honoured and esteemed; only one city, in which, despite a few narrownesses, all the advantages of a great, I may say a world-metropolis, are conspicuous! This city is, in my opinion, and in my experience, Leipzig.”

Commerce, Fairs.—The outstanding importance of Leipzig as a commercial town is mainly derived from its three great fairs, which annually attract an enormous concourse of merchants from all parts of Europe, and from Persia, Armenia and other Asiatic countries. The most important fairs are held at Easter and Michaelmas, and are said to have been founded as markets about 1170. The smaller New Year’s fair was established in 1458. Under the fostering care of the margraves of Meissen, and then of the electors of Saxony they attained great popularity. In 1268 the margrave of Meissen granted a safe-conduct to all frequenters of the fairs, and in 1497 and 1507 the emperor Maximilian I. greatly increased their importance by prohibiting the holding of annual markets at any town within a wide radius of Leipzig. During the Thirty Years’ War, the Seven Years’ War and the troubles consequent upon the French Revolution, the trade of the Leipzig fairs considerably decreased, but it recovered after the accession of Saxony to the German Customs Union (Zollverein) in 1834, and for the next twenty years rapidly and steadily increased. Since then, owing to the greater facilities of communication, the transactions at the fairs have diminished in relative, though they have increased in actual, value. Wares that can be safely purchased by sample appear at the fairs in steadily diminishing quantities, while others, such as hides, furs and leather, which require to be actually examined, show as marked an increase. The value of the sales considerably exceeds £10,000,000 sterling per annum. The principal commodity is furs (chiefly American and Russian), of which about one and a quarter million pounds worth are sold annually; other articles disposed of are leather, hides, wool, cloth, linen and glass. The Leipzig wool-market, held for two days in June, is also important.

In the trades of bookselling and publishing Leipzig occupies a unique position, not only taking the first place in Germany, but even surpassing London and Paris in the number and total value of its sales. There are upwards of nine hundred publishers and booksellers in the town, and about eleven thousand firms in other parts of Europe are represented here. Several hundred booksellers assemble in Leipzig every year, and settle their accounts at their own exchange (Buchhändler-Börse). Leipzig also contains about two hundred printing-works, some of great extent, and a corresponding number of type-foundries, binding-shops and other kindred industries.

The book trades give employment to over 15,000 persons, and since 1878 Leipzig has grown into an industrial town of the first rank. The iron and machinery trades employ 4500 persons; the textile industries, cotton and yarn spinning and hosiery, 6000; and the making of scientific and musical instruments, including pianos, 2650. Other industries include the manufacture of artificial flowers, wax-cloth, chemicals, ethereal oils and essences, beer, mineral waters, tobacco and cigars, lace, india-rubber wares, rush-work and paper, the preparation of furs and numerous other branches. These industries are mostly carried on in the suburbs of Plagwitz, Reudnitz, Lindenau, Gohlis, Eutritzsch, Konnewitz and the neighbouring town of Markranstädt.

Communications.—Leipzig lies at the centre of a network of railways giving it direct communication with all the more important cities of Germany. There are six main line railway stations, of which the Dresden and the Magdeburg lie side by side in the north-east corner of the promenade, the Thuringian and Berlin stations further away in the northern suburb; in the eastern is the Eilenburg station (for Breslau and the east) and in the south the Bavarian station. The whole traffic of these stations is to be directed into a vast central station (the largest in the world), lying on the sites of the Dresden, Magdeburg and Thuringian stations. The estimated cost, borne by Prussia, Saxony and the city of Leipzig, is estimated at 6 million pounds sterling. The city has an extensive electric tramway system, bringing all the outlying suburbs into close connexion with the business quarters of the town.

Population.—The population of Leipzig was quintupled within the 19th century, rising from 31,887 in 1801 to 153,988 in 1881, to 455,089 in 1900 and to 502,570 in 1905.

