VOLUME XVI SLICE V Letter to Lightfoot, John (continued 3)

(J. S.; X.)

LEWES, a market-town and municipal borough and the county town of Sussex, England, in the Lewes parliamentary division, 50 m. S. from London by the London, Brighton & South Coast railway. Pop. (1901) 11,249. It is picturesquely situated on the slope of a chalk down falling to the river Ouse. Ruins of the old castle, supposed to have been founded by King Alfred and rebuilt by William de Warenne shortly after the Conquest, rise from the height. There are two mounds which bore keeps, an uncommon feature. The castle guarded the pass through the downs formed by the valley of the Ouse. In one of the towers is the collection of the Sussex Archaeological Society. St Michael’s church is without architectural merit, but contains old brasses and monuments; St Anne’s church is a transitional Norman structure; St Thomas-at-Cliffe is Perpendicular; St John’s, Southover, of mixed architecture, preserves some early Norman portions, and has some relics of the Warenne family. In the grounds of the Cluniac priory of St Pancras, founded in 1078, the leaden coffins of William de Warenne and Gundrada his wife were dug up during an excavation for the railway in 1845. There is a free grammar school dating from 1512, and among the other public buildings are the town hall and corn exchange, county hall, prison, and the Fitzroy memorial library. The industries include the manufacture of agricultural implements, brewing, tanning, and iron and brass founding. The municipal borough is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 1042 acres.

The many neolithic and bronze implements that have been discovered, and the numerous tumuli and earthworks which surround Lewes, indicate its remote origin. The town Lewes (Loewas, Loewen, Leswa, Laquis, Latisaquensis) was in the royal demesne of the Saxon kings, from whom it received the privilege of a market. Æthelstan established two royal mints there, and by the reign of Edward the Confessor, and probably before, Lewes was certainly a borough. William I. granted the whole barony of Lewes, including the revenue arising from the town, to William de Warenne, who converted an already existing fortification into a place of residence. His descendants continued to hold the barony until the beginning of the 14th century. In default of male issue, it then passed to the earl of Arundel, with whose descendants it remained until 1439, when it was divided between the Norfolks, Dorsets and Abergavennys. By 1086 the borough had increased 30% in value since the beginning of the reign, and its importance as a port and market-town is evident from Domesday. A gild merchant seems to have existed at an early date. The first mention of it is in a charter of Reginald de Warenne, about 1148, by which he restored to the burgesses the privileges they had enjoyed in the time of his grandfather and father, but of which they had been deprived. In 1595 a “Fellowship” took the place of the old gild and in conjunction with two constables governed the town until the beginning of the 18th century. The borough seal probably dates from the 14th century. Lewes was incorporated by royal charter in 1881. The town returned two representatives to parliament from 1295 until deprived of one member in 1867. It was disfranchised in 1885. Earl Warenne and his descendants held the fairs and markets from 1066. In 1792 the fair-days were the 6th of May, Whit-Tuesday, the 26th of July (for wool), and the 2nd of October. The market-day was Saturday. Fairs are now held on the 6th of May for horses and cattle, the 20th of July for wool, and the 21st and 28th of September for Southdown sheep. A corn-market is held every Tuesday, and a stock-market every alternate Monday. The trade in wool has been important since the 14th century.

Lewes was the scene of the battle fought on the 14th of May 1264 between Henry III. and Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. Led by the king and by his son, the future king Edward I., the royalists left Oxford, took Northampton and drove Montfort from Rochester into London. Then, harassed on the route by their foes, they marched through Kent into Sussex and took up their quarters at Lewes, a stronghold of the royalist Earl Warenne. Meanwhile, reinforced by a number of Londoners, Earl Simon left London and reached Fletching, about 9 m. north of Lewes, on the 13th of May. Efforts at reconciliation having failed he led his army against the town, which he hoped to surprise, early on the following day. His plan was to direct his main attack against the priory of St Pancras, which sheltered the king and his brother Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans, while causing the enemy to believe that his principal objective was the castle, where Prince Edward was. But the surprise was not complete and the royalists rushed from the town to meet the enemy in the open field. Edward led his followers against the Londoners, who were gathered around the standard of Montfort, put them to flight, pursued them for several miles, and killed a great number of them. Montfort’s ruse, however, had been successful. He was not with his standard as his foes thought, but with the pick of his men he attacked Henry’s followers and took prisoner both the king and his brother. Before Edward returned from his chase the earl was in possession of the town. In its streets the prince strove to retrieve his fortunes, but in vain. Many of his men perished in the river, but others escaped, one band, consisting of Earl Warenne and others, taking refuge in Pevensey Castle. Edward himself took sanctuary and on the following day peace was made between the king and the earl.

LEWES, a town in Sussex county, Delaware, U.S.A., in the S.E. part of the state, on Delaware Bay. Pop. (1910), 2158. Lewes is served by the Philadelphia, Baltimore & Washington (Pennsylvania System), and the Maryland, Delaware & Virginia railways. Its harbour is formed by the Delaware Breakwater, built by the national government and completed in 1869, and 2¼ m. above it another breakwater was completed in December 1901 by the government. The cove between them forms a harbour of refuge of about 550 acres. At the mouth of Delaware Bay, about 2 m. below Lewes, is the Henlopen Light, one of the oldest lighthouses in America. The Delaware Bay pilots make their headquarters at Lewes. Lewes has a large trade with northern cities in fruits and vegetables, and is a subport of entry of the Wilmington Customs District. The first settlement on Delaware soil by Europeans was made near here in 1631 by Dutch colonists, sent by a company organized in Holland in the previous year by Samuel Blommaert, Killian van Rensselaer, David Pieterszen de Vries and others. The settlers called the place Zwaanendael, valley of swans. The settlement was soon entirely destroyed by the Indians, and a second body of settlers whom de Vries, who had been made director of the colony, brought in 1632 remained for only two years. The fact of the settlement is important; because of it the English did not unite the Delaware country with Maryland, for the Maryland Charter of 1632 restricted colonization to land within the prescribed boundaries, uncultivated and either uninhabited or inhabited only by Indians. In 1658 the Dutch established an Indian trading post, and in 1659 erected a fort at Zwaanendael. After the annexation of the Delaware counties to Pennsylvania in 1682, its name was changed to Lewes, after the town of that name in Sussex, England. It was pillaged by French pirates in 1698. One of the last naval battles of the War of Independence was fought in the bay near Lewes on the 8th of April 1782, when the American privateer “Hyder Ally” (16), commanded by Captain Joshua Barnes (1759-1818), defeated and captured the British sloop “General Monk” (20), which had been an American privateer, the “General Washington,” had been captured by Admiral Arbuthnot’s squadron in 1780, and was now purchased by the United States government and, as the “General Washington,” was commanded by Captain Barnes in 1782-1784. In March 1813 the town was bombarded by a British frigate.

See the “History of Lewes” in the Papers of the Historical Society of Delaware, No. xxxviii. (Wilmington, 1903); and J. T. Scharf, History of Delaware (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1888).

LEWIS, SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL, Bart. (1806-1863), English statesman and man of letters, was born in London on the 21st of April 1806. His father, Thomas F. Lewis, of Harpton Court, Radnorshire, after holding subordinate office in various administrations, became a poor-law commissioner, and was made a baronet in 1846. Young Lewis was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, where in 1828 he took a first-class in classics and a second-class in mathematics. He then entered the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1831. In 1833 he undertook his first public work as one of the commissioners to inquire into the condition of the poor Irish residents in the United Kingdom.1 In 1834 Lord Althorp included him in the commission to inquire into the state of church property and church affairs generally in Ireland. To this fact we owe his work on Local Disturbances in Ireland, and the Irish Church Question (London, 1836), in which he condemned the existing connexion between church and state, proposed a state provision for the Catholic clergy, and maintained the necessity of an efficient workhouse organization. During this period Lewis’s mind was much occupied with the study of language. Before leaving college he had published some observations on Whately’s doctrine of the predicables, and soon afterwards he assisted Thirlwall and Hare in starting the Philological Museum. Its successor, the Classical Museum, he also supported by occasional contributions. In 1835 he published an Essay on the Origin and Formation of the Romance Languages (re-edited in 1862), the first effective criticism in England of Raynouard’s theory of a uniform romance tongue, represented by the poetry of the troubadours. He also compiled a glossary of provincial words used in Herefordshire and the adjoining counties. But the most important work of this earlier period was one to which his logical and philological tastes contributed. The Remarks on the Use and Abuse of some Political Terms (London, 1832) may have been suggested by Bentham’s Book of Parliamentary Fallacies, but it shows all that power of clear sober original thinking which marks his larger and later political works. Moreover, he translated Boeckh’s Public Economy of Athens and Müller’s History of Greek Literature, and he assisted Tufnell in the translation of Müller’s Dorians. Some time afterwards he edited a text of the Fables of Babrius. While his friend Hayward conducted the Law Magazine, he wrote in it frequently on such subjects as secondary punishments and the penitentiary system. In 1836, at the request of Lord Glenelg, he accompanied John Austin to Malta, where they spent nearly two years reporting on the condition of the island and framing a new code of laws. One leading object of both commissioners was to associate the Maltese in the responsible government of the island. On his return to England Lewis succeeded his father as one of the principal poor-law commissioners. In 1841 appeared the Essay on the Government of Dependencies, a systematic statement and discussion of the various relations in which colonies may stand towards the mother country. In 1844 Lewis married Lady Maria Theresa Lister, sister of Lord Clarendon, and a lady of literary tastes. Much of their married life was spent in Kent House, Knightsbridge. They had no children. In 1847 Lewis resigned his office. He was then returned for the county of Hereford, and Lord John Russell appointed him secretary to the Board of Control, but a few months afterwards he became under-secretary to the Home Office. In this capacity he introduced two important bills, one for the abolition of turnpike trusts and the management of highways by a mixed county board, the other for the purpose of defining and regulating the law of parochial assessment. In 1850 he succeeded Hayter as financial secretary to the treasury. About this time, also, appeared his Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion. On the dissolution of parliament which followed the resignation of Lord John Russell’s ministry in 1852, Lewis was defeated for Herefordshire and then for Peterborough. Excluded from parliament he accepted the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, and remained editor until 1855. During this period he served on the Oxford commission, and on the commission to inquire into the government of London. But its chief fruits were the Treatise on the Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics, and the Enquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History,2 in which he vigorously attacked the theory of epic lays and other theories on which Niebuhr’s reconstruction of that history had proceeded. In 1855 Lewis succeeded his father in the baronetcy. He was at once elected member for the Radnor boroughs, and Lord Palmerston made him chancellor of the exchequer. He had a war loan to contract and heavy additional taxation to impose, but his industry, method and clear vision carried him safely through. After the change of ministry in 1859 Sir George became home secretary under Lord Palmerston, and in 1861, much against his wish, he succeeded Sidney Herbert (Lord Herbert of Lea) at the War Office. The closing years of his life were marked by increasing intellectual vigour. In 1859 he published an able Essay on Foreign Jurisdiction and the Extradition of Criminals, a subject to which the attempt on Napoleon’s life, the discussions on the Conspiracy Bill, and the trial of Bernard, had drawn general attention. He advocated the extension of extradition treaties, and condemned the principal idea of Weltrechtsordnung which Mohl of Heidelberg had proposed. His two latest works were the Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, in which, without professing any knowledge of Oriental languages, he applied a sceptical analysis to the ambitious Egyptology of Bunsen; and the Dialogue on the Best Form of Government, in which, under the name of Crito, the author points out to the supporters of the various systems that there is no one abstract government which is the best possible for all times and places. An essay on the Characteristics of Federal, National, Provincial and Municipal Government does not seem to have been published. Sir George died in April 1863. A marble bust by Weekes stands in Westminster Abbey.

