← Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "L" to "Lamellibranchia" / Volume 16, Slice 1
Chapter 2
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "L" to "Lamellibranchia" (part 2)
The statutes relating to hours of labour may be considered under five groups, namely: (1) general laws which merely fix what shall be regarded as a day’s labour in the absence of a contract; (2) laws defining what shall constitute a day’s work on public roads; (3) laws limiting the hours of labour per day on public works; (4) laws limiting the hours of labour in certain occupations; and (5) laws which specify the hours per day or per week during which women and children may be employed. The statutes included in the first two groups place no restrictions upon the number of hours which may be agreed upon between employers and employés, while those in the other three groups usually limit the freedom of contract and provide penalties for their violation. A considerable number of states have enacted laws which fix a day’s labour in the absence of any contract, some at eight and others at ten hours, so that when an employer and an employé make a contract and they do not specify what shall constitute a day’s labour, eight or ten hours respectively would be ruled as the day’s labour in an action which might come before the courts. In a number of the states it is optional with the citizens to liquidate certain taxes either by cash payments or by rendering personal service. In the latter case the length of the working day is defined by law, eight hours being usually specified. The Federal government and nearly one-half of the states have laws providing that eight hours shall constitute a day’s work for employés on public works. Under the Federal Act it is unlawful for any officer of the government or of any contractor or sub-contractor for public works to permit labourers and mechanics to work longer than eight hours per day. The state laws concerning hours of labour have similar provisions. Exceptions are provided for cases of extraordinary emergencies, such as danger to human life or property. In many states the hours of labour have been limited by law in occupations in which, on account of their dangerous or insanitary character, the health of the employés would be jeopardized by long hours of labour, or in which the fatigue occasioned by long hours would endanger the lives of the employés or of the public. The occupations for which such special legislation has been enacted are those of employés on steam and street railways, in mines and other underground workings, smelting and refining works, bakeries and cotton and woollen mills. Laws limiting the hours of labour of women and children have been considered under factory and workshop acts.
Nearly all states and Territories of the Union have laws prohibiting the employment of labour on Sunday. These laws usually make it a misdemeanour for persons either to labour themselves or to compel or permit their apprentices, servants or other employés, to labour on the first day of the week. Exceptions are made in the case of household duties or works of necessity or charity, and in the case of members of religious societies who observe some other than the first day of the week.
Statutes concerning the payment of wages of employés may be considered in two groups: (1) those which relate to the employment contract, such as laws fixing the maximum period of wage payments, prohibiting the payment of wages in scrip or other evidences of indebtedness in lieu of lawful money, prohibiting wage deductions on account of fines, breakage of machinery, discounts for prepayments, medical attendance, relief funds or other purposes, requiring the giving of notice of reduction of wages, &c.; (2) legislation granting certain privileges or affording special protection to working people with respect to their wages, such as laws exempting wages from attachment, preferring wage claims in assignments, and granting workmen liens upon buildings and other constructions on which they have been employed.
Employers’ liability laws have been passed to enable an employé to recover damages from his employer under certain conditions when he has been injured through accident occurring in the works of the employer. The common-law maxim that the principal is responsible for the acts of his agent does not apply where two or more persons are working together under the same employer and one of the employés is injured through the carelessness of his fellow-employé, although the one causing the accident is the agent of the principal, who under the common law would be responsible. The old Roman law and the English and American practice under it held that the co-employé was a party to the accident. The injustice of this rule is seen by a single illustration. A weaver in a cotton factory, where there are hundreds of operatives, is injured by the neglect or carelessness of the engineer in charge of the motive power. Under the common law the weaver could not recover damages from the employer, because he was the co-employé of the engineer. So, one of thousands of employés of a railway system, sustaining injuries through the carelessness of a switchman whom he never saw, could recover no damages from the railway company, both being co-employés of the same employer. The injustice of this application of the common-law rule has been recognized, but the only way to avoid the difficulty was through specific legislation providing that under such conditions as those related, and similar ones, the doctrine of co-employment should not apply, and that the workman should have the same right to recover damages as a passenger upon a railway train. This legislation has upset some of the most notable distinctions of law.
The first agitation for legislation of this character occurred in England in 1880. A number of states in the Union have now enacted statutes fixing the liability of employers under certain conditions and relieving the employé from the application of the common-law rule. Where the employé himself is contributory to the injuries resulting from an accident he cannot recover, nor can he recover in some cases where he knows of the danger from the defects of tools or implements employed by him. The legislation upon the subject involves many features of legislation which need not be described here, such as those concerning the power of employés to make a contract, and those defining the conditions, often elaborate, which lead to the liability of the employer and the duties of the employé, and the relations in which damages for injuries sustained in employment may be recovered from the employer.
(B) The statutes thus far considered may be regarded as protective labour legislation. There is, besides, a large body of statutory laws enacted in the various states for the purpose of fixing the legal status of employers and employés and defining their rights and privileges as such.
A great variety of statutes have been enacted in the various states relating to the labour contract. Among these are laws defining the labour contract, requiring notice of termination of contract, making it a misdemeanour to break a contract of service and thereby endanger human life or expose valuable property to serious injury, or to make a contract of service and accept transportation or pecuniary advancements with intent to defraud, prohibiting contracts of employment whereby employés waive the right to damages in case of injury, &c. A Federal statute makes it a misdemeanour for any one to prepay the transportation or in any way assist or encourage the importation of aliens under contract to perform labour or service of any kind in the United States, exceptions being made in the case of skilled labour that cannot otherwise be obtained, domestic servants and persons belonging to any of the recognized professions.
The Federal government and nearly all the states and territories have statutory provisions requiring the examination and licensing of persons practising certain trades other than those in the class of recognized professions. The Federal statute relates only to engineers on steam vessels, masters, mates, pilots, &c. The occupations for which examinations and licences are required by the various state laws are those of barbers, horseshoers, elevator operators, plumbers, stationary firemen, steam engineers, telegraph operators on railroads and certain classes of mine workers and steam and street railway employés.
The right of combination and peaceable assembly on the part of employés is recognized at common law throughout the United States. Organizations of working-men formed for their mutual benefit, protection and improvement, such as for endeavouring to secure higher wages, shorter hours of labour or better working conditions, are nowhere regarded as unlawful. A number of states and the Federal government have enacted statutes providing for the incorporation of trade unions, but owing to the freedom from regulation or inspection enjoyed by unincorporated trade unions, very few have availed themselves of this privilege. A number of states have enacted laws tending to give special protection to and encourage trade unions. Thus, nearly one-half of the states have passed acts declaring it unlawful for employers to discharge workmen for joining labour organizations, or to make it a condition of employment that they shall not belong to such bodies. Laws of this kind have generally been held to be unconstitutional. Nearly all the states have laws protecting trade unions in the use of the union label, insignia of membership, credentials, &c., and making it a misdemeanour to counterfeit or fraudulently use them. A number of the states exempt labour organizations from the operations of the anti-trust and insurance acts.
Until recent years all legal action concerning labour disturbances was based upon the principles of the common law. Some of the states have now fairly complete statutory enactments concerning labour disturbances, while others have little or no legislation of this class. The right of employés to strike for any cause or for no cause is sustained by the common law everywhere in the United States. Likewise an employer has a right to discharge any or all of his employés when they have no contract with him, and he may refuse to employ any person or class of persons for any reason or for no reason. Agreements among strikers to take peaceable means to induce others to remain away from the works of an employer until he yields to the demands of the strikers are not held to be conspiracies under the common law, and the carrying out of such a purpose by peaceable persuasion and without violence, intimidation or threats, is not unlawful. However, any interference with the constitutional rights of another to employ whom he chooses or to labour when, where or on what terms he pleases, is illegal. The boycott has been held to be an illegal conspiracy in restraint of trade. The statutory enactments of the various states concerning labour disturbances are in part re-enactments of the rules of common law and in part more or less departures from or additions to the established principles. The list of such statutory enactments is a large one, and includes laws relating to blacklisting, boycotting, conspiracy against working-men, interference with employment, intimidation, picketing and strikes of railway employés; laws requiring statements of causes of discharge of employés and notice of strikes in advertisements for labour; laws prohibiting deception in the employment of labour and the hiring of armed guards by employers; and laws declaring that certain labour agreements do not constitute conspiracy. Some of these laws have been held to be unconstitutional, and some have not yet been tested in the courts.
The laws just treated relate almost entirely to acts either of employers or of employés, but there is another form of law, namely, that providing for action to be taken by others in the effort to prevent working people from losing employment, either by their own acts or by those of their employers, or to settle any differences which arise out of controversies relating to wages, hours of labour, terms and conditions of employment, rules, &c. These laws provide for the mediation and the arbitration of labour disputes (see Arbitration and Conciliation). Twenty-three states and the Federal government have laws or constitutional provisions of this nature. In some cases they provide for the appointment of state boards, and in others of local boards only. A number of states provide for local or special boards in addition to the regular state boards. In some states it is required that a member of a labour organization must be a member of the board, and, in general, both employers and employés must be represented. Nearly all state boards are required to attempt to mediate between the parties to a dispute when information is received of an actual or threatened labour trouble. Arbitration may be undertaken in some states on application from either party, in others on the application of both parties. An agreement to maintain the status quo pending arbitration is usually required. The modes of enforcement of obedience to the awards of the boards are various. Some states depend on publicity alone, some give the decisions the effect of judgments of courts of law which may be enforced by execution, while in other states disobedience to such decisions is punishable as for contempt of court. The Federal statute applies only to common carriers engaged in interstate commerce, and provides for an attempt to be made at mediation by two designated government officials in controversies between common carriers and their employés, and, in case of the failure of such an attempt, for the formation of a board of arbitration consisting of the same officials together with certain other parties to be selected. Such arbitration boards are to be formed only at the request or upon the consent of both parties to the controversy.
The enforcement of laws by executive or judicial action is an important matter relating to labour legislation, for without action such laws would remain dead letters. Under the constitutions of the states, the governor is the commander-in-chief of the military forces, and he has the power to order the militia or any part of it into active service in case of insurrection, invasion, tumult, riots or breaches of the peace or imminent danger thereof. Frequent action has been taken in the case of strikes with the view of preventing or suppressing violence threatened or happening to persons or property, the effect being, however, that the militia protects those working or desiring to work, or the employers. The president of the United States may use the land and naval forces whenever by reason of insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful obstructions, conspiracy, combinations or assemblages of persons it becomes impracticable to enforce the laws of the land by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or when the execution of the laws is so hindered by reason of such events that any portion or class of the people are deprived thereby of their rights and privileges under the constitution and laws of the country. Under this general power the United States forces have been used for the protection of both employers and employés indirectly, the purpose being to protect mails and, as in the states, to see that the laws are carried out.
The power of the courts to interfere in labour disputes is through the injunction and punishment thereunder for contempt of court. It is a principle of law that when there are interferences, actual or threatened, with property or with rights of a pecuniary nature, and the common or statute law offers no adequate and immediate remedy for the prevention of injury, a court of equity may interpose and issue its order or injunction as to what must or must not be done, a violation of which writ gives the court which issued it the power to punish for contempt. The doctrine is that something is necessary to be done to stop at once the destruction of property and the obstruction of business, and the injunction is immediate in its action. This writ has been resorted to frequently for the indirect protection of employés and of employers.
(C. D. W.)
Authorities.—English: (a) Factory Legislation: Abraham and Davies, Law relating to Factories and Workshops (London, 1897 and 1902); Redgrave, Factory Acts (London, 1897); Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence and Digests, Group “C” (3 vols., 1892-1893), Assistant Commissioner’s Report on Employment of Women (1893), Fifth and Final Report of the Commission (1894); International Labour Conference at Berlin, Correspondence, Commercial Series (C, 6042) (1890); House of Lords Committee on the Sweating System, Report (1891); Home Office Reports: Annual Reports of H.M. Chief Inspector of Factories (1879 to 1901), Committee on White Lead and Various Lead Industries (1894), Working of the Cotton Cloth Factories Acts (1897), Dangerous Trades (Anthrax) Committee, Do., Miscellaneous Trades (1896-97-98-99), Conditions of Work in Fish-Curing Trade (1898), Lead Compounds in Pottery (1899), Phosphorus in Manufacture of Lucifer Matches (1899), &c., &c.; Whately Cooke-Taylor, Modern Factory System (London, 1891); Oliver, Dangerous Trades (London, 1902); Cunningham, Growth of English Commerce and Industry (1907); Hutchins and Harrison, History of Factory Legislation (1903); Traill, Social England, &c., &c. (b) Mines and Quarries: Statutes: Coal Mines Regulation Acts 1886, 1894, 1896, 1899; Metalliferous Mines Regulation Acts 1872, 1875; Quarries Act 1894; Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence and Digests, Group “A” (1892-1893, 3 vols.); Royal Commission on Mining Royalties, Appendices (1894); Home Office Reports: Annual General Report upon the Mining Industry (1894-1897), Mines and Quarries, General Reports and Statistics (1898 to 1899), Annual Reports of H.M. Chief Inspector of Factories (1893-1895) (Quarries); Macswinney and Bristowe, Coal Mines Regulation Act 1887 (London, 1888). (c) Shops: Statutes: Shop Hours Acts 1892, 1893, 1896, Seats for Shop Assistants Act 1899; Report of Select Committee of House of Commons on the Shop Hours Regulation Bill 1886 (Eyre and Spottiswoode). (d) Truck: Home Office Reports: Annual Reports of H.M. Chief Inspector of Factories, especially 1895-1900, Memorandum on the Law relating to Truck and Checkweighing Clauses of the Coal Mines Acts 1896, Memorandum relating to the Truck Acts, by Sir Kenelm Digby, with text of Acts (1897).
Continental Europe: Annuaire de la législation du travail (Bruxelles, 1898-1905); Hygiène et sécurité des travailleurs dans les ateliers industriels (Paris, 1895); Bulletin de l’inspection du travail (Paris, 1895-1902); Bulletin de l’office international du travail (Paris, 1902-1906); Congrès international de législation du travail (1898); Die Gewerbeordnung für das deutsche Reich. (1) Landmann (1897); (2) Neukamp (1901); Gesetz betr. Kinderarbeit in gewerblichen Betrieben, 30. März 1903; Konrad Agahd, Manz’sche Gesetzausgabe, erster Band und siebenter Band (Wien, 1897-1898); Legge sugli infortunii del lavoro (Milan, 1900).
United States: See the Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (1907) giving all labour laws in force in the United States in 1907, with annotations of decisions of courts; bimonthly Bulletins of the U.S. Bureau of Labor, containing laws passed since those published in the foregoing, and decisions of courts relating to employers and employés; also special articles in these Bulletins on “Employer and Employé under the Common Law” (No. 1), “Protection of Workmen in their Employment” (No. 26), “Government Industrial Arbitration” (No. 60), “Laws relating to the Employment of Women and Children, and to Factory Inspection and the Health and Safety of Employés” (No. 74), “Wages and Hours of Labor in Manufacturing Industries, 1890 to 1907” (No. 77), “Review of Labor Legislation of 1908 and 1909” (No. 85); also “Report of the Industrial Commission on Labor Legislation” (vol. v., U.S. Commission’s Report); C. D. Wright, Industrial Evolution in the United States (1887); Stimson, Handbook to the Labor Laws of the United States, and Labor in its Relation to Law; Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems; Labatt, Commentaries on the Law of Master and Servant.
The term “labour” (Lat. labor) means strictly any energetic work, though in general it implies hard work, but in modern parlance it is specially confined to industrial work of the kind done by the “working-classes.”
H. D. Traill, Social England, v. 602 (1896).
W. Cunningham, Growth of English Commerce and Industry.
W. Cunningham, Growth of English Commerce and Industry.
From an “Essay on Trade” (1770), quoted in History of Factory Legislation, by B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison (1903), pp. 5, 6.
Minutes of Evidence, House of Commons, 1876; quoted in History of Factory Legislation, by Harrison and Hutchinson, p. 179.
LABOUR PARTY, in Great Britain, the name given to the party in parliament composed of working-class representatives. As the result of the Reform Act of 1884, extending the franchise to a larger new working-class electorate, the votes of “labour” became more and more a matter of importance for politicians; and the Liberal party, seeking for the support of organized labour in the trade unions, found room for a few working-class representatives, who, however, acted and voted as Liberals. It was not till 1893 that the Independent Labour party, splitting off under Mr J. Keir Hardie (b. 1856) from the socialist organization known as the Social Democratic Federation (founded 1881), was formed at Bradford, with the object of getting independent candidates returned to parliament on a socialist programme. In 1900 Mr Keir Hardie, who as secretary of the Lanarkshire Miners’ Union had stood unsuccessfully as a labour candidate for Mid-Lanark in 1888, and sat as M.P. for West Ham in 1892-1895, was elected to parliament for Merthyr-Tydvil by its efforts, and in 1906 it obtained the return of 30 members, Mr Keir Hardie being chairman of the group. Meanwhile in 1899 the Trade Union Congress instructed its parliamentary committee to call a conference on the question of labour representation; and in February 1900 this was attended by trade union delegates and also by representatives of the Independent Labour party, the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society. A resolution was carried “to establish a distinct labour group in parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their own policy, which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interest of labour,” and the committee (the Labour Representation Committee) was elected for the purpose. Under their auspices 29 out of 51 candidates were returned at the election of 1906. These groups were distinct from the Labour members (“Lib.-Labs”) who obeyed the Liberal whips and acted with the Liberals. In 1908 the attempts to unite the parliamentary representatives of the Independent Labour party with the Trades Union members were successful. In June of that year the Miners’ Federation, returning 15 members, joined the Independent Labour party, now known for parliamentary purposes as the “Labour Party”; other Trades Unions, such as the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, took the same step. This arrangement came into force at the general election of 1910, when the bulk of the miners’ representatives signed the constitution of the Labour party, which after the election numbered 40 members of parliament.
LABRADOR, a great peninsula in British North America, bounded E. by the North Atlantic, N. by Hudson Strait, W. by Hudson and James Bays, and S. by an arbitrary line extending eastwards from the south-east corner of Hudson Bay, near 51° N., to the mouth of the Moisie river, on the Gulf of St Lawrence, in 50° N., and thence eastwards by the Gulf of St Lawrence. It extends from 50° to 63° N., and from 55° to 80° W., and embraces an approximate area of 511,000 sq. m. Recent explorations and surveys have added greatly to the knowledge of this vast region, and have shown that much of the peninsula is not a land of “awful desolation,” but a well-wooded country, containing latent resources of value in its forests, fisheries and minerals.
Physical Geography.—Labrador forms the eastern limb of the V in the Archaean protaxis of North America (see Canada), and includes most of the highest parts of that area. Along some portions of the coasts of Hudson and also of Ungava Bay there is a fringe of lowland, but most of the interior is a plateau rising toward the south and east. The highest portion extends east and west between 52° and 54° N., where an immense granite area lies between the headwaters of the larger rivers of the four principal drainage basins; the lowest area is between Hudson Bay and Ungava Bay in the north-west, where the general level is not more than 500 ft. above the sea. The only mountains are the range along the Atlantic coast, extending from the Strait of Belle Isle to Cape Chidley; in their southern half they rarely exceed 1500 ft., but increase in the northern half to a general elevation of upwards of 2000 ft., with numerous sharp peaks between 3000 and 5000 ft., some say 7000 or 8000 ft. The coasts are deeply indented by irregular bays and fringed with rocky islands, especially along the high Atlantic coast, where long narrow fiords penetrate inland. Hamilton Inlet, 250 m. north of the Strait of Belle Isle, is the longest of these bays, with a length of 150 m. and a breadth varying from 2 to 30 m. The surface of the outer portions of the plateau is deeply seamed by valleys, cut into the crystalline rocks by the natural erosion of rivers, depending for their length and depth upon the volume of water flowing through them. The valley of the Hamilton river is the greatest, forms a continuation of the valley of the Inlet and extends 300 m. farther inland, while its bottom lies from 500 to 1500 ft. below the surface of the plateau into which it is cut. The depressions between the low ridges of the interior are occupied by innumerable lakes, many of great size, including Mistassini, Mishikamau, Clearwater, Kaniapiskau and Seal, all from 50 to 100 m. long. The streams discharging these lakes, before entering their valleys, flow on a level with the country and occupy all depressions, so that they frequently spread out into lake-expansions and are often divided into numerous channels by large islands. The descent into the valleys is usually abrupt, being made by heavy rapids and falls; the Hamilton, from the level interior, in a course of 12 m. falls 760 ft. into the head of its valley, this descent including a sheer drop of 315 ft. at the Grand Falls, which, taken with the large volume of the river, makes it the greatest fall in North America. The rivers of the northern and western watersheds drain about two-thirds of the peninsula; the most important of the former are the Koksoak, the largest river of Labrador (over 500 m. long), the George, Whale and Payne rivers, all flowing into Ungava Bay. The large rivers flowing westwards into Hudson Bay are the Povungnituk, Kogaluk, Great Whale, Big, East Main and Rupert, varying in length from 300 to 500 m. The rivers flowing south are exceedingly rapid, the Moisie, Romaine, Natashkwan and St Augustine being the most important; all are about 300 m. long. The Atlantic coast range throws most of the drainage northwards into the Ungava basin, and only small streams fall into the ocean, except the Hamilton, North-west and Kenamou, which empty into the head of Hamilton Inlet.
Geology.—The peninsula is formed largely of crystalline schists and gneisses associated with granites and other igneous rocks, all of archaean age; there are also large areas of non-fossiliferous, stratified limestones, cherts, shales and iron ores, the unaltered equivalents of part of the schists and gneisses. Narrow strips of Animikie (Upper Huronian or perhaps Cambrian) rocks occur along the low-lying southern and western shores, but there are nowhere else indications of the peninsula having been below sea-level since an exceedingly remote time. During the glacial period the country was covered by a thick mantle of ice, which flowed out radially from a central collecting-ground. Owing to the extremely long exposure to denudation, to the subsequent removal of the greater part of the decomposed rock by glaciers, and to the unequal weathering of the component rocks, it is now a plateau, which ascends somewhat abruptly within a few miles of the coast-line to heights of between 500 and 2000 ft. The interior is undulating, and traversed by ridges of low, rounded hills, seldom rising more than 500 ft. above the surrounding general level.
Minerals.—The mineral wealth is undeveloped. Thick beds of excellent iron ore cover large areas in the interior and along the shores of Hudson and Ungava Bays. Large areas of mineralized Huronian rocks have also been discovered, similar to areas in other parts of Canada, where they contain valuable deposits of gold, copper, nickel and lead; good prospects of these metals have been found.
Climate.—The climate ranges from cold temperate on the southern coasts to arctic on Hudson Strait, and is generally so rigorous that it is doubtful if the country is fit for agriculture north of 51°, except on the low grounds near the coast. On James Bay good crops of potatoes and other roots are grown at Fort George, 54° N., while about the head of Hamilton Inlet, on the east coast, and in nearly the same latitude, similar crops are easily cultivated. On the outer coasts the climate is more rigorous, being affected by the floating ice borne southwards on the Arctic current. In the interior at Mistassini, 50° 30′ N, a crop of potatoes is raised annually, but they rarely mature. No attempts at agriculture have been made elsewhere inland. Owing to the absence of grass plains, there is little likelihood that it will ever be a grazing district. There are only two seasons in the interior: winter begins early in October, with the freezing of the small lakes, and lasts until the middle of June, when the ice on rivers and lakes melts and summer suddenly bursts forth. From unconnected observations the lowest temperatures of the interior range from −50° F. to −60° F., and are slightly higher along the coast. The mean summer temperature of the interior is about 55° F., with frosts during every month in the northern portion. On the Atlantic coast and in Hudson Bay the larger bays freeze solid between the 1st and 15th of December, and these coasts remain ice-bound until late in June. Hudson Strait is usually sufficiently open for navigation about the 10th of July.
Vegetation.—The southern half is included in the sub-Arctic forest belt, and nine species of trees constitute the whole arborescent flora of this region; these species are the white birch, poplar, aspen, cedar. Banksian pine, white and black spruce, balsam fir and larch. The forest is continuous over the southern portion to 53° N., the only exceptions being the summits of rocky hills and the outer islands of the Atlantic and Hudson Bay, while the low margins and river valleys contain much valuable timber. To the northward the size and number of barren areas rapidly increase, so that in 55° N. more than half the country is treeless, and two degrees farther north the limit of trees is reached, leaving, to the northward, only barrens covered with low Arctic flowering plants, sedges and lichens.
Fisheries.—The fisheries along the shores of the Gulf of St Lawrence and of the Atlantic form practically the only industry of the white population scattered along the coasts, as well as of a large proportion of the inhabitants of Newfoundland. The census (1891) of Newfoundland gave 10,478 men, 2081 women and 828 children employed in the Labrador fishery in 861 vessels, of which the tonnage amounted to 33,689; the total catch being 488,788 quintals of cod, 1275 tierces of salmon and 3828 barrels of herring, which, compared with the customs returns for 1880, showed an increase of cod and decreases of salmon and herring. The salmon fishery along the Atlantic coast is now very small, the decrease being probably due to excessive use of cod-traps. The cod fishery is now carried on along the entire Atlantic coast and into the eastern part of Ungava Bay, where excellent catches have been made since 1893. The annual value of the fisheries on the Canadian portion of the coast is about $350,000. The fisheries of Hudson Bay and of the interior are wholly undeveloped, though both the bay and the large lakes of the interior are well stocked with several species of excellent fish, including Arctic trout, brook trout, lake trout, white fish, sturgeon and cod.
Population.—The population is approximately 14,500, or about one person to every 35 sq. m.; it is made up of 3500 Indians, 2000 Eskimo and 9000 whites. The last are confined to the coasts and to the Hudson Bay Company’s trading posts of the interior. On the Atlantic coast they are largely immigrants from Newfoundland, together with descendants of English fishermen and Hudson Bay Company’s servants. To the north of Hamilton Inlet they are of more or less mixed blood from marriage with Eskimo women. The Newfoundland census of 1901 gave 3634 as the number of permanent white residents along the Atlantic coast, and the Canadian census (1891) gave a white population of 5728, mostly French Canadians, scattered along the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence, while the whites living at the inland posts did not exceed fifty persons. It is difficult to give more than a rough approximation of the number of the native population, owing to their habits of roving from one trading post to another, and the consequent liability of counting the same family several times if the returns are computed from the books of the various posts, the only available data for an enumeration. The following estimate is arrived at in this manner: Indians—west coast, 1200; Ungava Bay, 200; east coast, 200; south coast, 1900. Eskimo—Atlantic coast, 1000; south shore of Hudson Strait, 800; east coast of Hudson Bay, 500. The Indians roam over the southern interior in small bands, their northern limit being determined by that of the trees on which they depend for fuel. They live wholly by the chase, and their numbers are dependent upon the deer and other animals; as a consequence there is a constant struggle between the Indian and the lower animals for existence, with great slaughter of the latter, followed by periodic famines among the natives, which greatly reduce their numbers and maintain an equilibrium. The native population has thus remained about stationary for the last two centuries. The Indians belong to the Algonquin family, and speak dialects of the Cree language. By contact with missionaries and fur-traders they are more or less civilized, and the great majority of them are Christians. Those living north of the St Lawrence are Roman Catholic, while the Indians of the western watershed have been converted by the missionaries of the Church Mission Society; the eastern and northern bands have not yet been reached by the missionaries, and are still pagans. The Eskimo of the Atlantic coast have long been under the guidance of the Moravian missionaries, and are well advanced in civilization; those of Hudson Bay have been taught by the Church Mission Society, and promise well; while the Eskimo of Hudson Strait alone remain without teachers, and are pagans. The Eskimo live along the coasts, only going inland for short periods to hunt the barren-ground caribou for their winter clothing; the rest of the year they remain on the shore or the ice, hunting seals and porpoises, which afford them food, clothing and fuel. The christianized Indians and Eskimo read and write in their own language; those under the teaching of the Church Mission Society use a syllabic character, the others make use of the ordinary alphabet.
Political Review.—The peninsula is divided politically between the governments of Canada, Newfoundland and the province of Quebec. The government of Newfoundland, under Letters Patent of the 28th of March 1876, exercises jurisdiction along the Atlantic coast; the boundary between its territory and that of Canada is a line running due north and south from Anse Sablon, on the north shore of the Strait of Belle Isle, to 52° N., the remainder of the boundary being as yet undetermined. The northern boundary of the province of Quebec follows the East Main river to its source in Patamisk lake, thence by a line due east to the Ashuanipi branch of the Hamilton river; it then follows that river and Hamilton Inlet to the coast area under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland. The remainder of the peninsula, north of the province of Quebec, by order in council dated the 18th of December 1897, was constituted Ungava District, an unorganized territory under the jurisdiction of the government of the Dominion of Canada.
Authorities.—W. T. Grenfell and others, Labrador: the Country and the People (New York, 1909); R. F. Holmes, “A Journey in the Interior of Labrador,” Proc. R.G.S. x. 189-205 (1887); A. S. Packard, The Labrador Coast (New York, 1891); Austen Cary, “Exploration on Grand River, Labrador,” Bul. Am. Geo. Soc. vol. xxiv., 1892; R. Bell, “The Labrador Peninsula,” Scottish Geo. Mag. July 1895. Also the following reports by the Geological Survey of Canada:—R. Bell, “Report on an Exploration of the East Coast of Hudson Bay,” 1877-1878; “Observations on the Coast of Labrador and on Hudson Strait and Bay,” 1882-1884; A. P. Low, “Report on the Mistassini Expedition,” 1885; “Report on James Bay and the Country East of Hudson Bay,” 1887-1888; “Report on Explorations in the Labrador Peninsula, 1892-1895,” 1896; “Report on a Traverse of the Northern Part of the Labrador Peninsula,” 1898; “Report on the South Shore of Hudson Strait,” 1899. For History: W. G. Gosling, Labrador (1910).
(A. P. Lo.; A. P. C.)