History.—Leipzig owes its origin to a Slav settlement between the Elster and the Pleisse, which was in existence before the year 1000, and its name to the Slav word lipa, a lime tree. There was also a German settlement near this spot, probably round a castle erected early in the 10th century by the German king, Henry the Fowler. The district was part of the mark of Merseburg, and the bishops of Merseburg were the lords of extensive areas around the settlements. In the 11th century Leipzig is mentioned as a fortified place and in the 12th it came into the possession of the margrave of Meissen, being granted some municipal privileges by the margrave, Otto the Rich, before 1190. Its favourable situation in the midst of a plain intersected by the principal highways of central Europe, together with the fostering care of its rulers, now began the work of raising Leipzig to the position of a very important commercial town. Its earliest trade was in the salt produced at Halle, and its enterprising inhabitants constructed roads and bridges to lighten the journey of the traders and travellers whose way led to the town. Soon Leipzig was largely used as a depot by the merchants of Nuremberg, who carried on a considerable trade with Poland. Powers of self-government were acquired by the council (Rat) of the town, the importance of which was enhanced during the 15th century by several grants of privileges from the emperors. When Saxony was divided in 1485 Leipzig fell to the Albertine, or ducal branch of the family, whose head Duke George gave new rights to the burghers. This duke, however, at whose instigation the famous discussion between Luther and Johann von Eck took place in the Pleissenburg of Leipzig, inflicted some injury upon the town’s trade and also upon its university by the harsh treatment which he meted out to the adherents of the new doctrines; but under the rule of his successor, Henry, Leipzig accepted the teaching of the reformers. In 1547 during the war of the league of Schmalkalden the town was besieged by the elector of Saxony, John Frederick I. It was not captured, although its suburbs were destroyed. These and the Pleissenburg were rebuilt by the elector Maurice, who also strengthened the fortifications. Under the elector Augustus I. emigrants from the Netherlands were encouraged to settle in Leipzig and its trade with Hamburg and with England was greatly extended.

During the Thirty Years’ War Leipzig suffered six sieges and on four occasions was occupied by hostile troops, being retained by the Swedes as security for the payment of an indemnity from 1648 to 1650. After 1650 its fortifications were strengthened; its finances were put on a better footing; and its trade, especially with England, began again to prosper; important steps being taken with regard to its organization. Towards the end of the 17th century the publishing trade began to increase very rapidly, partly because the severity of the censorship at Frankfort-on-the-Main caused many booksellers to remove to Leipzig. During the Seven Years’ War Frederick the Great exacted a heavy contribution from Leipzig, but this did not seriously interfere with its prosperity. In 1784 the fortifications were pulled down. The wars in the first decade of the 19th century were not on the whole unfavourable to the commerce of Leipzig, but in 1813 and 1814, owing to the presence of enormous armies in the neighbourhood, it suffered greatly. Another revival, however, set in after the peace of 1815, and this was aided by the accession of Saxony to the German Zollverein in 1834, and by the opening of the first railway a little later. In 1831 the town was provided with a new constitution, and in 1837 a scheme for the reform of the university was completed. A riot in 1845, the revolutionary movement of 1848 and the Prussian occupation of 1866 were merely passing shadows. In 1879 Leipzig acquired a new importance by becoming the seat of the supreme court of the German empire.

The immediate neighbourhood of Leipzig has been the scene of several battles, two of which are of more than ordinary importance. These are the battles of Breitenfeld, fought on the 17th of September 1631, between the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus and the imperialists, and the great battle of Leipzig, known in Germany as the Völkerschlacht, fought in October 1813 between Napoleon and the allied forces of Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Towards the middle of the 18th century Leipzig was the seat of the most influential body of literary men in Germany, over whom Johann Christoph Gottsched, like his contemporary, Samuel Johnson, in England, exercised a kind of literary dictatorship. Then, if ever, Leipzig deserved the epithet of a “Paris in miniature” (Klein Paris) assigned to it by Goethe in his Faust. The young Lessing produced his first play in the Leipzig theatre, and the university counts Goethe, Klopstock, Jean Paul Richter, Fichte and Schelling among its alumni. Schiller and Gellert also resided for a time in Leipzig, and Sebastian Bach and Mendelssohn filled musical posts here. Among the celebrated natives of the town are the philosopher Leibnitz and the composer Wagner.