Lewis was a man of mild and affectionate disposition, much beloved by a large circle of friends, among whom were Sir E. Head, the Grotes, the Austins, Lord Stanhope, J. S. Mill, Dean Milman, the Duff Gordons. In public life he was distinguished, as Lord Aberdeen said, “for candour, moderation, love of truth.” He had a passion for the systematic acquirement of knowledge, and a keen and sound critical faculty. His name has gone down to history as that of a many-sided man, sound in judgment, unselfish in political life, and abounding in practical good sense.

A reprint from the Edinburgh Review of his long series of papers on the Administration of Great Britain appeared in 1864, and his Letters to various Friends (1870) were edited by his brother Gilbert, who succeeded him in the baronetcy.

1 See the Abstract of Final Report of Commissioners of Irish Poor Enquiry, &c., by G. C. Lewis and N. Senior (1837).

2 Translated into German by Liebrecht (Hanover, 1858).

LEWIS, HENRY CARVILL (1853-1888), American geologist, was born in Philadelphia on the 16th of November 1853. Educated in the university of Pennsylvania he took the degree of M.A. in 1876. He became attached to the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania in 1879, serving for three years as a volunteer member, and during this term he became greatly interested in the study of glacial phenomena. In 1880 he was chosen professor of mineralogy in the Philadelphia academy of natural sciences, and in 1883 he was appointed to the chair of geology in Haverford College, Pennsylvania. During the winters of 1885 to 1887 he studied petrology under H. F. Rosenbusch at Heidelberg, and during the summers he investigated the glacial geology of northern Europe and the British Islands. His observations in North America, where he had studied under Professor G. F. Wright, Professor T. C. Chamberlin and Warren Upham, had demonstrated the former extension of land-ice, and the existence of great terminal moraines. In 1884 his Report on the Terminal Moraine in Pennsylvania and New York was published: a work containing much information on the limits of the North American ice-sheet. In Britain he sought to trace in like manner the southern extent of the terminal moraines formed by British ice-sheets, but before his conclusions were matured he died at Manchester on the 21st of July 1888. The results of his observations were published in 1894 entitled Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland, edited by Dr H. W. Crosskey.

See “Prof. Henry Carvill Lewis and his Work in Glacial Geology,” by Warren Upham, Amer. Geol. vol. ii. (Dec. 1888) p. 371, with portrait.

LEWIS, JOHN FREDERICK (1805-1876), British painter, son of F. C. Lewis, engraver, was born in London. He was elected in 1827 associate of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, of which he became full member in 1829 and president in 1855; he resigned in 1858, and was made associate of the Royal Academy in 1859 and academician in 1865. Much of his earlier life was spent in Spain, Italy and the East, but he returned to England in 1851 and for the remainder of his career devoted himself almost exclusively to Eastern subjects, which he treated with extraordinary care and minuteness of finish, and with much beauty of technical method. He is represented by a picture, “Edfou: Upper Egypt,” in the National Gallery of British Art. He achieved equal eminence in both oil and water-colour painting.

LEWIS, MATTHEW GREGORY (1775-1818), English romance-writer and dramatist, often referred to as “Monk” Lewis, was born in London on the 9th of July 1775. He was educated for a diplomatic career at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford, spending most of his vacations abroad in the study of modern languages; and in 1794 he proceeded to the Hague as attaché to the British embassy. His stay there lasted only a few months, but was marked by the composition, in ten weeks, of his romance Ambrosio, or the Monk, which was published in the summer of the following year. It immediately achieved celebrity; but some passages it contained were of such a nature that about a year after its appearance an injunction to restrain its sale was moved for and a rule nisi obtained. Lewis published a second edition from which he had expunged, as he thought, all the objectionable passages, but the work still remains of such a character as almost to justify the severe language in which Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers addresses—

“Wonder-working Lewis, Monk or Bard, Who fain would’st make Parnassus a churchyard; Even Satan’s self with thee might dread to dwell, And in thy skull discern a deeper hell.”

Whatever its demerits, ethical or aesthetic, may have been, The Monk did not interfere with the reception of Lewis into the best English society; he was favourably noticed at court, and almost as soon as he came of age he obtained a seat in the House of Commons as member for Hindon, Wilts. After some years, however, during which he never addressed the House, he finally withdrew from a parliamentary career. His tastes lay wholly in the direction of literature, and The Castle Spectre (1796, a musical drama of no great literary merit, but which enjoyed a long popularity on the stage), The Minister (a translation from Schiller’s Kabale u. Liebe), Rolla (1797, a translation from Kotzebue), with numerous other operatic and tragic pieces, appeared in rapid succession. The Bravo of Venice, a romance translated from the German, was published in 1804; next to The Monk it is the best known work of Lewis. By the death of his father he succeeded to a large fortune, and in 1815 embarked for the West Indies to visit his estates; in the course of this tour, which lasted four months, the Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, published posthumously in 1833, was written. A second visit to Jamaica was undertaken in 1817, in order that he might become further acquainted with, and able to ameliorate, the condition of the slave population; the fatigues to which he exposed himself in the tropical climate brought on a fever which terminated fatally on the homeward voyage on the 14th of May 1818.

The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis, in two volumes, was published in 1839.

LEWIS, MERIWETHER (1774-1809), American explorer, was born near Charlottesville, Virginia, on the 18th of August 1774. In 1794 he volunteered with the Virginia troops called out to suppress the “Whisky Insurrection,” was commissioned as ensign in the regular United States army in 1795, served with distinction under General Anthony Wayne in the campaigns against the Indians, and attained the rank of captain in 1797. From 1801 to 1803 he was the private secretary of President Jefferson. On the 18th of January 1803 Jefferson sent a confidential message to Congress urging the development of trade with the Indians of the Missouri Valley and recommending that an exploring party be sent into this region, notwithstanding the fact that it was then held by Spain and owned by France. Congress appropriated funds for the expedition, and the president instructed Lewis to proceed to the head-waters of the Missouri river and thence across the mountains to the Pacific Ocean. With Jefferson’s consent Lewis chose as a companion Lieut. William Clark, an old friend and army comrade. The preparations were made under the orders of the War Department, and, until the news arrived that France had sold Louisiana to the United States, they were conducted in secrecy. Lewis spent some time in Philadelphia, gaining additional knowledge of the natural sciences and learning the use of instruments for determining positions; and late in 1803 he and Clark, with twenty-nine men from the army, went into winter quarters near St Louis, where the men were subjected to rigid training. On the 14th of May 1804 the party, with sixteen additional members, who, however, were to go only a part of the way, started up the Missouri river in three boats, and by the 2nd of November had made the difficult ascent of the stream as far as 47° 21′ N. lat., near the site of the present Bismarck, North Dakota, where, among the Mandan Indians, they passed the second winter. Early in April 1805 the ascent of the Missouri was continued as far as the three forks of the river, which were named the Jefferson, the Gallatin and the Madison. The Jefferson was then followed to its source in the south-western part of what is now the state of Montana. Procuring a guide and horses from the Shoshone Indians, the party pushed westward through the Rocky Mountains in September, and on the 7th of October embarked in canoes on a tributary of the Columbia river, the mouth of which they reached on the 15th of November. They had travelled upwards of 4000 m. from their starting-point, had encountered various Indian tribes never before seen by whites, had made valuable scientific collections and observations, and were the first explorers to reach the Pacific by crossing the continent north of Mexico. After spending the winter on the Pacific coast they started on the 23rd of March 1806 on their return journey, and, after crossing the divide, Lewis with one party explored Maria’s river, and Clark with another the Yellowstone. On the 12th of August the two explorers reunited near the junction of the Yellowstone and the Missouri, and on the 23rd of September reached St Louis. In spite of exposure, hardship and peril only one member of the party died, and only one deserted. No later feat of exploration, perhaps, in any quarter of the globe has exceeded this in romantic interest. The expedition was commemorated by the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition at Portland, Oregon, in 1905. The leaders and men of the exploring party were rewarded with liberal grants of land from the public domain, Lewis receiving 1500 acres; and in March 1807 Lewis was made governor of the northern part of the territory obtained from France in 1803, which had been organized as the Louisiana Territory. He performed the duties of this office with great efficiency, but it is said that in the unwonted quiet of his new duties, his mind, always subject to melancholy, became unbalanced, and that while on his way to Washington he committed suicide about 60 m. south-west of Nashville, Tennessee, on the 11th of October 1809. It is not definitely known, however, whether he actually committed suicide or was murdered.