From the Portuguese llavrador (a yeoman farmer). The name was originally given to Greenland (1st half of 16th century) and was transferred to the peninsula in the belief that it formed part of the same country as Greenland. The name was bestowed “because he who first gave notice of seeing it [Greenland] was a farmer (llavrador) from the Azores.” See the historical sketch of Labrador by W. S. Wallace in Grenfell’s Labrador, &c., 1909.
LABRADORITE, or Labrador Spar, a lime-soda felspar of the plagioclase (q.v.) group, often cut and polished as an ornamental stone. It takes its name from the coast of Labrador, where it was discovered, as boulders, by the Moravian Mission about 1770, and specimens were soon afterwards sent to the secretary in London, the Rev. B. Latrobe. The felspar itself is generally of a dull grey colour, with a rather greasy lustre, but many specimens exhibit in certain directions a magnificent play of colours—blue, green, orange, purple or red; the colour in some specimens changing when the stone is viewed in different directions. This optical effect, known sometimes as “labradorescence,” seems due in some cases to the presence of minute laminae of certain minerals, like göthite or haematite, arranged parallel to the surface which reflects the colour; but in other cases it may be caused not so much by inclusions as by a delicate lamellar structure in the felspar. An aventurine effect is produced by the presence of microscopic enclosures. The original labradorite was found in the neighbourhood of Nain, notably in a lagoon about 50 m. inland, and in St Paul’s Island. Here it occurs with hypersthene, of a rich bronzy sheen, forming a coarse-grained norite. When wet, the stones are remarkably brilliant, and have been called by the natives “fire rocks.” Russia has also yielded chatoyant labradorite, especially near Kiev and in Finland; a fine blue labradorite has been brought from Queensland; and the mineral is also known in several localities in the United States, as at Keeseville, in Essex county, New York. The ornamental stone from south Norway, now largely used as a decorative material in architecture, owes its beauty to a felspar with a blue opalescence, often called labradorite, but really a kind of orthoclase which Professor W. C. Brögger has termed cryptoperthite, whilst the rock in which it occurs is an augite-syenite called by him laurvigite, from its chief locality, Laurvik in Norway. Common labradorite, without play of colour, is an important constituent of such rocks as gabbro, diorite, andesite, dolerite and basalt. (See Plagioclase.) Ejected crystals of labradorite are found on Monti Rossi, a double parasitic cone on Etna.
The term labradorite is unfortunately used also as a rock-name, having been applied by Fouqué and Lévy to a group of basic rocks rich in augite and poor in olivine.
(F. W. R.*)
LABRADOR TEA, the popular name for a species of Ledum, a small evergreen shrub growing in bogs and swamps in Greenland and the more northern parts of North America. The leaves are tough, densely covered with brown wool on the under face, fragrant when crushed and have been used as a substitute for tea. The plant is a member of the heath family (Ericaceae).
LABRUM (Lat. for “lip”), the large vessel of the warm bath in the Roman thermae. These were cut out of great blocks of marble and granite, and have generally an overhanging lip. There is one in the Vatican of porphyry over 12 ft. in diameter. The term labrum is used in zoology, of a lip or lip-like part; in entomology it is applied specifically to the upper lip of an insect, the lower lip being termed labium.
LA BRUYÈRE, JEAN DE (1643-1696), French essayist and moralist, was born in Paris on the 16th of August 1645, and not as was once the common statement, at Dourdan (Seine-et-Oise) in 1639. His family was of the middle class, and his reference to a certain Geoffroy de la Bruyère, a crusader, is only a satirical illustration of a method of self-ennoblement common in France as in some other countries. Indeed he himself always signed the name Delabruyère in one word, thus avowing his roture. His progenitors, however, were of respectable position, and he could trace them back at least as far as his great-grandfather, who had been a strong Leaguer. La Bruyère’s own father was controller-general of finance to the Hôtel de Ville. The son was educated by the Oratorians and at the university of Orleans; he was called to the bar, and in 1673 bought a post in the revenue department at Caen, which gave the status of noblesse and a certain income. In 1687 he sold this office. His predecessor in it was a relation of Bossuet, and it is thought that the transaction was the cause of La Bruyère’s introduction to the great orator. Bossuet, who from the date of his own preceptorship of the dauphin, was a kind of agent-general for tutorships in the royal family, introduced him in 1684 to the household of the great Condé, to whose grandson Henri Jules de Bourbon as well as to that prince’s girl-bride Mlle de Nantes, one of Louis XIV.’s natural children, La Bruyère became tutor. The rest of his life was passed in the household of the prince or else at court, and he seems to have profited by the inclination which all the Condé family had for the society of men of letters. Very little is known of the events of this part—or, indeed, of any part—of his life. The impression derived from the few notices of him is of a silent, observant, but somewhat awkward man, resembling in manners Joseph Addison, whose master in literature La Bruyère undoubtedly was. Yet despite the numerous enemies which his book raised up for him, most of these notices are favourable—notably that of Saint-Simon, an acute judge and one bitterly prejudiced against roturiers generally. There is, however, a curious passage in a letter from Boileau to Racine in which he regrets that “nature has not made La Bruyère as agreeable as he would like to be.” His Caractères appeared in 1688, and at once, as Nicolas de Malezieu had predicted, brought him “bien des lecteurs et bien des ennemis.” At the head of these were Thomas Corneille, Fontenelle and Benserade, who were pretty clearly aimed at in the book, as well as innumerable other persons, men and women of letters as well as of society, on whom the cap of La Bruyère’s fancy-portraits was fitted by manuscript “keys” compiled by the scribblers of the day. The friendship of Bossuet and still more the protection of the Condés sufficiently defended the author, and he continued to insert fresh portraits of his contemporaries in each new edition of his book, especially in the 4th (1689). Those, however, whom he had attacked were powerful in the Academy, and numerous defeats awaited La Bruyère before he could make his way into that guarded hold. He was defeated thrice in 1691, and on one memorable occasion he had but seven votes, five of which were those of Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, Pellisson and Bussy-Rabutin. It was not till 1693 that he was elected, and even then an epigram, which, considering his admitted insignificance in conversation, was not of the worst, haesit lateri:—
“Quand la Bruyère se présente
Pourquoi faut il crier haro?
Pour faire un nombre de quarante
Ne falloit il pas un zéro?”
His unpopularity was, however, chiefly confined to the subjects of his sarcastic portraiture, and to the hack writers of the time, of whom he was wont to speak with a disdain only surpassed by that of Pope. His description of the Mercure galant as “immédiatement au dessous de rien” is the best-remembered specimen of these unwise attacks; and would of itself account for the enmity of the editors, Fontenelle and the younger Corneille. La Bruyère’s discourse of admission at the Academy, one of the best of its kind, was, like his admission itself, severely criticized, especially by the partisans of the “Moderns” in the “Ancient and Modern” quarrel. With the Caractères, the translation of Theophrastus, and a few letters, most of them addressed to the prince de Condé, it completes the list of his literary work, with the exception of a curious and much-disputed posthumous treatise. La Bruyère died very suddenly, and not long after his admission to the Academy. He is said to have been struck with dumbness in an assembly of his friends, and, being carried home to the Hôtel de Condé, to have expired of apoplexy a day or two afterwards, on the 10th of May 1696. It is not surprising that, considering the recent panic about poisoning, the bitter personal enmities which he had excited and the peculiar circumstances of his death, suspicions of foul play should have been entertained, but there was apparently no foundation for them. Two years after his death appeared certain Dialogues sur le Quiétisme, alleged to have been found among his papers incomplete, and to have been completed by the editor. As these dialogues are far inferior in literary merit to La Bruyère’s other works, their genuineness has been denied. But the straightforward and circumstantial account of their appearance given by this editor, the Abbé du Pin, a man of acknowledged probity, the intimacy of La Bruyère with Bossuet, whose views in his contest with Fénelon these dialogues are designed to further, and the entire absence, at so short a time after the alleged author’s death, of the least protest on the part of his friends and representatives, seem to be decisive in their favour.
Although it is permissible to doubt whether the value of the Caractères has not been somewhat exaggerated by traditional French criticism, they deserve beyond all question a high place. The plan of the book is thoroughly original, if that term may be accorded to a novel and skilful combination of existing elements. The treatise of Theophrastus may have furnished the first idea, but it gave little more. With the ethical generalizations and social Dutch painting of his original La Bruyère combined the peculiarities of the Montaigne essay, of the Pensées and Maximes of which Pascal and La Rochefoucauld are the masters respectively, and lastly of that peculiar 17th-century product, the “portrait” or elaborate literary picture of the personal and mental characteristics of an individual. The result was quite unlike anything that had been before seen, and it has not been exactly reproduced since, though the essay of Addison and Steele resembles it very closely, especially in the introduction of fancy portraits. In the titles of his work, and in its extreme desultoriness, La Bruyère reminds the reader of Montaigne, but he aimed too much at sententiousness to attempt even the apparent continuity of the great essayist. The short paragraphs of which his chapters consist are made up of maxims proper, of criticisms literary and ethical, and above all of the celebrated sketches of individuals baptized with names taken from the plays and romances of the time. These last are the great feature of the work, and that which gave it its immediate if not its enduring popularity. They are wonderfully piquant, extraordinarily life-like in a certain sense, and must have given great pleasure or more frequently exquisite pain to the originals, who were in many cases unmistakable and in most recognizable.
But there is something wanting in them. The criticism of Charpentier, who received La Bruyère at the Academy, and who was of the opposite faction, is in fact fully justified as far as it goes. La Bruyère literally “est [trop] descendu dans le particulier.” He has neither, like Molière, embodied abstract peculiarities in a single life-like type, nor has he, like Shakespeare, made the individual pass sub speciem aeternitatis, and serve as a type while retaining his individuality. He is a photographer rather than an artist in his portraiture. So, too, his maxims, admirably as they are expressed, and exact as their truth often is, are on a lower level than those of La Rochefoucauld. Beside the sculpturesque precision, the Roman brevity, the profoundness of ethical intuition “piercing to the accepted hells beneath,” of the great Frondeur, La Bruyère has the air of a literary petit-maître dressing up superficial observation in the finery of esprit. It is indeed only by comparison that he loses, but then it is by comparison that he is usually praised. His abundant wit and his personal “malice” have done much to give him his rank in French literature, but much must also be allowed to his purely literary merits. With Racine and Massillon he is probably the very best writer of what is somewhat arbitrarily styled classical French. He is hardly ever incorrect—the highest merit in the eyes of a French academic critic. He is always well-bred, never obscure, rarely though sometimes “precious” in the turns and niceties of language in which he delights to indulge, in his avowed design of attracting readers by form, now that, in point of matter, “tout est dit.” It ought to be added to his credit that he was sensible of the folly of impoverishing French by ejecting old words. His chapter on “Les ouvrages de l’esprit” contains much good criticism, though it shows that, like most of his contemporaries except Fénelon, he was lamentably ignorant of the literature of his own tongue.
The editions of La Bruyère, both partial and complete, have been extremely numerous. Les Caractères de Théophraste traduits du Grec, avec les caractères et les mœurs de ce siècle, appeared for the first time in 1688, being published by Michallet, to whose little daughter, according to tradition, La Bruyère gave the profits of the book as a dowry. Two other editions, little altered, were published in the same year. In the following year, and in each year until 1694, with the exception of 1693, a fresh edition appeared, and, in all these five, additions, omissions and alterations were largely made. A ninth edition, not much altered, was put forth in the year of the author’s death. The Academy speech appeared in the eighth edition. The Quietist dialogues were published in 1699; most of the letters, including those addressed to Condé, not till 1867. In recent times numerous editions of the complete works have appeared, notably those of Walckenaer (1845), Servois (1867, in the series of Grands écrivains de la France), Asselineau (a scholarly reprint of the last original edition, 1872) and finally Chassang (1876); the last is one of the most generally useful, as the editor has collected almost everything of value in his predecessors. The literature of “keys” to La Bruyère is extensive and apocryphal. Almost everything that can be done in this direction and in that of general illustration was done by Edouard Fournier in his learned and amusing Comédie de La Bruyère (1866); M. Paul Morillot contributed a monograph on La Bruyère to the series of Grands écrivains français in 1904.
(G. Sa.)
LABUAN (a corruption of the Malay word labuh-an, signifying an “anchorage”), an island of the Malay Archipelago, off the north-west coast of Borneo in 5° 16′ N., 115° 15′ E. Its area is 30.23 sq. m.; it is distant about 6 m. from the mainland of Borneo at the nearest point, and lies opposite to the northern end of the great Brunei Bay. The island is covered with low hills rising from flats near the shore to an irregular plateau near the centre. About 1500 acres are under rice cultivation, and there are scattered patches of coco-nut and sago palms and a few vegetable gardens, the latter owned for the most part by Chinese. For the rest Labuan is covered over most of its extent by vigorous secondary growth, amidst which the charred trunks of trees rise at frequent intervals, the greater part of the forest of the island having been destroyed by great accidental conflagrations. Labuan was ceded to Great Britain in 1846, chiefly through the instrumentality of Sir James Brooke, the first raja of Sarawak, and was occupied two years later.
At the time of its cession the island was uninhabited, but in 1881 the population numbered 5731, though it had declined to 5361 in 1891. The census returns for 1901 give the population at 8411. The native population consists of Malay fishermen, Chinese, Tamils and small shifting communities of Kadayans, Tutongs and other natives of the neighbouring Bornean coast. There are about fifty European residents. At the time of its occupation by Great Britain a brilliant future was predicted for Labuan, which it was thought would become a second Singapore. These hopes have not been realized. The coal deposits, which are of somewhat indifferent quality, have been worked with varying degrees of failure by a succession of companies, one of which, the Labuan & Borneo Ltd., liquidated in 1902 after the collapse of a shaft upon which large sums had been expended. It was succeeded by the Labuan Coalfields Ltd. The harbour is a fine one, and the above-named company possesses three wharves capable of berthing the largest Eastern-going ocean steamers. To-day Labuan chiefly exists as a trading depôt for the natives of the neighbouring coast of Borneo, who sell their produce—beeswax, edible birds-nests, camphor, gutta, trepang, &c.,—to Chinese shopkeepers, who resell it in Singapore. There is also a considerable trade in sago, much of which is produced on the mainland, and there are three small sago-factories on the island where the raw product is converted into flour. The Eastern Extension Telegraph Company has a central station at Labuan with cables to Singapore, Hong-Kong and British North Borneo. Monthly steam communication is maintained by a German firm between Labuan, Singapore and the Philippines. The colony joined the Imperial Penny Postage Union in 1889. There are a few miles of road on the island and a metre-gauge railway from the harbour to the coal mines, the property of the company. There is a Roman Catholic church with a resident priest, an Anglican church, visited periodically by a clergyman from the mainland, two native and Chinese schools, and a sailors’ club, built by the Roman Catholic mission. The bishop of Singapore and Sarawak is also bishop of Labuan. The European graveyard has repeatedly been the scene of outrages perpetrated, it is believed, by natives from the mainland of Borneo, the graves being rifled and the hair of the head and other parts of the corpses being carried off to furnish ornaments to weapons and ingredients in the magic philtres of the natives. Pulau Dat, a small island in the near neighbourhood of Labuan, is the site of a fine coco-nut plantation whence nuts and copra are exported in bulk. The climate is hot and very humid.
Until 1869 the expenditure of the colony was partly defrayed by imperial grants-in-aid, but after that date it was left to its own resources. A garrison of imperial troops was maintained until 1871, when the troops were withdrawn after many deaths from fever and dysentery had occurred among them. Since then law and order have been maintained without difficulty by a small mixed police force of Punjabis and Malays. From the 1st of January 1890 to the 1st of January 1906 Labuan was transferred for administrative purposes to the British North Borneo Company, the governor for the time being of the company’s territories holding also the royal commission as governor of Labuan. This arrangement did not work satisfactorily and called forth frequent petitions and protests from the colonists. Labuan was then placed under the government of the Straits Settlements, and is administered by a deputy governor who is a member of the Straits Civil Service.
LABURNUM, known botanically as Laburnum vulgare (or Cytisus Laburnum), a familiar tree of the pea family (Leguminosae); it is also known as “golden chain” and “golden rain.” It is a native of the mountains of France, Switzerland, southern Germany, northern Italy, &c., has long been cultivated as an ornamental tree throughout Europe, and was introduced into north-east America by the European colonists. Gerard records it as growing in his garden in 1597 under the names of anagyris, laburnum or beane trefoyle (Herball, p. 1239), but the date of its introduction into England appears to be unknown. In France it is called l’aubour—a corruption from laburnum according to Du Hamel—as also arbois, i.e. arc-bois, “the wood having been used by the ancient Gauls for bows. It is still so employed in some parts of the Mâconnois, where the bows are found to preserve their strength and elasticity for half a century” (Loudon, Arboretum, ii. 590).
Several varieties of this tree are cultivated, differing in the size of the flowers, in the form of the foliage, &c., such as the “oak-leafed” (quercifolium), pendulum, crispum, &c.; var. aureum has golden yellow leaves. One of the most remarkable forms is Cytisus Adami (C. purpurascens), which bears three kinds of blossoms, viz. racemes of pure yellow flowers, others of a purple colour and others of an intermediate brick-red tint. The last are hybrid blossoms, and are sterile, with malformed ovules, though the pollen appears to be good. The yellow and purple “reversions” are fertile. It originated in Paris in 1828 by M. Adam, who inserted a “shield” of the bark of Cytisus purpureus into a stock of Laburnum. A vigorous shoot from this bud was subsequently propagated. Hence it would appear that the two distinct species became united by their cambium layers, and the trees propagated therefrom subsequently reverted to their respective parentages in bearing both yellow and purple flowers, but produce as well blossoms of an intermediate or hybrid character. Such a result may be called a “graft-hybrid.” For full details see Darwin’s Animals and Plants under Domestication.
The laburnum has highly poisonous properties. The roots taste like liquorice, which is a member of the same family as the laburnum. It has proved fatal to cattle, though hares and rabbits eat the bark of it with avidity (Gardener’s Chronicle, 1881, vol. xvi. p. 666). The seeds also are highly poisonous, possessing emetic as well as acrid narcotic principles, especially in a green state. Gerard (loc. cit.) alludes to the powerful effect produced on the system by taking the bruised leaves medicinally. Pliny states that bees will not visit the flowers (N.H. xvi. 31), but this is an error, as bees and butterflies play an important part in the fertilization of the flowers, which they visit for the nectar.
The heart wood of the laburnum is of a dark reddish-brown colour, hard and durable, and takes a good polish. Hence it is much prized by turners, and used with other coloured woods for inlaying purposes. The laburnum has been called false ebony from this character of its wood.
LABYRINTH (Gr. λαβύρινθος, Lat. labyrinthus), the name given by the Greeks and Romans to buildings, entirely or partly subterranean, containing a number of chambers and intricate passages, which rendered egress puzzling and difficult. The word is considered by some to be of Egyptian origin, while others connect it with the Gr. λαῦρα, the passage of a mine. Another derivation suggested is from λάβρυς, a Lydian or Carian word meaning a “double-edged axe” (Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxi. 109, 268), according to which the Cretan labyrinth or palace of Minos was the house of the double axe, the symbol of Zeus.
Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 19, 91) mentions the following as the four famous labyrinths of antiquity.
1. The Egyptian: of which a description is given by Herodotus (ii. 148) and Strabo (xvii. 811). It was situated to the east of Lake Moeris, opposite the ancient site of Arsinoë or Crocodilopolis. According to Egyptologists, the word means “the temple at the entrance of the lake.” According to Herodotus, the entire building, surrounded by a single wall, contained twelve courts and 3000 chambers, 1500 above and 1500 below ground. The roofs were wholly of stone, and the walls covered with sculpture. On one side stood a pyramid 40 orgyiae, or about 243 ft. high. Herodotus himself went through the upper chambers, but was not permitted to visit those underground, which he was told contained the tombs of the kings who had built the labyrinth, and of the sacred crocodiles. Other ancient authorities considered that it was built as a place of meeting for the Egyptian nomes or political divisions; but it is more likely that it was intended for sepulchral purposes. It was the work of Amenemhē III., of the 12th dynasty, who lived about 2300 B.C. It was first located by the Egyptologist Lepsius to the north of Hawara in the Fayum, and (in 1888) Flinders Petrie discovered its foundation, the extent of which is about 1000 ft. long by 800 ft. wide. Immediately to the north of it is the pyramid of Hawara, in which the mummies of the king and his daughter have been found (see W. M. Flinders Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoë, 1889).
2. The Cretan: said to have been built by Daedalus on the plan of the Egyptian, and famous for its connexion with the legend of the Minotaur. It is doubtful whether it ever had any real existence and Diodorus Siculus says that in his time it had already disappeared. By the older writers it was placed near Cnossus, and is represented on coins of that city, but nothing corresponding to it has been found during the course of the recent excavations, unless the royal palace was meant. The rocks of Crete are full of winding caves, which gave the first idea of the legendary labyrinth. Later writers (for instance, Claudian, De sexto Cons. Honorii, 634) place it near Gortyna, and a set of winding passages and chambers close to that place is still pointed out as the labyrinth; these are, however, in reality ancient quarries.
3. The Lemnian: similar in construction to the Egyptian. Remains of it existed in the time of Pliny. Its chief feature was its 150 columns.
4. The Italian: a series of chambers in the lower part of the tomb of Porsena at Clusium. This tomb was 300 ft. square and 50 ft. high, and underneath it was a labyrinth, from which it was exceedingly difficult to find an exit without the assistance of a clew of thread. It has been maintained that this tomb is to be recognized in the mound named Poggio Gajella near Chiusi.
Lastly, Pliny (xxxvi. 19) applies the word to a rude drawing on the ground or pavement, to some extent anticipating the modern or garden maze.
On the Egyptian labyrinth see A. Wiedemann, Ägyptische Geschichte (1884), p. 258, and his edition of the second book of Herodotus (1890); on the Cretan, C. Höck, Kreta (1823-1829), and A. J. Evans in Journal of Hellenic Studies; on the subject generally, articles in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie and Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités.
In gardening, a labyrinth or maze means an intricate network of pathways enclosed by hedges or plantations, so that those who enter become bewildered in their efforts to find the centre or make their exit. It is a remnant of the old geometrical style of gardening. There are two methods of forming it. That which is perhaps the more common consists of walks, or alleys as they were formerly called, laid out and kept to an equal width or nearly so by parallel hedges, which should be so close and thick that the eye cannot readily penetrate them. The task is to get to the centre, which is often raised, and generally contains a covered seat, a fountain, a statue or even a small group of trees. After reaching this point the next thing is to return to the entrance, when it is found that egress is as difficult as ingress. To every design of this sort there should be a key, but even those who know the key are apt to be perplexed. Sometimes the design consists of alleys only, as in fig. 1, published in 1706 by London and Wise. In such a case, when the farther end is reached, there only remains to travel back again. Of a more pretentious character was a design published by Switzer in 1742. This is of octagonal form, with very numerous parallel hedges and paths, and “six different entrances, whereof there is but one that leads to the centre, and that is attended with some difficulties and a great many stops.” Some of the older designs for labyrinths, however, avoid this close parallelism of the alleys, which, though equally involved and intricate in their windings, are carried through blocks of thick planting, as shown in fig. 2, from a design published in 1728 by Batty Langley. These blocks of shrubbery have been called wildernesses. To this latter class belongs the celebrated labyrinth at Versailles (fig. 3), of which Switzer observes, that it “is allowed by all to be the noblest of its kind in the world.”
Whatever style be adopted, it is essential that there should be a thick healthy growth of the hedges or shrubberies that confine the wanderer. The trees used should be impenetrable to the eye, and so tall that no one can look over them; and the paths should be of gravel and well kept. The trees chiefly used for the hedges, and the best for the purpose, are the hornbeam among deciduous trees, or the yew among evergreens. The beech might be used instead of the hornbeam on suitable soil. The green holly might be planted as an evergreen with very good results, and so might the American arbor vitae if the natural soil presented no obstacle. The ground must be well prepared, so as to give the trees a good start, and a mulching of manure during the early years of their growth would be of much advantage. They must be kept trimmed in or clipped, especially in their earlier stages; trimming with the knife is much to be preferred to clipping with shears. Any plants getting much in advance of the rest should be topped, and the whole kept to some 4 ft. or 5 ft. in height until the lower parts are well thickened, when it may be allowed to acquire the allotted height by moderate annual increments. In cutting, the hedge (as indeed all hedges) should be kept broadest at the base and narrowed upwards, which prevents it from getting thin and bare below by the stronger growth being drawn to the tops.
The maze in the gardens at Hampton Court Palace (fig. 4) is considered one of the finest examples in England. It was planted in the early part of the reign of William III., though it has been supposed that a maze had existed there since the time of Henry VIII. It is constructed on the hedge and alley system, and was, it is believed, originally planted with hornbeam, but many of the plants have been replaced by hollies, yews, &c., so that the vegetation is mixed. The walks are about half a mile in length, and the ground occupied is a little over a quarter of an acre. The centre contains two large trees, with a seat beneath each. The key to reach this resting place is to keep the right hand continuously in contact with the hedge from first to last, going round all the stops.
The maze in the gardens at Somerleyton Hall, near Lowestoft (fig. 5), was designed by Mr John Thomas. The hedges are of English yew, are about 6½ ft. high, and have been planted about sixty years. In the centre is a grass mound, raised to the height of the hedges, and on this mound is a pagoda, approached by a curved grass path. At the two corners on the western side are banks of laurels 15 or 16 ft. high. On each side of the hedges throughout the labyrinth is a small strip of grass.
There was also a labyrinth at Theobald’s Park, near Cheshunt, when this place passed from the earl of Salisbury into the possession of James I. Another is said to have existed at Wimbledon House, the seat of Earl Spencer, which was probably laid out by Brown in the 18th century. There is an interesting labyrinth, somewhat after the plan of fig. 2, at Mistley Place, Manningtree.
When the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society at South Kensington were being planned, Albert, Prince Consort, the president of the society, especially desired that there should be a maze formed in the ante-garden, which was made in the form shown in fig. 6. This labyrinth, designed by Lieut. W. A. Nesfield, was for many years the chief point of attraction to the younger visitors to the gardens; but it was allowed to go to ruin, and had to be destroyed. The gardens themselves are now built over.
(T. Mo.)
LABYRINTHULIDEA, the name given by Sir Ray Lankester (1885) to Sarcodina (q.v.) forming a reticulate plasmodium, the denser masses united by fine pseudopodical threads, hardly distinct from some Proteomyxa, such as Archerina.
This is a small and heterogeneous group. Labyrinthula, discovered by L. Cienkowsky, forms a network of relatively stiff threads on which are scattered large spindle-shaped enlargements, each representing an amoeba, with a single nucleus. The threads are pseudopods, very slowly emitted and withdrawn. The amoebae multiply by fission in the active state. The nearest approach to a “reproductive” state is the approximation of the amoebae, and their separate encystment in an irregular heap, recalling the Acrasieae. From each cyst ultimately emerges a single amoeba, or more rarely four (figs. 6, 7). The saprophyte Diplophrys (?) stercorea (Cienk.) appears closely allied to this.
1. A colony or “cell-heap” of Labyrinthula vitellina, Cienk., crawling upon an Alga.
2. A colony or “cell-heap” of Chlamydomyxa labyrinthuloides, Archer, with fully expanded network of threads on which the oat-shaped corpuscles (cells) are moving. o, Is an ingested food particle; at c a portion of the general protoplasm has detached itself and become encysted.
3 A portion of the network of Labyrinthula vitellina, Cienk., more highly magnified. p, Protoplasmic mass apparently produced by fusion of several filaments. p′, Fusion of several cells which have lost their definite spindle-shaped contour. s, Corpuscles which have become spherical and are no longer moving (perhaps about to be encysted).
4. A single spindle cell and threads of Labyrinthula macrocystis, Cienk. n, Nucleus.
5. A group of encysted cells of L. Macrocystis, embedded in a tough secretion.
6, 7. Encysted cells of L. macrocystis, with enclosed protoplasm divided into four spores.
8, 9. Transverse division of a non-encysted spindle-cell of L. macrocystis.
Chlamydomyxa (W. Archer) resembles Labyrinthula in its freely branched plasmodium, but contains yellowish chromatophores, and minute oval vesicles (“physodes”) filled with a substance allied to tannin—possibly phloroglucin—which glide along the plasmodial tracks. The cell-body contains numerous nuclei; but in its active state is not resolvable into distinct oval amoeboids. It is amphitrophic, ingesting and digesting other Protista, as well as “assimilating” by its chromatophores, the product being oil, not starch. The whole body may form a laminated cellulose resting cyst, from which it may only temporarily emerge (fig. 2), or it may undergo resolution into nucleate cells which then encyst, and become multinucleate before rupturing the cyst afresh.
Leydenia (F. Schaudinn) is a parasite in malignant diseases of the pleura. The pseudopodia of adjoining cells unite to form a network; but its affinities seem to such social naked Foraminifera as Mikrogromia.
See Cienkowsky, Archiv f. Microscopische Anatomie, iii. 274 (1867), xii. 44 (1876); W. Archer, Quart. Jour. Microscopic Science, xv. 107 (1875); E. R. Lankester, Ibid., xxxix., 233 (1896); Hieronymus and Jenkinson, Ibid., xiii. 89 (1899); W. Zopf, Beiträge zur Physiologie und Morphologie niederer Organismen, ii. 36 (1892), iv. 60 (1894); Pènard, Archiv für Protistenkunde, iv. 296 (1904); F. Schaudinn and Leyden, Sitzungsberichte der Königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, vi. (1896).