Authorities.—For the history of Leipzig see E. Hasse, Die Stadt Leipzig und ihre Umgebung, geographisch und statistisch beschrieben (Leipzig, 1878); K. Grosse, Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig (Leipzig, 1897-1898); Rachel, Verwaltungsorganisation und Ämterwesen der Stadt Leipzig bis 1627 (Leipzig, 1902); G. Wustmann, Aus Leipzigs Vergangenheit (Leipzig, 1898); Bilderbuch aus der Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig (Leipzig, 1897); Leipzig durch drei Jahrhunderte, Atlas zur Geschichte des Leipziger Stadtbildes (Leipzig, 1891); Quellen zur Geschichte Leipzigs (Leipzig, 1889-1895); and Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig (Leipzig, 1905); F. Seifert, Die Reformation in Leipzig (Leipzig, 1883); G. Buchwald, Reformationsgeschichte der Stadt Leipzig (Leipzig, 1900); Geffcken and Tykocinski, Stiftungsbuch der Stadt Leipzig (Leipzig, 1905); the Urkundenbuch der Stadt Leipzig, edited by C. F. Posern-Klett and Förstemann (Leipzig, 1870-1895); and the Schriften des Vereins für die Geschichte Leipzigs (Leipzig, 1872-1904). For other aspects of the town’s life see Hirschfeld, Leipzigs Grossindustrie und Grosshandel (Leipzig, 1887); Hassert, Die geographische Lage und Entwickelung Leipzigs (Leipzig, 1899); Helm, Heimatkunde von Leipzig (Leipzig, 1903); E. Friedberg, Die Universität Leipzig in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1897); F. Zarncke, Die Statutenbücher der Universität Leipzig (Leipzig, 1861); E. Hasse, Geschichte der Leipziger Messen (Leipzig, 1885); Tille, Die Anfänge der hohen Landstrasse (Gotha, 1906); Biedermann, Geschichte der Leipziger Kramerinnung (Leipzig, 1881); and Moltke, Die Leipziger Kramerinnung im 15 und 16 Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1901).

LEIRIA, an episcopal city and the capital of the district of Leiria, formerly included in Estremadura, Portugal; on the river Liz and on the Lisbon-Figueria da Foz railway. Pop. (1900) 4459. The principal buildings of Leiria are the ruined citadel, which dates from 1135, and the cathedral, a small Renaissance building erected in 1571 but modernized in the 18th century. The main square of the city is named after the poet Francisco Rodrigues Lobo, who was born here about 1500. Between Leiria and the Atlantic there are extensive pine woods known as the Pinhal de Leiria, which were planted by King Diniz (1279-1325) with trees imported from the Landes in France, in order to give firmness to the sandy soil. In the neighbourhood there are glass and iron foundries, oil wells and mineral springs. Leiria, the Roman Calippo, was taken from the Moors in 1135 by Alphonso I. (Affonso Henriques). King Diniz made it his capital. In 1466 the first Portuguese printing-press was established here; in 1545 the city was made an episcopal see. The administrative district of Leiria coincides with the north and north-west of the ancient province of Estremadura (q.v.); pop. (1900) 238,755; area 1317 sq. m.

LEISLER, JACOB (c. 1635-1691), American political agitator, was born probably at Frankfort-on-Main, Germany, about 1635. He went to New Netherland (New York) in 1660, married a wealthy widow, engaged in trade, and soon accumulated a fortune. The English Revolution of 1688 divided the people of New York into two well-defined factions. In general the small shop-keepers, small farmers, sailors, poor traders and artisans were arrayed against the patroons, rich fur-traders, merchants, lawyers and crown officers. The former were led by Leisler, the latter by Peter Schuyler (1657-1724), Nicholas Bayard (c. 1644-1707), Stephen van Cortlandt (1643-1700), William Nicolls (1657-1723) and other representatives of the aristocratic Hudson Valley families. The “Leislerians” pretended greater loyalty to the Protestant succession. When news of the imprisonment of Gov. Andros in Massachusetts was received, they took possession on the 31st of May 1689 of Fort James (at the southern end of Manhattan Island), renamed it Fort William and announced their determination to hold it until the arrival of a governor commissioned by the new sovereigns. The aristocrats also favoured the Revolution, but preferred to continue the government under authority from James II. rather than risk the danger of an interregnum. Lieutenant-Governor Francis Nicholson sailed for England on the 24th of June, a committee of safety was organized by the popular party, and Leisler was appointed commander-in-chief. Under authority of a letter from the home government addressed to Nicholson, “or in his absence, to such as for the time being takes care for preserving the peace and administering the laws in His Majesty’s province of New York,” he assumed the title of lieutenant-governor in December 1689, appointed a council and took charge of the government of the entire province. He summoned the first Intercolonial Congress in America, which met in New York on the 1st of May 1690 to plan concerted action against the French and Indians. Colonel Henry Sloughter was commissioned governor of the province on the 2nd of September 1689 but did not reach New York until the 19th of March 1691. In the meantime Major Richard Ingoldsby and two companies of soldiers had landed (January 28, 1691) and demanded possession of the fort. Leisler refused to surrender it, and after some controversy an attack was made on the 17th of March in which two soldiers were killed and several wounded. When Sloughter arrived two days later Leisler hastened to give over to him the fort and other evidences of authority. He and his son-in-law, Jacob Milborne, were charged with treason for refusing to submit to Ingoldsby, were convicted, and on the 16th of May 1691 were executed. There has been much controversy among historians with regard both to the facts and to the significance of Leisler’s brief career as ruler in New York.