Bibliography.—Jefferson’s Message from the President of the United States, Communicating Discoveries made in Exploring the Missouri, Red River and Washita by Captains Lewis and Clark, Dr Sibley and Mr Dunbar (Washington, 1806, and subsequent editions) is the earliest account, containing the reports sent back by the explorers in the winter of 1804-1805. Patrick Gass’s Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery under the Command of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark (Pittsburg, 1807) is the account of a sergeant in the party. Biddle and Allen’s History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1814) is a condensation of the original journals. There are numerous reprints of this work, the best being that of Elliott Coues (4 vols., New York, 1893), which contains additions from the original manuscripts and a new chapter, in the style of Biddle, inserted as though a part of the original text. As a final authority consult R. G. Thwaites (ed.), The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (8 vols., New York, 1904-1905), containing all the known literary records of the expedition. For popular accounts see W. R. Lighton, Lewis and Clark (Boston, 1901); O. D. Wheeler, The Trail of Lewis and Clark (2 vols., New York, 1904); and Noah Brooks (ed.), First across the Continent: Expedition of Lewis and Clark (New York, 1901).

LEWISBURG, a borough and the county-seat of Union county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the W. bank of West Branch of the Susquehanna river, about 50 m. N. of Harrisburg. Pop. (1900) 3457 (60 foreign-born); (1910) 3081. It is served by the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading railways. It is the seat of Bucknell University (coeducational), opened in 1846 as the university of Lewisburg and renamed in 1886 in honour of William Bucknell (1809-1890), a liberal benefactor. The university comprises a College of Liberal Arts, an Academy for Young Men, an Institute for Young Women, and a School of Music, and in 1908-1909 had 50 instructors and 775 students, of whom 547 were in the College of Liberal Arts. The city is situated in a farming region, and has various manufactures, including flour, lumber, furniture, woollens, nails, foundry products and carriages. Lewisburg (until about 1805 called Derrstown) was founded and laid out in 1785 by Ludwig Derr, a German, and was chartered as a borough in 1812.

LEWISHAM, a south-eastern metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded N.W. by Deptford, N.E. by Greenwich, E. by Woolwich, and W. by Camberwell, and extending S. to the boundary of the county of London. Pop. (1901) 127,495. Its area is for the most part occupied by villas. It includes the districts of Blackheath and Lee in the north, Hither Green, Catford and Brockley in the central parts, and Forest Hill and part of Sydenham in the south-west. In the districts last named well-wooded hills rise above 300 ft., and this is an especially favoured residential quarter, its popularity being formerly increased by the presence of medicinal springs, discovered in 1640, on Sydenham Common. Towards the south, in spite of the constant extension of building, there are considerable tracts of ground uncovered, apart from public grounds. In the north the borough includes the greater part of Blackheath (q.v.), an open common of considerable historical interest. The other principal pleasure grounds are Hilly Fields (46 acres) and Ladywell Recreation Grounds (46 acres) in the north-west part of the borough; and at Sydenham (but outside the boundary of the county of London) is the Crystal Palace. Among institutions are the Horniman Museum, Forest Hill (1901); Morden’s College, on the south of Blackheath, founded at the close of the 17th century by Sir John Morden for Turkey merchants who were received as pensioners, and subsequently extended in scope; numerous schools in the same locality; and the Park Fever Hospital, Hither Green. The parliamentary borough of Lewisham returns one member. The borough council consists of a mayor, 7 aldermen and 42 councillors. Area, 7014.4 acres.

LEWISTON, a city of Androscoggin county, Maine, U.S.A., on the Androscoggin river, opposite Auburn, with which it is connected by four steel bridges, and about 36 m. N.E. of Portland. Pop. (1900) 23,761, of whom 9316 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 26,247. It is served by the Maine Central, the Grand Trunk, the Portland & Rumford Falls and the Lewiston, Augusta & Waterville (electric) railways. The surrounding country is hilly and the river is picturesque; in the vicinity there are many lakes and ponds abounding in salmon and trout. The Maine fish hatchery is on Lake Auburn, 3 m. above the city. Lewiston is the seat of Bates College, a non-sectarian institution, which grew out of the Maine State Seminary (chartered in 1855), and was chartered in 1864 under its present name, adopted in honour of Benjamin E. Bates (d. 1877), a liberal benefactor. In 1908-1909 the college had 25 instructors and 440 students, and its library contained 34,000 volumes. The campus of the college is about 1 m. from the business portion of Lewiston and covers 50 acres; among the college buildings are an auditorium (1909) given by W. Scott Libbey of Lewiston, and the Libbey Forum for the use of the three literary societies and the two Christian associations of the college. The literary societies give excellent training in forensics. The matriculation pledge requires from male students total abstinence from intoxicants as a condition of membership. There are no secret fraternities. From the beginning women have been admitted on the same terms as men. The Cobb Divinity School (Free Baptist), which was founded at Parsonfield, Maine, in 1840 as a department of Parsonfield Seminary, and was situated in 1842-1844 at Dracut, Massachusetts, in 1844-1854 at Whitestown, New York, and in 1854-1870 at New Hampton, New Hampshire, was removed to Lewiston in 1870 and became a department (known as Bates Theological Seminary until 1888) of Bates College, with which it was merged in 1908. Lewiston has a fine city hall, a Carnegie library and a public park of 10½ acres, with a bronze soldiers’ monument by Franklin Simmons, who was born in 1839 at Webster near Lewiston, and is known for his statues of Roger Williams, William King, Francis H. Pierpont and U. S. Grant in the national Capitol, and for “Grief” and “History” on the Peace Monument at Washington. In Lewiston are the Central Maine General Hospital (1888), the Sisters’ Hospital (1888), under the charge of the French Catholic Sisters of Charity, a home for aged women, a young women’s home and the Hesley Asylum for boys. The Shrine Building (Kora Temple), dedicated in 1909, is the headquarters of the Shriners of the state. The river at Lewiston breaks over a ledge of mica-schist and gneiss, the natural fall of 40 ft. having been increased to more than 50 ft. by a strong granite dam; and 3 m. above the city at Deer Rips a cement dam furnishes 10,000 horse-power. The water-power thus obtained is distributed by canals from the nearer dam and transmitted by wire from the upper dam. The manufacture of cotton goods is the principal industry, and in 1905 the product of the city’s cotton mills was valued at about one-third of that of the mills of the whole state. Among other industries are the manufacture of woollen goods, shirts, dry-plates, carriages, spools and bobbins, and boots and shoes, and the dyeing and finishing of textiles. The total factory product in 1905 was valued at $8,527,649. The municipality owns its water works and electric lighting plant. Lewiston was settled in 1770, incorporated as a township in 1795 and chartered as a city in 1861. It was the home of Nelson Dingley (1832-1899), who from 1856 until his death controlled the Lewiston Journal. He was governor of the state in 1874-1876, Republican representative in Congress in 1881-1899, and the drafter of the Dingley Tariff Bill (1897).

LEWIS-WITH-HARRIS, the most northerly island of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. It is sometimes called the Long Island and is 24 m. from the nearest point of the mainland, from which it is separated by the strait called The Minch. It is 60 m. long and has an extreme breadth of 30 m., its average breadth being 15 m. It is divided into two portions by a line roughly drawn between Loch Resort on the west and Loch Seaforth on the east, of which the larger or more northerly portion, known as Lewis (pron. Lews), belongs to the county of Ross and Cromarty and the lesser, known as Harris, to Inverness-shire. The area of the whole island is 492,800 acres, or 770 sq. m., of which 368,000 acres belong to Lewis. In 1891 the population of Lewis was 27,045, of Harris 3681; in 1901 the population of Lewis was 28,357, of Harris 3803, or 32,160 for the island, of whom 17,175 were females, 11,209 spoke Gaelic only, and 17,685 both Gaelic and English. There is communication with certain ports of the Western Highlands by steamer via Stornoway every week—oftener during the tourist and special seasons—the steamers frequently calling at Loch Erisort, Loch Sealg, Ardvourlie, Tarbert, Ardvey, Rodel and The Obe. The coast is indented to a remarkable degree, the principal sea-lochs in Harris being East and West Loch Tarbert; and in Lewis, Loch Seaforth, Loch Erisort and Broad Bay (or Loch a Tuath) on the east coast and Loch Roag and Loch Resort on the west. The mainland is dotted with innumerable fresh-water lakes. The island is composed of gneiss rocks, excepting a patch of granite near Carloway, small bands of intrusive basalt at Gress and in Eye Peninsula and some Torridonian sandstone at Stornoway, Tong, Vatskir and Carloway. Most of Harris is mountainous, there being more than thirty peaks above 1000 ft. high. Lewis is comparatively flat, save in the south-east, where Ben More reaches 1874 ft., and in the south-west, where Mealasbhal (1885) is the highest point; but in this division there are only eleven peaks exceeding 1000 ft. in height. The rivers are small and unimportant. The principal capes are the Butt of Lewis, in the extreme north, where the cliffs are nearly 150 ft. high and crowned with a lighthouse, the light of which is visible for 19 m.; Tolsta Head, Tiumpan Head and Cabag Head, on the east; Renish Point, in the extreme south; and, on the west, Toe Head and Gallon Head. The following inhabited islands in the Inverness-shire division belong to the parish of Harris: off the S.W. coast, Bernera (pop. 524), Ensay, Killigray and Pabbay; off the W. coast, Scarp (160), Soay and Tarrensay (72); off the E. coast, Scalpa (587) and Scotasay. Belonging to the county of Ross and Cromarty are Great Bernera (580) to the W. of Lewis, in the parish of Uig, and the Shiant Isles, about 21 m. S. of Stornoway, in the parish of Lochs, so named from the number of its sea lochs and fresh-water lakes. The south-eastern base of Broad Bay is furnished by the peninsula of Eye, attached to the main mass by so slender a neck as seemingly to be on the point of becoming itself an island. Much of the surface of both Lewis and Harris is composed of peat and swamp; there are scanty fragments of an ancient forest. The rainfall for the year averages 41.7 in., autumn and winter being very wet. Owing to the influence of the Gulf Stream, however, the temperature is fairly high, averaging for the year 46.6° F., for January 39.5° F. and for August 56.5° F.