LAC, a resinous incrustation formed on the twigs and young branches of various trees by an insect, Coccus lacca, which infests them. The term lac (laksha, Sanskrit; lakh, Hindi) is the same as the numeral lakh—a hundred thousand—and is indicative of the countless hosts of insects which make their appearance with every successive generation. Lac is a product of the East Indies, coming especially from Bengal, Pegu, Siam and Assam, and is produced by a number of trees of the species Ficus, particularly F. religiosa. The insect which yields it is closely allied to the cochineal insect, Coccus cacti; kermes, C. ilicis and Polish grains, C. polonicus, all of which, like the lac insect, yield a red colouring matter. The minute larval insects fasten in myriads on the young shoots, and, inserting their long proboscides into the bark, draw their nutriment from the sap of the plant. The insects begin at once to exude the resinous secretion over their entire bodies; this forms in effect a cocoon, and, the separate exudations coalescing, a continuous hard resinous layer regularly honeycombed with small cavities is deposited over and around the twig. From this living tomb the female insects, which form the great bulk of the whole, never escape. After their impregnation, which takes place on the liberation of the males, about three months from their first appearance, the females develop into a singular amorphous organism consisting in its main features of a large smooth shining crimson-coloured sac—the ovary—with a beak stuck into the bark, and a few papillary processes projected above the resinous surface. The red fluid in the ovary is the substance which forms the lac dye of commerce. To obtain the largest amount of both resin and dye-stuff it is necessary to gather the twigs with their living inhabitants in or near June and November. Lac encrusting the twigs as gathered is known in commerce as “stick lac”; the resin crushed to small fragments and washed in hot water to free it from colouring matter constitutes “seed lac”; and this, when melted, strained through thick canvas, and spread out into thin layers, is known as “shellac,” and is the form in which the resin is usually brought to European markets. Shellac varies in colour from a dark amber to an almost pure black; the palest, known as “orange-lac,” is the most valuable; the darker varieties—“liver-coloured,” “ruby,” “garnet,” &c.—diminish in value as the colour deepens. Shellac may be bleached by dissolving it in a boiling lye of caustic potash and passing chlorine through the solution till all the resin is precipitated, the product being known as white shellac. Bleached lac takes light delicate shades of colour, and dyed a golden yellow it is much used in the East Indies for working into chain ornaments for the head and for other personal adornments. Lac is a principal ingredient in sealing-wax, and forms the basis of some of the most valuable varnishes, besides being useful in various cements, &c. Average stick lac contains about 68% of resin, 10 of lac dye and 6 of a waxy substance. Lac dye is obtained by evaporating the water in which stick lac is washed, and comes into commerce in the form of small square cakes. It is in many respects similar to, although not identical with, cochineal.
LACAILLE, NICOLAS LOUIS DE (1713-1762), French astronomer, was born at Rumigny, in the Ardennes, on the 15th of March 1713. Left destitute by the death of his father, who held a post in the household of the duchess of Vendôme, his theological studies at the Collège de Lisieux in Paris were prosecuted at the expense of the duke of Bourbon. After he had taken deacon’s orders, however, he devoted himself exclusively to science, and, through the patronage of J. Cassini, obtained employment, first in surveying the coast from Nantes to Bayonne, then, in 1739, in remeasuring the French arc of the meridian. The success of this difficult operation, which occupied two years, and achieved the correction of the anomalous result published by J. Cassini in 1718, was mainly due to Lacaille’s industry and skill. He was rewarded by admission to the Academy and the appointment of mathematical professor in Mazarin college, where he worked in a small observatory fitted for his use. His desire to observe the southern heavens led him to propose, in 1750, an astronomical expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, which was officially sanctioned, and fortunately executed. Among its results were determinations of the lunar and of the solar parallax (Mars serving as an intermediary), the first measurement of a South African arc of the meridian, and the observation of 10,000 southern stars. On his return to Paris in 1754 Lacaille was distressed to find himself an object of public attention; he withdrew to Mazarin college, and there died, on the 21st of March 1762, of an attack of gout aggravated by unremitting toil. Lalande said of him that, during a comparatively short life, he had made more observations and calculations than all the astronomers of his time put together. The quality of his work rivalled its quantity, while the disinterestedness and rectitude of his moral character earned him universal respect.
His principal works are: Astronomiae Fundamenta (1757), containing a standard catalogue of 398 stars, re-edited by F. Baily (Memoirs Roy. Astr. Society, v. 93); Tabulae Solares (1758); Coelum australe stelliferum (1763) (edited by J. D. Maraldi), giving zone-observations of 10,000 stars, and describing fourteen new constellations; “Observations sur 515 étoiles du Zodiaque” (published in t. vi. of his Éphémérides, 1763); Leçons élémentaires de Mathématiques (1741), frequently reprinted; ditto de Mécanique (1743), &c.; ditto d’Astronomie (1746), 4th edition augmented by Lalande (1779); ditto d’Optique (1750), &c. Calculations by him of eclipses for eighteen hundred years were inserted in L’Art de vérifier les dates (1750); he communicated to the Academy in 1755 a classed catalogue of forty-two southern nebulae, and gave in t. ii. of his Éphémérides (1755) practical rules for the employment of the lunar method of longitudes, proposing in his additions to Pierre Bouguer’s Traité de Navigation (1760) the model of a nautical almanac.
See G. de Fouchy, “Éloge de Lacaille,” Hist. de l’Acad. des Sciences, p. 197 (1762); G. Brotier, Preface to Lacaille’s Coelum australe; Claude Carlier, Discours historique, prefixed to Lacaille’s Journal historique du voyage fait au Cap (1763); J. J. Lalande, Connoissance des temps, p. 185 (1767); Bibl. astr. pp. 422, 456, 461, 482; J. Delambre, Hist. de l’astr. au XVIIIe siècle, pp. 457-542; J. S. Bailly, Hist. de l’astr. moderne, tomes ii., iii., passim; J. C. Poggendorff, Biog. Lit. Handwörterbuch; R. Grant, Hist. of Physical Astronomy, pp. 486, &c.; R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie. A catalogue of 9766 stars, reduced from Lacaille’s observations by T. Henderson, under the supervision of F. Baily, was published in London in 1847.
LACAITA, SIR JAMES [Giacomo] (1813-1895), Anglo-Italian politician and writer. Born at Manduria in southern Italy, he practised law in Naples, and having come in contact with a number of prominent Englishmen and Americans in that city, he acquired a desire to study the English language. Although a moderate Liberal in politics, he never joined any secret society, but in 1851 after the restoration of Bourbon autocracy he was arrested for having supplied Gladstone with information on Bourbon misrule. Through the intervention of the British and Russian ministers he was liberated, but on the publication of Gladstone’s famous letters to Lord Aberdeen he was obliged to leave Naples. He first settled in Edinburgh, where he married Maria Carmichael, and then in London where he made numerous friends in literary and political circles, and was professor of Italian at Queen’s College from 1853 to 1856. In the latter year he accompanied Lord Minto to Italy, on which occasion he first met Cavour. From 1857 to 1863 he was private secretary (non-political) to Lord Lansdowne, and in 1858 he accompanied Gladstone to the Ionian Islands as secretary, for which services he was made a K.C.M.G. the following year. In 1860 Francis II. of Naples had implored Napoleon III. to send a squadron to prevent Garibaldi from crossing over from Sicily to Calabria; the emperor expressed himself willing to do so provided Great Britain co-operated, and Lord John Russell was at first inclined to agree. At this juncture Cavour, having heard of the scheme, entrusted Lacaita, at the suggestion of Sir James Hudson, the British minister at Turin, with the task of inducing Russell to refuse co-operation. Lacaita, who was an intimate friend both of Russell and his wife, succeeded, with the help of the latter, in winning over the British statesman just as he was about to accept the Franco-Neapolitan proposal, which was in consequence abandoned. He returned to Naples late in 1860 and the following year was elected member of parliament for Bitonto, although he had been naturalized a British subject in 1855. He took little part in parliamentary politics, but in 1876 was created senator. He was actively interested in a number of English companies operating in Italy, and was made one of the directors of the Italian Southern Railway Co. He had a wide circle of friends in many European countries and in America, including a number of the most famous men in politics and literature. He died in 1895 at Posilipo near Naples.
An authority on Dante, he gave many lectures on Italian literature and history while in England; and among his writings may be mentioned a large number of articles on Italian subjects in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1857-1860), and an edition of Benvenuto da Imola’s Latin lectures on Dante delivered in 1375; he co-operated with Lord Vernon in the latter’s great edition of Dante’s Inferno (London, 1858-1865), and he compiled a catalogue in four volumes of the duke of Devonshire’s library at Chatsworth (London, 1879).
LA CALLE, a seaport of Algeria, in the arrondissement of Bona, department of Constantine, 56 m. by rail E. of Bona and 10 m. W. of the Tunisian frontier. It is the centre of the Algerian and Tunisian coral fisheries and has an extensive industry in the curing of sardines; but the harbour is small and exposed to the N.E. and W. winds. The old fortified town, now almost abandoned, is built on a rocky peninsula about 400 yds. long, connected with the mainland by a bank of sand. Since the occupation of La Calle by the French in 1836 a new town has grown up along the coast. Pop. (1906) of the town, 2774; of the commune, 4612.
La Calle from the times of its earliest records in the 10th century has been the residence of coral merchants. In the 16th century exclusive privileges of fishing for coral were granted by the dey of Algiers to the French, who first established themselves on a bay to the westward of La Calle, naming their settlement Bastion de France; many ruins still exist of this town. In 1677 they moved their headquarters to La Calle. The company—Compagnie d’Afrique—who owned the concession for the fishery was suppressed in 1798 on the outbreak of war between France and Algeria. In 1806 the British consul-general at Algiers obtained the right to occupy Bona and La Calle for an annual rent of £11,000; but though the money was paid for several years no practical effect was given to the agreement. The French regained possession in 1817, were expelled during the wars of 1827, when La Calle was burnt, but returned and rebuilt the place in 1836. The boats engaged in the fishery were mainly Italian, but the imposition, during the last quarter of the 19th century, of heavy taxes on all save French boats drove the foreign vessels away. For some years the industry was abandoned, but was restarted on a small scale in 1903.
See Abbé Poiret, Voyage en Barbarie ... (Paris, 1789); E. Broughton, Six Years’ Residence in Algiers (London, 1839) and Sir R. L. Playfair, Travels in the Footsteps of Bruce (London, 1877).
LA CALPRENÈDE, GAUTHIER DE COSTES, Seigneur de (c. 1610-1663), French novelist and dramatist, was born at the Château of Tolgou, near Sarlat (Dordogne), in 1609 or 1610. After studying at Toulouse, he came to Paris and entered the regiment of the guards, becoming in 1650 gentleman-in-ordinary of the royal household. He died in 1663 in consequence of a kick from his horse. He was the author of several long heroic romances ridiculed by Boileau. They are: Cassandre (10 vols., 1642-1650); Cléopatre (1648); Faramond (1661); and Les Nouvelles, ou les Divertissements de la princesse Alcidiane (1661) published under his wife’s name, but generally attributed to him. His plays lack the spirit and force that occasionally redeem the novels. The best is Le Comte d’Essex, represented in 1638, which supplied some ideas to Thomas Corneille for his tragedy of the same name.
LA CARLOTA, a town of the province of Negros Occidental, Philippine Islands, on the W. coast of the island and the left bank of San Enrique river, about 18 m. S. of Bacolod, the capital of the province. Pop. (1903), after the annexation of San Enrique, 19,192. There are fifty-four villages or barrios in the town; the largest had a population in 1903 of 3254 and two others had each more than 1000 inhabitants. The Panayano dialect of the Visayan language is spoken by most of the inhabitants. At La Carlota the Spanish government established a station for the study of the culture of sugar-cane; by the American government this has been converted into a general agricultural experiment station, known as “Government Farm.”
LACCADIVE ISLANDS, a group of coral reefs and islands in the Indian Ocean, lying between 10° and 12° 20′ N. and 71° 40′ and 74° E. The name Laccadives (laksha dwipa, the “hundred thousand isles”) is that given by the people of the Malabar coast, and was probably meant to include the Maldives; they are called by the natives simply Divi, “islands,” or Amendivi, from the chief island. There are seventeen separate reefs, “round each of which the 100-fathom line is continuous” (J. S. Gardiner). There are, however, only thirteen islands, and of these only eight are inhabited. They fall into two groups—the northern, belonging to the collectorate of South Kanara, and including the inhabited islands of Amini, Kardamat, Kiltan and Chetlat; and the southern, belonging to the administrative district of Malabar, and including the inhabited islands of Agatti, Kavaratti, Androth and Kalpeni. Between the Laccadives and the Maldives to the south lies the isolated Minikoi, which physically belongs to neither group, though somewhat nearer to the Maldives (q.v.). The principal submerged banks lie north of the northern group of islands; they are Munyal, Coradive and Sesostris, and are of greater extent than those on which the islands lie. The general depth over these is from 23 to 28 fathoms, but Sesostris has shallower soundings “indicating patches growing up, and some traces of a rim” (J. S. Gardiner). The islands have in nearly all cases emerged from the eastern and protected side of the reef, the western being completely exposed to the S.W. monsoon. The islands are small, none exceeding a mile in breadth, while the total area is only about 80 sq. m. They lie so low that they would be hardly discernible but for the coco-nut groves with which they are thickly covered. The soil is light coral sand, beneath which, a few feet down, lies a stratum of coral stretching over the whole of the islands. This coral, generally a foot to a foot and a half in thickness, has been in the principal islands wholly excavated, whereby the underlying damp sand is rendered available for cereals. These excavations—a work of vast labour—were made at a remote period, and according to the native tradition by giants. In these spaces (totam, “garden”) coarse grain, pulse, bananas and vegetables are cultivated; coco-nuts grow abundantly everywhere. For rice the natives depend upon the mainland.
Population and Trade.—The population in 1901 was 10,274. The people are Moplas, i.e. of mixed Hindu and Arab descent, and are Mahommedans. Their manners and customs are similar to those of the coast Moplas; but they maintain their own ancient caste distinctions. The language spoken is Malayalim, but it is written in the Arabic character. Reading and writing are common accomplishments among the men. The chief industry is the manufacture of coir. The various processes are entrusted to the women. The men employ themselves with boatbuilding and in conveying the island produce to the coast. The exports from the Laccadives are of the annual value of about £17,000.
History.—No data exist for determining at what period the Laccadives were first colonized. The earliest mention of them as distinguished from the Maldives seems to be by Albírúní (c. 1030), who divides the whole archipelago (Díbaját) into the Dívah Kúzah or Cowrie Islands (the Maldives), and the Divah Kanbar or Coir Islands (the Laccadives). (See Journ. Asiat. Soc., September 1844, p. 265). The islanders were converted to Islam by an Arab apostle named Mumba Mulyaka, whose grave at Androth still imparts a peculiar sanctity to that island. The kazee of Androth was in 1847 still a member of his family, and was said to be the twenty-second who had held the office in direct line from the saint. This gives colour to the tradition that the conversion took place about 1250. It is also further corroborated by the story given by the Ibn Batuta of the conversion of the Maldives, which occurred, as he heard, four generations (say one hundred and twenty years) before his visit to these islands in 1342. The Portuguese discovered the Laccadives in May 1498, and built forts upon them, but about 1545 the natives rose upon their oppressors. The islands subsequently became a suzerainty of the raja of Cannanore, and after the peace of Seringapatam, 1792 the southern group was permitted to remain under the management of the native chief at a yearly tribute. This was often in arrear, and on this account these islands were sequestrated by the British government in 1877.
See The Fauna and Geography of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes, ed. J. Stanley Gardiner (Cambridge 1901-1905); Malabar District Gazetteer (Madras, 1908); G. Pereira, “As Ilhas de Dyve” (Boletim da Soc. Geog., Lisbon, 1898-1899) gives details relating to the Laccadives from the 16th-century MS. volume De insulis et peregrinatione lusitanorum in the National Library, Lisbon.
LACCOLITE (Gr. λάκκος, cistern, λίθος, stone), in geology, the name given by Grove K. Gilbert to intrusive masses of igneous rock possessing a cake-like form, which he first described from the Henry Mountains of southern Utah. Their characteristic is that they have spread out along the bedding planes of the strata, but are not so broad and thin as the sheets or intrusive sills which, consisting usually of basic rocks, have spread over immense distances without attaining any great thickness. Laccolites cover a comparatively small area and have greater thickness. Typically they have a domed upper surface while their base is flat. In the Henry Mountains they are from 1 to 5 m. in diameter and range in thickness up to about 5000 ft. The cause of their peculiar shape appears to be the viscosity of the rock injected, which is usually of intermediate character and comparatively rich in alkalis, belonging to the trachytes and similar lithological types. These are much less fluid than the basalts, and the latter in consequence spread out much more readily along the bedding planes, forming thin flat-topped sills. At each side the laccolites thin out rapidly so that their upper surface slopes steeply to the margins. The strata above them which have been uplifted and bent are often cracked by extension, and as the igneous materials well into the fissures a large number of dikes is produced. At the base of the laccolite, on the other hand, the strata are flat and dikes are rare, though there may be a conduit up which the magma has flowed into the laccolite. The rocks around are often much affected by contact alteration, and great masses of them have sometimes sunk into the laccolite, where they may be partly melted and absorbed.
Gilbert obtained evidence that these laccolites were filled at depths of 7000 to 10,000 ft. and did not reach the surface, giving rise to volcanoes. From the effects on the drainage of the country it seemed probable that above the laccolites the strata swelled up in flattish eminences. Often they occur side by side in groups belonging to a single period, though all the members of each group are not strictly of the same age. One laccolite may be formed on the side of an earlier one, and compound laccolites also occur. When exposed by erosion they give rise to hills, and their appearance varies somewhat with the stage of development.
In the western part of South America laccolites agreeing in all essential points with those described by Gilbert occur in considerable numbers and present some diversity of types. Occasionally they are asymmetrical, or have one steep or vertical side while the other is gently inclined. In other cases they split into a number of sheets spreading outwards through the rocks around. But the term laccolite has also been adopted by geologists in Britain and elsewhere to describe a variety of intrusive masses not strictly identical in character with those of the Henry Mountains. Some of these rest on a curved floor, like the gabbro masses of the Cuillin Hills in Skye; others are injected along a flattish plane of unconformability where one system of rocks rests on the upturned and eroded edges of an older series. An example of the latter class is furnished by the felsite mass of the Black Hill in the Pentlands, near Edinburgh, which has followed the line between the Silurian and the Old Red Sandstone, forcing the rocks upwards without spreading out laterally to any great extent.
The term laccolite has also been applied to many granite intrusions, such as those of Cornwall. We know from the evidence of mining shafts which have been sunk in the country near the edge of these granites that they slope downwards underground with an angle of twenty to thirty degrees. They have been proved also to have been injected along certain wall-marked horizons; so that although the rocks of the country have been folded in a very complicated manner the granite can often be shown to adhere closely to certain members of the stratigraphical sequence for a considerable distance. Hence it is clear that their upper surfaces are convex and gently arched, and it is conjectured that the strata must extend below them, though at a great depth, forming a floor. The definite proof of this has not been attained for no borings have penetrated the granites and reached sedimentary rocks beneath them. But often in mountainous countries where there are deep valleys the bases of great granite laccolites are exposed to view in the hill sides. These granite sills have a considerable thickness in proportion to their length, raise the rocks above them and fill them with dikes, and behave generally like typical laccolites. In contradistinction to intrusions of this type with a well-defined floor we may place the batholiths, bysmaliths, plutonic plugs and stocks, which have vertical margins and apparently descend to unknown depths. It has been conjectured that masses of this type eat their way upwards by dissolving the rock above them and absorbing it, or excavate a passage by breaking up the roof of the space they occupy while the fragments detached sink downwards and are lost in the ascending magma.
(J. S. F.)
LACE (corresponding to Ital. merletto, trina; Genoese pizzo; Ger. spitzen; Fr. dentelle; Dutch kanten; Span. encaje; the English word owes something to the Fr. lassis or lacis, but both are connected with the earlier Lat. laqueus; early French laces were also called passements or insertions and dents or edgings), the name applied to ornamental open work formed of threads of flax, cotton, silk, gold or silver, and occasionally of mohair or aloe fibre, looped or plaited or twisted together by hand, (1) with a needle, when the work is distinctively known as “needlepoint lace”; (2) with bobbins, pins and a pillow or cushion, when the work is known as “pillow lace”; and (3) by steam-driven machinery, when imitations of both needlepoint and pillow laces are produced. Lace-making implies the production of ornament and fabric concurrently. Without a pattern or design the fabric of lace cannot be made.
The publication of patterns for needlepoint and pillow laces dates from about the middle of the 16th century. Before that period lace described such articles as cords and narrow braids of plaited and twisted threads, used not only to fasten shoes, sleeves and corsets together, but also in a decorative manner to braid the hair, to wind round hats, and to be sewn as trimmings upon costumes. In a Harleian MS. of the time of Henry VI. and Edward IV., about 1471, directions are given for the making of “lace Bascon, lace indented, lace bordered, lace covert, a brode lace, a round lace, a thynne lace, an open lace, lace for hattys,” &c. The MS. opens with an illuminated capital letter, in which is the figure of a woman making these articles. The MS. supplies a clear description how threads in combinations of twos, threes, fours, fives, to tens and fifteens, were to be twisted and plaited together. Instead of the pillow, bobbins and pins with which pillow lace soon afterwards was made, the hands were used, each finger of a hand serving as a peg upon which was placed a “bowys” or “bow,” or little ball of thread. Each ball might be of different colour from the other. The writer of the MS. says that the first finger next the thumb shall be called A, the next B, and so on. According to the sort of cord or braid to be made, so each of the four fingers, A, B, C, D might be called into service. A “thynne lace” might be made with three threads, and then only fingers A, B, C would be required. A “round” lace, stouter than the “thynne” lace, might require the service of four or more fingers. By occasionally dropping the use of threads from certain fingers a sort of indented lace or braid might be made. But when laces of more importance were wanted, such as a broad lace for “hattys,” the fingers on the hands of assistants were required. The smaller cords or “thynne laces,” when fastened in simple or fantastic loops along the edges of collars and cuffs, were called “purls” (see the small edge to the collar worn by Catherine de’ Medici, Pl. II. fig. 4). In another direction from which some suggestion may be derived as to the evolution of lace-making, notice should be taken of the fact that at an early period the darning of varied ornamental devices, stiff and geometric in treatment into hand-made network of small square meshes (see squares of “lacis,” Pl. I. fig. 1) became specialized in many European countries. This is held by some writers to be “opus filatorium,” or “opus araneum” (spider work). Examples of this “opus filatorium,” said to date from the 13th century exist in public collections. The productions of this darning in the early part of the 16th century came to be known as “punto a maglia quadra” in Italy and as “lacis” in France, and through a growing demand for household and wearing linen, very much of the “lacis” was made in white threads not only in Italy and France but also in Spain. In appearance it is a filmy fabric. With white threads also were the “purlings” above mentioned made, by means of leaden bobbins or “fuxii,” and were called “merletti a piombini” (see lower border, Pl. II. fig. 3). Cut and drawn thread linen work (the latter known as “tela tirata” in Italy and as “deshilado” in Spain) were other forms of embroidery as much in vogue as the darning on net and the “purling.” The ornament of much of this cut and drawn linen work (see collar of Catherine de’ Medici, Pl. II. fig. 4), more restricted in scope than that of the darning on net, was governed by the recurrence of open squares formed by the withdrawal of the threads. Within these squares and rectangles radiating devices usually were worked by means of whipped and buttonhole stitches (Pl. fig. 5). The general effect in the linen was a succession of insertions or borders of plain or enriched reticulations, whence the name “punto a reticella” given to this class of embroidery in Italy. Work of similar style and especially that with whipped stitches was done rather earlier in the Grecian islands, which derived it from Asia Minor and Persia. The close connexion of the Venetian republic with Greece and the eastern islands, as well as its commercial relations with the East, sufficiently explains an early transplanting of this kind of embroidery into Venice, as well as in southern Spain. At Venice besides being called “reticella,” cut work was also called “punto tagliato.” Once fairly established as home industries such arts were quickly exploited with a beauty and variety of pattern, complexity of stitch and delicacy of execution, until insertions and edgings made independently of any linen as a starting base (see first two borders, Pl. II. fig. 3) came into being under the name of “Punto in aria” (Pl. II. fig. 7). This was the first variety of Venetian and Italian needlepoint lace in the middle of the 16th century, and its appearance then almost coincides in date with that of the “merletti a piombini,” which was the earliest Italian cushion or pillow lace (see lower edging, Pl. II. fig. 3).
The many varieties of needlepoint and pillow laces will be touched on under the heading allotted to each of these methods of making lace. Here, however, the general circumstances of their genesis may be briefly alluded to. The activity in cord and braid-making and in the particular sorts of ornamental needlework already mentioned clearly postulated such special labour as was capable of being converted into lace-making. And from the 16th century onwards the stimulus to the industry in Europe was afforded by regular trade demand, coupled with the exertions of those who encouraged their dependents or protegés to give their spare time to remunerative home occupations. Thus the origin and perpetuation of the industry have come to be associated with the women folk of peasants and fishermen in circumstances which present little dissimilarity whether in regard to needle lace workers now making lace in whitewashed cottages and cabins at Youghal and Kenmare in the south of Ireland, or those who produced their “punti in aria” during the 16th century about the lagoons of Venice, or Frenchwomen who made the sumptuous “Points de France” at Alençon and elsewhere in the 17th and 18th centuries; or pillow lace workers to be seen at the present day at little seaside villages tucked away in Devonshire dells, or those who were engaged more than four hundred years ago in “merletti a piombini” in Italian villages or on “Dentelles au fuseau” in Flemish lowlands. The ornamental character, however, of these several laces would be found to differ much; but methods, materials, appliances and opportunities of work would in the main be alike. As fashion in wearing laces extended, so workers came to be drawn together into groups by employers who acted as channels for general trade. Nuns in the past as in the present have also devoted attention to the industry, often providing in the convent precincts workrooms not only for peasant women to carry out commissions in the service of the church or for the trade, but also for the purpose of training children in the art. Elsewhere lace schools have been founded by benefactors or organized by some leading local lace-maker as much for trading as for education. In all this variety of circumstance, development of finer work has depended upon the abilities of the workers being exercised under sound direction, whether derived through their own intuitions, or supplied by intelligent and tasteful employers. Where any such direction has been absent the industry viewed commercially has suffered, its productions being devoid of artistic effect or adaptability to the changing tastes of demand.
It is noteworthy that the two widely distant regions of Europe where pictorial art first flourished and attained high perfection, north Italy and Flanders, were precisely the localities where lace-making first became an industry of importance both from an artistic and from a commercial point of view. Notwithstanding more convincing evidence as to the earlier development of pillow lace making in Italy the invention of pillow lace is often credited to the Flemings; but there is no distinct trace of the time or the locality. In a picture said to exist in the church of St Gomar at Lierre, and sometimes attributed to Quentin Matsys (1495), is introduced a girl apparently working at some sort of lace with pillow, bobbins, &c., which are somewhat similar to the implements in use in more recent times. From the very infancy of Flemish art an active intercourse was maintained between the Low Countries and the great centres of Italian art; and it is therefore only what might be expected that the wonderful examples of the art and handiwork of Venice in lace-making should soon have come to be known to and rivalled among the equally industrious, thriving and artistic Flemings. At the end of the 16th century pattern-books were issued in Flanders having the same general character as those published for the guidance of the Venetian and other Italian lace-makers.
Style usually called “Reticella” on account of the patterns being based on repeated squares or reticulations. The two first borders are of needlepoint work; the lower border is of such pillow lace as was known in Italy as “merletti a piombini.”
Fig. 7.—BORDER OF FLAT NEEDLEPOINT LACE OF FULLER TEXTURE THAN THAT OF FIG. 3, AND FROM A FREER STYLE OF DESIGN IN WHICH CONVENTIONALIZED FLORAL FORMS HELD TOGETHER BY SMALL BARS OR TYES ARE USED.
Style called “Punto in Aria,” chiefly on account of its independence of squares or reticulations. Italian. Early 17th century.
Fig. 5.—CORNER OF A NAPKIN OR HANDKERCHIEF BORDERED WITH “RETICELLA” NEEDLEPOINT LACE IN THE DESIGN OF WHICH ACORNS AND CARNATIONS ARE MINGLED WITH GEOMETRIC RADIATIONS. Probably of English early 17th century.
Fig. 4.—CATHERINE DE MEDICI, WEARING A LINEN UPTURNED COLLAR OF CUT WORK AND NEEDLEPOINT LACE. Louvre. About 1540.
Fig. 6.—AMELIE ELISABETH, COMTESSE DE HAINAULT, WEARING A RUFF OF NEEDLEPOINT RETICELLA LACE. By Morcelse. The Hague. About 1600.
France and England were not far behind Venice and Flanders in making needle and pillow lace. Henry III. of France (1574-1589) appointed a Venetian, Frederic Vinciolo, pattern maker for varieties of linen needle works and laces to his court. Through the influence of this fertile designer the seeds of a taste for lace in France were principally sown. But the event which par excellence would seem to have fostered the higher development of the French art of lace-making was the aid officially given it in the following century by Louis XIV., acting on the advice of his minister Colbert. Intrigue and diplomacy were put into action to secure the services of Venetian lace-workers; and by an edict dated 1665 the lace-making centres at Alençon, Quesnoy, Arras, Reims, Sedan, Château Thierry, Loudun and elsewhere were selected for the operations of a company in aid of which the state made a contribution of 36,000 francs; at the same time the importation of Venetian, Flemish and other laces was strictly forbidden. The edict contained instructions that the lace-makers should produce all sorts of thread work, such as those done on a pillow or cushion and with the needle, in the style of the laces made at Venice, Genoa, Ragusa and other places; these French imitations were to be called “points de France.” By 1671 the Italian ambassador at Paris writes, “Gallantly is the minister Colbert on his way to bring the ‘lavori d’aria’ to perfection.” Six years later an Italian, Domenigo Contarini, alludes to the “punto in aria,” “which the French can now do to admiration.” The styles of design which emanated from the chief of the French lace centre, Alençon, were more fanciful and less severe than the Venetian, and it is evident that the Flemish lace-makers later on adopted many of these French patterns for their own use. The provision of French designs (fig. 24) which owes so much to the state patronage, contrasts with the absence of corresponding provision in England and was noticed early in the 18th century by Bishop Berkeley. “How,” he asks, “could France and Flanders have drawn so much money from other countries for figured silk, lace and tapestry, if they had not had their academies of design?”