See J. R. Brodhead, History of the State of New York (vol. 2, New York, 1871). For the documents connected with the controversy see E. B. O’Callaghan, Documentary History of the State of New York (vol. 2, Albany, 1850).

LEISNIG, a town in the kingdom of Saxony, prettily situated on the Freiberger Mulde, 7 m. S. of Grimma by the railway from Leipzig to Dresden via Döbeln. Pop. (1905) 8147. On a high rock above the town lies the old castle of Mildenstein, now utilized as administrative offices. The industries include the manufacture of cloth, furniture, boots, buttons, cigars, beer, machinery and chemicals. Leisnig is a place of considerable antiquity. About 1080 it passed into the possession of the counts of Groitzsch, but was purchased in 1157 by the emperor Frederick I., who committed it to the charge of counts. It fell to Meissen in 1365, and later to Saxony.

LEITH, a municipal and police burgh, and seaport, county of Midlothian, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 77,439. It is situated on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, 1½ m. N.N.E. of Edinburgh, of which it is the port and with which it is connected by Leith Walk, practically a continuous street. It has stations on the North British and Caledonian railways, and a branch line (N.B.R.) to Portobello. Lying at the mouth of the Water of Leith, which is crossed by several bridges and divides it into the parishes of North and South Leith, it stretches for 3¼ m. along the shore of the Firth from Seafield in the east to near Granton in the west. There is tramway communication with Edinburgh and Newhaven.

The town is a thriving centre of trade and commerce. St Mary’s in Kirkgate, the parish church of South Leith, was founded in 1483, and was originally cruciform but, as restored in 1852, consists of an aisled nave and north-western tower. Here David Lindsay (1531-1613), its minister, James VI.’s chaplain and afterwards bishop of Ross, preached before the king the thanksgiving sermon on the Gowrie conspiracy (1600). John Logan, the hymn-writer and reputed author of “The Ode to the Cuckoo,” was minister for thirteen years; and in its graveyard lies the Rev. John Home, author of Douglas, a native of Leith. Near it in Constitution Street is St James’s Episcopal church (1862-1869), in the Early English style by Sir Gilbert Scott, with an apsidal chancel and a spire 160 ft. high. The parish church of North Leith, in Madeira Street, with a spire 158 ft. high, is one of the best livings in the Established Church of Scotland. St Thomas’s, at the head of Shirra Brae, in the Gothic style, was built in 1843 by Sir John Gladstone of Fasque, who—prior to his removal to Liverpool, where his son, W. E. Gladstone, was born—had been a merchant in Leith. The public buildings are wholly modern, the principal being of classic design. They include the custom house (1812) in the Grecian style; Trinity House (1817), also Grecian, containing Sir Henry Raeburn’s portrait of Admiral Lord Duncan, David Scott’s “Vasco da Gama Rounding the Cape” and other paintings; the markets (1818); the town hall (1828), with an Ionic façade on Constitution Street and a Doric porch on Charlotte Street; the corn exchange (1862) in the Roman style; the assembly rooms; exchange buildings; the public institute (1867) and Victoria public baths (1899). Trinity House was founded in 1555 as a home for old and disabled sailors, but on the decline of its revenues it became the licensing authority for pilots, its humane office being partly fulfilled by the sailors’ home, established about 1840 in a building adjoining the Signal Tower, and rehoused in a handsome structure in the Scottish Baronial style in 1883-1884. Other charitable institutions include the hospital, John Watt’s hospital and the smallpox hospital. The high school, built in 1806, for many years a familiar object on the west margin of the Links, gave way to the academy, a handsome and commodious structure, to which are drafted senior pupils from the numerous board schools for free education in the higher branches. Here also is accommodated the technical college. Secondary instruction is given also in Craighall Road school. A bronze statue of Robert Burns was unveiled in 1898. Leith Links, one of the homes of golf in Scotland, is a popular resort, on Lochend Road are situated Hawkhill recreation grounds, and Lochend Loch is used for skating and curling. There are small links at Newhaven, and in Trinity are Starbank Park and Cargilfield playing ground. The east pier (1177 yds. long) and the west pier (1041 yds.) are favourite promenades. The waterway between them is the entrance to the harbour. Leith cemetery is situated at Seafield and the Eastern cemetery in Easter Road.