The economic conditions of the island correspond with its physical conditions. The amount of cultivable land is small and poor. Sir James Matheson (1796-1878), who purchased the island in 1844, is said to have spent nearly £350,000 in reclamation and improvements. Barley and potatoes are the chief crops. A large number of black cattle are reared and some sheep-farming is carried on in Harris. Kelp-making, once important, has been extinct for many years. Harris has obtained great reputation for tweeds. The cloth has an aroma of heather and peat, and is made in the dwellings of the cotters, who use dyes of long-established excellence. The fisheries are the principal mainstay of the people. In spite of the very considerable reductions in rent effected by the Crofters’ Commission (appointed in 1886) and the sums expended by government, most of the crofters still live in poor huts amid dismal surroundings. The island affords good sporting facilities. Many of the streams abound with salmon and trout; otters and seals are plentiful, and deer and hares common; while bird life includes grouse, ptarmigan, woodcock, snipe, heron, widgeon, teal, eider duck, swan and varieties of geese and gulls. There are many antiquarian remains, including duns, megaliths, ruined towers and chapels and the like. At Rodel, in the extreme south of Harris, is a church, all that is left of an Augustinian monastery. The foundation is Norman and the superstructure Early English. On the towers are curious carved figures and in the interior several tombs of the Macleods, the most remarkable being that of Alastair (Alexander), son of William Macleod of Dunvegan, dated 1528. The monument, a full-length recumbent effigy of a knight in armour, lies at the base of a tablet in the shape of an arch divided into compartments, in which are carved in bas-relief, besides the armorial bearings of the deceased and a rendering of Dunvegan castle, several symbolical scenes, one of which exhibits Satan weighing in the balance the good and evil deeds of Alastair Macleod, the good obviously preponderating. Stornoway, the chief town (pop. 3852) is treated under a separate heading. At Callernish, 13 m. due W. of Stornoway, are several stone circles, one of which is probably the most perfect example of so-called “Druidical” structures in the British Isles. In this specimen the stones are huge, moss-covered, undressed blocks of gneiss. Twelve of such monoliths constitute the circle, in the centre of which stands a pillar 17 ft. high. From the circle there runs northwards an avenue of stones, comprising on the right-hand side nine blocks and on the left-hand ten. There also branch off from the circle, on the east and west, a single line of four stones and, on the south, a single line of five stones. From the extreme point of the south file to the farther end of the avenue on the north is a distance of 127 yds. and the width from tip to tip of the east and west arms is 41 yds. Viewed from the north end of the avenue, the design is that of a cross. The most important fishery centre on the west coast is Carloway, where there is the best example of a broch, or fort, in the Hebrides. Rory, the blind harper who translated the Psalms into Gaelic, was born in the village. Tarbert, at the head of East Loch Tarbert, is a neat, clean village, in communication by mail-car with Stornoway. At Coll, a few miles N. by E. of Stornoway, is a mussel cave; and at Gress, 2 m. or so beyond in the same direction, there is a famous seals’ cave, adorned with fine stalactites. Port of Ness, where there is a harbour, is the headquarters of the ling fishery. Loch Seaforth gave the title of earl to a branch of the Mackenzies, but in 1716 the 5th earl was attainted for Jacobitism and the title forfeited. In 1797 Francis Humberston Mackenzie (1754-1815), chief of the Clan Mackenzie, was created Lord Seaforth and Baron Mackenzie of Kintail, and made colonel of the 2nd battalion of the North British Militia, afterwards the 3rd battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders. The 2nd battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders was formerly the Ross-shire Buffs, which was raised in 1771.

LEXICON, a dictionary (q.v.). The word is the Latinized form of Gr. λεξικόν, sc. βιβλίον, a word-book (λέξις, word, λέγειν, to speak). Lexicon, rather than dictionary, is used of word-books of the Greek language, and sometimes of Arabic and Hebrew.

LEXINGTON, BARON, a title borne in the English family of Sutton from 1645 to 1723. Robert Sutton (1594-1668), son of Sir William Sutton of Averham, Nottinghamshire, was a member of parliament for his native county in 1625 and again in 1640. He served Charles I. during the Civil War, making great monetary sacrifices for the royal cause, and in 1645 the king created him Baron Lexington, this being a variant of the name of the Nottinghamshire village of Laxton. His estate suffered during the time of the Commonwealth, but some money was returned to him by Charles II. He died on the 13th of October 1668. His only son, Robert, the 2nd baron (1661-1723), supported in the House of Lords the elevation of William of Orange to the throne, and was employed by that king at court and on diplomatic business. He also served as a soldier, but he is chiefly known as the British envoy at Vienna during the conclusion of the treaty of Ryswick, and at Madrid during the negotiations which led to the treaty of Utrecht. He died on the 19th of September 1723. His letters from Vienna, selected and edited by the Hon. H. M. Sutton, were published as the Lexington Papers (1851). Lexington’s barony became extinct on his death, but his estates descended to the younger sons of his daughter Bridget (d. 1734), the wife of John Manners, 3rd duke of Rutland. Lord George Manners, who inherited these estates in 1762, is the ancestor of the family of Manners-Sutton. An earlier member of this family is Oliver Sutton, bishop of Lincoln from 1280 to 1299.

LEXINGTON, a city and the county-seat of Fayette county, Kentucky, U.S.A., about 75 m. S. of Cincinnati. Pop. (1900) 26,369, of whom 10,130 were negroes and 924 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 35,099. It is served by the Louisville & Nashville, the Southern, the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific, the Lexington & Eastern, and electric railways. The city, which lies at an altitude of about 950 ft., is situated near the centre of the celebrated “blue grass” region, into which extend a number of turnpike roads. Its public buildings include the court house and the Federal building, both built of Bowling Green oolitic limestone. Among the public institutions are two general hospitals—St Joseph’s (Roman Catholic) and Good Samaritan (controlled by the Protestant churches of the city)—the Eastern Lunatic Asylum (1815, a state institution since 1824), with 250 acres of grounds; a state House of Reform for Girls and a state House of Reform for Boys (both at Greendale, a suburb); an orphan industrial school (for negroes); and two Widows’ and Orphans’ Homes, one established by the Odd Fellows of Kentucky and the other by the Knights of Pythias of the state. Lexington is the seat of Transylvania University (non-sectarian; coeducational), formerly Kentucky University (Disciples of Christ), which grew out of Bacon College (opened at Georgetown, Ky., in 1836), was chartered in 1858 as Kentucky University, and was opened at Harrodsburg, Ky., in 1859, whence after a fire in 1864 it removed to Lexington in 1865. At Lexington it was consolidated with the old Transylvania University, a well-known institution which had been chartered as Transylvania Seminary in 1783, was opened near Danville, Ky., in 1785, was removed to Lexington in 1789, was re-chartered as Transylvania University in 1798, and virtually ceased to exist in 1859.1 In 1908 Kentucky University resumed the old name, Transylvania University. It has a college of Liberal Arts, a College of Law, a Preparatory School, a Junior College for Women, and Hamilton College for women (founded in 1869 as Hocker Female College), over which the university assumed control in 1903, and a College of the Bible, organized in 1865 as one of the colleges of the university, but now under independent control. In 1907-1908 Transylvania University, including the College of the Bible, had 1129 students. At Lexington are the State University, two colleges for girls—the Campbell-Hagerman College and Sayre College—and St Catherine’s Academy (Roman Catholic). The city is the meeting-place of a Chatauqua Assembly, and has a public library. The State University was founded (under the Federal Land Grant Act of 1862) in 1865 as the State Agricultural and Mechanical College, was opened in 1866, and was a college of Kentucky University until 1878. In 1890 the college received a second Federal appropriation, and it received various grants from the state legislature, which in 1880 imposed a state tax of one-half of 1% for its support. In connexion with it an Agricultural Experiment Station was established in 1885. In 1908 its title became, by act of Legislature, the State University. The university has a College of Agriculture, a College of Arts and Science, a College of Law, a School of Civil Engineering, a School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, and a School of mining Engineering. The university campus is the former City Park, in the southern part of the city. In 1907-1908 the university had 1064 students. The city is the see of a Protestant Episcopal bishopric.

Lexington was the home of Henry Clay from 1797 until his death in 1852, and in his memory a monument has been erected, consisting of a magnesian-limestone column (about 120 ft.) in the Corinthian style and surmounted by a statue of Clay, the head of which was torn off in 1902 by a thunderbolt. Clay’s estate, “Ashland,” is now one of the best known of the stock-farms in the vicinity; the present house is a replica of Clay’s home. The finest and most extensive of these stock-farms, and probably the finest in the world, is “Elmendorf,” 6 m. from the city. On these farms many famous trotting and running horses have been raised. There are two race-tracks in Lexington, and annual running and trotting race meetings attract large crowds. The city’s industries consist chiefly in a large trade in tobacco, hemp, grain and live stock—there are large semi-annual horse sales—and in the manufacture of “Bourbon” whisky, tobacco, flour, dressed flax and hemp, carriages, harness and saddles. The total value of the city’s factory products in 1905 was $2,774,329 (46.9% more than in 1900).