The humble endeavours of peasantry in England (which could boast of no schools of design), Germany, Sweden, Russia and Spain could not result in work of so high artistic pretension as that of France and Flanders. In the 18th century good lace was made in Devonshire, but it is only in recent years that to some extent the hand lace-makers of England and Ireland have become impressed with the necessity of well-considered designs for their work. Pillow lace making under the name of “bone lace making” was pursued in the 17th century in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, and in 1724 Defoe refers to the manufacture of bone lace in which villagers were “wonderfully exercised and improved within these few years past.” “Bone” lace dates from the 17th century in England and was practically the counterpart of Flemish “dentelles au fuseau,” and related also to the Italian “merletti a piombini” (see Pl. fig. 10). In Germany, Barbara Uttmann, a native of Nuremberg, instructed peasants of the Harz mountains to twist and plait threads in 1561. She was assisted by certain refugees from Flanders. A sort of “purling” or imitation of the Italian “merletti a piombini” was the style of work produced then.
Lace of comparatively simple design has been made for centuries in villages of Andalusia as well as in Spanish conventual establishments. The “point d’Espagne,” however, appears to have been a commercial name given by French manufacturers of a class of lace made in France with gold or silver threads on the pillow and greatly esteemed by Spaniards in the 17th century. No lace pattern-books have been found to have been published in Spain. The needle-made laces which came out of Spanish monasteries in 1830, when these institutions were dissolved, were mostly Venetian needle-made laces. The lace vestments preserved at the cathedral at Granada hitherto presumed to be of Spanish work are verified as being Flemish of the 17th century (similar in style to Pl. fig. 14). The industry is not alluded to in Spanish ordinances of the 15th, 16th or 17th centuries, but traditions which throw its origin back to the Moors or Saracens are still current in Seville and its neighbourhood, where a twisted and knotted arrangement of fine cords is often worked under the name of “Morisco” fringe, elsewhere called macramé lace. Black and white silk pillow laces, or “blondes,” date from the 18th century. They were made in considerable quantity in the neighbourhood of Chantilly, and imported for mantillas by Spain, where corresponding silk lace making was started. Although after the 18th century the making of silk laces more or less ceased at Chantilly and the neighbourhood, the craft is now carried on in Normandy—at Bayeux and Caen—as well as in Auvergne, which is also noted for its simple “torchon” laces. Silk pillow lace making is carried on in Spain, especially at Barcelona. The patterns are almost entirely imitations from 18th-century French ones of a large and free floral character. Lace-making is said to have been promoted in Russia through the patronage of the court, after the visit of Peter the Great to Paris in the early days of the 18th century. Peasants in the districts of Vologda, Balakhua (Nijni-Novgorod), Bieleff (Tula) and Mzensk (Orel) make pillow laces of simple patterns. Malta is noted for producing a silk pillow lace of black or white, or red threads, chiefly of patterns in which repetitions of circles, wheels and radiations of shapes resembling grains of wheat are the main features. This characteristic of design, appearing in white linen thread laces of similar make which have been identified as Genoese pillow laces of the early 17th century, reappears in Spanish and Paraguayan work. Pillow lace in imitation of Maltese, Buckinghamshire and Devonshire laces is made to a small extent in Ceylon, in different parts of India and in Japan. A successful effort has also been made to re-establish the industry in the island of Burano near Venice, and pillow and needlepoint lace of good design is made there.
At present the chief sources of hand-made lace are France, Belgium, Ireland and England.
France is faithful to her traditions in maintaining a lively and graceful taste in lace-making. Fashion of late years has called for ampler and more boldly effective laces, readily produced with both braids and cords and far less intricate needle or pillow work than was required for the dainty and smaller laces of earlier date.
In Belgium the social and economic conditions are, as they have been in the past, more conducive and more favourable than elsewhere to lace-making at a sufficiently remunerative rate of wages. The production of hand-made laces in Belgium was in 1900 greater than that of France. The principal modern needle-made lace of Belgium is the “Point de Gaze”; “Duchesse” and Bruges laces are the chief pillow-made laces; whilst “Point Appliqué” and “Plat Appliqué” are frequently the results not only of combining needle-made and pillow work, but also of using them in conjunction with machine-made net. Ireland is the best producer of that substantial looped-thread work known as crochet (see figs. 25, 26, 27), which must be regarded as a hand-made lace fabric although not classifiable as a needlepoint or pillow lace. It is also quite distinct in character from pseudo-laces, which are really embroideries with a lace-like appearance, e.g. embroideries on net, cut and embroidered cambrics and fine linen. For such as these Ireland maintains a reputation in its admirable Limerick and Carrickmacross laces, made not only in Limerick and Carrickmacross, but also in Kinsale, Newry, Crossmaglen and elsewhere. The demand from France for Irish crochet is now far beyond the supply, a condition which leads not only to the rapid repetition by Irish workers of old patterns, but tends also to a gradual debasement of both texture and ornament. Attempts have been made to counteract this tendency, with some success, as the specimens of Irish crochet in figs. 25, 26 and 27 indicate.
Possibly of English early 17th-century work. Its texture is typical of a development in pillow-lace-making later than that of the lower edge of “merletti a piombini” in Pl. II. fig. 3.
Of the middle of the 17th century, the designs for which were often adaptations from those made for such needlepoint lace as that of the Jabot in fig. 12.
Flemish, of the middle of the 17th century. This lace is usually thought to be the earliest type of “Point d’Angleterre” in contradistinction to the “Point de Flandres” (fig. 14).
An appreciable amount of pillow-made lace is annually supplied from Devonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Northampton, but it is bought almost wholly for home use. The English laces are made almost entirely in accordance with the precedents of the 19th century—that is to say, in definite lengths and widths, as for borders, insertions and flounces, although large shaped articles, such as panels for dresses, long sleeves complete skirts, jackets, blouses, and fancifully shaped collars of considerable dimensions have of late been freely made elsewhere. To make such things entirely of lace necessitates many modifications in the ordinary methods; the English lace-workers are slow to adapt their work in the manner requisite, and hence are far behind in the race to respond to the fashionable demand. No countries succeed so well in promptly answering the variable call of fashion as France and Belgium.
As regards trade in lace, America probably buys more from Belgium than from France; France and England come next as purchasers of nearly equal quantities, after which come Russia and Italy.
The greatest amount of lace now made is that which issues from machines in England, France and Germany. The total number of persons employed in the lace industry in England in 1871 was 49,370, and in 1901 about 34,929, of whom not more than 5000 made lace by hand.
The early history of the lace-making machine coincides with that of the stocking frame, that machine having been adapted about the year 1768 for producing open-looped fabrics which had a net-like appearance. About 1786 frames for making point nets by machinery first appear at Mansfield and later at Ashbourne and Nottingham and soon afterwards modifications were introduced into such frames in order to make varieties of meshes in the point nets which were classed as figured nets. In 1808 and 1809 John Heathcoat of Nottingham obtained patents for machines for making bobbin net with a simpler and more readily produced mesh than that of the point net just mentioned. For at least thirty years thousands of women had been employed in and about Nottingham in the embroidery of simple ornament on net. In 1813 John Leavers began to improve the figured net weaving machines above mentioned, and from these the lace-making machines in use at the present time were developed. But it was the application of the celebrated Jacquard apparatus to such machines that enabled manufacturers to produce all sorts of patterns in thread-work in imitation of the patterns for hand-made lace. A French machine called the “dentellière” was devised (see La Nature for the 3rd of March 1881), and the patterns produced by it were of plaited threads. The expense, however, attending the production of plaited lace by the “dentellière” is as great as that of pillow lace made by the hand, and so the machine has not succeeded for ordinary trade purposes. More successful results have been secured by the new patent circular lace machine of Messrs. Birkin & Co. of Nottingham, the productions of which, all of simple design, cannot be distinguished from hand-made pillow lace of the same style (see figs. 57, 58, 59).
Before dealing with technical details in processes of making lace whether by hand or by the machine, the component parts of different makes of lace may be considered. These are governed by the ornaments or patterns, which may be so designed, as they were in the earlier laces, that the different component parts may touch one another without any intervening groundwork. But as a wish arose to vary the effect of the details in a pattern ground-works were gradually developed and at first consisted of links or ties between the substantial parts of the pattern. The bars or ties were succeeded by grounds of meshes, like nets. Sometimes the substantial parts of a pattern were outlined with a single thread or by a strongly marked raised edge of buttonhole-stitched or of plaited work. Minute fanciful devices were then introduced to enrich various portions of the pattern. Some of the heavier needle-made laces resemble low relief carving in ivory, and the edges of the relief portions are often decorated with clusters of small loops. For the most part all this elaboration was brought to a high pitch of variety and finish by French designers and workers; and French terms are more usual in speaking of details in laces. Thus the solid part of the pattern is called the toilé or clothing, the links or ties are called brides, the meshed grounds are called réseaux, the outline to the edges of a pattern is called cordonnet or brodé, the insertions of fanciful devices modes, the little loops picots. These terms are applicable to the various portions of laces made with the needle, on the pillow or by the machine.
The sequence of patterns in lace (which may be verified upon referring to figs. 1 to 23) is roughly as follows. From about 1540 to 1590 they were composed of geometric forms set within squares, or of crossed and radiating line devices, resulting in a very open fabric, stiff and almost wiry in effect, without brides or réseaux. From 1590 may be dated the introduction into patterns of very conventional floral and even human and animal forms and slender scrolls, rendered in a tape-like texture, held together by brides. To the period from 1620 to 1670 belongs the development of long continuous scroll patterns with réseaux and brides, accompanied in the case of needle-made laces with an elaboration of details, e.g. cordonnet with massings of picots. Much of these laces enriched with fillings or modes was made at this time. From 1650 to 1700 the scroll patterns gave way to arrangements of detached ornamental details (as in Pl. VI. fig. 22): and about 1700 to 1760 more important schemes or designs were made (as in Pl. fig. 19, and in fig. 24 in text), into which were introduced naturalistic renderings of garlands, flowers, birds, trophies, architectural ornament and human figures. Grounds composed entirely of varieties of modes as in the case of the réseau rosacé (Pl. V. fig. 21) were sometimes made then. From 1760 to 1800 small details consisting of bouquets, sprays of flowers, single flowers, leaves, buds, spots and such like were adopted, and sprinkled over meshed grounds, and the character of the texture was gauzy and filmy (as in figs. 40 and 42). Since that time variants of the foregoing styles of pattern and textures have been used according to the bent of fashion in favour of simple or complex ornamentation, or of stiff, compact or filmy textures.
Needlepoint Lace.—The way in which the early Venetian “punto in aria” was made corresponds with that in which needlepoint lace is now worked. The pattern is first drawn upon a piece of parchment. The parchment is then stitched to two pieces of linen. Upon the leading lines drawn on the parchment a thread is laid, and fastened through to the parchment and linen by means of stitches, thus constructing a skeleton thread pattern (see left-hand part of fig. 30). Those portions which are to be represented as the “clothing” or toilé are usually worked as indicated in the enlarged diagram (fig. 29), and then edged as a rule with buttonhole stitching (fig. 28). Between these toilé portions of the pattern are worked ties (brides) or meshes (réseaux), and thus the various parts united into one fabric are wrought on to the face of the parchment pattern and reproducing it (see right-hand part of fig. 30). A knife is passed between the two pieces of linen at the back of the parchment, cutting the stitches which have passed through the parchment and linen, and so releasing the lace itself from its pattern parchment. In the earlier stages, the lace was made in lengths to serve as insertions (passements) and also in vandykes (dentelles) to serve as edgings. Later on insertions and vandykes were made in one piece. All of such were at first of a geometric style of pattern (Pl. figs. 3-5 and 6).
Following closely upon them came the freer style of design already mentioned, without and then with links or ties—brides—interspersed between the various details of the patterns (Pl. II. fig. 7), which were of flat tape-like texture. In elaborate specimens of this flat point lace some lace workers occasionally used gold thread with the white thread. These flat laces (“Punto in Aria”) are also called “flat Venetian point.” About 1640 “rose (raised) point” laces began to be made (Pl. III. fig. 12). They were done in relief and those of bold design with stronger reliefs are called “gros point de Venise.” Lace of this latter class was used for altar cloths, flounces, jabots or neckcloths which hung beneath the chin over the breast (Pl. III. fig. 11), as well as for trimming the turned-over tops of jack boots. Tabliers and ladies’ aprons were also made of such lace. In these no regular ground was introduced. All sorts of minute embellishments, like little knots, stars and loops or picots, were worked on to the irregularly arranged brides or ties holding the main patterns together, and the more dainty of these raised laces (Pl. fig. 17) exemplify the most subtle uses to which the buttonhole stitch appears capable of being put in making ornaments. But about 1660 came laces with brides or ties arranged in a honeycomb reticulation or regular ground. To them succeeded lace in which the compact relief gave place to daintier and lighter material combined with a ground of meshes or réseau. The needle-made meshes were sometimes of single and sometimes of double threads. A diagram is given of an ordinary method of making such meshes (fig. 31). At the end of the 17th century the lightest of the Venetian needlepoint laces were made; and this class which was of the filmiest texture is usually known as “point de Venise à réseau” (Pl. V. fig. 20a). It was contemporary with the needle-made French laces of Alençon and Argentan that became famous towards the latter part of the 17th century (Pl. V. fig. 20b). “Point d’Argentan” has been thought to be especially distinguished on account of its delicate honeycomb ground of hexagonally arranged brides (fig. 32), a peculiarity already referred to in certain antecedent Venetian point laces. Often intermixed with this hexagonal brides ground is the fine-meshed ground or réseau (fig. 20b), which has been held to be distinctive of “point d’Alençon.” But the styles of patterns and the methods of working them, with rich variety of insertions or modes, with the brodé or cordonnet of raised buttonhole stitched edging, are alike in Argentan and Alençon needle-made laces (Pl. V. fig. 20b and fig. 32). Besides the hexagonal brides ground and the ground of meshes another variety of grounding (réseau rosacé) was used in certain Alençon designs. This ground consisted of buttonhole-stitched skeleton hexagons within each of which was worked a small hexagon of toilé connected with the outer surrounding hexagon by means of six little ties or brides (Pl. V. fig. 21). Lace with this particular ground has been called “Argentella,” and some writers have thought that it was a specialty of Genoese or Venetian work. But the character of the work and the style of the floral patterns are those of Alençon laces. The industry at Argentan was virtually an offshoot of that nurtured at Alençon, where “lacis,” “cut work” and “vélin” (work on parchment) had been made for years before the well-developed needle-made “point d’Alençon” came into vogue under the favouring patronage of the state-aided lace company mentioned as having been formed in 1665. Madame Despierre in her Histoire du point d’Alençon gives an interesting and trustworthy account of the industry.
In Belgium, Brussels has acquired some celebrity for needle-made laces. These, however, are chiefly in imitation of those made at Alençon, but the toilé is of less compact texture and sharpness in definition of pattern. Brussels needlepoint lace is often worked with meshed grounds made on a pillow, and a plain thread is used as a cordonnet for their patterns instead of a thread overcast with buttonhole stitches as in the French needlepoint laces. Note the bright sharp outline to the various ornamental details in Pl. V. fig. 20b.
Fig. 19.—PORTION OF FLOUNCE, NEEDLEPOINT LACE COPIED AT THE BURANO LACE SCHOOL FROM THE ORIGINAL OF THE SO-CALLED “POINT DE VENISE À BRIDES PICOTÉES.”
17th century. Formerly belonging to Pope Clement XIII., but now the property of the queen of Italy. The design and work, however, are indistinguishable from those of important flounces of “Point de France.” The pattern consists of repetitions of two vertically-arranged groups of fantastic pine-apples and vases with flowers, intermixed with bold rococo bands and large leaf devices. The hexagonal meshes of the ground, although similar to the Venetian “brides picotées,” are much akin to the buttonhole stitched ground of “Point d’Argentan.” (Victoria and Albert Museum.)
The conventional character of the pseudo-leaf and floral forms contrasts with that of the realistic designs of contemporary French laces. Italian. Early 18th century.
Louis XV. period. The variety of the fillings of geometric design is particularly remarkable in this specimen, as is the buttonhole stitched cordonnat or outline to the various ornamental forms.
Needlepoint lace has also been occasionally produced in England. Whilst the character of its design in the early 17th century was rather more primitive, as a rule, than that of the contemporary Italian, the method of its workmanship is virtually the same and an interesting specimen of English needle-made lace inset into an early 17th-century shirt is illustrated in fig. 33. Specimens of needle-made work done by English school children may be met with in samplers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Needlepoint lace is successfully made at Youghal, Kenmare and New Ross in Ireland, where of late years attention has been given to the study of designs for it. The lace-making school at Burano near Venice produces hand-made laces which are, to a great extent, careful reproductions of the more celebrated classes of point laces, such as “punto in aria,” “rose point de Venise,” “point de Venise à réseau,” “point d’Alençon,” “point d’Argentan” and others. Some good needlepoint lace is made in Bohemia and elsewhere in the Austrian empire.
Pillow-made Lace.—Pillow-made lace is built upon no substructure corresponding with a skeleton thread pattern such as is used for needlepoint lace, but is the representation of a pattern obtained by twisting and plaiting threads.
These patterns were never so strictly geometric in style as those adopted for the earliest point lace making from the antecedent cut linen and drawn thread embroideries. Curved forms, almost at the outset of pillow lace, seem to have been found easy of execution (see lower border, Pl. II. fig. 3); its texture was more lissom and less crisp and wiry in appearance than that of contemporary needle-made lace. The early twisted and plaited thread laces, which had the appearance of small cords merging into one another, were soon succeeded by laces of similar make but with flattened and broader lines more like fine braids or tapes (Pl. I. fig. 2, and Pl. fig. 10). But pillow laces of this tapey character must not be confused with laces in which actual tape or braid is used. That peculiar class of lace-work does not arise until after the beginning of the 17th century when the weaving of tape is said to have commenced in Flanders. In England this sort of tape-lace dates no farther back than 1747, when two Dutchmen named Lanfort were invited by an English firm to set up tape looms in Manchester.
Fig. 34.—Diagram showing six Bobbins in use.
The process by which lace is made on the pillow is roughly and briefly as follows. A pattern is first drawn upon a piece of paper or parchment. It is then pricked with holes by a skilled “pattern pricker,” who determines where the principal pins shall be stuck for guiding the threads. This pricked pattern is then fastened to the pillow. The pillow or cushion varies in shape in different countries. Some lace-makers use a circular pad, backed with a flat board, in order that it may be placed upon a table and easily moved. Other lace-workers use a well-stuffed round pillow or short bolster, flattened at the two ends, so that they may hold it conveniently on their laps. From the upper part of pillow with the pattern fastened on it hang the threads from the bobbins. The bobbin threads thus hang across the pattern. Fig. 34 shows the commencement, for instance, of a double set of three-thread plaitings. The compact portion in a pillow lace has a woven appearance (fig. 35).
About the middle of the 17th century pillow lace of formal scroll patterns somewhat in imitation of those for point lace was made, chiefly in Flanders. The earlier of these had grounds of ties or brides and was often called “point de Flandres” (Pl. fig. 14) in contradistinction to scroll patterns with a mesh ground, which were called “point d’Angleterre” (Pl. fig. 16). Into Spain and France much lace from Venice and Flanders was imported as well as into England, where from the 16th century the manufacture of the simple pattern “bone lace” by peasants in the midland and southern counties was still being carried on. In Charles II.’s time its manufacture was threatened with extinction by the preference given to the more artistic and finer Flemish laces. The importation of the latter was accordingly prohibited. Dealers in Flemish lace sought to evade the prohibitions by calling certain of their laces “point d’Angleterre,” and smuggling them into England. But smuggling was made so difficult that English dealers were glad to obtain the services of Flemish lace-makers and to induce them to settle in England. It is from some such cause that the better 17th- and 18th-century English pillow laces bear resemblance to pillow laces of Brussels, of Mechlin and of Valenciennes.
As skill in the European lace-making developed soon after the middle of the 17th century, patterns and particular plaitings came to be identified with certain localities. Mechlin, for instance, enjoyed a high reputation for her productions. The chief technical features of this pillow lace lie in the plaiting of the meshes, and the outlining of the clothing or toilé with a thread cordonnet. The ordinary Mechlin mesh is hexagonal in shape. Four of the sides are of double twisted threads, two are of four threads plaited three times (fig. 39).
In Brussels pillow lace, which has greater variety of design, the mesh is also hexagonal; but in contrast with the Mechlin mesh whilst four of its sides are of double-twisted threads the other two are of four threads plaited four times (fig. 41). The finer specimens of Brussels lace are remarkable for the fidelity and grace with which the botanical forms in many of its patterns are rendered (Pl. VI. fig. 23). These are mainly reproductions or adaptations of designs for point d’Alençon, and the soft quality imparted to them in the texture of pillow-made lace contrasts with the harder and more crisp appearance in needlepoint lace. An example of dainty Brussels pillow lace is given in fig. 42. In the Brussels pillow lace a delicate modelling effect is often imparted to the close textures of the flowers by means of pressing them with a bone instrument which gives concave shapes to petals and leaves, the edges of which consist in part of slightly raised cordonnet of compact plaited work.
Fig. 42.—Portion of a Wedding Veil, 7 ft. 6 in. × 6 ft. 6 in., of Pillow-made Lace, Brussels, late 18th century. The design consists of light leafy garlands of orange blossoms and other flowers daintily festooned. Little feathery spirals and stars are powdered over the ground, which is of Brussels vrai réseau. In the centre upon a more open ground of pillow-made hexagonal brides is a group of two birds, one flying towards the other which appears ready to take wing from its nest; an oval frame containing two hearts pierced by an arrow, and a hymeneal torch. Throughout this veil is a profusion of pillow renderings of various modes, the réseau rosacé, star devices, &c. The ornamental devices are partly applied and partly worked into the ground (Victoria and Albert Museum).
Honiton pillow lace resembles Brussels lace, but in most of the English pillow laces (Devonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire) the réseau is of a simple character (fig. 43). As a rule, English lace is made with a rather coarser thread than that used in the older Flemish laces. In real Flemish Valenciennes lace there are no twisted sides to the mesh; all are closely plaited (fig. 44) and as a rule the shape of the mesh is diamond but without the openings as shown in fig. 44. No outline or cordonnet to define the pattern is used in Valenciennes lace (see fig. 45). Much lace of the Valenciennes type (fig. 54) is made at Ypres. Besides these distinctive classes of pillow-like laces, there are others in which equal care in plaiting and twisting threads is displayed, though the character of the design is comparatively simple, as for instance in ordinary pillow laces from Italy, from the Auvergne, from Buckinghamshire, or rude and primitive as in laces from Crete, southern Spain and Russia. Pillow lace-making in Crete is now said to be extinct. The laces were made chiefly of silk. The patterns in many specimens are outlined with one, two or three bright-coloured silken threads. Uniformity in simple character of design may also be observed in many Italian, Spanish, Bohemian, Swedish and Russian pillow laces (see the lower edge of fig. 46).
Fig. 45.—Lappet of delicate Pillow-made Lace, Valenciennes, about 1750. The peculiarity of Valenciennes lace is the filmy cambric-like texture and the absence of any cordonnet to define the separate parts of the ornament such as is used in needlepoint lace of Alençon, and in pillow Mechlin and Brussels lace.
Guipure.—This name is often applied to needlepoint and pillow laces in which the ground consists of ties or brides, but it more properly designates a kind of lace or “passementerie,” made with gimp of fine wires whipped round with silk, and with cotton thread. An earlier kind of gimp was formed with “Cartisane,” a little strip of thin parchment or vellum covered with silk, gold or silver thread. These stiff gimp threads, formed into a pattern, were held together by stitches worked with the needle. Gold and silver thread laces have been usually made on the pillow, though gold thread has been used with fine effect in 17th-century Italian needlepoint laces.
Fig. 46.—Border to a Cloth. The wide part bearing the double-headed eagle of Russia is of drawn thread embroidery: the scalloped edging is of Russian pillow-made lace, though the style of its pattern is often seen in pillow laces made by peasants in Danubian provinces as well as in the south of Spain.
Machine-made Lace.—We have already seen that a technical peculiarity in making needlepoint lace is that a single thread and needle are alone used to form the pattern, and that the buttonhole stitch and other loopings which can be worked by means of a needle and thread mark a distinction between lace made in this manner and lace made on the pillow. For the process of pillow lace making a series of threads are in constant employment, plaited and twisted the one with another. A buttonhole stitch is not producible by it. The Leavers lace machine does not make either a buttonhole stitch or a plait. An essential principle of this machine-made work is that the threads are twisted together as in stocking net. The Leavers lace machine is that generally in use at Nottingham and Calais. French ingenuity has developed improvements in this machine whereby laces of delicate thread are made; but as fast as France makes an improvement England follows with another, and both countries virtually maintain an equal position in this branch of industry. The number of threads brought into operation in a Leavers machine is regulated by the pattern to be produced, the threads being of two sorts, beam or warp threads and bobbin or weft threads. Upwards of 8880 are sometimes used, sixty pieces of lace being made simultaneously, each piece requiring 148 threads—100 beam threads and 48 bobbin threads. The ends of both sets of threads are fixed to a cylinder upon which as the manufacture proceeds the lace becomes wound. The supply of the beam or warp threads is held upon reels, and that of the bobbins or weft threads is held in bobbins. The beam or warp thread reels are arranged in frames or trays beneath the stage, above which and between it and the cylinder the twisting of the bobbin or weft with beam or warp threads takes place. The bobbins containing the bobbin or weft threads are flattened in shape so as to pass conveniently between the stretched beam or warp threads. Each bobbin can contain about 120 yds. of thread. By most ingenious mechanism varying degrees of tension can be imparted to warp and weft threads as required. As the bobbins or weft threads pass like pendulums between the warp threads the latter are made to oscillate, thus causing them to become twisted with the bobbin threads. As the twistings take place, combs passing through both warp and weft threads compress the twistings. Thus the texture of the clothing or toilé in machine-made lace may generally be detected by its ribbed appearance, due to the compressed twisted threads. Figs. 47 and 48 are intended to show effects obtained by varying the tensions of weft and warp threads. For instance, if the weft, as threads b, b, b, b in fig. 47, be tight and the warp thread slack, the warp thread a will be twisted upon the weft threads. But if the warp thread a be tight and the weft threads b, b, b, b, be slack, as in fig. 48, then the weft threads will be twisted on the warp thread. At the same time the twisting in both these cases arises from the conjunction of movements given to the two sets of threads, namely, an oscillation or movement from side to side of the beam or warp threads, and the swinging or pendulum-like movement of the bobbin or weft threads between the warp threads. Fig. 49 is a diagram of a sectional elevation of a lace machine representing its more essential parts. E is the cylinder or beam upon which the lace is rolled as made, and upon which the ends of both warp and weft threads are fastened at starting. Beneath are w, w, w, a series of trays or beams, one above the other, containing the reels of the supplies of warp threads; c, c represent the slide bars for the passage of the bobbin b with its thread from k to k, the landing bars, one on each side of the rank of warp threads; s, t are the combs which take it in turns to press together the twistings as they are made. The combs come away clear from the threads as soon as they have pressed them together and fall into positions ready to perform their pressing operations again. The contrivances for giving each thread a particular tension and movement at a certain time are connected with an adaptation of the Jacquard system of pierced cards. The machine lace pattern drafter has to calculate how many holes shall be punched in a card, and to determine the position of such holes. Each hole regulates the mechanism for giving movement to a thread. Fig. 54 displays a piece of hand-made Valenciennes (Ypres) lace and fig. 55 a corresponding piece woven by the machine. The latter shows the advantage that can be gained by using very fine gauge machines, thus enabling a very close imitation of the real lace to be made by securing a very open and clear réseau or net, such as would be made on a coarse machine, and at the same time to keep the pattern fine and solid and standing out well from the net, as is the case with the real lace, which cannot be done by using a coarse gauge machine. In this example the machine used is a 16 point (that is 32 carriages to the inch), and the ground is made half gauge, that is 8 point, and the weaving is made the full gauge of the machine, that is 16 point. Fig. 56 gives other examples of hand- and machine-made Valenciennes lace. The machine-made lace (b) imitating the real (a) is made on a 14-point machine (that is 28 carriages to the inch), the ground being 7 point and the pattern being full gauge or 14 point. Although the principle in these examples of machine work is exactly the same, in so far that they use half gauge net and full gauge clothing to produce the contrast as mentioned above, the fabrication of these two examples is quite different, that in fig. 55 being an example of tight bobbins or weft, and slack warp threads as shown in fig. 47. Whereas the example in fig. 56 is made with slack bobbins or weft threads and tight warp threads as in fig. 48. In fig. 57 is a piece of hand-made lace of stout thread, very similar to much Cluny lace made in the Auvergne and to the Buckinghamshire “Maltese” lace. Close to it are specimens of lace (figs. 58 and 59) made by the new patent circular lace machine of Messrs Birkin of Nottingham. This machine although very slow in production actually reproduces the real lace, at a cost slightly below that of the hand-made lace. In another branch of lace-making by machinery, mechanical ingenuity, combined with chemical treatment, has led to surprising results (figs. 53 and 50). Swiss, German and other manufacturers use machines in which a principle of the sewing-machine is involved. A fine silken tissue is thereby enriched with an elaborately raised cotton or thread embroidery. The whole fabric is then treated with chemical mordants which, whilst dissolving the silky web, do not attack the cotton or thread embroidery. A relief embroidery possessing the appearance of hand-made raised needlepoint lace is thus produced. Figs. 60 and 61 give some idea of the high quality to which this admirable counterfeit has been brought.