The oldest industry is shipbuilding, which dates from 1313. Here in 1511 James IV. built the “St Michael,” “ane verrie monstruous great ship, whilk tuik sae meikle timber that schee waisted all the woodis in Fyfe, except Falkland wood, besides the timber that cam out of Norroway.” Other important industries are engineering, sugar-refining (established 1757), meat-preserving, flour-milling, sailcloth-making, soap-boiling, rope and twine-making, tanning, chemical manures-making, wood-sawing, hosiery, biscuit-baking, brewing, distilling and lime-juice making. Of the old trade of glass-making, which began in 1682, scarcely a trace survives. As a distributing centre, Leith occupies a prominent place. It is the headquarters of the whisky business in Great Britain, and stores also large quantities of wine from Spain, Portugal and France. This pre-eminence is due to its excellent dock and harbour accommodation and capacious warehouses. The two old docks (1801-1807) cover 10½ acres; Victoria Dock (1852) 5 acres; Albert Dock (1863-1869) 10¾ acres; Edinburgh Dock (1874-1881) 162⁄3 acres; and the New Dock (1892-1901) 60 acres. There are several dry docks, of which the Prince of Wales Graving Dock (1858), the largest, measures 370 ft. by 60 ft. Space can always be had for more dock room by reclaiming the east sands, where in the 17th and 18th centuries Leith Races were held, the theme of a humorous descriptive poem by Robert Fergusson. Apart from coasting trade there are constant sailings to the leading European ports, the United States and the British colonies. In 1908 the tonnage of ships entering the harbour was (including coastwise trade) 1,975,457; that of ships clearing the harbour 1,993,227. The number of vessels registered at the port was 213 (net tonnage 146,799). The value of imports was £12,883,890, of exports £5,377,188. In summer there are frequent excursions to the Bass Rock and the Isle of May, North Berwick, Elie, Aberdour, Alloa and Stirling. Leith Fort, built in North Leith in 1779 for the defence of the harbour, is now the headquarters of the Royal Artillery in Scotland. Leith is the head of a fishery district. The town, which is governed by a provost, bailies and council, unites with Musselburgh and Portobello to send one member to parliament.

Leith figures as Inverleith in the foundation charter of Holyrood Abbey (1128). In 1329 Robert I. granted the harbour to the magistrates of Edinburgh, who did not always use their power wisely. They forbade, for example, the building of streets wide enough to admit a cart, a regulation that accounted for the number of narrow wynds and alleys in the town. Had the overlords been more considerate incorporation with Edinburgh would not have been so bitterly resisted. Several of the quaint bits of ancient Leith yet remain, and the appearance of the shore as it was in the 17th and 18th centuries, and even at a later date, was picturesque in the extreme. During the centuries of strife between Scotland and England its situation exposed the port to attack both by sea and land. At least twice (in 1313 and 1410) its shipping was burned by the English, who also sacked the town in 1544—when the 1st earl of Hertford destroyed the first wooden pier—and 1547. In the troublous times that followed the death of James V., Leith became the stronghold of the Roman Catholic and French party from 1548 to 1560, Mary of Guise, queen regent, not deeming herself secure in Edinburgh. In 1549 the town was walled and fortified by Montalembert, sicur d’Essé, the commander of the French troops, and endured an ineffectual siege in 1560 by the Scots and their English allies. A house in Coalhill is thought to be the “handsome and spacious edifice” erected for her privy council by Mary of Guise. D’Essé’s wall, pierced by six gates, was partly dismantled on the death of the queen regent, but although rebuilt in 1571, not a trace of it exists. The old tolbooth, in which William Maitland of Lethington, Queen Mary’s secretary, poisoned himself in 1573, to avoid execution for adhering to Mary’s cause, was demolished in 1819. Charles I. is said to have received the first tidings of the Irish rebellion while playing golf on the links in 1641. Cromwell in his Scottish campaign built the Citadel in 1650 and the mounds on the links, known as “Giant’s Brae” and “Lady Fife’s Brae,” were thrown up by the Protector as batteries. In 1698 the sailing of the first Darien expedition created great excitement. In 1715 William Mackintosh of Borlum (1662-1743) and his force of Jacobite Highlanders captured the Citadel, of which only the name of Citadel Street and the archway in Couper Street have preserved the memory.