Lexington was named from Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1775 by a party of hunters who were encamped here when they received the news of the battle of Lexington; the permanent settlement dates from 1779. It was laid out in 1781, incorporated as a town in 1782, and chartered as a city in 1832. The first newspaper published west of the Alleghany Mountains, the Kentucky Gazette, was established here in 1787, to promote the separation of Kentucky from Virginia. The first state legislature met here in 1792, but later in the same year Frankfort became the state capital. Until 1907, when the city was enlarged by annexation, its limits remained as they were first laid out, a circle with a radius of 1 m., the court house being its centre.

See G. W. Ranck, History of Lexington, Kentucky (Cincinnati, 1872).

1 See Robert Peter, Transylvania University: Its Origin, Rise, Decline and Fall (Louisville, 1896), and his History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University (Louisville, 1905).

LEXINGTON, a township of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., about 11 m. N.W. of Boston. Pop. (1900) 3831, (1910 U.S. census) 4918. It is traversed by the Boston & Maine railroad and by the Lowell & Boston electric railway. Its area is about 17 sq. m., and it contains three villages—Lexington, East Lexington and North Lexington. Agriculture is virtually the only industry. Owing to its historic interest the village of Lexington is visited by thousands of persons annually, for it was on the green or common of this village that the first armed conflict of the American War of Independence occurred. On the green stand a monument erected by the state in 1799 to the memory of the minute-men who fell in that engagement, a drinking fountain surmounted by a bronze statue (1900, by Henry Hudson Kitson) of Captain John Parker, who was in command of the minute-men, and a large boulder, which marks the position of the minute-men when they were fired upon by the British. Near the green, in the old burying-ground, are the graves of Captain Parker and other American patriots—the oldest gravestone is dated 1690. The Hancock-Clarke House (built in part in 1698) is now owned by the Lexington Historical Society and contains a museum of revolutionary and other relics, which were formerly exhibited in the Town Hall. The Buckman Tavern (built about 1690), the rendezvous of the minute-men, and the Munroe Tavern (1695), the headquarters of the British, are still standing, and two other houses, on the common, antedate the War of Independence. The Cary Library in this village, with 23,000 volumes (1908), was founded in 1868, and was housed in the Town Hall from 1871 until 1906, when it was removed to the Cary Memorial Library building. In the library are portraits of Paul Revere, William Dawes and Lord Percy. The Town Hall (1871) contains statues of John Hancock (by Thomas R. Gould) and Samuel Adams (by Martin Millmore), of the “Minute-Man of 1775” and the “Soldier of 1861,” and a painting by Henry Sandham, “The Battle of Lexington.”

Lexington was settled as a part of Cambridge as early as 1642. It was organized as a parish in 1691 and was made a township (probably named in honour of Lord Lexington) in 1713. In the evening of the 18th of April 1775 a British force of about 800 men under Lieut.-Colonel Francis Smith and Major John Pitcairn was sent by General Thomas Gage from Boston to destroy military stores collected by the colonists at Concord, and to seize John Hancock and Samuel Adams, then at Parson Clarke’s house (now known as the Hancock-Clarke House) in Lexington. Although the British had tried to keep this movement a secret, Dr Joseph Warren discovered their plans and sent out Paul Revere and William Dawes to give warning of their approach. The expedition had not proceeded far when Smith, discovering that the country was aroused, despatched an express to Boston for reinforcements and ordered Pitcairn to hasten forward with a detachment of light infantry. Early in the morning of the 19th Pitcairn arrived at the green in the village of Lexington, and there found between sixty and seventy minute-men under Captain John Parker drawn up in line of battle. Pitcairn ordered them to disperse, and on their refusal to do so his men fired a volley. Whether a stray shot preceded the first volley, and from which side it came, are questions which have never been determined. After a second volley from the British, Parker ordered his men to withdraw. The engagement lasted only a few minutes, but eight Americans were killed and nine were wounded; not more than two or three of the British were wounded. Hancock and Adams had escaped before the British troops reached Lexington. The British proceeded from Lexington to Concord (q.v.). On their return they were continually fired upon by Americans from behind trees, rocks, buildings and other defences, and were threatened with complete destruction until they were rescued at Lexington by a force of 1000 men under Lord Hugh Percy (later, 1786, duke of Northumberland). Percy received the fugitives within a hollow square, checked the onslaught for a time with two field-pieces, used the Munroe Tavern for a hospital, and later in the day carried his command with little further injury back to Boston. The British losses for the entire day were 73 killed, 174 wounded and 26 missing; the American losses were 49 killed, 39 wounded and 5 missing.

In 1839 a state normal school for women (the first in Massachusetts and the first public training school for teachers in the United States) was opened at Lexington; it was transferred to West Newton in 1844 and to Framingham in 1853.

See Charles Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington (Boston, 1868), and the publications of the Lexington Historical Society, (1890 seq.).

LEXINGTON, a city and the county-seat of Lafayette county, Missouri, U.S.A., situated on the S. bank of the Missouri river, about 40 m. E. of Kansas City. Pop. (1900) 4190, including 1170 negroes and 283 foreign-born; (1910) 5242. It is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Wabash (at Lexington Junction, 4 m. N.W.), and the Missouri Pacific railway systems. The city lies for the most part on high broken ground at the summit of the river bluffs, but in part upon their face. Lexington is the seat of the Lexington College for Young Women (Baptist, established 1855), the Central College for Women (Methodist Episcopal, South; opened 1869), and the Wentworth Military Academy (1880). There are steam flour mills, furniture factories and various other small manufactories; but the main economic interest of the city is in brickyards and coal-mines in its immediate vicinity. It is one of the principal coal centres of the state, Higginsville (pop. in 1910, 2628), about 12 m. S.E., in the same county, also being important. Lexington was founded in 1819, was laid out in 1832, and, with various additions, was chartered as a city in 1845. A new charter was received in 1870. Lexington succeeded Sibley as the eastern terminus of the Santa Fé trade, and was in turn displaced by Independence; it long owed its prosperity to the freighting trade up the Missouri, and at the opening of the Civil War it was the most important river town between St Louis and St Joseph and commanded the approach by water to Fort Leavenworth.

After the Confederate success at Wilson’s Creek (Aug. 10, 1861), General Sterling Price advanced northward, and with about 15,000 men arrived in the vicinity of Lexington on the 12th of September. Here he found a Federal force of about 2800 men under Colonel James A. Mulligan (1830-1864) throwing up intrenchments on Masonic College Hill, an eminence adjoining Lexington on the N.E. An attack was made on the same day and the Federals were driven within their defences, but at night General Price withdrew to the Fair-grounds not far away and remained there five days waiting for his wagon train and for reinforcements. On the 18th the assault was renewed, and on the 20th the Confederates, advancing behind movable breastworks of water-soaked bales of hemp, forced the besieged, now long without water, to surrender. The losses were: Confederate, 25 killed and 75 wounded; Federal, 39 killed and 120 wounded. At the end of September General Price withdrew, leaving a guard of only a few hundred in the town, and on the 16th of the next month a party of 220 Federal scouts under Major Frank J. White (1842-1875) surprised this guard, released about 15 prisoners, and captured 60 or more Confederates. Another Federal raid on the town was made in December of the same year by General John Pope’s cavalry. Again, during General Price’s Missouri expedition in 1864, a Federal force entered Lexington on the 16th of October, and three days later there was some fighting about 4 m. S. of the town.

LEXINGTON, a town and the county-seat of Rockbridge county, Virginia, U.S.A., on the North river (a branch of the James), about 30 m. N.N.W. of Lynchburg. Pop. (1900) 3203 (1252 negroes); (1910) 2931. It is served by the Chesapeake & Ohio and the Baltimore & Ohio railways. The famous Natural Bridge is about 16 m. S.W., and there are mineral springs in the vicinity—at Rockbridge Baths, 10 m. N., at Wilson’s Springs, 12 m. N., and at Rockbridge Alum Springs, 17 m. N.W. Lexington is best known as the seat of Washington and Lee University, and of the Virginia Military Institute. The former grew out of Augusta Academy, which was established in 1749 in Augusta county, about 15 m. S.W. of what is now the city of Staunton, was renamed Liberty Hall and was established near Lexington in 1780, and was chartered as Liberty Hall Academy in 1782. In 1798 its name was changed to Washington Academy, in recognition of a gift from George Washington of some shares of canal stock, which he refused to receive from the Virginia legislature. In 1802 the Virginia branch of the Society of the Cincinnati disbanded and turned over to the academy its funds, about $25,000; in 1813 the academy took the name Washington College; and in 1871 its corporate name was changed to Washington and Lee University, the addition to the name being made in honour of General Robert E. Lee, who was the president of the college from August 1865 until his death in 1870. He was succeeded by his son, General George Washington Custis Lee (b. 1832), president from 1871 to 1897, and Dr William Lyne Wilson (1843-1900), the eminent political leader and educator, was president from 1897 to 1900. In 1908-1909 the university comprised a college, a school of commerce, a school of engineering and a school of law, and had a library of 47,000 volumes, 23 instructors and 565 students. In the Lee Memorial chapel, on the campus, General Robert E. Lee is buried, and over his grave is a notable recumbent statue of him by Edward Virginius Valentine (b. 1838). The Virginia Military Institute was established in March 1839, when its cadet corps supplanted the company of soldiers maintained by the state to garrison the Western Arsenal at Lexington. The first superintendent (1839-1890) was General Francis Henney Smith (1812-1890), a graduate (1833) of the United States Military Academy; and from 1851 until the outbreak of the Civil War “Stonewall” Jackson was a professor in the Institute—he is buried in the Lexington cemetery and his grave is marked by a monument. On the campus of the institute is a fine statue, “Virginia Mourning Her Dead,” by Moses Ezekiel (b. 1844), which commemorates the gallantry of a battalion of 250 cadets from the institute, more than 50 of whom were killed or wounded during the engagement at New Market on the 15th of May 1864. In 1908-1909 the institute had 21 instructors and 330 cadets. Flour is manufactured in Lexington and lime in the vicinity. The town owns and operates its water-works. The first settlers of Rockbridge county established themselves in 1737 near the North river, a short distance below Lexington. The first permanent settlement on the present site was made about 1778. On the 11th of June 1864, during the occupation of the town by Federal troops under General David Hunter, most of the buildings in the town and those of the university were damaged and all those of the institute, except the superintendent’s headquarters, were burned.