Collections of hand-made lace chiefly exist in museums and technical institutions, as for instance the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and museums at Lyons, Nuremberg, Berlin, Turin and elsewhere. In such places the opportunity is presented of tracing in chronological sequence the stages of pattern and texture development.
Literature.—The literature of the art of lace-making is considerable. The series of 16th- and 17th-century lace pattern-books, of which the more important are perhaps those by F. Vinciolo (Paris, 1587), Cesare Vecellio (Venice, 1592), and Isabetta Catanea Parasole (Venice, 1600), not to mention several kindred works of earlier and later date published in Germany and the Netherlands, supplies a large field for exploration. Signor Ongania of Venice published a limited number of facsimiles of the majority of such works. M. Alvin of Brussels issued a brochure in 1863 upon these patterns, and in the same year the marquis Girolamo d’Adda contributed two bibliographical essays upon the same subject to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (vol. xv. p. 342 seq., and vol. xvii. p. 421 seq.). In 1864 Cavaliere A. Merli wrote a pamphlet (with illustrations) entitled Origine ed uso delle trine a filo di rete; Mons F. de Fertiault compiled a brief and rather fanciful Histoire de la dentelle in 1843, in which he reproduced statements to be found in Diderot’s Encyclopédie, subsequently quoted by Roland de la Platière. The first Report of the Department of Practical Art (1853) contains a “Report on Cotton Print Works and Lace-Making” by Octavius Hudson, and in the first Report of the Department of Science and Art are some “Observations on Lace.” Reports upon the International Exhibitions of 1851 (London) and 1867 (Paris), by M. Aubry, Mrs Palliser and others contain information concerning lace-making. The most important work first issued upon the history of lace-making is that by Mrs Bury Palliser (History of Lace, 1869). In this work the history is treated rather from an antiquarian than a technical point of view; and wardrobe accounts, inventories, state papers, fashionable journals, diaries, plays, poems, have been laid under contribution with surprising diligence. A new edition published in 1902 presents the work as entirely revised, rewritten and enlarged under the editorship of M. Jourdain and Alice Dryden. In 1875 the Arundel Society brought out Ancient Needlepoint and Pillow Lace, a folio volume of permanently printed photographs taken from some of the finest specimens of ancient lace collected for the International Exhibition of 1874. These were accompanied by a brief history of lace, written from the technical aspect of the art, by Alan S. Cole. At the same time appeared a bulky imperial 4to volume by Seguin, entitled La Dentelle, illustrated with wood-cuts and fifty photo-typographical plates. Seguin divides his work into four sections. The first is devoted to a sketch of the origin of laces; the second deals with pillow laces, bibliography of lace and a review of sumptuary edicts; the third relates to needle-made lace; and the fourth contains an account of places where lace has been and is made, remarks upon commerce in lace, and upon the industry of lace makers. Without sufficient conclusive evidence Seguin accords to France the palm for having excelled in producing practically all the richer sorts of laces, notwithstanding that both before and since the publication of his otherwise valuable work, many types of them have been identified as being Italian in origin. Descriptive catalogues are issued of the lace collections at South Kensington Museum, at the Science and Art Museum, Dublin, and at the Industrial Museum, Nuremberg. In 1881 a series of four Cantor Lectures on the art of lace-making were delivered before the Society of Arts by Alan S. Cole.
A Technical History of the Manufacture of Venetian Laces, by G. M. Urbani de Gheltof, with plates, was translated by Lady Layard, and published at Venice by Signor Ongania. The History of Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacture (London, 1867), by Felkin, has already been referred to. There is also a technological essay upon lace made by machinery, with diagrams of lace stitches and patterns (Technologische Studien im sächsischen Erzgebirge, Leipzig, 1878), by Hugo Fischer. In 1886 the Libraire Renouard, Paris, published a History of Point d’Alençon, written by Madame G. Despierres, which gives a close and interesting account of the industry, together with a list, compiled from local records, of makers and dealers from 1602 onwards.—Embroidery and Lace: their manufacture and history from the remotest antiquity to the present day, by Ernest Lefebure, lace-maker and administrator of the École des Arts Décoratifs, translated and enlarged with notes by Alan S. Cole, was published in London in 1888. It is a well-illustrated handbook for amateurs, collectors and general readers.—Irish laces made from modern designs are illustrated in a Renascence of the Irish Art of Lace-making, published in 1888 (London).—Anciennes Dentelles belges formant la collection de feue madame Augusta Baronne Liedts et données au Musée de Grunthuis à Bruges, published at Antwerp in 1889, consists of a folio volume containing upwards of 181 phototypes—many full size—of fine specimens of lace. The ascriptions of country and date of origin are occasionally inaccurate, on account of a too obvious desire to credit Bruges with being the birthplace of all sorts of lace-work, much of which shown in this work is distinctly Italian in style.—The Encyclopaedia of Needlework, by Thérèse de Dillmont-Dornach (Alsace, 1891), is a detailed guide to several kinds of embroidery, knitting, crochet, tatting, netting and most of the essential stitches for needlepoint lace. It is well illustrated with wood-cuts and process blocks.—An exhaustive history of Russian lace-making is given in La Dentelle russe, by Madame Sophie Davidoff, published at Leipzig, 1895. Russian lace is principally pillow-work with rather heavy thread, and upwards of eighty specimens are reproduced by photo-lithography in this book.
A short account of the best-known varieties of Point and Pillow Lace, by A. M. S. (London, 1899), is illustrated with typical specimens of Italian, Flemish, French and English laces, as well as with magnified details of lace, enabling any one to identify the plaits, the twists and loops of threads in the actual making of the fabric.—L’Industrie des tulles et dentelles mécaniques dans le Pas de Calais, 1815-1900, by Henri Hénon (Paris, 1900), is an important volume of over 600 pages of letterpress, interspersed with abundant process blocks of the several kinds of machine nets and laces made at Calais since 1815. It opens with a short account of the Arras hand-made laces, the production of which is now almost extinct. The book was sold for the benefit of a public subscription towards the erection of a statue in Calais to Jacquard, the inventor of the apparatus by means of which all figured textile fabrics are manufactured. It is of some interest to note that machine net and lace-making at Calais owe their origin to Englishmen, amongst whom “le sieur R. Webster arrivé à St Pierre-les-Calais en Décembre, 1816, venant d’Angleterre, est l’un des premiers qui ont établi dans la communauté une fabrique de tulles,” &c. Lace-making in the Midlands: Past and Present, by C. C. Channer and M. E. Roberts (London, 1900) upon the lace-making industry in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire contains many illustrations of laces made in these counties from the 17th century to the present time. Musée rétrospectif. Dentelles à l’exposition universelle internationale de 1900 à Paris. Rapport de Mons. E. Lefebvre contains several good illustrations, especially of important specimens of Point de France of the 17th and 18th centuries. Le Point de France et les autres dentelliers au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècles, by Madame Laurence de Laprade (Paris, 1905), brings together much hitherto scattered information throwing light upon operations in many localities in France where the industry has been carried on for considerable periods. The book is well and usefully illustrated.
See also Irische Spitzen (30 half-tone plates), with a short historical introduction by Alan S. Cole (Stuttgart, 1902); Pillow Lace, a practical handbook by Elizabeth Mincoff and Margaret S. Marriage (London, 1907); The Art of Bobbin Lace, a practical text-book of workmanship, &c., by Louisa Tebbs (London, 1907); Antiche trine italiane, by Elisa Ricci (Bergamo, 1908), well illustrated; Seven Centuries of Lace, by Mrs John Hungerford Pollen (London and New York, 1908), very fully illustrated.
(A. S. C.)
The prevalence of fashion in the above-mentioned sorts of embroidery during the 16th century is marked by the number of pattern-books then published. In Venice a work of this class was issued by Alessandro Pagannino in 1527; another of a similar nature, printed by Pierre Quinty, appeared in the same year at Cologne; and La Fleur de la science de pourtraicture et patrons de broderie, façon arabicque et ytalique, was published at Paris in 1530. From these early dates until the beginning of the 17th century pattern-books for embroidery in Italy, France, Germany and England were published in great abundance. The designs contained in many of those dating from the early 16th century were to be worked for costumes and hangings, and consisted of scrolls, arabesques, birds, animals, flowers, foliage, herbs and grasses. So far, however, as their reproduction as laces might be concerned, the execution of complicated work was involved which none but practised lace-workers, such as those who arose a century later, could be expected to undertake.
A very complete account of how these conditions began and developed at Alençon, for instance, is given in Madame Despierre’s Histoire du Point d’Alençon (1886) to which is appended an interesting and annotated list of merchants, designers and makers of Point d’Alençon.
E.g. The family of Camusat at Alençon from 1602 until 1795.
The picture, however, as Seguin has pointed out, was probably painted some thirty years later, and by Jean Matsys.
See the poetical skit Révolte des passements et broderies, written by Mademoiselle de la Tousse, cousin of Madame de Sévigné, in the middle of the 17th century, which marks the favour which foreign laces at that time commanded amongst the leaders of French fashion. It is fairly evident too that the French laces themselves, known as “bisette,” “gueuse,” “campane” and “mignonette,” were small and comparatively insignificant works, without pretence to design.
Useful information has been communicated to the writer of the present article on lace by Mrs B. Wishaw of Seville.
See Felkin’s Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures.
After 1650 the lace-workers at Alençon and its neighbourhood produced work of a daintier kind than that which was being made by the Venetians. As a rule the hexagonal bride grounds of Alençon laces are smaller than similar details in Venetian laces. The average size of a diagonal taken from angle to angle in an Alençon (or so-called Argentan) hexagon was about one-sixth of an inch, and each side of the hexagon was about one-tenth of an inch. An idea of the minuteness of the work can be formed from the fact that a side of a hexagon would be overcast with some nine or ten buttonhole stitches.
LACE-BARK TREE, a native of Jamaica, known botanically as Lagetta lintearia, from its native name lagetto. The inner bark consists of numerous concentric layers of interlacing fibres resembling in appearance lace. Collars and other articles of apparel have been made of the fibre, which is also used in the manufacture of whips, &c. The tree belongs to the natural order Thymelaeaceae, and is grown in hothouses in Britain.
LACEDAEMON, in historical times an alternative name of Laconia (q.v.). Homer uses only the former, and in some passages seems to denote by it the Achaean citadel, the Therapnae of later times, in contrast to the lower town Sparta (G. Gilbert, Studien zur altspartanischen Geschichte, Göttingen, 1872, p. 34 foll.). It is described by the epithets κοίλη (hollow) and κητώεσσα (spacious or hollow), and is probably connected etymologically with λάκκος, lacus, any hollow place. Lacedaemon is now the name of a separate department, which had in 1907 a population of 87,106.
LACÉPÈDE, BERNARD GERMAIN ÉTIENNE DE LA VILLE, Comte de (1756-1825), French naturalist, was born at Agen in Guienne on the 26th of December 1756. His education was carefully conducted by his father, and the early perusal of Buffon’s Natural History awakened his interest in that branch of study, which absorbed his chief attention. His leisure he devoted to music, in which, besides becoming a good performer on the piano and organ, he acquired considerable mastery of composition, two of his operas (which were never published) meeting with the high approval of Gluck; in 1781-1785 he also brought out in two volumes his Poétique de la musique. Meantime he wrote two treaties, Essai sur l’électricité (1781) and Physique générale et particulière (1782-1784), which gained him the friendship of Buffon, who in 1785 appointed him subdemonstrator in the Jardin du Roi, and proposed to him to become the continuator of his Histoire naturelle. This continuation was published under the titles Histoire des quadrupèdes ovipares et des serpents (2 vols., 1788-1789) and Histoire naturelle des reptiles (1789). After the Revolution Lacépède became a member of the legislative assembly, but during the Reign of Terror he left Paris, his life having become endangered by his disapproval of the massacres. When the Jardin du Roi was reorganized as the Jardin des Plantes, Lacépède was appointed to the chair allocated to the study of reptiles and fishes. In 1798 he published the first volume of Histoire naturelle des poissons, the fifth volume appearing in 1803; and in 1804 appeared his Histoire des cétacés. From this period till his death the part he took in politics prevented him making any further contribution of importance to science. In 1799 he became a senator, in 1801 president of the senate, in 1803 grand chancellor of the legion of honour, in 1804 minister of state, and at the Restoration in 1819 he was created a peer of France. He died at Épinay on the 6th of October 1825. During the latter part of his life he wrote Histoire générale physique et civile de l’Europe, published posthumously in 18 vols., 1826.
A collected edition of his works on natural history was published in 1826.
LACEWING-FLY, the name given to neuropterous insects of the families Hemerobiidae and Chrysopidae, related to the ant-lions, scorpion-flies, &c., with long filiform antennae, longish bodies and two pairs of large similar richly veined wings. The larvae are short grubs beset with hair-tufts and tubercles. They feed upon Aphidae or “green fly” and cover themselves with the emptied skins of their prey. Lacewing-flies of the genus Chrysopa are commonly called golden-eye flies.
LA CHAISE, FRANÇOIS DE (1624-1709), father confessor of Louis XIV., was born at the château of Aix in Forey on the 25th of August 1624, being the son of Georges d’Aix, seigneur de la Chaise, and of Renée de Rochefort. On his mother’s side he was a grandnephew of Père Coton, the confessor of Henry IV. He became a novice of the Society of Jesus before completing his studies at the university of Lyons, where, after taking the final vows, he lectured on philosophy to students attracted by his fame from all parts of France. Through the influence of Camille de Villeroy, archbishop of Lyons, Père de la Chaise was nominated in 1674 confessor of Louis XIV., who intrusted him during the lifetime of Harlay de Champvallon, archbishop of Paris, with the administration of the ecclesiastical patronage of the crown. The confessor united his influence with that of Madame de Maintenon to induce the king to abandon his liaison with Madame de Montespan. More than once at Easter he is said to have had a convenient illness which dispensed him from granting absolution to Louis XIV. With the fall of Madame de Montespan and the ascendancy of Madame de Maintenon his influence vastly increased. The marriage between Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon was celebrated in his presence at Versailles, but there is no reason for supposing that the subsequent coolness between him and Madame de Maintenon arose from his insistence on secrecy in this matter. During the long strife over the temporalities of the Gallican Church between Louis XIV. and Innocent XI. Père de la Chaise supported the royal prerogative, though he used his influence at Rome to conciliate the papal authorities. He must be held largely responsible for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but not for the brutal measures applied against the Protestants. He exercised a moderating influence on Louis XIV.’s zeal against the Jansenists, and Saint-Simon, who was opposed to him in most matters, does full justice to his humane and honourable character. Père de la Chaise had a lasting and unalterable affection for Fénelon, which remained unchanged by the papal condemnation of the Maximes. In spite of failing faculties he continued his duties as confessor to Louis XIV. to the end of his long life. He died on the 20th of January 1709. The cemetery of Père-la-Chaise in Paris stands on property acquired by the Jesuits in 1826, and not, as is often stated, on property personally granted to him.
See R. Chantelauze, Le Père de la Chaize. Études d’histoire religieuse (Paris and Lyons, 1859).
LA CHAISE-DIEU, a town of central France, in the department of Haute Loire, 29 m. N.N.W. of Le Puy by rail. Pop. (1906) 1203. The town, which is situated among fir and pine woods, 3500 ft. above the sea, preserves remains of its ramparts and some houses of the 14th and 15th centuries, but owes its celebrity to a church, which, after the cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand, is the most remarkable Gothic building in Auvergne. The west façade, approached by a flight of steps, is flanked by two massive towers. The nave and aisles are of equal height and are separated from the choir by a stone rood screen. The choir, terminating in an apse with radiating chapel, contains the fine tomb and statue of Clement VI., carved stalls and some admirable Flemish tapestries of the early 16th century. There is a ruined cloister on the south side. The church, which dates from the 14th century, was built at the expense of Pope Clement VI., and belonged to a powerful Benedictine abbey founded in 1043. There are spacious monastic buildings of the 18th century. The abbey was formerly defended by fortifications, the chief survival of which is a lofty rectangular keep to the south of the choir. Trade in timber and the making of lace chiefly occupy the inhabitants of the town.
LA CHALOTAIS, LOUIS RENÉ DE CARADEUC DE (1701-1785), French jurist, was born at Rennes, on the 6th of March 1701. He was for 60 years procureur général at the parliament of Brittany. He was an ardent opponent of the Jesuits; drew up in 1761 for the parliament a memoir on the constitutions of the Order, which did much to secure its suppression in France; and in 1763 published a remarkable “Essay on National Education,” in which he proposed a programme of scientific studies as a substitute for those taught by the Jesuits. The same year began the conflict between the Estates of Brittany and the governor of the province, the duc d’Aiguillon (q.v.). The Estates refused to vote the extraordinary imposts demanded by the governor in the name of the king. La Chalotais was the personal enemy of d’Aiguillon, who had served him an ill turn with the king, and when the parliament of Brittany sided with the Estates, he took the lead in its opposition. The parliament forbade by decrees the levy of imposts to which the Estates had not consented. The king annulling these decrees, all the members of the parliament but twelve resigned (October 1764 to May 1765). The government considered La Chalotais one of the authors of this affair. At this time the secretary of state who administered the affairs of the province, Louis Philypeaux, duc de la Vrillière, comte de Saint-Florentin (1705-1777), received two anonymous and abusive letters. La Chalotais was suspected of having written them, and three experts in handwriting declared that they were by him. The government therefore arrested him, his son and four other members of the parliament. The arrest made a great sensation. There was much talk of “despotism.” Voltaire stated that the procureur général, in his prison of Saint Malo, was reduced, for lack of ink, to write his defence with a toothpick dipped in vinegar—which was apparently pure legend; but public opinion all over France was strongly aroused against the government. On the 16th of November 1765 a commission of judges was named to take charge of the trial. La Chalotais maintained that the trial was illegal; being procureur général he claimed the right to be judged by the parliament of Rennes, or failing this by the parliament of Bordeaux, according to the custom of the province. The judges did not dare to pronounce a condemnation on the evidence of experts in handwriting, and at the end of a year, things remained where they were at the first. Louis XV. then decided on a sovereign act, and brought the affair before his council, which without further formality decided to send the accused into exile. That expedient but increased the popular agitation; philosophes, members of the parliament, patriot Bretons and Jansenists all declared that La Chalotais was the victim of the personal hatred of the duc d’Aiguillon and of the Jesuits. The government at last gave way, and consented to recall the members of the parliament of Brittany who had resigned. This parliament, when it met again, after the formal accusation of the duc d’Aiguillon, demanded the recall of La Chalotais. This was accorded in 1775, and La Chalotais was allowed to transmit his office to his son. In this affair public opinion showed itself stronger than the absolutism of the king. The opposition to the royal power gained largely through it, and it may be regarded as one of the preludes to the revolution of 1789. La Chalotais, who was personally a violent, haughty and unsympathetic character, died at Rennes on the 12th of July 1785.
See, besides the Comptes-Rendus des Constitutions des Jésuites and the Essai d’éducation nationale, the Mémoires de la Chalotais (3 vols., 1766-1767). Two works containing detailed bibliographies are Marion, La Bretagne et le duc d’Aiguillon (Paris, 1893), and B. Pocquet, Le Duc d’Aiguillon et La Chalotais (Paris, 1901). See also a controversy between these two authors in the Bulletin critique for 1902.
LA CHARITÉ, a town of central France in the department of Nièvre, on the right bank of the Loire, 17 m. N.N.W. of Nevers on the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway. Pop. (1906) 3990. La Charité possesses the remains of a fine Romanesque basilica, the church of Sainte-Croix, dating from the 11th and early 12th centuries. The plan consists of a nave, rebuilt at the end of the 17th century, transept and choir with ambulatory and side chapels. Surmounting the transept is an octagonal tower of one story, and a square Romanesque tower of much beauty flanks the main portal. There are ruins of the ramparts, which date from the 14th century. The manufacture of hosiery, boots and shoes, files and iron goods, lime and cement and woollen and other fabrics are among the industries; trade is chiefly in wood and iron.
La Charité owes its celebrity to its priory, which was founded in the 8th century and reorganized as a dependency of the abbey of Cluny in 1052. It became the parent of many priories and monasteries, some of them in England and Italy. The possession of the town was hotly contested during the wars of religion of the 16th century, at the end of which its fortifications were dismantled.
LA CHAUSSÉE, PIERRE CLAUDE NIVELLE DE (1692-1754), French dramatist, was born in Paris in 1692. In 1731 he published an Épître à Clio, a didactic poem in defence of Lériget de la Faye in his dispute with Antoine Houdart de la Motte, who had maintained that verse was useless in tragedy. La Chaussée was forty years old before he produced his first play, La Fausse Antipathie (1734). His second play, Le Préjugé à la mode (1735) turns on the fear of incurring ridicule felt by a man in love with his own wife, a prejudice dispelled in France, according to La Harpe, by La Chaussée’s comedy. L’École des amis (1737) followed, and, after an unsuccessful attempt at tragedy in Maximinien, he returned to comedy in Mélanide (1741). In Mélanide the type known as comédie larmoyante is fully developed. Comedy was no longer to provoke laughter, but tears. The innovation consisted in destroying the sharp distinction then existing between tragedy and comedy in French literature. Indications of this change had been already offered in the work of Marivaux, and La Chaussée’s plays led naturally to the domestic drama of Diderot and of Sedaine. The new method found bitter enemies. Alexis Piron nicknames the author “le Révérend Père Chaussée,” and ridiculed him in one of his most famous epigrams. Voltaire maintained that the comédie larmoyante was a proof of the inability of the author to produce either of the recognized kinds of drama, though he himself produced a play of similar character in L’Enfant prodigue. The hostility of the critics did not prevent the public from shedding tears nightly over the sorrows of La Chaussée’s heroine. L’École des mères (1744) and La Gouvernante (1747) form, with those already mentioned, the best of his work. The strict moral aims pursued by La Chaussée in his plays seem hardly consistent with his private preferences. He frequented the same gay society as did the comte de Caylus and contributed to the Recueils de ces messieurs. La Chaussée died on the 14th of May 1754. Villemain said of his style that he wrote prosaic verses with purity, while Voltaire, usually an adverse critic of his work, said he was “un des premiers après ceux qui ont du génie.”
For the comédie larmoyante see G. Lanson, Nivelle de la Chaussée et la comédie larmoyante (1887).
LACHES (from Anglo-French lachesse, negligence, from lasche, modern lâche, unloosed, slack), a term for slackness or negligence, used particularly in law to signify negligence on the part of a person in doing that which he is by law bound to do, or unreasonable lapse of time in asserting a right, seeking relief, or claiming a privilege. Laches is frequently a bar to a remedy which might have been had if prosecuted in proper time. Statutes of limitation specify the time within which various classes of actions may be brought. Apart from statutes of limitation courts of equity will often refuse relief to those who have allowed unreasonable time to elapse in seeking it, on the principle vigilantibus ac non dormientibus jura subveniunt.
LACHINE, an incorporated town in Jacques Cartier county, Quebec, Canada, 8 m. W. of Montreal, on Lake St Louis, an expansion of the St Lawrence river, and at the upper end of the Lachine canal. Pop. (1901) 5561. It is a station on the Grand Trunk railway and a port of call for steamers plying between Montreal and the Great Lakes. It is a favourite summer resort for the people of Montreal. It was named in 1669 in mockery of its then owner, Robert Cavelier de la Salle (1643-1687), who dreamed of a westward passage to China. In 1689 it was the scene of a terrible massacre of the French by the Iroquois.
LACHISH, a town of great importance in S. Palestine, often mentioned in the Tell el-Amarna tablets. It was destroyed by Joshua for joining the league against the Gibeonites (Joshua x. 31-33) and assigned to the tribe of Judah (xv. 39). Rehoboam fortified it (2 Chron. xi. 9). King Amaziah having fled hither, was here murdered by conspirators (2 Kings xiv. 19). Sennacherib here conducted a campaign (2 Kings xviii. 13) during which Hezekiah endeavoured to make terms with him: the campaign is commemorated by bas-reliefs found in Nineveh, now in the British Museum (see G. Smith’s History of Sennacherib, p. 69). It was one of the last cities that resisted Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. xxxiv. 7). The meaning of Micah’s denunciation (i. 13) of the city is unknown. The Onomasticon places it 7 m. from Eleutheropolis on the S. road, which agrees with the generally received identification, Tell el-Ḥesi, an important mound excavated for the Palestine Exploration Fund by Petrie and Bliss, 1890-1893. The name is preserved in a small Roman site in the neighbourhood, Umm Lakis, which probably represents a later dwelling-place of the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of the city.
See W. M. Flinders Petrie, Tell el-Hesy, and F. J. Bliss, A Mound of many Cities, both published by the Palestine Exploration Fund.
(R. A. S. M.)
LACHMANN, KARL KONRAD FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1793-1851), German philologist and critic, was born at Brunswick on the 4th of March 1793. He studied at Leipzig and Göttingen, devoting himself mainly to philological studies. In 1815 he joined the Prussian army as a volunteer chasseur and accompanied his detachment to Paris, but did not encounter the enemy. In 1816 he became an assistant master in the Friedrich Werder gymnasium at Berlin, and a privat-docent at the university. The same summer he became one of the principal masters in the Friedrichs-Gymnasium of Königsberg, where he assisted his colleague, the Germanist Friedrich Karl Köpke (1785-1865) with his edition of Rudolf von Ems’ Barlaam und Josaphat (1818), and also assisted his friend in a contemplated edition of the works of Walther von der Vogelweide. In January 1818 he became professor extraordinarius of classical philology in the university of Königsberg, and at the same time began to lecture on Old German grammar and the Middle High German poets. He devoted himself during the following seven years to an extraordinarily minute study of those subjects, and in 1824 obtained leave of absence in order that he might search the libraries of middle and south Germany for further materials. In 1825 Lachmann was nominated extraordinary professor of classical and German philology in the university of Berlin (ordinary professor 1827); and in 1830 he was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences. The remainder of his laborious and fruitful life as an author and a teacher was uneventful. He died on the 13th of March 1851.
Lachmann, who was the translator of the first volume of P. E. Müller’s Sagabibliothek des skandinavischen Altertums (1816), is a figure of considerable importance in the history of German philology (see Rudolf von Raumer, Geschichte der germanischen Philologie, 1870). In his “Habilitationsschrift” Über die ursprüngliche Gestalt des Gedichts der Nibelunge Not (1816), and still more in his review of Hagen’s Nibelungen and Benecke’s Bonerius, contributed in 1817 to the Jenaische Literaturzeitung he had already laid down the rules of textual criticism and elucidated the phonetic and metrical principles of Middle High German in a manner which marked a distinct advance in that branch of investigation. The rigidly scientific character of his method becomes increasingly apparent in the Auswahl aus den hochdeutschen Dichtern des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (1820), in the edition of Hartmann’s Iwein (1827), in those of Walther von der Vogelweide (1827) and Wolfram von Eschenbach (1833), in the papers “Über das Hildebrandslied,” “Über althochdeutsche Betonung und Verskunst,” “Über den Eingang des Parzivals,” and “Über drei Bruchstücke niederrheinischer Gedichte” published in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy, and in Der Nibelunge Not und die Klage (1826, 11th ed., 1892), which was followed by a critical commentary in 1836. Lachmann’s Betrachtungen über Homer’s Ilias, first published in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy in 1837 and 1841, in which he sought to show that the Iliad consists of sixteen independent “lays” variously enlarged and interpolated, have had considerable influence on modern Homeric criticism (see Homer), although his views are no longer accepted. His smaller edition of the New Testament appeared in 1831, 3rd ed. 1846; the larger, in two volumes, in 1842-1850. The plan of Lachmann’s edition, explained by himself in the Stud. u. Krit. of 1830, is a modification of the unaccomplished project of Bentley. It seeks to restore the most ancient reading current in Eastern MSS., using the consent of the Latin authorities (Old Latin and Greek Western Uncials) as the main proof of antiquity of a reading where the oldest Eastern authorities differ. Besides Propertius (1816), Lachmann edited Catullus (1829); Tibullus (1829); Genesius (1834); Terentianus Maurus (1836); Babrius (1845); Avianus (1845); Gaius (1841-1842); the Agrimensores Romani (1848-1852); Lucilius (edited after his death by Vahlen, 1876); and Lucretius (1850). The last, which was the main occupation of the closing years of his life, from 1845, was perhaps his greatest achievement, and has been characterized by Munro as “a work which will be a landmark for scholars as long as the Latin language continues to be studied.” Lachmann also translated Shakespeare’s sonnets (1820) and Macbeth (1829).
See M. Hertz, Karl Lachmann, eine Biographie (1851), where a full list of Lachmann’s works is given; F. Leo, Rede zur Säcularfeier K. Lachmanns (1893); J. Grimm, biography in Kleine Schriften; W. Scherer in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xvii., and J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship, iii. (1908), pp. 127-131.
LACINIUM, PROMUNTURIUM (mod. Capo delle Colonne), 7 m S.E. of Crotona (mod. Cotrone); the easternmost point of Bruttii (mod. Calabria). On the cape still stands a single column of the temple erected to Hera Lacinia, which is said to have been fairly complete in the 16th century, but to have been destroyed to build the episcopal palace at Cotrone. It is a Doric column with capital, about 27 ft. in height. Remains of marble roof-tiles have been seen on the spot (Livy xlii. 3) and architectural fragments were excavated in 1886-1887 by the Archaeological Institute of America. The sculptures found were mostly buried again, but a few fragments, some decorative terra-cottas and a dedicatory inscription to Hera of the 6th century B.C., in private possession at Cotrone, are described by F. von Duhn in Notizie degli scavi, 1897, 343 seq. The date of the erection of the temple may be given as 480-440 B.C.; it is not recorded by any ancient writer.
See R. Koldewey and O. Puchstein, Die griechischen Tempel in Unteritalien und Sicilien (Berlin 1899, 41).