A mile S.E. of the links lies the ancient village of Restalrig, the home of the Logans, from whom the superiority of Leith was purchased in 1553 by the queen regent. Sir Robert Logan (d. 1606) was alleged to have been one of the Gowrie conspirators and to have arranged to imprison the king in Fast Castle. This charge, however, was not made until three years after his death, when his bones were exhumed for trial. He was then found guilty of high treason and sentence of forfeiture pronounced; but there is reason to suspect that the whole case was trumped up. The old church escaped demolition at the Reformation and even the fine east window was saved. In the vaults repose Sir Robert and other Logans, besides several of the lords Balmerino, and Lord Brougham’s father lies in the kirkyard. The well of St Triduana, which was reputed to possess wonderful curative powers, vanished when the North British railway was constructed.

LEITMERITZ (Czech, Litoměřice), a town and episcopal see of Bohemia, 45 m. N. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 13,075, mostly German. It lies on the right bank of the Elbe, which becomes here navigable for steamers and is spanned by an iron bridge 1700 ft. in length. The fine cathedral, founded in 1057, was built in 1671 and contains some valuable paintings. The library of the episcopal palace, built between 1694 and 1701, possesses the oldest maps of Bohemia made in 1518 by Nicolaus Claudianus of Jung-Bunzlau. Of the other churches that of All Saints dates from the 13th century. The town-hall, with its remarkable bell tower, dates from the 15th century. Leitmeritz is situated in the midst of a very fertile country, called the “Bohemian Paradise,” which produces great quantities of corn, fruit, hops and wines. The beer brewed here enjoys a high reputation. On the opposite bank of the river, where the Eger discharges itself into the Elbe, lies Theresienstadt (pop. 7046), an important garrison town. It was formerly an important fortress, erected in 1780 by the emperor Joseph II. and named after his mother Maria Theresa, but the fortress was dismantled in 1882.

Leitmeritz was originally the castle of a royal count and is first mentioned, in 993, in the foundation charter of the convent of St Margaret near Prague. In 1248 it received a town charter, and was governed by the laws of Magdeburg until the time of Ferdinand I., having a special court of jurisdiction over all the royal towns where this law obtained. The town reached its highest degree of prosperity under Charles IV., who bestowed upon it large tracts of forest, agricultural land and vineyards. In the Hussite wars, after its capture by the utraquist, Leitmeritz remained true to “the Chalice,” shared also in the revolt against Ferdinand I., and suffered in consequence. It was still more unfortunate during the Thirty Years’ War, in the course of which most of the Protestant inhabitants left it; the property of the Bohemian refugees being given to German immigrants. The present bishopric was established in 1655.

LEITNER, GOTTLIEB WILHELM (1840-1899), Anglo-Hungarian orientalist, was born at Budapest in 1840. He was the son of a physician, and was educated at Malta Protestant college. At the age of fifteen he acted as an interpreter in the Crimean War. He entered King’s College, London, in 1858, and in 1861 was appointed professor of Arabic and Mahommedan law. He became principal of the government college at Lahore in 1864, and there originated the term “Dardistan” for a portion of the mountains on the north-west frontier, which was subsequently recognized to be a purely artificial distinction. He collected much valuable information on Graeco-Buddhist art and the origins of Indian art. He spoke, read and wrote twenty-five languages. He founded an oriental institute at Woking, and for some years edited the Asiatic Quarterly Review. He died at Bonn in 1899.