LEYDEN, JOHN (1775-1811), British orientalist and man of letters, was born on the 8th of September 1775 at Denholm on the Teviot, not far from Hawick. Leyden’s father was a shepherd, but contrived to send his son to Edinburgh University to study for the ministry. Leyden was a diligent but somewhat miscellaneous student, reading everything apparently, except theology, for which he seems to have had no taste. Though he completed his divinity course, and in 1798 received licence to preach from the presbytery of St Andrews, it soon became clear that the pulpit was not his vocation. In 1794 Leyden had formed the acquaintance of Dr Robert Anderson, editor of The British Poets, and of The Literary Magazine. It was Anderson who introduced him to Dr Alexander Murray, and Murray, probably, who led him to the study of Eastern languages. They became warm friends and generous rivals, though Leyden excelled, perhaps, in the rapid acquisition of new tongues and acquaintance with their literature, while Murray was the more scientific philologist. Through Anderson also he came to know Richard Heber, by whom he was brought under the notice of Sir Walter Scott, who was then collecting materials for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Leyden was admirably fitted for helping in this kind of work, for he was a borderer himself, and an enthusiastic lover of old ballads and folk-lore. Scott tells how, on one occasion, Leyden walked 40 m. to get the last two verses of a ballad, and returned at midnight, singing it all the way with his loud, harsh voice, to the wonder and consternation of the poet and his household.

Leyden meanwhile compiled a work on the Discoveries and Settlements of Europeans in Northern and Western Africa, suggested by Mungo Park’s travels, edited The Complaint of Scotland, printed a volume of Scottish descriptive poems, and nearly finished his Scenes of Infancy, a diffuse poem based on border scenes and traditions. He also made some translations from Eastern poetry, Persian and Arabic. At last his friends got him an appointment in India on the medical staff, for which he qualified by a year’s hard work. In 1803 he sailed for Madras, and took his place in the general hospital there. He was promoted to be naturalist to the commissioners going to survey Mysore, and in 1807 his knowledge of the languages of India procured him an appointment as professor of Hindustani at Calcutta; this he soon after resigned for a judgeship, and that again to be a commissioner in the court of requests in 1809, a post which required a familiarity with several Eastern tongues. In 1811 he joined Lord Minto in the expedition to Java. Having entered a library which was said to contain many Eastern MSS., without having the place aired, he was seized with Batavian fever, and died, after three days’ illness, on the 28th of August 1811.

LEYDEN JAR, or Condenser, an electrical appliance consisting in one form of a thin glass jar partly coated inside and outside with tin foil, or in another of a number of glass plates similarly coated. When the two metal surfaces are connected for a short time with the terminals of some source of electromotive force, such as an electric machine, an induction coil or a voltaic battery, electric energy is stored up in the condenser in the form of electric strain in the glass, and can be recovered again in the form of an electric discharge.

The earliest form of Leyden jar consisted of a glass vial or thin Florence flask, partly full of water, having a metallic nail inserted through the cork which touched the water. The bottle was held in the hand, and the nail presented Early history. to the prime conductor of an electrical machine. If the person holding the bottle subsequently touched the nail, he experienced an electric shock. This experiment was first made by E. G. von Kleist of Kammin in Pomerania in 1745,1 and it was repeated in another form in 1746 by Cunaeus and P. van Musschenbroek, of the university of Leyden (Leiden), whence the term Leyden jar.2 J. H. Winkler discovered that an iron chain wound round the bottle could be substituted for the hand, and Sir William Watson in England shortly afterward showed that iron filings or mercury could replace the water within the jar. Dr John Bevis of London suggested, in 1746, the use of sheet lead coatings within and without the jar, and subsequently the use of tin foil or silver leaf made closely adherent to the glass. Benjamin Franklin and Bevis devised independently the form of condenser known as a Franklin or Leyden pane, which consists of a sheet of glass, partly coated on both sides with tin foil or silver leaf, a margin of glass all round being left to insulate the two tin foils from each other. Franklin in 1747 and 1748 made numerous investigations on the Leyden jar, and devised a method of charging jars in series as well as in parallel. In the former method, now commonly known as charging in cascade, the jars are insulated and the outside coating of one jar is connected to the inside coating of the next and so on for a whole series, the inside coating of the first jar and the outside coating of the last jar being the terminals of the condenser. For charging in parallel a number of jars are collected in a box, and all the outside coatings are connected together metallically and all the inside coatings brought to one common terminal. This arrangement is commonly called a battery of Leyden jars. To Franklin also we owe the important knowledge that the electric charge resides really in the glass and not in the metal coatings, and that when a condenser has been charged the metallic coatings can be exchanged for fresh ones and yet the electric charge of the condenser remains.

In its modern form the Leyden jar consists of a wide-mouthed bottle of thin English flint glass of uniform thickness, free from flaws. About half the outside and half the inside surface is coated smoothly with tin foil, and the remainder of Modern construction. the glazed surface is painted with shellac varnish. A wooden stopper closes the mouth of the jar, and through it a brass rod passes which terminates in a chain, or better still, three elastic brass springs, which make good contact with the inner coating. The rod terminates externally in a knob or screw terminal. The jar has a certain capacity C which is best expressed in microfarads or electrostatic units (see Electrostatics), and is determined by the surface of the tin foil and thickness and quality of the glass. The jar can be charged so that a certain potential difference V, reckoned in volts, exists between the two coatings. If a certain critical potential is exceeded, the glass gives way under the electric strain and is pierced. The safe voltage for most glass jars is about 20,000 volts for glass 1⁄10th in. in thickness; this corresponds with an electric spark of about 7 millimetres in length. When the jar is charged, it is usually discharged through a metallic arc called the discharging tongs, and this discharge is in the form of an oscillatory current (see Electrokinetics). The energy stored up in the jar in joules is expressed by the value of ½ CV2, where C is the capacity measured in farads and V the potential difference of the coatings in volts. If the capacity C is reckoned in microfarads then the energy storage is equal to CV2/2 × 106 joules or 0.737 CV2/2 × 106 foot-pounds. The size of jar commonly known as a quart size may have a capacity from 1⁄400th to 1⁄800th of a microfarad, and if charged to 20,000 volts stores up energy from a quarter to half a joule or from 3⁄16ths to 3⁄8ths of a foot-pound.

Leyden jars are now much employed for the production of the high frequency electric currents used in wireless telegraphy (see Telegraphy, Wireless). For this purpose they are made by Moscicki in the form of glass tubes partly coated by silver chemically deposited on the glass on the inner and outer surfaces. The tubes have walls thicker at the ends than in the middle, as the tendency to puncture the glass is greatest at the edges of the coatings. In other cases, Leyden jars or condensers take the form of sheets of mica or micanite or ebonite partly coated with tin foil or silver leaf on both sides; or a pile of sheets of alternate tin foil and mica may be built up, the tin foil sheets having lugs projecting out first on one side and then on the other. All the lugs on one side are connected together, and so also are all the lugs on the other side, and the two sets of tin foils separated by sheets of mica constitute the two metallic surfaces of the Leyden jar condenser. For the purposes of wireless telegraphy, when large condensers are required, the ordinary Leyden High tension condensers. jar occupies too much space in comparison with its electrical capacity, and hence the best form of condenser consists of a number of sheets of crown glass, each partly coated on both sides with tin foil. The tin foil sheets have lugs attached which project beyond the glass. The plates are placed in a vessel full of insulating oil which prevents the glow or brush discharge taking place over their edges. All the tin foils on one side of the glass plates are connected together and all the tin foils on the opposite sides, so as to construct a condenser of any required capacity. The box should be of glass or stoneware or other non-conducting material. When glass tubes are used it is better to employ tubes thicker at the ends than in the middle, as it has been found that when the safe voltage is exceeded and the glass gives way under electric strain, the piercing of the glass nearly always takes place at the edges of the tin foil.

Glass is still commonly used as a dielectric because of its cheapness, high dielectric strength or resistance to electric puncture, and its high dielectric constant (see Electrostatics). It has been found, however, that very Compressed air condensers. efficient condensers can be made with compressed air as dielectric. If a number of metal plates separated by small distance pieces are enclosed in an iron box which is pumped full of air to a pressure, say, of 100 ℔. to 1 sq. in., the dielectric strength of the air is greatly increased, and the plates may therefore be brought very near to one another without causing a spark to pass under such voltage as would cause discharge in air at normal pressure. Condensers of this kind have been employed by R. A. Fessenden in wireless telegraphy, and they form a very excellent arrangement for standard condensers with which to compare the capacity of other Leyden jars. Owing to the variation in the value of the dielectric constant of glass with the temperature and with the frequency of the applied electromotive force, and also owing to electric glow discharge from the edges of the tin foil coatings, the capacity of an ordinary Leyden jar is not an absolutely fixed quantity, but its numerical value varies somewhat with the method by which it is measured, and with the other circumstances above mentioned. For the purpose of a standard condenser a number of concentric metal tubes may be arranged on an insulating stand, alternate tubes being connected together. One coating of the condenser is formed by one set of tubes and the other by the other set, the air between being the dielectric. Paraffin oil or any liquid dielectric of constant inductivity may replace the air.

See J. A. Fleming, Electric Wave Telegraphy (London, 1906); R. A. Fessenden, “Compressed Air for Condensers,” Electrician, 1905, 55, p. 795; Moscicki, “Construction of High Tension Condensers,” L’Éclairage électrique, 1904, 41, p. 14, or Engineering, 1904, p. 865.

(J. A. F.)