LA CIOTAT, a coast town of south-eastern France in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, on the west shore of the Bay of La Ciotat, 26 m. S.E. of Marseilles by rail. Pop. (1906) 10,562. The port is easily accessible and well sheltered. The large shipbuilding yards and repairing docks of the Messageries Maritimes Company give employment to between 2000 and 3000 workmen. Fishing and an active coasting trade are carried on; the town is frequented for sea-bathing. La Ciotat was in ancient times the port of the neighbouring town of Citharista (now the village of Ceyreste).
LA CLOCHE, JAMES DE [”Prince James Stuart”] (1644?-1669), a character who was brought into the history of England by Lord Acton in 1862 (Home and Foreign Review, i. 146-174: “The Secret History of Charles II.”). From information discovered by Father Boero in the archives of the Jesuits in Rome, Lord Acton averred that Charles II., when a lad at Jersey, had a natural son, James. The evidence follows. On the 2nd of April 1668, as the register of the Jesuit House of Novices at Rome attests, “there entered Jacobus de la Cloche.” His baggage was exiguous, his attire was clerical. He is described as “from the island of Jersey, under the king of England, aged 24.” He possessed two documents in French, purporting to have been written by Charles II. at Whitehall, on the 25th of September 1665, and on the 7th of February 1667. In both Charles acknowledges James to be his natural son, he styles him “James de la Cloche de Bourg du Jersey,” and avers that to recognize him publicly “would imperil the peace of the kingdoms”—why is not apparent. A third certificate of birth, in Latin, undated, was from Christina of Sweden, who declares that James, previously a Protestant, has been received into the church of Rome at Hamburg (where in 1667-1668 she was residing) on the 29th of July 1667. The next paper purports to be a letter from Charles II. of August 3/13 to Oliva, general of the Jesuits. The king writes, in French, that he has long wished to be secretly received into the church. He therefore desires that James, his son by a young lady “of the highest quality,” and born to him when he was about sixteen, should be ordained a priest, come to England and receive him. Charles alludes to previous attempts of his own to be secretly admitted (1662). James must be sent secretly to London at once, and Oliva must say nothing to Christina of Sweden (then meditating a journey to Rome), and must never write to Charles except when James carries the letter. Charles next writes on August 29/September 9. He is most anxious that Christina should not meet James; if she knows Charles’s design of changing his creed she will not keep it secret, and Charles will infallibly lose his life. With this letter there is another, written when the first had been sealed. Charles insists that James must not be accompanied, as novices were, when travelling, by a Jesuit socius or guardian. Charles’s wife and mother have just heard that this is the rule, but the rule must be broken. James, who is to travel as “Henri de Rohan,” must not come by way of France. Oliva will supply him with funds. On the back of this letter Oliva has written the draft of his brief reply to Charles (from Leghorn, October 14, 1668). He merely says that the bearer, a French gentleman (James spoke only French), will inform the king that his orders have been executed. Besides these two letters is one from Charles to James, of date August 4/14. It is addressed to “Le Prince Stuart,” though none of Charles’s bastards was allowed to bear the Stuart name. James is told that he may desert the clerical profession if he pleases. In that case “you may claim higher titles from us than the duke of Monmouth.” (There was no higher title save prince of Wales!) If Charles and his brother, the duke of York, die childless, “the kingdoms belong to you, and parliament cannot legally oppose you, unless as, at present, they can only elect Protestant kings.” This letter ought to have opened the eyes of Lord Acton and other historians who accept the myth of James de la Cloche. Charles knew that the crown of England was not elective, that there was no Exclusion Act, and that there were legal heirs if he and his brother died without issue. The last letter of Charles is dated November 18/28, and purports to have been brought from England to Oliva by James de la Cloche on his return to Rome. It reveals the fact that Oliva, despite Charles’s orders, did send James by way of France, with a socius or guardian whom he was to pick up in France on his return to England. Charles says that James is to communicate certain matters to Oliva, and come back at once. Oliva is to give James all the money he needs, and Charles will later make an ample donation to the Jesuits. He acknowledges a debt to Oliva of £800, to be paid in six months. The reader will remark that the king has never paid a penny to James or to Oliva, and that Oliva has never communicated directly with Charles. The truth is that all of Charles’s letters are forgeries. This is certain because in all he writes frequently as if his mother, Henrietta Maria, were in London, and constantly in company with him. Now she had left England for France in 1665, and to England she never returned. As the letters—including that to “Prince Stuart”—are all forged, it is clear that de la Cloche was an impostor. His aim had been to get money from Oliva, and to pretend to travel to England, meaning to enjoy himself. He did not quite succeed, for Oliva sent a socius with him into France. His precautions to avoid a meeting with Christina of Sweden were necessary. She knew no more of him than did Charles, and would have exposed him.
The name of James de la Cloche appears no more in documents. He reached Rome in December 1668, and in January a person calling himself “Prince James Stuart” appears in Naples, accompanied by a socius styling himself a French knight of Malta. Both are on their way to England, but Prince James falls ill and stays in Naples, while his companion departs. The knight of Malta may be a Jesuit. In Naples, Prince James marries a girl of no position, and is arrested on suspicion of being a coiner. To his confessors (he had two in succession) he says that he is a son of Charles II. Our sources are the despatches of Kent, the English agent at Naples, and the Lettere, vol. iii., of Vincenzo Armanni (1674), who had his information from one of the confessors of the “Prince.” The viceroy of Naples communicated with Charles II., who disowned the impostor; Prince James, however, was released, and died at Naples in August 1669, leaving a wild will, in which he claims for his son, still unborn, the “apanage” of Monmouth or Wales, “which it is usual to bestow on natural sons of the king.” The son lived till about 1750, a penniless pretender, and writer of begging letters.
It is needless to pursue Lord Acton’s conjectures about later mysterious appearances of James de la Cloche at the court of Charles, or to discuss the legend that his mother was a lady of Jersey—or a sister of Charles! The Jersey myths may be found in The Man of the Mask (1908), by Monsignor Barnes, who argued that James was the man in the iron mask (see Iron Mask). Later Monsignor Barnes, who had observed that the letter of Charles to Prince James Stuart is a forgery, noticed the impossibility that Charles, in 1668, should constantly write of his mother as resident in London, which she left for ever in 1665.
Who de la Cloche really was it is impossible to discover, but he was a bold and successful swindler, who took in, not only the general of the Jesuits, but Lord Acton and a generation of guileless historians.
(A. L.)
LA CONDAMINE, CHARLES MARIE DE (1701-1774), French geographer and mathematician, was born at Paris on the 28th of January 1701. He was trained for the military profession, but turned his attention to science and geographical exploration. After taking part in a scientific expedition in the Levant (1731), he became a member with Louis Godin and Pierre Bouguer of the expedition sent to Peru in 1735 to determine the length of a degree of the meridian in the neighbourhood of the equator. His associations with his principals were unhappy; the expedition was beset by many difficulties, and finally La Condamine separated from the rest and made his way from Quito down the Amazon, ultimately reaching Cayenne. His was the first scientific exploration of the Amazon. He returned to Paris in 1744 and published the results of his measurements and travels with a map of the Amazon in Mém. de l’académie des sciences, 1745 (English translation 1745-1747). On a visit to Rome La Condamine made careful measurements of the ancient buildings with a view to a precise determination of the length of the Roman foot. The journal of his voyage to South America was published in Paris in 1751. He also wrote in favour of inoculation, and on various other subjects, mainly connected with his work in South America. He died at Paris on the 4th of February 1774.
LACONIA (Gr. Λακωνική), the ancient name of the south-eastern district of the Peloponnese, of which Sparta was the capital. It has an area of some 1,048,000 acres, slightly greater than that of Somersetshire, and consists of three well-marked zones running N. and S. The valley of the Eurotas, which occupies the centre, is bounded W. by the chain of Taygetus (mod. Pentedaktylon, 7900 ft.), which starts from the Arcadian mountains on the N., and at its southern extremity forms the promontory of Taenarum (Cape Matapan). The eastern portion of Laconia consists of a far more broken range of hill country, rising in Mt. Parnon to a height of 6365 ft. and terminating in the headland of Malea. The range of Taygetus is well watered and was in ancient times covered with forests which afforded excellent hunting to the Spartans, while it had also large iron mines and quarries of an inferior bluish marble, as well as of the famous rosso antico of Taenarum. Far poorer are the slopes of Parnon, consisting for the most part of barren limestone uplands scantily watered. The Eurotas valley, however, is fertile, and produces at the present day maize, olives, oranges and mulberries in great abundance. Laconia has no rivers of importance except the Eurotas and its largest tributary the Oenus (mod. Kelefína). The coast, especially on the east, is rugged and dangerous. Laconia has few good harbours, nor are there any islands lying off its shores with the exception of Cythera (Cerigo), S. of Cape Malea. The most important towns, besides Sparta and Gythium, were Bryseae, Amyclae and Pharis in the Eurotas plain, Pellana and Belbina on the upper Eurotas, Sellasia on the Oenus, Caryae on the Arcadian frontier, Prasiae, Zarax and Epidaurus Limera on the east coast, Geronthrae on the slopes of Parnon, Boeae, Asopus, Helos, Las and Teuthrone on the Laconian Gulf, and Hippola, Messa and Oetylus on the Messenian Gulf.
The earliest inhabitants of Laconia, according to tradition, were the autochthonous Leleges (q.v.). Minyan immigrants then settled at various places on the coast and even appear to have penetrated into the interior and to have founded Amyclae. Phoenician traders, too, visited the shores of the Laconian Gulf, and there are indications of trade at a very early period between Laconia and Crete, e.g. a number of blocks of green Laconian porphyry from the quarries at Croceae have been found in the palace of Minos at Cnossus. In the Homeric poems Laconia appears as the realm of an Achaean prince, Menelaus, whose capital was perhaps Therapne on the left bank of the Eurotas, S.E. of Sparta; the Achaean conquerors, however, probably contented themselves with a suzerainty over Laconia and part of Messenia (q.v.) and were too few to occupy the whole land. The Achaean kingdom fell before the incoming Dorians, and throughout the classical period the history of Laconia is that of its capital Sparta (q.v.). In 195 B.C. the Laconian coast towns were freed from Spartan rule by the Roman general T. Quinctius Flamininus, and became members of the Achaean League. When this was dissolved in 146 B.C., they remained independent under the title of the “Confederation of the Lacedaemonians” or “of the Free-Laconians” (κοινὸν τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων or Ἐλευθερολακώνων), the supreme officer of which was a στρατηγός (general) assisted by a ταμίας (treasurer). Augustus seems to have reorganized the league in some way, for Pausanias (iii. 21, 6) speaks of him as its founder. Of the twenty-four cities which originally composed the league, only eighteen remained as members by the reign of Hadrian (see Achaean League). In A.D. 395 a Gothic horde under Alaric devastated Laconia, and subsequently it was overrun by large bands of Slavic immigrants. Throughout the middle ages it was the scene of vigorous struggles between Slavs, Byzantines, Franks, Turks and Venetians, the chief memorials of which are the ruined strongholds of Mistra near Sparta, Geráki (anc. Geronthrae) and Monemvasia, “the Gibraltar of Greece,” on the east coast, and Passava near Gythium. A prominent part in the War of Independence was played by the Maniates or Mainotes, the inhabitants of the rugged peninsula formed by the southern part of Taygetus. They had all along maintained a virtual independence of the Turks and until quite recently retained their medieval customs, living in fortified towers and practising the vendetta or blood-feud.
The district has been divided into two departments (nomes), Lacedaemon and Laconia, with their capitals at Sparta and Gythium respectively. Pop. of Laconia (1907) 61,522.
Archaeology.—Until 1904 archaeological research in Laconia was carried on only sporadically. Besides the excavations undertaken at Sparta, Gythium and Vaphio (q.v.), the most important were those at the Apollo sanctuary of Amyclae carried out by C. Tsountas in 1890 (Ἐφημ. ἀρχαιολ. 1892, 1 ff.) and in 1904 by A. Furtwängler. At Kampos, on the western side of Taygetus, a small domed tomb of the “Mycenean” age was excavated in 1890 and yielded two leaden statuettes of great interest, while at Arkina a similar tomb of poor construction was unearthed in the previous year. Important inscriptions were found at Geronthrae (Geráki), notably five long fragments of the Edictum Diocletiani, and elsewhere. In 1904 the British Archaeological school at Athens undertook a systematic investigation of the ancient and medieval remains in Laconia. The results, of which the most important are summarized in the article Sparta, are published in the British School Annual, x. ff. The acropolis of Geronthrae, a hero-shrine at Angelona in the south-eastern highlands, and the sanctuary of Ino-Pasiphae at Thalamae have also been investigated.
Bibliography.—Besides the Greek histories and many of the works cited under Sparta, see W. M. Leake, Travels in the Morea (London, 1830), cc. iv.-viii., xxii., xxiii.; E. Curtius, Peloponnesos (Gotha, 1852), ii. 203 ff.; C. Bursian, Geographie von Griechenland (Leipzig, 1868), ii. 102 ff.; Strabo viii. 5; Pausanias iii. and the commentary in J. G. Frazer, Pausanias’s Description of Greece (London, 1898), vol. iii.; W. G. Clark, Peloponnesus (London, 1858), 155 ff.; E. P. Boblaye, Recherches géographiques sur les ruines de la Morée (Paris, 1835), 65 ff.; L. Ross, Reisen im Peloponnes (Berlin, 1841), 158 ff.; W. Vischer, Erinnerungen u. Eindrücke aus Griechenland (Basel, 1857), 360 ff.; J. B. G. M. Bory de Saint-Vincent, Relation du voyage de l’expédition scientifique de Morée (Paris, 1836), cc. 9, 10; G. A. Blouet, Expédition scientifique de Morée (Paris, 1831-1838), ii. 58 ff.; A. Philippson, Der Peloponnes (Berlin, 1892), 155 ff.; Annual of British School at Athens, 1907-8.
Inscriptions: Le Bas-Foucart, Voyage archéologique: Inscriptions, Nos. 160-290; Inscriptiones Graecae, v.; Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (Berlin, 1828), Nos. 1237-1510; Collitz-Bechtel, Sammlung der griech. Dialektinschriften, iii. 2 (Göttingen, 1898), Nos. 4400-4613. Coins: Catalogue of Greek Coins in the British Museum: Peloponnesus (London, 1887), xlvi. ff., 121 ff.; B. V. Head, Historia Numorum (Oxford, 1887), 363 ff. Cults: S. Wide, Lakonische Kulte (Leipzig, 1893). Ancient roads: W. Loring, “Some Ancient Routes in the Peloponnese” in Journal of Hellenic Studies, xv. 25 ff.
(M. N. T.)
LACONIA, a city and the county-seat of Belknap county, New Hampshire, U.S.A., on both sides of the Winnepesaukee river, 28 m. N.N.E. of Concord. Pop. (1900) 8042 (1770 foreign-born); (1910) 10,183. Laconia is served by two divisions of the Boston & Maine railway, which has a very handsome granite passenger station (1892) and repair shops here. It is pleasantly situated in the lake district of central New Hampshire, and in the summer season Lake Winnisquam on the S. and W. and Lake Winnepesaukee on the N.E. attract many visitors. The city covers an area of 24.65 sq. m. (5.47 sq. m. annexed since 1890). Within the city limits, and about 6 m. from its centre, are the grounds of the Winnepesaukee Camp-Meeting Association, and the camping place for the annual reunions of the New Hampshire Veterans of the Civil War, both at The Weirs, the northernmost point in the territory claimed by colonial Massachusetts; about 2 m. from the centre of Laconia is Lakeport (pop. 1900, 2137), which, like The Weirs, is a summer resort and a ward in the city of Laconia. Among the public institutions are the State School for Feeble-minded Children, a cottage hospital and the Laconia Public Library, lodged in the Gale Memorial Library building (1903). Another fine building is the Congregational Church (1906). The New Hampshire State Fish Hatchery is in Laconia. Water-power is furnished by the river. In 1905 Laconia ranked first among the cities of the state in the manufacture of hosiery and knit goods, and the value of these products for the year was 48.4% of the total value of the city’s factory product; among its other manufactures are yarn, knitting machines, needles, sashes and blinds, axles, paper boxes, boats, gas and gasolene engines, and freight, passenger and electric cars. The total value of the factory products increased from $2,152,379 in 1900 to $3,096,878 in 1905, or 43.9%. The portion of the city N. of the river, formerly known as Meredith Bridge, was set apart from the township of Meredith and incorporated as a township under the name of Laconia in 1855; a section S. of the river was taken from the township of Gilford in 1874; and Lakeport was added in 1893, when Laconia was chartered as a city. The same Laconia was first applied in New England to the region granted in 1629 to Mason and Gorges (see Mason, John).
LACONICUM (i.e. Spartan, sc. balneum, bath), the dry sweating room of the Roman thermae, contiguous to the caldarium or hot room. The name was given to it as being the only form of warm bath that the Spartans admitted. The laconicum was usually a circular room with niches in the axes of the diagonals and was covered by a conical roof with a circular opening at the top, according to Vitruvius (v. 10), “from which a brazen shield is suspended by chains, capable of being so lowered and raised as to regulate the temperature.” The walls of the laconicum were plastered with marble stucco and polished, and the conical roof covered with plaster and painted blue with gold stars. Sometimes, as in the old baths at Pompeii, the laconicum was provided in an apse at one end of the caldarium, but as a rule it was a separate room raised to a higher temperature and had no bath in it. In addition to the hypocaust under the floor the wall was lined with flue tiles. The largest laconicum, about 75 ft. in diameter, was that built by Agrippa in his thermae on the south side of the Pantheon, and is referred to by Cassius (liii. 23), who states that, in addition to other works, “he constructed the hot bath chamber which he called the Laconicum Gymnasium.” All traces of this building are lost; but in the additions made to the thermae of Agrippa by Septimius Severus another laconicum was built farther south, portions of which still exist in the so-called Arco di Giambella.
LACORDAIRE, JEAN BAPTISTE HENRI (1802-1861), French ecclesiastic and orator, was born at Recey-sur-Ource, Côte d’Or, on the 12th of March 1802. He was the second of a family of four, the eldest of whom, Jean Théodore (1801-1870), travelled a great deal in his youth, and was afterwards professor of comparative anatomy at Liége. For several years Lacordaire studied at Dijon, showing a marked talent for rhetoric; this led him to the pursuit of law, and in the local debates of the advocates he attained a high celebrity. At Paris he thought of going on the stage, but was induced to finish his legal training and began to practise as an advocate (1817-1824). Meanwhile Lamennais had published his Essai sur l’Indifférence,—a passionate plea for Christianity and in particular for Roman Catholicism as necessary for the social progress of mankind. Lacordaire read, and his ardent and believing nature, weary of the theological negations of the Encyclopaedists, was convinced. In 1823 he became a theological student at the seminary of Saint Sulpice; four years later he was ordained and became almoner of the college Henri IV. He was called from it to co-operate with Lamennais in the editorship of L’Avenir, a journal established to advocate the union of the democratic principle with ultramontanism. Lacordaire strove to show that Catholicism was not bound up with the idea of dynasty, and definitely allied it with a well-defined liberty, equality and fraternity. But the new propagandism was denounced from Rome in an encyclical. In the meantime Lacordaire and Montalembert, believing that, under the charter of 1830, they were entitled to liberty of instruction, opened an independent free school. It was closed in two days, and the teachers fined before the court of peers. These reverses Lacordaire accepted with quiet dignity; but they brought his relationship with Lamennais to a close. He now began the course of Christian conférences at the Collége Stanislas, which attracted the art and intellect of Paris; thence he went to Nôtre Dame, and for two years his sermons were the delight of the capital. His presence was dignified, his voice capable of indefinite modulation, and his gestures animated and attractive. He still preached the gospel of the people’s sovereignty in civil life and the pope’s supremacy in religion, but brought to his propagandism the full resources of a mind familiar with philosophy, history and literature, and indeed led the reaction against Voltairean scepticism. He was asked to edit the Univers, and to take a chair in the university of Louvain, but he declined both appointments, and in 1838 set out for Rome, revolving a great scheme for christianizing France by restoring the old order of St Dominic. At Rome he donned the habit of the preaching friar and joined the monastery of Minerva. His Mémoire pour le rétablissement en France de l’ordre des frères prêcheurs was then prepared and dedicated to his country; at the same time he collected the materials for the life of St Dominic. When he returned to France in 1841 he resumed his preaching at Nôtre Dame, but he had small success in re-establishing the order of which he ever afterwards called himself monk. His funeral orations are the most notable in their kind of any delivered during his time, those devoted to Marshal Drouet and Daniel O’Connell being especially marked by point and clearness. He next thought that his presence in the National Assembly would be of use to his cause; but being rebuked by his ecclesiastical superiors for declaring himself a republican, he resigned his seat ten days after his election. In 1850 he went back to Rome and was made provincial of the order, and for four years laboured to make the Dominicans a religious power. In 1854 he retired to Sorrèze to become director of a private lyceum, and remained there until he died on the 22nd of November 1861. He had been elected to the Academy in the preceding year.
The best edition of Lacordaire’s works is the Œuvres complètes (6 vols., Paris, 1872-1873), published by C. Poussielgue, which contains, besides the Conférences, the exquisitely written, but uncritical, Vie de Saint Dominique and the beautiful Lettres à un jeune homme sur la vie chrétienne. For a complete list of his published correspondence see L. Petit de Julleville’s Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française, vii. 598.
The authoritative biography is by Ch. Foisset (2 vols., Paris, 1870). The religious aspect of his character is best shown in Père B. Chocarne’s Vie du Père Lacordaire (2 vols., Paris, 1866—English translation by A. Th. Drane, London, 1868); see also Count C. F. R. de Montalembert’s Un Moine au XIXème siècle (Paris, 1862—English translation by F. Aylward, London, 1867). There are lives by Mrs H. L. Lear (London, 1882); by A. Ricard (1 vol. of L’École menaisienne, Paris, 1883); by Comte O. d’Haussonville (1 vol., Les Grands écrivains Français series, Paris, 1897); by Gabriel Ledos (Paris, 1901); by Dora Greenwell (1867); and by the duc de Broglie (Paris, 1889). The Correspondance inédite du Père Lacordaire, edited by H. Villard (Paris, 1870), may also be consulted. See also Saint-Beuve in Causeries de Lundi. Several of Lacordaire’s Conférences have been translated into English, among these being, Jesus Christ (1869); God (1870); God and Man (1872); Life (1875). For a theological study of the Conférences de Nôtre Dame, see an article by Bishop J. C. Hedley in Dublin Review (October 1870).
LACQUER, or Lacker, a general term for coloured and frequently opaque varnishes applied to certain metallic objects and to wood. The term is derived from the resin lac, which substance is the basis of lacquers properly so called. Technically, among Western nations, lacquering is restricted to the coating of polished metals or metallic surfaces, such as brass, pewter and tin, with prepared varnishes which will give them a golden, bronze-like or other lustre as desired. Throughout the East Indies the lacquering of wooden surfaces is universally practised, large articles of household furniture, as well as small boxes, trays, toys and papier-mâché objects, being decorated with bright-coloured and variegated lacquer. The lacquer used in the East is, in general, variously coloured sealing-wax, applied, smoothed and polished in a heated condition; and by various devices intricate marbled, streaked and mottled designs are produced. Quite distinct from these, and from all other forms of lacquer, is the lacquer work of Japan, for which see Japan, § Art.
LACRETELLE, PIERRE LOUIS DE (1751-1824), French politician and writer, was born at Metz on the 9th of October 1751. He practised as a barrister in Paris; and under the Revolution was elected as a député suppléant in the Constituent Assembly, and later as deputy in the Legislative Assembly. He belonged to the moderate party known as the “Feuillants,” but after the 10th of August 1792 he ceased to take part in public life. In 1803 he became a member of the Institute, taking the place of La Harpe. Under the Restoration he was one of the chief editors of the Minerve française; he wrote also an essay, Sur le 18 Brumaire (1799), some Fragments politiques et littéraires (1817), and a treatise Des partis politiques et des factions de la prétendue aristocratie d’aujourd’hui (1819).
His younger brother, Jean Charles Dominique de Lacretelle, called Lacretelle le jeune (1766-1855), historian and journalist, was also born at Metz on the 3rd of September 1766. He was called to Paris by his brother in 1787, and during the Revolution belonged, like him, to the party of the Feuillants. He was for some time secretary to the duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, the celebrated philanthropist, and afterwards joined the staff of the Journal de Paris, then managed by Suard, and where he had as colleagues André Chénier and Antoine Roucher. He made no attempt to hide his monarchist sympathies, and this, together with the way in which he reported the trial and death of Louis XVI., brought him in peril of his life; to avoid this danger he enlisted in the army, but after Thermidor he returned to Paris and to his newspaper work. He was involved in the royalist movement of the 13th Vendémiaire, and condemned to deportation after the 18th Fructidor; but, thanks to powerful influence, he was left “forgotten” in prison till after the 18th Brumaire, when he was set at liberty by Fouché. Under the Empire he was appointed a professor of history in the Faculté des lettres of Paris (1809), and elected as a member of the Académie française (1811). In 1827 he was prime mover in the protest made by the French Academy against the minister Peyronnet’s law on the press, which led to the failure of that measure, but this step cost him, as it did Villemain, his post as censeur royal. Under Louis Philippe he devoted himself entirely to his teaching and literary work. In 1848 he retired to Mâcon; but there, as in Paris, he was the centre of a brilliant circle, for he was a wonderful causeur, and an equally good listener, and had many interesting experiences to recall. He died on the 26th of March 1855. His son Pierre Henri (1815-1899) was a humorous writer and politician of purely contemporary interest.
J. C. Lacretelle’s chief work is a series of histories of the 18th century, the Revolution and its sequel: Précis historique de la Révolution française, appended to the history of Rabaud St Étienne, and partly written in the prison of La Force (5 vols., 1801-1806); Histoire de France pendant le XVIIIe siècle (6 vols., 1808); Histoire de l’Assemblée Constituante (2 vols., 1821); L’Assemblée Législative (1822); La Convention Nationale (3 vols., 1824-1825); Histoire de France depuis la restauration (1829-1835); Histoire du consulat et de l’empire (4 vols., 1846). The author was a moderate and fair-minded man, but possessed neither great powers of style, nor striking historical insight, nor the special historian’s power of writing minute accuracy of detail with breadth of view. Carlyle’s sarcastic remark on Lacretelle’s history of the Revolution, that it “exists, but does not profit much,” is partly true of all his books. He had been an eyewitness of and an actor in the events which he describes, but his testimony must be accepted with caution.
LACROIX, ANTOINE FRANÇOIS ALFRED (1863- ), French mineralogist and geologist, was born at Mâcon, Saône et Loire, on the 4th of February 1863. He took the degree of D. ès Sc. in Paris, 1889. In 1893 he was appointed professor of mineralogy at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, and in 1896 director of the mineralogical laboratory in the École des Hautes Études. He paid especial attention to minerals connected with volcanic phenomena and igneous rocks, to the effects of metamorphism, and to mineral veins, in various parts of the world, notably in the Pyrenees. In his numerous contributions to scientific journals he dealt with the mineralogy and petrology of Madagascar, and published an elaborate and exhaustive volume on the eruptions in Martinique, La Montagne Pelée et ses éruptions (1904). He also issued an important work entitled Mineralogie de la France et de ses Colonies (1893-1898), and other works in conjunction with A. Michel Lévy. He was elected member of the Académie des sciences in 1904.
LACROIX, PAUL (1806-1884), French author and journalist, was born in Paris on the 27th of April 1806, the son of a novelist. He is best known under his pseudonym of P. L. Jacob, bibliophile, or “Bibliophile Jacob,” suggested by the constant interest he took in public libraries and books generally. Lacroix was an extremely prolific and varied writer. Over twenty historical romances alone came from his pen, and he also wrote a variety of serious historical works, including a history of Napoleon III., and the life and times of the Tsar Nicholas I. of Russia. He was the joint author with Ferdinand Séré of a five-volume work, Le Moyen Âge et La Renaissance (1847), a standard work on the manners, customs and dress of those times, the chief merit of which lies in the great number of illustrations it contains. He also wrote many monographs on phases of the history of culture. Over the signature Pierre Dufour was published an exhaustive Histoire de la Prostitution (1851-1852), which has always been attributed to Lacroix. His works on bibliography were also extremely numerous. In 1885 he was appointed librarian of the Arsenal Library, Paris. He died in Paris on the 16th of October 1884.
LACROMA (Serbo-Croatian Lokrum), a small island in the Adriatic Sea, forming part of the Austrian kingdom of Dalmatia, and lying less than half a mile south of Ragusa. Though barely 1¼ m. in length, Lacroma is remarkable for the beauty of its subtropical vegetation. It was a favourite resort of the archduke Maximilian, afterwards emperor of Mexico (1832-1867), who restored the château and park; and of the Austrian crown prince Rudolph (1857-1889). It contains an 11th-century Benedictine monastery; and the remains of a church, said by a very doubtful local tradition to have been founded by Richard I. of England (1157-1199), form part of the imperial château.
See Lacroma, an illustrated descriptive work by the crown princess Stéphanie (afterwards Countess Lónyay) (Vienna, 1892).