1 Park Benjamin, The Intellectual Rise in Electricity, p. 512.

2 Ibid. p. 519.

LEYS, HENDRIK, Baron (1815-1869), Belgian painter, was born at Antwerp on the 18th of February 1815. He studied under Wappers at the Antwerp Academy. In 1833 he painted “Combat d’un grenadier et d’un cosaque,” and in the following year “Combat de Bourguignons et Flamands.” In 1835 he went to Paris where he was influenced by the Romantic movement. Examples of this period of his painting are “Massacre des échevins de Louvain,” “Mariage flamand,” “Le Roi des arbalétriers” and other works. Leys was an imitative painter in whose works may rapidly be detected the schools which he had been studying before he painted them. Thus after his visit to Holland in 1839 he reproduced many of the characteristics of the Dutch genre painters in such works as “Franz Floris se rendant à une fête” (1845) and “Service divin en Hollande” (1850). So too the methods of Quentin Matsys impressed themselves upon him after he had travelled in Germany in 1852. In 1862 Leys was created a baron. At the time of his death, which occurred in August 1869, he was engaged in decorating with fresco the large hall of the Antwerp Hôtel de Ville.

LEYTON, an urban district forming one of the north-eastern suburbs of London, England, in the Walthamstow (S.W.) parliamentary division of Essex. Pop. (1891) 63,106; (1901) 98,912. It lies on the east (left) bank of the Lea, along the flat open valley of which runs the boundary between Essex and the county of London. The church of St Mary, mainly a brick reconstruction, contains several interesting memorials; including one to William Bowyer the printer (d. 1737), erected by his son and namesake, more famous in the same trade. Here is also buried John Strype the historian and biographer (d. 1737), who held the position of curate and lecturer at this church. Leyton is in the main a residential as distinct from a manufacturing locality. Its name is properly Low Leyton, and the parish includes the district of Leytonstone to the east. Roman remains have been discovered here, but no identification with a Roman station by name has been made with certainty. The ground of the Essex County Cricket Club is at Leyton.

LHASA (Lhassa, Lassa, “God’s ground”), the capital of Tibet. It lies in 29° 39′ N., 91° 5′ E., 11,830 ft. above sea-level. Owing to the inaccessibility of Tibet and the political and religious exclusiveness of the lamas, Lhasa was long closed to European travellers, all of whom during the latter half of the 19th century were stopped in their attempts to reach it. It was popularly known as the “Forbidden City.” But its chief features were known by the accounts of the earlier Romish missionaries who visited it and by the investigations, in modern times, of native Indian secret explorers, and others, and the British armed mission of 1904 (see Tibet).

Site and General Aspect.—The city stands in a tolerably level plain, which is surrounded on all sides by hills. Along its southern side, about ½ m. south of Lhasa, runs a considerable river called the Kyichu (Ki-chu) or Kyi, flowing here from E.N.E., and joining the great Tsangpo (or upper course of the Brahmaputra) some 38 m. to the south-west. The hills round the city are barren. The plain, however, is fertile, though in parts marshy. There are gardens scattered over it round the city, and these are planted with fine trees. The city is screened from view from the west by a rocky ridge, lofty and narrow, with summits at the north and south, the one flanked and crowned by the majestic buildings of Potala, the chief residence of the Dalai lama, the other by the temple of medicine. Groves, gardens and open ground intervene between this ridge and the city itself for a distance of about 1 m. A gate through the centre of the ridge gives access from the west; the road thence to the north part of the city throws off a branch to the Yutok sampa or turquoise-tiled covered bridge, one of the noted features of Lhasa, which crosses a former channel of the Kyi, and carries the road to the centre of the town.

The city is nearly circular in form, and less than 1 m. in diameter. It was walled in the latter part of the 17th century, but the walls were destroyed during the Chinese occupation in 1722. The chief streets are fairly straight, but generally of no great width. There is no paving or metal, nor any drainage system, so that the streets are dirty and in parts often flooded. The inferior quarters are unspeakably filthy, and are rife with evil smells and large mangy dogs and pigs. Many of the houses are of clay and sun-dried brick, but those of the richer people are of stone and brick. All are frequently white-washed, the doors and windows being framed in bands of red and yellow. In the suburbs there are houses entirely built of the horns of sheep and oxen set in clay mortar. This construction is in some cases very roughly carried out, but in others it is solid and highly picturesque. Some of the inferior huts of this type are inhabited by the Ragyaba or scavengers, whose chief occupation is that of disposing of corpses according to the practice of cutting and exposing them to the dogs and birds of prey. The houses generally are of two or three storeys. Externally the lower part generally presents dead walls (the ground floor being occupied by stables and similar apartments); above these rise tiers of large windows with or without projecting balconies, and over all flat broad-eaved roofs at varying levels. In the better houses there are often spacious and well-finished apartments, and the principal halls, the verandahs and terraces are often highly ornamented in brilliant colours. In every house there is a kind of chapel or shrine, carved and gilt, on which are set images and sacred books.

Temples and Monasteries.—In the centre of the city is an open square which forms the chief market-place. Here is the great temple of the “Jo” or Lord Buddha, called the Jokhang,1 regarded as the centre of all Tibet, from which all the main The Jokhang. roads are considered to radiate. This is the great metropolitan sanctuary and church-centre of Tibet, the St Peter’s or Lateran of Lamaism. It is believed to have been founded by the Tibetan Constantine, Srong-tsan-gampo, in 652, as the shrine of one of those two very sacred Buddhist images which were associated with his conversion and with the foundation of the civilized monarchy in Tibet. The exterior of the building is not impressive; it rises little above the level of other buildings which closely surround it, and the effect of its characteristic gilt roof, though conspicuous and striking from afar, is lost close at hand.

The main building of the Jokhang is three storeys high. The entrance consists of a portico supported on timber columns, carved and gilt, while the walls are engraved with Chinese, Mongolian and Tibetan characters, and a great prayer-wheel stands on one side. Massive folding doors, ornamented with scrollwork in iron, lead to an antehall, and from this a second gate opens into a courtyard surrounded by a verandah with many pillars and chapels, and frescoes on its walls. On the left is the throne of the grand lama, laid with cushions, together with the seats of other ecclesiastical dignitaries, variously elevated according to the rank of their occupants. An inner door with enclosed vestibule gives access to the quadrangular choir or chancel, as it may be called, though its centre is open to the sky. On either side of it are three chapels, and at the extremity is the rectangular “holy of holies,” flanked by two gilded images of the coming Buddha, and screened by lattice-work. In it is the shrine on which sits the great image of Sakya, set about with small figures, lamps and a variety of offerings, and richly jewelled, though the workmanship of the whole is crude. In the second and third storeys of the temple are shrines and representations of a number of gods and goddesses. The temple contains a vast accumulation of images, gold and silver vessels, lamps, reliquaries and precious bric-à-brac of every kind. The daily offices are attended by crowds of worshippers, and a sacred way which leads round the main building is constantly traversed by devotees who perform the circuit as a work of merit, always in a particular direction. The temple was found by the members of the British mission who visited it to be exceedingly dirty, and the atmosphere was foul with the fumes of butter-lamps.

Besides the convent-cells, halls of study and magazines of precious lumber, buildings grouped about the Jokhang are occupied by the civil administration, e.g. as treasuries, customs office, courts of justice, &c., and there are also private apartments for the grand lama and other high functionaries. No woman is permitted to pass the night within the precinct.

In front of the main entrance to the Jokhang, in the shadow of a sacred willow tree, stands a famous monument, the Doring monolith, which bears the inscribed record of a treaty of peace concluded in 822 (or, according to another view, in 783) between the king of Tibet and the emperor of China. Before this monument the apostate from Lamaism, Langdharma, brother and successor of the last-named king, is said to have been standing when a fanatic recluse, who had been stirred by a vision to avenge his persecuted faith, assassinated him.

The famous Potala hill, covered by the palace of the Dalai lama, forms a majestic mountain of building; with its vast inward-sloping walls broken only in the upper parts by straight rows of many windows, and its flat roofs at various levels, it is Potala. not unlike a fortress in appearance. At the south base of the rock is a large space enclosed by walls and gates, with great porticoes on the inner side. This swarms with lamas and with beggars. A series of tolerably easy staircases, broken by intervals of gentle ascent, leads to the summit of the rock. The whole width of this is occupied by the palace. The central part of this group of buildings (for the component parts of Potala are of different dates) rises in a vast quadrangular mass above its satellites to a great height, terminating in gilt canopies similar to those on the Jokhang. Here on the lofty terrace is the grand lama’s promenade, and from this great height he looks down upon the crowds of his votaries far below. This central member of Potala is called the red palace from its crimson colour, which distinguishes it from the rest. It contains the principal halls and chapels and shrines of past Dalai lamas. There is in these much rich decorative painting, with jewelled work, carving and other ornament, but the interior of Potala as a whole cannot compare in magnificence with the exterior. Among the numerous other buildings of note on or near Potala hill, one is distinguished by the Chinese as one of the principal beauties of Lhasa. This is a temple not far from the base of the hill, in the middle of a lake which is surrounded by trees and shrubberies. This temple, called Lu-kang, is circular in form, with a loggia or portico running all round and adorned with paintings. Its name, “the serpent house,” comes from the tradition of a serpent or dragon, which dwelt here and must be propitiated lest it should cause the waters to rise and flood Lhasa.

Another great and famous temple is Ramo-ché, at the north side of the city. This is also regarded as a foundation of Srong-tsan-gampo, and is said to contain the body of his Chinese wife and the second of the primeval palladia, the image that she brought with her to the Snow-land; whence it is known as the “small Jokhang.” This temple is noted for the practice of magical arts. Its buildings are in a neglected condition.

Another monastery within the city is that of Moru, also on the north side, remarkable for its external order and cleanliness. Though famous as a school of orthodox magic, it is noted also for the printing-house in the convent garden. This convent was the temporary residence of the regent during the visit of the British mission in 1904. Other monasteries in or near the city are the Tsamo Ling or Chomoling at the north-west corner; the Tangyä Ling or Tengyeling at the west of the city; the Kundä Ling or Kundeling about 1 m. west of the city, at the foot of a low isolated hill called Chapochi. Three miles south, beyond the river, is the Tsemchog Ling or Tsecholing. These four convents are known as “The Four Ling.” From their inmates the Dalai lama’s regent, during his minority, was formerly chosen. The temple of medicine, as already stated, crowns the summit (Chagpa) at the end of the ridge west of the city, opposite to that on which stands the Potala. It is natural that in a country possessing a religious system like that of Tibet the medical profession should form a branch of the priesthood. “The treatment of disease, though based in some measure upon a judicious use of the commoner simple drugs of the country, is, as was inevitable amongst so superstitious a people, saturated with absurdity” (Waddell, Lhasa and its Mysteries).

The three great monasteries in the vicinity of Lhasa, all claiming to be foundations of Tsongkhapa (1356-1418), the medieval reformer and organizer of the modern orthodox Lama Church, “the yellow caps,” are the following:—

1. Debung (written ’Bras spungs) is 6 m. west of Lhasa at the foot of the hills which flank the plain on the north. It is one of the largest monasteries in the world, having some 8000 monks. In the middle of the convent buildings rises a kind of pavilion, brilliant with colour and gilding, which is occupied by the Dalai Lama when he visits Debung once a year and expounds to the inmates. The place is frequented by the Mongol students who come to Lhasa to graduate, and is known in the country as the Mongol convent; it has also been notorious as a centre of political intrigue. Near it is the seat of the chief magician of Tibet, the Nachung Chos-kyong, a building picturesque in itself and in situation.

2. Sera is 3 m. north of the city on the acclivity of the hills and close to the road by which pilgrims enter from Mongolia. From a distance the crowd of buildings and temples, rising in amphitheatre against a background of rocky mountains, forms a pleasing picture. In the recesses of the hill, high above the convent, are scattered cells of lamas adopting the solitary life. The chief temple of Sera, a highly ornate building, has a special reputation as the resting-place of a famous Dorjē, i.e. the Vajra or Thunderbolt of Jupiter, the symbol of the strong and indestructible, which the priest grasps and manipulates in various ways during prayer. The emblem is a bronze instrument, shaped much like a dumbbell with pointed ends, and it is carried solemnly in procession to the Jokhang during the New Year’s festival.

The hill adjoining Sera is believed to be rich in silver ore, but it is not allowed to be worked. On the summit is a spring and a holy place of the Lhasa Mahommedans, who resort thither. Near the monastery there is said to be gold, which is worked by the monks. “Should they ... discover a nugget of large size, it is immediately replaced in the earth, under the impression that the large nuggets ... germinate in time, producing the small lumps which they are privileged to search for” (Nain Singh).

3. Galdan.—This great convent is some 25 m. east of Lhasa, on the other side of the Kyichu. It is the oldest monastery of the “Yellow” sect, having been founded by Tsongkhapa and having had him for its first superior. Here his body is said to be preserved with miraculous circumstances; here is his tomb, of marble and malachite, with a great shrine said to be of gold, and here are other relics of him, such as the impression of his hands and feet.

Samyé is another famous convent intimately connected with Lhasa, being said to be used as a treasury by the government, but it lies some 36 m. south-east on the left bank of the great Tsangpo. It was founded in 770, and is the oldest extant monastery in Tibet. It is surrounded by a very high circular stone wall, 1½ m. in circumference, with gates facing the four points of the compass. On this wall Nain Singh, who was here on his journey in 1874, counted 1030 votive piles of brick. One very large temple occupies the centre, and round it are four smaller but still large temples. Many of the idols are said to be of pure gold, and the wealth is very great. The interiors of the temples are covered with beautiful writing in enormous characters, which the vulgar believe to be the writing of Sakya himself.

Population and Trade.—The total population of Lhasa, including the lamas in the city and vicinity, is probably about 30,000; a census in 1854 made the figure 42,000, but it is known to have greatly decreased since. There are only some 1500 resident Tibetan laymen and about 5500 Tibetan women. The permanent population embraces, besides Tibetans, settled families of Chinese (about 2000 persons), as well as people from Nepal, from Ladak, and a few from Bhotan and Mongolia. The Ladakis and some of the other foreigners are Mahommedans, and much of the trade is in their hands. Desideri (1716) speaks also of Armenians and even “Muscovites.” The Chinese have a crowded burial-ground at Lhasa, tended carefully after their manner. The Nepalese (about 800) supply the mechanics and metal-workers. There are among them excellent gold- and silversmiths; and they make the elaborate gilded canopies crowning the temples. The chief industries are the weaving of a great variety of stuffs from the fine Tibetan wool; the making of earthenware and of the wooden porringers (varying immensely in elaboration and price) of which every Tibetan carries one about with him; also the making of certain fragrant sticks of incense much valued in China and elsewhere.

As Lhasa is not only the nucleus of a cluster of vast monastic establishments, which attract students and aspirants to the religious life from all parts of Tibet and Mongolia, but is also a great place of pilgrimage, the streets and public places swarm with visitors from every part of the Himalayan plateau,2 and from all the steppes of Asia between Manchuria and the Balkhash Lake. Naturally a great traffic arises quite apart from the pilgrimage. The city thus swarms with crowds attracted by devotion and the love of gain, and presents a great diversity of language, costume and physiognomy; though, in regard to the last point, varieties of the broad face and narrow eye greatly predominate. Much of the retail trade of the place is in the hands of the women. The curious practice of the women in plastering their faces with a dark-coloured pigment is less common in Lhasa than in the provinces.

During December especially traders arrive from western China by way of Tachienlu bringing every variety of silk-stuffs, carpets, china-ware and tea; from Siningfu come silk, gold lace, Russian goods, carpets of a superior kind, semi-precious stones, horse furniture, horses and a very large breed of fat-tailed sheep; from eastern Tibet, musk in large quantities, which eventually finds its way to Europe through Nepal; from Bhotan and Sikkim, rice; from Sikkim also tobacco; besides a variety of Indian and European goods from Nepal and Darjeeling, and charas (resinous exudation of hemp) and saffron from Ladakh and Kashmir. The merchants leave Lhasa in March, before the setting in of the rains renders the rivers impassable.

The tea importation from China is considerable, for tea is an absolute necessary to the Tibetan. The tea is of various qualities, from the coarsest, used only for “buttered” tea (a sort of broth), to the fine quality drunk by the wealthy. This is pressed into bricks or cakes weighing about 5½ ℔, and often passes as currency. The quantity that pays duty at Tachienlu is about 10,000,000 ℔, besides some amount smuggled. No doubt a large part of this comes to Lhasa.

Lhasa Festivities.—The greatest of these is at the new year. This lasts fifteen days, and is a kind of lamaic carnival, in which masks and mummings, wherein the Tibetans take especial delight, play a great part. The celebration commences at midnight, with shouts and clangour of bells, gongs, chank-shells, drums and all the noisy repertory of Tibetan music; whilst friends exchange early visits and administer coarse sweetmeats and buttered tea. On the second day the Dalai Lama gives a grand banquet, at which the Chinese and native authorities are present, whilst in the public spaces and in front of the great convents all sorts of shows and jugglers’ performances go on. Next day a regular Tibetan exhibition takes place. A long cable, twisted of leather thongs, is stretched from a high point in the battlements of Potala slanting down to the plain, where it is strongly moored. Two men slide from top to bottom of this huge hypothenuse, sometimes lying on the chest (which is protected by a breast-plate of strong leather), spreading their arms as if to swim, and descending with the rapidity of an arrow-flight. Occasionally fatal accidents occur in this performance, which is called “the dance of the gods”; but the survivors are rewarded by the court, and the Grand Lama himself is always a witness of it. This practice occurs more or less over the Himalayan plateau, and is known in the neighbourhood of the Ganges as Barat. It is employed as a kind of expiatory rite in cases of pestilence and the like. Exactly the same performance is described as having been exhibited in St Paul’s Churchyard before King Edward VI., and again before Philip of Spain, as well as, about 1750, at Hertford and other places in England (see Strutt’s Sports, &c., 2nd ed., p. 198).

The most remarkable celebration of the new year’s festivities is the great jubilee of the Monlam (s Mon-lam, “prayer”), instituted by Tsongkhapa himself in 1408. Lamas from all parts of Tibet, but chiefly from the great convents in the neighbourhood, flock to Lhasa, and every road leading thither is thronged with troops of monks on foot or horseback, on yaks or donkeys, carrying with them their breviaries and their cooking-pots. Those who cannot find lodging bivouac in the streets and squares, or pitch their little black tents in the plain. The festival lasts six days, during which there reigns a kind of saturnalia. Unspeakable confusion and disorder reign, while gangs of lamas parade the streets, shouting, singing and coming to blows. The object of this gathering is, however, supposed to be devotional. Vast processions take place, with mystic offerings and lama-music, to the Jokhang and Moru convents; the Grand Lama himself assists at the festival, and from an elevated throne beside the Jokhang receives the offerings of the multitude and bestows his benediction.

On the 15th of the first month multitudes of torches are kept ablaze, which lighten up the city to a great distance, whilst the interior of the Jokhang is illuminated throughout the night by innumerable lanterns shedding light on coloured figures in bas-relief, framed in arabesques of animals, birds and flowers, and representing the history of Buddha and other subjects, all modelled in butter. The figures are executed on a large scale, and, as described by Huc, who witnessed the festival at Kunbum on the frontier of China, with extraordinary truth and skill. These singular works of art occupy some months in preparation, and on the morrow are thrown away. On other days horse-races take place from Sera to Potala, and foot-races from Potala to the city. On the 27th of the month the holy Dorjē is carried in solemn procession from Sera to the Jokhang, and to the presence of the lama at Potala.