LA CROSSE, a city and the county-seat of La Crosse county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., about 180 m. W.N.W. of Milwaukee, and about 120 m. S.E. of St Paul, Minnesota, on the E. bank of the Mississippi river, at the mouth of the Black and of the La Crosse rivers. Pop. (1900) 28,895; (1910 census) 30,417. Of the total population in 1900, 7222 were foreign-born, 3130 being German and 2023 Norwegian, and 17,555 were of foreign-parentage (both parents foreign-born), including 7853 of German parentage, 4422 of Norwegian parentage, and 1062 of Bohemian parentage. La Crosse is served by the Chicago & North Western, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the La Crosse & South Eastern, and the Green Bay & Western railways, and by river steamboat lines on the Mississippi. The river is crossed here by a railway bridge (C.M. & St P.) and wagon bridge. The city is situated on a prairie, extending back from the river about 2½ m. to bluffs, from which fine views may be obtained. Among the city’s buildings and institutions are the Federal Building (1886-1887), the County Court House (1902-1903), the Public Library (with more than 20,000 volumes), the City Hall (1891), the High School Building (1905-1906), the St Francis, La Crosse and Lutheran hospitals, a Young Men’s Christian Association Building, a Young Women’s Christian Association Building, a U.S. Weather Station (1907), and a U.S. Fish Station (1905). La Crosse is the seat of a state Normal School (1909). Among the city’s parks are Pettibone (an island in the Mississippi), Riverside, Burns, Fair Ground and Myrick. The city is the see of a Roman Catholic bishop. La Crosse is an important lumber and grain market, and is the principal wholesale distributing centre for a large territory in S.W. Wisconsin, N. Iowa and Minnesota. Proximity to both pine and hardwood forests early made it one of the most important lumber manufacturing places in the North-west; but this industry has now been displaced by other manufactures. The city has grain elevators, flour mills (the value of flour and grist mill products in 1905 was $2,166,116), and breweries (product value in 1905, $1,440,659). Other important manufactures are agricultural implements ($542,425 in 1905), lumber and planing mill products, leather, woollen, knit and rubber goods, tobacco, cigars and cigarettes, carriages, foundry and machine-shop products, copper and iron products, cooperage, pearl buttons, brooms and brushes. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $8,139,432, as against $7,676,581 in 1900. The city owns and operates its water-works system, the wagon bridge (1890-1891) across the Mississippi, and a toll road (2½ m. long) to the village of La Crescent, Minn.
Father Hennepin and du Lhut visited or passed the site of La Crosse as early as 1680, but it is possible that adventurous coureurs-des-bois preceded them. The first permanent settlement was made in 1841, and La Crosse was made the county-seat in 1855 and was chartered as a city in 1856.
LACROSSE, the national ball game of Canada. It derives its name from the resemblance of its chief implement used, the curved netted stick, to a bishop’s crozier. It was borrowed from the Indian tribes of North America. In the old days, according to Catlin, the warriors of two tribes in their war-paint would form the sides, often 800 or 1000 strong. The goals were placed from 500 yds. to ½ m. apart with practically no side boundaries. A solemn dance preceded the game, after which the ball was tossed into the air and the two sides rushed to catch it on “crosses,” similar to those now in use. The medicine-men acted as umpires, and the squaws urged on the men by beating them with switches. The game attracted much attention from the early French settlers in Canada. In 1763, after Canada had become British, the game was used by the aborigines to carry out an ingenious piece of treachery. On the 4th of June, when the garrison of Fort Michilimackinac (now Mackinac) was celebrating the king’s birthday, it was invited by the Ottawas, under their chief Pontiac, to witness a game of “baggataway” (lacrosse). The players gradually worked their way close to the gates, when, throwing aside their crosses and seizing their tomahawks which the squaws suddenly produced from under their blankets, they rushed into the fort and massacred all the inmates except a few Frenchmen.
The game found favour among the British settlers, but it was not until 1867, the year in which Canada became a Dominion, that G. W. Beers, a prominent player, suggested that Lacrosse should be recognized as the national game, and the National Lacrosse Association of Canada was formed. From that time the game has flourished vigorously in Canada and to a less extent in the United States. In 1868 an English Lacrosse Association was formed, but, although a team of Indians visited the United Kingdom in 1867, it was not until sometime later that the game became at all popular in Great Britain. Its progress was much encouraged by visits of teams representing the Toronto Lacrosse Club in 1888 and 1902, the methods of the Canadians and their wonderful “short-passing” exciting much admiration. In 1907 the Capitals of Ottawa visited England, playing six matches, all of which were won by the Canadians. The match North v. South has been played annually in England since 1882. A county championship was inaugurated in 1905. A North of England League, embracing ten clubs, began playing league matches in 1897; and a match between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge has been played annually since 1903. A match between England and Ireland was played annually from 1881 to 1904.
Implements of the Game.—The ball is made of india-rubber sponge, weighs between 4¼ and 4½ oz., and measures 8 to 8½ in. in circumference. The “crosse” is formed of a light staff of hickory wood, the top being bent to form a kind of hook, from the tip of which a thong is drawn and made fast to the shaft about 2 ft. from the other end. The oval triangle thus formed is covered with a network of gut or rawhide, loose enough to hold the ball but not to form a bag. At no part must the crosse measure more than 12 in. in breadth, and no metal must be used in its manufacture. It may be of any length to suit the player. The goals are set up not less than 100 nor more than 150 yds. apart, the goal-posts being 6 ft. high and the same distance apart. They are set up in the middle of the “goal-crease,” a space of 12 ft. square marked with chalk. A net extends from the top rail and sides of the posts back to a point 6 ft. behind the middle of the line between the posts. Boundaries are agreed upon by the captains. Shoes may have india-rubber soles, but must be without spikes.
The Game.—The object of the game is to send the ball, by means of the crosse, through the enemy’s goal-posts as many times as possible during the two periods of play, precisely as in football and hockey. There are twelve players of each side. In every position save that of goal there are two men, one of each side, whose duties are to “mark” and neutralize each other’s efforts. The game is opened by the act of “facing,” in which the two centres, each with his left shoulder towards his opponents’ goal, hold their crosses, wood downwards, on the ground, the ball being placed between them. When the signal is given the centres draw their crosses sharply inwards in order to gain possession of the ball. The ball may be kicked or struck with the crosse, as at hockey, but the goal-keeper alone may handle it, and then only to block and not to throw it. Although the ball may be thrown with the crosse for a long distance—220 yds. is about the limit—long throws are seldom tried, it being generally more advantageous for a player to run with the ball resting on the crosse, until he can pass it to a member of his side who proceeds with the attack, either by running, passing to another, or trying to throw the ball through the opponents’ goal. The crosse, usually held in both hands, is made to retain the ball by an ingenious rocking motion only acquired by practice. As there is no “off-side” in Lacrosse, a player may pass the ball to the front, side or rear. No charging is allowed, but one player may interfere with another by standing directly in front of him (“body-check”), though without holding, tripping or striking with the crosse. No one may interfere with a player who is not in possession of the ball. Fouls are penalized either by the suspension of the offender until a goal has been scored or until the end of the game; or by allowing the side offended against a “free position.” When a “free position” is awarded each player must stand in the position where he is, excepting the goal-keeper who may get back to his goal, and any opponent who may be nearer the player getting the ball than 5 yds.; this player must retire to that distance from the one who has been given the “free position,” who then proceeds with the game as he likes when the referee says “play.” This penalty may not be carried out nearer than 10 yds. from the goal. If the ball crosses a boundary the referee calls “stand,” and all players stop where they are, the ball being then “faced” not less than 4 yds. within the boundary line by the two nearest players.
See the official publications of the English Lacrosse Union; and Lacrosse by W. C. Schmeisser, in Spalding’s “Athletic Library.” Also Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians, by George Catlin.
LA CRUZ, RAMÓN DE (1731-1794), Spanish dramatist, was born at Madrid on the 28th of March 1731. He was a clerk in the ministry of finance, and is the author of three hundred sainetes, little farcical sketches of city life, written to be played between the acts of a longer play. He published a selection in ten volumes (Madrid, 1786-1791), and died on the 5th of March 1794. The best of his pieces, such as Las Tertulias de Madrid, are delightful specimens of satiric observation.
See E. Cotardo y Mori, Don Ramón de la Cruz y sus obras (Madrid, 1899); C. Cambronero, Sainetes inédites existentes en la Biblioteca Municipal de Madrid (Madrid, 1900).
LACRYMATORY (from Lat. lacrima, a tear), a class of small vessels of terra-cotta, or, more frequently, of glass, found in Roman and late Greek tombs, and supposed to have been bottles into which mourners dropped their tears. They contained unguents, and to the use of unguents at funeral ceremonies the finding of so many of these vessels in tombs is due. They are shaped like a spindle, or a flask with a long small neck and a body in the form of a bulb.
LACTANTIUS FIRMIANUS (c. 260-c. 340), also called Lucius Caelius (or Caecilius) Lactantius Firmianus, was a Christian writer who from the beauty of his style has been called the “Christian Cicero.” His history is very obscure. He was born of heathen parents in Africa about 260, and became a pupil of Arnobius, whom he far excelled in style though his knowledge of the Scriptures was equally slight. About 290 he went to Nicomedia in Bithynia while Diocletian was emperor, to teach rhetoric, but found little work to do in that Greek-speaking city. In middle age he became a convert to Christianity, and about 306 he went to Gaul (Trèves) on the invitation of Constantine the Great, and became tutor to his eldest son, Crispus. He probably died about 340.
Lactantius’ chief work, Divinarum Institutionum Libri Septem, is an “apology” for and an introduction to Christianity, written in exquisite Latin, but displaying such ignorance as to have incurred the charge of favouring the Arian and Manichaean heresies. It seems to have been begun in Nicomedia about 304 and finished in Gaul before 311. Two long eulogistic addresses and most of the brief apostrophes to the emperor are from a later hand, which has added some dualistic touches. The seven books of the institutions have separate titles given to them either by the author or by a later editor. The first, De Falsa Religione, and the second, De Origine Erroris, attack the polytheism of heathendom, show the unity of the God of creation and providence, and try to explain how men have been corrupted by demons. The third book, De Falsa Sapientia, describes and criticizes the various systems of prevalent philosophy. The fourth book, De Vera Sapientia et Religione, insists upon the inseparable union of true wisdom and true religion, and maintains that this union is made real in the person of Christ. The fifth book, De Justitia, maintains that true righteousness is not to be found apart from Christianity, and that it springs from piety which consists in the knowledge of God. The sixth book, De Vero Cultu, describes the true worship of God, which is righteousness, and consists chiefly in the exercise of Christian love towards God and man. The seventh book, De Vita Beata, discusses, among a variety of subjects, the chief good, immortality, the second advent and the resurrection. Jerome states that Lactantius wrote an epitome of these Institutions, and such a work, which may well be authentic, was discovered in MS. in the royal library at Turin in 1711 by C. M. Pfaff.
Besides the Institutions Lactantius wrote several treatises: (1) De Ira Dei, addressed to one Donatus and directed against the Epicurean philosophy. (2) De Opificio Dei sive de Formatione Hominis, his earliest work, and one which reveals very little Christian influence. He exhorts a former pupil, Demetrianus, not to be led astray by wealth from virtue; and he demonstrates the providence of God from the adaptability and beauty of the human body. (3) A celebrated incendiary treatise, De Mortibus Persecutorum, which describes God’s judgments on the persecutors of his church from Nero to Diocletian, and has served as a model for numberless writings. De Mort. Persecut. is not in the earlier editions of Lactantius; it was discovered and printed by Baluze in 1679. Many critics ascribe it to an unknown Lucius Caecilius; there are certainly serious differences of grammar, style and temper between it and the writings already mentioned. It was probably composed in Nicomedia, c. 315. Jerome speaks of Lactantius as a poet, and several poems have been attributed to him:—De Ave Phoenice (which Harnack thinks makes use of 1 Clement), De Passione Domini and De Resurrectione (Domini) or De Pascha ad Felicem Episcopum. The first of these may belong to Lactantius’s heathen days, the second is a product of the Renaissance (c. 1500), the third was written by Venantius Fortunatus in the 6th century.
Editions: O. F. Fritzsche in E. G. Gersdorf’s Bibl. patr. eccl. x., xi. (Leipzig, 1842-1844); Migne, Patr. Lat. vi., vii.; S. Brandt and G. Laubmann in the Vienna Corpus Script. Eccles. Lat. xix., xxvii. 1 and 2 (1890-93-97). Translation: W. Fletcher in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vii. Literature: the German histories of early Christian literature, by A. Harnack, O. Bardenhewer, A. Ebert, A. Ehrhard, G. Kruger’s Early Chr. Lit. p. 307 and Hauck-Herzog’s Realencyk. vol. xi., give guides to the copious literature on the subject.
LACTIC ACID (hydroxypropionic acid), C3H6O3. Two lactic acids are known, differing from each other in the position occupied by the hydroxyl group in the molecule; they are known respectively as α-hydroxypropionic acid (fermentation or inactive lactic acid), CH3·CH(OH)·CO2H, and β-hydroxypropionic acid (hydracrylic acid), (q.v.), CH2(OH)·CH2·CO2H. Although on structural grounds there should be only two hydroxypropionic acids, as a matter of fact four lactic acids are known. The third isomer (sarcolactic acid) is found in meat extract (J. v. Liebig), and may be prepared by the action of Penicillium glaucum on a solution of ordinary ammonium lactate. It is identical with α-hydroxypropionic acid in almost every respect, except with regard to its physical properties. The fourth isomer, formed by the action of Bacillus laevo-lacti on cane-sugar, resembles sarcolactic acid in every respect, except in its action on polarized light (see Stereoisomerism).
Fermentation, or ethylidene lactic acid, was isolated by K. W. Scheele (Trans. Stockholm Acad. 1780) from sour milk (Lat. lac, lactis, milk, whence the name). About twenty-four years later Bouillon Lagrange, and independently A. F. de Fourcroy and L. N. Vauquelin, maintained that Scheele’s new acid was nothing but impure acetic acid. This notion was combated by J. Berzelius, and finally refuted (in 1832) by J. v. Liebig and E. Mitscherlich, who, by the elementary analyses of lactates, proved the existence of this acid as a distinct compound. It may be prepared by the lactic fermentation of starches, sugars, gums, &c., the sugar being dissolved in water and acidified by a small quantity of tartaric acid and then fermented by the addition of sour milk, with a little putrid cheese. Zinc carbonate is added to the mixture (to neutralize the acid formed), which is kept warm for some days and well stirred. On boiling and filtering the product, zinc lactate crystallizes out of the solution. The acid may also be synthesized by the decomposition of alanine (α-aminopropionic acid) by nitrous acid (K. Strecker, Ann., 1850, 75, p. 27); by the oxidation of propylene glycol (A. Wurtz); by boiling α-chlorpropionic acid with caustic alkalis, or with silver oxide and water; by the reduction of pyruvic acid with sodium amalgam; or from acetaldehyde by the cyanhydrin reaction (J. Wislicenus, Ann., 1863, 128, p. 13)
CH3·CHO → CH3·CH(OH)·CN → CH3·CH(OH)·CO2H.
It forms a colourless syrup, of specific gravity 1.2485 (15°/4°), and decomposes on distillation under ordinary atmospheric pressure; but at very low pressures (about 1 mm.) it distils at about 85° C., and then sets to a crystalline solid, which melts at about 18° C. It possesses the properties both of an acid and of an alcohol. When heated with dilute sulphuric acid to 130° C., under pressure, it is resolved into formic acid and acetaldehyde. Chromic acid oxidizes it to acetic acid and carbon dioxide; potassium permanganate oxidizes it to pyruvic acid; nitric acid to oxalic acid, and a mixture of manganese dioxide and sulphuric acid to acetaldehyde and carbon dioxide. Hydrobromic acid converts it into α-brompropionic acid, and hydriodic acid into propionic acid.
Lactide, , a crystalline solid, of melting-point 124° C., is one of the products obtained by the distillation of lactic acid.
LACTONES, the cyclic esters of hydroxy acids, resulting from the internal elimination of water between the hydroxyl and carboxyl groups, this reaction taking place when the hydroxy acid is liberated from its salts by a mineral acid. The α and β-hydroxy acids do not form lactones, the tendency for lactone formation appearing first with the γ-hydroxy acids, thus γ-hydroxybutyric acid, CH2OH·CH2·CH2·CO2H, yields γ-butyrolactone, These compounds may also be prepared by the distillation of the γ-halogen fatty acids, or by the action of alkaline carbonates on these acids, or from βγ- or γδ-unsaturated acids by digestion with hydrobromic acid or dilute sulphuric acid. The lactones are mostly liquids which are readily soluble in alcohol, ether and water. On boiling with water, they are partially reconverted into the hydroxy acids. They are easily saponified by the caustic alkalis.
On the behaviour of lactones with ammonia, see H. Meyer, Monatshefte, 1899, 20, p. 717; and with phenylhydrazine and hydrazine hydrate, see R. Meyer, Ber., 1893, 26, p. 1273; L. Gattermann, Ber., 1899, 32, p. 1133, E. Fischer, Ber., 1889, 22, p. 1889.
γ-Butyrolactone is a liquid which boils at 206° C. It is miscible with water in all proportions and is volatile in steam, γ-valerolactone, , is a liquid which boils at 207-208° C. δ-lactones are also known, and may be prepared by distilling the δ-chlor acids.
LA CUEVA, JUAN DE (1550?-1609?), Spanish dramatist and poet, was born at Seville, and towards 1579 began writing for the stage. His plays, fourteen in number, were published in 1588, and are the earliest manifestations of the dramatic methods developed by Lope de Vega. Abandoning the Senecan model hitherto universal in Spain, Cueva took for his themes matters of national legend, historic tradition, recent victories and the actualities of contemporary life: this amalgam of epical and realistic elements, and the introduction of a great variety of metres, prepared the way for the Spanish romantic drama of the 17th century. A peculiar interest attaches to El Infamador, a play in which the character of Leucino anticipates the classic type of Don Juan. As an initiative force, Cueva is a figure of great historical importance; his epic poem, La Conquista de Bética (1603), shows his weakness as an artist. The last work to which his name is attached is the Ejemplar poético (1609), and he is believed to have died shortly after its publication.
See the editions of Saco de Roma and El Infamador, by E. de Ochoa, in the Tesoro del teatro español (Paris, 1838), vol. i. pp. 251-285; and of Ejemplar poético, by J. J. López de Sedano, in the Parnaso español, vol. viii. pp. 1-68; also E. Walberg, “Juan de la Cueva et son Ejemplar poético” in the Acta Universitatis Lundensis (Lund, 1904), vol. xxix.; “Poèmes inédits de Juan de la Cueva (Viaje de Sannio,)” edited by F. A. Wulff, in the Acta Universitatis Lundensis (Lund, 1886-1887), vol. xxiii.; F. A. Wulff, “De la rimas de Juan de la Cueva, Primera Parte” in the Homenaje á Menéndez y Pelayo (Madrid, 1899), vol. ii. pp. 143-148.
(J. F.-K.)
LACUNAR, the Latin name in architecture for a panelled or coffered ceiling or soffit. The word is derived from lacuna, a cavity or hollow, a blank, hiatus or gap. The panels or coffers of a ceiling are by Vitruvius called lacunaria.
LACUZON (O. Fr. la cuzon, disturbance), the name given to the Franc-Comtois leader Claude Prost (1607-1681), who was born at Longchaumois (department of Jura) on the 17th of June 1607. He gained his first military experience when the French invaded Burgundy in 1636, harrying the French troops from the castles of Montaigu and St Laurent-la-Roche, and devastating the frontier districts of Bresse and Bugey with fire and sword (1640-1642). In the first invasion of Franche-Comté by Louis XIV. in 1668 Lacuzon was unable to make any effective resistance, but he played an important part in Louis’s second invasion. In 1673 he defended Salins for some time; after the capitulation of the town he took refuge in Italy. He died at Milan on the 21st of December 1681.
LACY, FRANZ MORITZ, Count (1725-1801), Austrian field marshal, was born at St Petersburg on the 21st of October 1725. His father, Peter, Count Lacy, was a distinguished Russian soldier, who belonged to an Irish family, and had followed the fortunes of the exiled James II. Franz Moritz was educated in Germany for a military career, and entered the Austrian service. He served in Italy, Bohemia, Silesia and the Netherlands during the War of the Austrian Succession, was twice wounded, and by the end of the war was a lieut.-colonel. At the age of twenty-five he became full colonel and chief of an infantry regiment. In 1756 with the opening of the Seven Years’ War he was again on active service, and in the first battle (Lobositz) he distinguished himself so much that he was at once promoted major-general. He received his third wound on this occasion and his fourth at the battle of Prague in 1757. Later in 1757 Lacy bore a conspicuous part in the great victory of Breslau, and at Leuthen, where he received his fifth wound, he covered the retreat of the defeated army. Soon after this began his association with Field-Marshal Daun, the new generalissimo of the empress’s forces, and these two commanders, powerfully assisted later by the genius of Loudon, made head against Frederick the Great for the remainder of the war. A general staff was created, and Lacy, a lieutenant field-marshal at thirty-two, was made chief of staff (quartermaster-general) to Daun. That their cautiousness often degenerated into timidity may be admitted—Leuthen and many other bitter defeats had taught the Austrians to respect their great opponent—but they showed at any rate that, having resolved to wear out the enemy by Fabian methods, they were strong enough to persist in their resolve to the end. Thus for some years the life of Lacy, as of Daun and Loudon, is the story of the war against Prussia (see Seven Years’ War). After Hochkirch (October 15, 1758) Lacy received the grand cross of the Maria Theresa order. In 1759 both Daun and Lacy fell into disfavour for failing to win victories, and Lacy owed his promotion to Feldzeugmeister only to the fact that Loudon had just received this rank for the brilliant conduct of his detachment at Kunersdorf. His responsibilities told heavily on Lacy in the ensuing campaigns, and his capacity for supreme command was doubted even by Daun, who refused to give him the command when he himself was wounded at the battle of Torgau.
After the peace of Hubertusburg a new sphere of activity was opened, in which Lacy’s special gifts had the greatest scope. Maria Theresa having placed her son, the emperor Joseph II., at the head of Austrian military affairs, Lacy was made a field-marshal, and given the task of reforming and administering the army (1766). He framed new regulations for each arm, a new code of military law, a good supply system. As the result of his work the Austrian army was more numerous, far better equipped, and cheaper than it had ever been before. Joseph soon became very intimate with his military adviser, but this did not prevent his mother, after she became estranged from the young emperor, from giving Lacy her full confidence. His activities were not confined to the army. He was in sympathy with Joseph’s innovations, and was regarded by Maria Theresa as a prime mover in the scheme for the partition of Poland. But his self-imposed work broke down Lacy’s health, and in 1773, in spite of the remonstrances of Maria Theresa and of the emperor, he laid down all his offices and went to southern France. On returning he was still unable to resume office, though as an unofficial adviser in political and military matters he was far from idle. In the brief and uneventful War of the Bavarian Succession, Lacy and Loudon were the chief Austrian commanders against the king of Prussia, and when Joseph II. at Maria Theresa’s death, became the sovereign of the Austrian dominions as well as emperor, Lacy remained his most trusted friend. More serious than the War of the Bavarian Succession was the Turkish war which presently broke out. Lacy was now old and worn out, and his tenure of command therein was not marked by any greater measure of success than in the case of the other Austrian generals. His active career was at an end, although he continued his effective interest in the affairs of the state and the army throughout the reign of Joseph’s successor, Leopold I. His last years were spent in retirement at his castle of Neuwaldegg near Vienna. He died at Vienna on the 24th of November 1801.
See memoir by A. v. Arneth in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (Leipzig, 1883).
LACY, HARRIETTE DEBORAH (1807-1874), English actress, was born in London, the daughter of a tradesman named Taylor. Her first appearance on the stage was at Bath in 1827 as Julia in The Rivals, and she was immediately given leading parts there in both comedy and tragedy. Her first London appearance was in 1830 as Nina, in Dimond’s Carnival of Naples. Her Rosalind, Aspatia (to Macready’s Melantius) in The Bridal, and Lady Teazle to the Charles Surface of Walter Lacy (1809-1898)—to whom she was married in 1839—confirmed her position and popularity. She was the original Helen in The Hunchback (1832), and also created Nell Gwynne in Jerrold’s play of that name, and the heroine in his Housekeeper. She was considered the first Ophelia of her day. She retired in 1848.
LACY, MICHAEL ROPHINO (1795-1867), Irish musician, son of a merchant, was born at Bilbao and appeared there in public as a violinist in 1801. He was sent to study in Paris under Kreutzer, and soon began a successful career, being known as “Le Petit Espagnol.” He played in London for some years after 1805, and then became an actor, but in 1818 resumed the musical profession, and in 1820 became leader of the ballet at the King’s theatre, London. He composed or adapted from other composers a number of operas and an oratorio, The Israelites in Egypt. He died in London on the 20th of September 1867.
LACYDES OF CYRENE, Greek philosopher, was head of the Academy at Athens in succession to Arcesilaus about 241 B.C. Though some regard him as the founder of the New Academy, the testimony of antiquity is that he adhered in general to the theory of Arcesilaus, and, therefore, that he belonged to the Middle Academy. He lectured in a garden called the Lacydeum, which was presented to him by Attalus I. of Pergamum, and for twenty-six years maintained the traditions of the Academy. He is said to have written treatises, but nothing survives. Before his death he voluntarily resigned his position to his pupils, Euander and Telecles. Apart from a number of anecdotes distinguished rather for sarcastic humour than for probability, Lacydes exists for us as a man of refined character, a hard worker and an accomplished orator. According to Athenaeus (x. 438) and Diogenes Laërtius (iv. 60) he died from excessive drinking, but the story is discredited by the eulogy of Eusebius (Praep. Ev. xiv. 7), that he was in all things moderate.
See Cicero, Acad. ii. 6; and Aelian, V.H. ii. 41; also articles Academy, Arcesilaus, Carneades.
LADAKH AND BALTISTAN, a province of Kashmir, India. The name Ladak, commonly but less correctly spelt Ladakh, and sometimes Ladag, belongs primarily to the broad valley of the upper Indus in West Tibet, but includes several surrounding districts in political connexion with it; the present limits are between 75° 40′ and 80° 30′ E., and between 32° 25′ and 36° N. It is bounded N. by the Kuenlun range and the slopes of the Karakoram, N.W. and W. by the dependency of Baltistan or Little Tibet, S.W. by Kashmir proper, S. by British Himalayan territory, and E. by the Tibetan provinces of Ngari and Rudok. The whole region lies very high, the valleys of Rupshu in the south-east being 15,000 ft., and the Indus near Leh 11,000 ft., while the average height of the surrounding ranges is 19,000 ft. The proportion of arable and even possible pasture land to barren rock and gravel is very small. Pop., including Baltistan (1901) 165,992, of whom 30,216 in Ladakh proper are Buddhists, whereas the Baltis have adopted the Shiah form of Islam.
The natural features of the country may be best explained by reference to two native terms, under one or other of which every part is included; viz. changtang, i.e. “northern, or high plain,” where the amount of level ground is considerable, and rong, i.e. “deep valley,” where the contrary condition prevails. The former predominates in the east, diminishing gradually westwards. There, although the vast alluvial deposits which once filled the valley to a remarkably uniform height of about 15,000 ft. have left their traces on the mountain sides, they have undergone immense denudation, and their débris now forms secondary deposits, flat bottoms or shelving slopes, the only spots available for cultivation or pasture. These masses of alluvium are often either metamorphosed to a subcrystalline rock still showing the composition of the strata, or simply consolidated by lime.
Grand scenery is exceptional, for the valleys are confined, and from the higher points the view is generally of a confused mass of brown or yellow hills, absolutely barren, and of no great apparent height. The parallelism characteristic of the Himalayan ranges continues here, the direction being north-west and south-east. A central range divides the Indus valley, here 4 to 8 m. wide, from that of its north branch the Shyok, which with its fertile tributary valley of Nubra is again bounded on the north by the Karakoram. This central ridge is mostly syenitic gneiss, and north-east from it are found, successively, Silurian slates, Carboniferous shales and Triassic limestones, the gneiss recurring at the Turkestan frontier. The Indus lies along the line which separates the crystalline rocks from the Eocene sandstones and shales of the lower range of hills on the left bank, the lofty mountains behind them consisting of parallel bands of rocks from Silurian to Cretaceous.
Several lakes in the east districts at about 14,000 ft. have been of much greater extent, and connected with the river systems of the country, but they are now mostly without outlet, saline, and in process of desiccation.
Leh is the capital of Ladakh, and the road to Leh from Srinagar lies up the lovely Sind valley to the sources of the river at the Zoji La Pass (11,300 ft.) in the Zaskar range. This is the range which, skirting the southern edge of the upland plains of Deosai in Baltistan, divides them from the valley of Kashmir, and then continues to Nanga Parbat (26,620 ft.) and beyond that mountain stretches to the north of Swat and Bajour. To the south-east it is an unbroken chain till it merges into the line of snowy peaks seen from Simla and the plains of India—the range which reaches past Chini to the famous peaks of Gangotri, Nandadevi and Nampa. It is the most central and conspicuous range in the Himalaya. The Zoji La, which curves from the head of the Sind valley on to the bleak uplands of Dras (where lies the road to the trough of the Indus and Leh), is, in spite of its altitude, a pass on which little snow lies; but for local accumulations, it would be open all the year round. It affords a typical instance of that cutting-back process by which a river-head may erode a channel through a watershed into the plateau behind, there being no steep fall towards the Indus on the northern side of the range. From the Zoji La the road continues by easy gradients, following the line of the Dras drainage, to the Indus, when it turns up the valley to Leh. From Leh there are many routes into Tibet, the best known being that from the Indus valley to the Tibetan plateau, by the Chang La, to Lake Pangkong and Rudok (14,000 ft.). Rudok occupies a forward position on the western Tibetan border analogous to that of Leh in Kashmir. The chief trade route to Lhasa from Leh, however, follows the line offered by the valleys of the Indus and the Brahmaputra (or Tsanpo), crossing the divide between these rivers north of Lake Manasarowar.
The observatory at Leh is the most elevated observatory in Asia. “The atmosphere of the Indus valley is remarkably clear and transparent, and the heat of the sun is very great. There is generally a difference of more than 60° between the reading of the exposed sun thermometer in vacuo and the air temperature in the shade, and this difference has occasionally exceeded 90°.... The mean annual temperature at Leh is 40°, that of the coldest months (January and February) only 18° and 19°, but it rises rapidly from February to July, in which month it reaches 62° with a mean diurnal maximum of 80° both in that month and August, and an average difference of 29° or 30° between the early morning and afternoon. The mean highest temperature of the year is 90°, varying between 84° and 93° in the twelve years previous to 1893. On the other hand, in the winter the minimum thermometer falls occasionally below 0°, and in 1878 reached as low as 17° below zero. The extreme range of recorded temperature is therefore not less than 110°. The air is as dry as Quetta, and rather more uniformly so.... The amount of rain and snow is insignificant. The average rain (and snow) fall is only 2.7 in. in the year.” The winds are generally light, and depend on the local direction of the valleys. At Leh, which stands at the entrance of the valley leading to the Kardang Pass, the most common directions are between south and west in the daytime and summer, and from north-east in the night, especially in the later months of the year. In January and February the air is generally calm, and April and May are the most windy months of the year.
Vegetation is confined to valleys and sheltered spots, where a stunted growth of tamarisk and Myricaria, Hippophae and Elaeagnus, furze, and the roots of burtsi, a salsolaceous plant, supply the traveller with much-needed firewood. The trees are the pencil cedar (Juniperus excelsa), the poplar and willow (both extensively planted, the latter sometimes wild), apple, mulberry, apricot and walnut. Irrigation is skilfully managed, the principal products being wheat, a beardless variety of barley called grim, millet, buckwheat, pease, beans and turnips. Lucerne and prangos (an umbelliferous plant) are used as fodder.
Among domestic animals are the famous shawl goat, two kinds of sheep, of which the larger (huniya) is used for carrying burdens, and is a principal source of wealth, the yak and the dso, a valuable hybrid between the yak and common cow. Among wild animals are the kiang or wild ass, ibex, several kinds of wild sheep, antelope (Pantholops), marmot, hare and other Tibetan fauna.
The present value of the trade between British India and Tibet passing through Ladakh is inconsiderable. Ladakh, however, is improving in its trade prospects apart from Tibet. It is curious that both Ladakh and Tibet import a considerable amount of treasure, for on the borders of western Tibet and within a radius of 100 or 200 m. of Leh there centres a gold-mining industry which apparently only requires scientific development to render it enormously productive. Here the surface soil has been for many centuries washed for gold by bands of Tibetan miners, who never work deeper than 20 to 50 ft., and whose methods of washing are of the crudest description. They work in winter, chiefly because of the binding power of frost on the friable soil, suffering great hardships and obtaining but a poor return for their labour. But the remoteness of Ladakh and its extreme altitude still continue to bar the way to substantial progress, though its central position naturally entitles it to be a great trade mart.
The adjoining territory of Baltistan forms the west extremity of Tibet, whose natural limits here are the Indus from its abrupt southward bend in 74° 45′ E., and the mountains to the north and west, separating a comparatively peaceful Tibetan population from the fiercer Aryan tribes beyond. Mahommedan writers about the 16th century speak of Baltistan as “Little Tibet,” and of Ladakh as “Great Tibet,” thus ignoring the really Great Tibet altogether. The Balti call Gilgit “a Tibet,” and Dr Leitner says that the Chilasi call themselves Bot or Tibetans; but, although these districts may have been overrun by the Tibetans, or have received rulers of that race, the ethnological frontier coincides with the geographical one given. Baltistan is a mass of lofty mountains, the prevailing formation being gneiss. In the north is the Baltoro glacier, the largest out of the arctic regions, 35 m. long, contained between two ridges whose highest peaks to the south are 25,000 and to the north 28,265 ft. The Indus, as in Lower Ladakh, runs in a narrow gorge, widening for nearly 20 m. after receiving the Shyok. The capital, Skardu, a scattered collection of houses, stands here, perched on a rock 7250 ft. above the sea. The house roofs are flat, occupied only in part by a second story, the remaining space being devoted to drying apricots, the chief staple of the main valley, which supports little cultivation. But the rapid slope westwards is seen generally in the vegetation. Birch, plane, spruce and Pinus excelsa appear; the fruits are finer, including pomegranate, pear, peach, vine and melon, and where irrigation is available, as in the North Shigar, and at the deltas of the tributary valleys, the crops are more luxuriant and varied.
History.—The earliest notice of Ladakh is by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien, A.D. 400, who, travelling in search of a purer faith, found Buddhism flourishing there, the only novelty to him being the prayer-cylinder, the efficacy of which he declares is incredible. Ladakh formed part of the Tibetan empire until its disruption in the 10th century, and since then has continued ecclesiastically subject, and sometimes tributary, to Lhasa. Its inaccessibility saved it from any Mussulman invasion until 1531, when Sultan Said of Kashgar marched an army across the Karakoram, one division fighting its way into Kashmir and wintering there. Next year they invaded eastern Tibet, where nearly all perished from the effects of the climate.
Early in the 17th century Ladakh was invaded by its Mahommedan neighbours of Baltistan, who plundered and destroyed the temples and monasteries; and again, in 1685-1688, by the Sokpa, who were expelled only by the aid of the lieutenant of Aurangzeb in Kashmir, Ladakh thereafter becoming tributary. The gyalpo or king then made a nominal profession of Islam, and allowed a mosque to be founded at Leh, and the Kashmiris have ever since addressed his successors by a Mahommedan title. When the Sikhs took Kashmir, Ladakh, dreading their approach, offered allegiance to Great Britain. It was, however, conquered and annexed in 1834-1841 by Gulab Singh of Jammu—the unwar-like Ladakhis, even with nature fighting on their side, and against indifferent generalship, being no match for the Dogra troops. These next turned their arms successfully against the Baltis (who in the 18th century were subject to the Mogul), and were then tempted to revive the claims of Ladakh to the Chinese provinces of Rudok and Ngari. This, however, brought down an army from Lhasa, and after a three days’ fight the Indian force was almost annihilated—chiefly indeed by frostbite and other sufferings, for the battle was fought in mid-winter, 15,000 ft. above the sea. The Chinese then marched on Leh, but were soon driven out again, and peace was finally made on the basis of the old frontier. The widespread prestige of China is illustrated by the fact that tribute, though disguised as a present, is paid to her, for Ladakh, by the maharaja of Kashmir.
The principal works to be consulted are F. Drew, The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories; Cunningham, Ladak; Major J. Biddulph, The Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh; Ramsay, Western Tibet; Godwin-Austen, “The Mountain Systems of the Himalaya,” vol. vi., Proc. R.G.S. (1884); W. Lawrence, The Valley of Kashmir (1895); H. F. Blandford, The Climate and Weather of India (1889).
(T. H. H.*)
H. F. Blandford, Climate and Weather of India (London, 1889).
LADD, GEORGE TRUMBULL (1842- ), American philosopher, was born in Painesville, Lake county, Ohio, on the 19th of January 1842. He graduated at Western Reserve College in 1864 and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1869; preached in Edinburg, Ohio, in 1869-1871, and in the Spring Street Congregational Church of Milwaukee in 1871-1879; and was professor of philosophy at Bowdoin College in 1879-1881, and Clark professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy at Yale from 1881 till 1901, when he took charge of the graduate department of philosophy and psychology; he became professor emeritus in 1905. In 1879-1882 he lectured on theology at Andover Theological Seminary, and in 1883 at Harvard, where in 1895-1896 he conducted a graduate seminary in ethics. He lectured in Japan in 1892, 1899 (when he also visited the universities of India) and 1906-1907. He was much influenced by Lotze, whose Outlines of Philosophy he translated (6 vols., 1877), and was one of the first to introduce (1879) the study of experimental psychology into America, the Yale psychological laboratory being founded by him.
Publications.—The Principles of Church Polity (1882); The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture (1884); What is the Bible? (1888); Essays on the Higher Education (1899), defending the “old” (Yale) system against the Harvard or “new” education, as praised by George H. Palmer; Elements of Physiological Psychology (1889, rewritten as Outlines of Physiological Psychology, in 1890); Primer of Psychology (1894); Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory (1894); and Outlines of Descriptive Psychology (1898); in a “system of philosophy,” Philosophy of the Mind (1891); Philosophy of Knowledge (1897); A Theory of Reality (1899); Philosophy of Conduct (1902); and Philosophy of Religion (2 vols., 1905); In Korea with Marquis Ito (1908); and Knowledge, Life and Reality (1909).
LADDER, (O. Eng. hlaeder; of Teutonic origin, cf. Dutch leer, Ger. Leiter; the ultimate origin is in the root seen in “lean,” Gr. κλῖμαξ), a set of steps or “rungs” between two supports to enable one to get up and down; usually made of wood and sometimes of metal or rope. Ladders are generally movable, and differ from a staircase also in having only treads and no “risers.” The term “Jacob’s ladder,” taken from the dream of Jacob in the Bible, is applied to a rope ladder with wooden steps used at sea to go aloft, and to a common garden plant of the genus Polemonium on account of the ladder-like formation of the leaves. The flower known in England as Solomon’s seal is in some countries called the “ladder of heaven.”
LADING (from “to lade,” O. Eng. hladan, to put cargo on board; cf. “load”), BILL OF, the document given as receipt by the master of a merchant vessel to the consignor of goods, as a guarantee for their safe delivery to the consignee. (See Affreightment.)
LADISLAUS [I.], Saint (1040-1095), king of Hungary, the son of Béla I., king of Hungary, and the Polish princess Richeza, was born in Poland, whither his father had sought refuge, but was recalled by his elder brother Andrew I. to Hungary (1047) and brought up there. He succeeded to the throne on the death of his uncle Geza in 1077, as the eldest member of the royal family, and speedily won for himself a reputation scarcely inferior to that of Stephen I., by nationalizing Christianity and laying the foundations of Hungary’s political greatness. Instinctively recognizing that Germany was the natural enemy of the Magyars, Ladislaus formed a close alliance with the pope and all the other enemies of the emperor Henry IV., including the anti-emperor Rudolph of Swabia and his chief supporter Welf, duke of Bavaria, whose daughter Adelaide he married. She bore him one son and three daughters, one of whom, Piriska, married the Byzantine emperor John Comnenus. The collapse of the German emperor in his struggle with the pope left Ladislaus free to extend his dominions towards the south, and colonize and Christianize the wildernesses of Transylvania and the lower Danube. Hungary was still semi-savage, and her native barbarians were being perpetually recruited from the hordes of Pechenegs, Kumanians and other races which swept over her during the 11th century. Ladislaus himself had fought valiantly in his youth against the Pechenegs, and to defend the land against the Kumanians, who now occupied Moldavia and Wallachia as far as the Alt, he built the fortresses of Turnu-Severin and Gyula Féhervár. He also planted in Transylvania the Szeklers, the supposed remnant of the ancient Magyars from beyond the Dnieper, and founded the bishoprics of Nagy-Várad, or Gross-Wardein, and of Agram, as fresh foci of Catholicism in south Hungary and the hitherto uncultivated districts between the Drave and the Save. He subsequently conquered Croatia, though here his authority was questioned by the pope, the Venetian republic and the Greek emperor. Ladislaus died suddenly in 1095 when about to take part in the first Crusade. No other Hungarian king was so generally beloved. The whole nation mourned for him for three years, and regarded him as a saint long before his canonization. A whole cycle of legends is associated with his name.
See J. Babik, Life of St Ladislaus (Hung.) (Eger, 1892); György Pray, Dissertatio de St Ladislao (Pressburg, 1774); Antál Gánóczy, Diss. hist. crit. de St Ladislao (Vienna, 1775).
(R. N. B.)
LADISLAUS IV., The Kumanian (1262-1290), king of Hungary, was the son of Stephen V., whom he succeeded in 1272. From his tenth year, when he was kidnapped from his father’s court by the rebellious vassals, till his assassination eighteen years later, his whole life, with one bright interval of military glory was unrelieved tragedy. His minority, 1272-1277, was an alternation of palace revolutions and civil wars, in the course of which his brave Kumanian mother Elizabeth barely contrived to keep the upper hand. In this terrible school Ladislaus matured precociously. At fifteen he was a man, resolute, spirited, enterprising, with the germs of many talents and virtues, but rough, reckless and very imperfectly educated. He was married betimes to Elizabeth of Anjou, who had been brought up at the Hungarian court. The marriage was a purely political one, arranged by his father and a section of the Hungarian magnates to counterpoise hostile German and Czech influences. During the earlier part of his reign, Ladislaus obsequiously followed the direction of the Neapolitan court in foreign affairs. In Hungary itself a large party was in favour of the Germans, but the civil wars which raged between the two factions from 1276 to 1278 did not prevent Ladislaus, at the head of 20,000 Magyars and Kumanians, from co-operating with Rudolph of Habsburg in the great battle of Durnkrüt (August 26th, 1278), which destroyed, once for all, the empire of the Přemyslidae. A month later a papal legate arrived in Hungary to inquire into the conduct of the king, who was accused by his neighbours, and many of his own subjects, of adopting the ways of his Kumanian kinsfolk and thereby undermining Christianity. Ladislaus was not really a pagan, or he would not have devoted his share of the spoil of Durnkrüt to the building of the Franciscan church at Pressburg, nor would he have venerated as he did his aunt St Margaret. Political enmity was largely responsible for the movement against him, yet the result of a very careful investigation (1279-1281) by Philip, bishop of Fermo, more than justified many of the accusations brought against Ladislaus. He clearly preferred the society of the semi-heathen Kumanians to that of the Christians; wore, and made his court wear, Kumanian dress; surrounded himself with Kumanian concubines, and neglected and ill-used his ill-favoured Neapolitan consort. He was finally compelled to take up arms against his Kumanian friends, whom he routed at Hodmézö (May 1282) with fearful loss; but, previously to this, he had arrested the legate, whom he subsequently attempted to starve into submission, and his conduct generally was regarded as so unsatisfactory that, after repeated warnings, the Holy See resolved to supersede him by his Angevin kinsfolk, whom he had also alienated, and on the 8th of August 1288 Pope Nicholas IV. proclaimed a crusade against him. For the next two years all Hungary was convulsed by a horrible civil war, during which the unhappy young king, who fought for his heritage to the last with desperate valour, was driven from one end of his kingdom to the other like a hunted beast. On the 25th of December 1289 he issued a manifesto to the lesser gentry, a large portion of whom sided with him, urging them to continue the struggle against the magnates and their foreign supporters; but on the 10th of July 1290 he was murdered in his camp at Korosszeg by the Kumanians, who never forgave him for deserting them.
See Karoly Szabó, Ladislaus the Cumanian (Hung.), (Budapest, 1886); and Acsády, History of the Hungarian Realm, i. 2 (Budapest, 1903). The latter is, however, too favourable to Ladislaus.
(R. N. B.)
LADISLAUS V. (1440-1457), king of Hungary and Bohemia, the only son of Albert, king of Hungary, and Elizabeth, daughter of the emperor Sigismund, was born at Komárom on the 22nd of February 1440, four months after his father’s death, and was hence called Ladislaus Posthumus. The estates of Hungary had already elected Wladislaus III. of Poland their king, but Ladislaus’s mother caused the holy crown to be stolen from its guardians at Visegrad, and compelled the primate to crown the infant king at Székesfejérvár on the 15th of May 1440; whereupon, for safety’s sake, she placed the child beneath the guardianship of his uncle the emperor Frederick III. On the death of Wladislaus III. (Nov. 10th, 1444), Ladislaus V. was elected king by the Hungarian estates, though not without considerable opposition, and a deputation was sent to Vienna to induce the emperor to surrender the child and the holy crown; but it was not till 1452 that Frederick was compelled to relinquish both. The child was then transferred to the pernicious guardianship of his maternal grandfather Ulrich Cillei, who corrupted him soul and body and inspired him with a jealous hatred of the Hunyadis. On the 28th of October 1453 he was crowned king of Bohemia, and henceforth spent most of his time at Prague and Vienna. He remained supinely indifferent to the Turkish peril; at the instigation of Cillei did his best to hinder the defensive preparations of the great Hunyadi, and fled from the country on the tidings of the siege of Belgrade. On the death of Hunyadi he made Cillei governor of Hungary at the diet of Futtak (October 1456), and when that traitor paid with his life for his murderous attempt on Laszló Hunyadi at Belgrade, Ladislaus procured the decapitation of young Hunyadi (16th of March 1457), after a mock trial which raised such a storm in Hungary that the king fled to Prague, where he died suddenly (Nov. 23rd, 1457), while making preparations for his marriage with Magdalena, daughter of Charles VII. of France. He is supposed to have been poisoned by his political opponents in Bohemia.
See F. Palacky, Zeugenverhör über den Tod König Ladislaus von Ungarn u. Böhmen (Prague, 1856); Ignacz Acsády, History of the Hungarian State (Hung.), vol. i. (Budapest, 1903).
LA DIXMERIE, NICOLAS BRICAIRE DE (c. 1730-1791), French man of letters, was born at Lamothe (Haute-Marne). While still young he removed to Paris, where the rest of his life was spent in literary activity. He died on the 26th of November 1791. His numerous works include Contes philosophiques et moraux (1765), Les Deux Âges du goût et du génie sous Louis XIV. et sous Louis XV. (1769), a parallel and contrast, in which the decision is given in favour of the latter; L’Espagne littéraire (1774); Éloge de Voltaire (1779) and Éloge de Montaigne (1781).
LADO ENCLAVE, a region of the upper Nile formerly administered by the Congo Free State, but since 1910 a province of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. It has an area of about 15,000 sq. m., and a population estimated at 250,000 and consisting of Bari, Madi, Kuku and other Nilotic Negroes. The enclave is bounded S.E. by the north-west shores of Albert Nyanza—as far south as the port of Mahagi—E. by the western bank of the Nile (Bahr-el-Jebel) to the point where the river is intersected by 5° 30′ N., which parallel forms its northern frontier from the Nile westward to 30° E. This meridian forms the west frontier to 4° N., the frontier thence being the Nile-Congo watershed to the point nearest to Mahagi and from that point direct to Albert Nyanza.
The country is a moderately elevated plateau sloping northward from the higher ground marking the Congo-Nile watershed. The plains are mostly covered with bush, with stretches of forest in the northern districts. Traversing the plateau are two parallel mountainous chains having a general north to south direction. One chain, the Kuku Mountains (average height 2000 ft.), approaches close to the Nile and presents, as seen from the river, several apparently isolated peaks. At other places these mountains form precipices which stretch in a continuous line like a huge wall. From Dufile in 3° 34′ N. to below the Bedden Rapids in 4° 40′ N. the bed of the Nile is much obstructed and the river throughout this reach is unnavigable (see Nile). Below the Bedden Rapids rises the conical hill of Rejaf, and north of that point the Nile valley becomes flat. Ranges of hill, however, are visible farther westwards, and a little north of 5° N. is Jebel Lado, a conspicuous mountain 2500 ft. high and some 12 m. distant from the Nile. It has given its name to the district, being the first hill seen from the Nile in the ascent of some 1000 m. from Khartum. On the river at Rejaf, at Lado, and at Kiro, 28 m. N. of Lado, are government stations and trading establishments. The western chain of hills has loftier peaks than those of Kuku, Jebel Loka being about 3000 ft. high. This western chain forms a secondary watershed separating the basin of the Yei, a large river, some 400 m. in length, which runs almost due north to join the Nile, from the other streams of the enclave, which have an easterly or north-easterly direction and join the Nile after comparatively short courses.
The northern part of the district was first visited by Europeans in 1841-1842, when the Nile was ascended by an expedition despatched by Mehemet Ali to the foot of the rapids at Bedden. The neighbouring posts of Gondokoro, on the east bank of the Nile, and Lado, soon became stations of the Khartum ivory and slave traders. After the discovery of Albert Nyanza by Sir Samuel Baker in 1864, the whole country was overrun by Arabs, Levantines, Turks and others, whose chief occupation was slave raiding. The region was claimed as part of the Egyptian Sudan, but it was not until the arrival of Sir Samuel Baker at Gondokoro in 1870 as governor of the equatorial provinces, that any effective control of the slave traders was attempted. Baker was succeeded by General C. G. Gordon, who established a separate administration for the Bahr-el-Ghazal. In 1878 Emin Pasha became governor of the Equatorial Province, a term henceforth confined to the region adjoining the main Nile above the Sobat confluence, and the region south of the Bahr-el-Ghazal province. (The whole of the Lado Enclave thus formed part of Emin’s old province.) Emin made his headquarters at Lado, whence he was driven in 1885 by the Mahdists. He then removed to Wadelai, a station farther south, but in 1889 the pasha, to whose aid H. M. Stanley had conducted an expedition from the Congo, evacuated the country and with Stanley made his way to the east coast. While the Mahdists remained in possession at Rejaf, Great Britain in virtue of her position in Uganda claimed the upper Nile region as within the British sphere; a claim admitted by Germany in 1890. In February 1894 the union jack was hoisted at Wadelai, while in May of the same year Great Britain granted to Leopold II., as sovereign of the Congo State, a lease of large areas lying west of the upper Nile inclusive of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Fashoda. Pressed however by France, Leopold II. agreed to occupy only that part of the leased area east of 30° E. and south of 5° 30′ N., and in this manner the actual limits of the Lado Enclave, as it was thereafter called, were fixed. Congo State forces had penetrated to the Nile valley as early as 1891, but it was not until 1897, when on the 17th of February Commandant Chaltin inflicted a decisive defeat on the Mahdists at Rejaf, that their occupation of the Lado Enclave was assured. After the withdrawal of the French from Fashoda, Leopold II. revived (1899) his claim to the whole of the area, leased to him in 1894. In this claim he was unsuccessful, and the lease, by a new agreement made with Great Britain in 1906, was annulled (see Africa, § 5). The king however retained the enclave, with the stipulation that six months after the termination of his reign it should be handed over to the Anglo-Sudanese government (see Treaty Series, No. 4, 1906).
See Le Mouvement géographique (Brussels) passim, and especially articles in the 1910 issues.
LADOGA (formerly Nevo), a lake of northern Russia, between 59° 56′ and 61° 46′ N., and 29° 53′ and 32° 50′ E., surrounded by the governments of St Petersburg and Olonets, and of Viborg in Finland. It has the form of a quadrilateral, elongated from N.W. to S.E. Its eastern and southern shores are flat and marshy, the north-western craggy and fringed by numerous small rocky islands, the largest of which are Valamo and Konnevitz, together having an area of 14 sq. m. Ladoga is 7000 sq. m. in area, that is, thirty-one times as large as the Lake of Geneva; but, its depth being less, it contains only nineteen times as much water as the Swiss lake. The greatest depth, 730 ft., is in a trough in the north-western part, the average depth not exceeding 250 to 350 ft. The level of Lake Ladoga is 55 ft. above the Gulf of Finland, but it rises and falls about 7 ft., according to atmospheric conditions, a phenomenon very similar to the seiches of the Lake of Geneva being observed in connexion with this.
The western and eastern shores consist of boulder clay, as well as a narrow strip on the southern shore, south of which runs a ridge of crags of Silurian sandstones. The hills of the north-western shore afford a variety of granites and crystalline slates of the Laurentian system, whilst Valamo island is made up of a rock which Russian geologists describe as orthoclastic hypersthenite. The granite and marble of Serdobol, and the sandstone of Putilovo, are much used for buildings at St Petersburg; copper and tin from the Pitkäranta mine are exported.
No fewer than seventy rivers enter Ladoga, pouring into it the waters of numberless smaller lakes which lie at higher levels round it. The Volkhov, which conveys the waters of Lake Ilmen, is the largest; Lake Onega discharges its waters by the Svir; and the Saima system of lakes of eastern Finland contributes the Vuoxen and Taipale rivers; the Syas brings the waters from the smaller lakes and marshes of the Valdai plateau. Ladoga discharges its surplus water by means of the Neva, which flows from its south-western corner into the Gulf of Finland, rolling down its broad channel 104,000 cubic ft. of water per second.
The water of Ladoga is very pure and cold; in May the surface temperature does not exceed 36° Fahr., and even in August it reaches only 50° and 53°, the average yearly temperature of the air at Valamo being 36.8°. The lake begins to freeze in October, but it is only about the end of December that it is frozen in its deeper parts; and it remains ice-bound until the end of March, though broad icefields continue to float in the middle of the lake until broken up by gales. Only a small part of the Ladoga ice is discharged by the Neva; but it is enough to produce in the middle of June a return of cold in the northern capital. The thickness of the ice does not exceed 3 or 4 ft.; but during the alternations of cold and warm weather, with strong gales, in winter, stacks of ice, 70 and 80 ft. high, are raised on the shores and on the icefields. The water is in continuous rotatory motion, being carried along the western shore from north to south, and along the eastern from south to north. The vegetation on the shores is poor; immense forests, which formerly covered them, are now mostly destroyed. But the fauna of the lake is somewhat rich; a species of seal which inhabits its waters, as well as several species of arctic crustaceans, recall its former connexion with the Arctic Ocean. The sweet water Diatomaceae which are found in great variety in the ooze of the deepest parts of the lake also have an arctic character.
Fishing is very extensively carried on. Navigation, which is practicable for only one hundred and eighty days in the year, is rather difficult owing to fogs and gales, which are often accompanied, even in April and September, with snow-storms. The prevailing winds blow from N.W. and S.W.; N.E. winds cause the water to rise in the south-western part, sometimes 3 to 5 ft. Steamers ply regularly in two directions from St Petersburg—to the monasteries of Konnevitz and Valamo, and to the mouth of the Svir, whence they go up that river to Lake Onega and Petrozavodsk; and small vessels transport timber, firewood, planks, iron, kaolin, granite, marble, fish, hay and various small wares from the northern shore to Schlüsselburg, and thence to St Petersburg. Navigation on the lake being too dangerous for small craft, canals with an aggregate length of 104 m. were dug in 1718-1731, and others in 1861-1886 having an aggregate length of 101 m. along its southern shore, uniting with the Neva at Schlüsselburg the mouths of the rivers Volkhov, Syas and Svir, all links in the elaborate system of canals which connect the upper Volga with the Gulf of Finland.
The population (35,000) on the shores of the lake is sparse, and the towns—Schlüsselburg (5285 inhabitants in 1897); New Ladoga (4144); Kexholm (1325) and Serdobol—are small. The monasteries of Valamo, founded in 992, on the island of the same name, and Konnevskiy, on Konnevitz island, founded in 1393, are visited every year by many thousands of pilgrims.
(P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)
LADY (O. Eng. hlaéfdige, Mid. Eng. láfdi, lāvedi; the first part of the word is hláf, loaf, bread, as in the corresponding hláford, lord; the second part is usually taken to be from the root dig-, to knead, seen also in “dough”; the sense development from bread-kneader, bread-maker, to the ordinary meaning, though not clearly to be traced historically, may be illustrated by that of “lord”), a term of which the main applications are two, (1) as the correlative of “lord” (q.v.) in certain of the usages of that word, (2) as the correlative of “gentleman” (q.v.). The primary meaning of mistress of a household is, if not obsolete, in present usage only a vulgarism. The special use of the word as a title of the Virgin Mary, usually “Our Lady,” represents the Lat. Domina Nostra. In Lady Day and Lady Chapel the word is properly a genitive, representing the O. Eng. hlaéfdigan. As a title of nobility the uses of “lady” are mainly paralleled by those of “lord.” It is thus a less formal alternative to the full title giving the specific rank, of marchioness, countess, viscountess or baroness, whether as the title of the husband’s rank by right or courtesy, or as the lady’s title in her own right. In the case of the younger sons of a duke or marquess, who by courtesy have lord prefixed to their Christian and family name, the wife is known by the husband’s Christian and family name with Lady prefixed, e.g. Lady John B.; the daughters of dukes, marquesses and earls are by courtesy Ladies; here that title is prefixed to the Christian and family name of the lady, e.g. Lady Mary B., and this is preserved if the lady marry a commoner, e.g. Mr and Lady Mary C. “Lady” is also the customary title of the wife of a baronet or knight; the proper title, now only used in legal documents or on sepulchral monuments, is “dame” (q.v.); in the latter case the usage is to prefix Dame to the Christian name of the wife followed by the surname of the husband, thus Dame Eleanor B., but in the former, Lady with the surname of the husband only, Sir A. and Lady B. During the 15th and 16th centuries “princesses” or daughters of the blood royal were usually known by their Christian names with “the Lady” prefixed, e.g. the Lady Elizabeth.
While “lord” has retained its original application as a title of nobility or rank without extension, an example which has been followed in Spanish usage by “don,” “lady” has been extended in meaning to be the feminine correlative of “gentleman” throughout its sense developments, and in this is paralleled by Dame in German, madame in French, donna in Spanish, &c. It is the general word for any woman of a certain social position (see Gentleman).
LADYBANK, a police burgh of Fifeshire, Scotland, 5½ m. S.W. of Cupar by the North British railway, ½ m. from the left bank of the Eden. Pop. (1901) 1340. Besides having a station on the main line to Dundee, it is also connected with Perth and Kinross and is a railway junction of some importance and possesses a locomotive depot. It is an industrial centre, linen weaving, coal mining and malting being the principal industries. Kettle, a village 1 m. S., has prehistoric barrows and a fort. At Collessie, 2½ m. N. by W., a standing stone, a mound and traces of ancient camps exist, while urns and coins have been found. Between the parishes of Collessie and Monimail the boundary line takes the form of a crescent known as the Bow of Fife. Monimail contains the Mount, the residence of Sir David Lindsay the poet (1490-1555). Its lofty site is now marked by a clump of trees. Here, too, is the Doric pillar, 100 ft. high, raised to the memory of John Hope, 4th earl of Hopetoun. Melville House, the seat of the earls of Leven, lies amidst beautiful woods.
LADYBRAND, a town of the Orange Free State, 80 m. E. of Bloemfontein by rail. Another railway connects it with Natal via Harrismith. Pop. (1904) 3862, of whom 2334 were whites. The town is pleasantly situated at the foot of a flat-topped hill (the Platberg), about 4 m. W. of the Caledon river, which separates the province from Basutoland. Ladybrand is the centre of a rich arable district, has a large wheat market and is also a health resort, the climate, owing to the proximity of the Maluti Mountains, being bracing even during the summer months (November-March). Coal and petroleum are found in the neighbourhood. It is named after the wife of Sir J. H. Brand, president of the Orange Free State.
LADY-CHAPEL, the chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and attached to churches of large size. Generally the chapel was built eastward of the high altar and formed a projection from the main building, as in Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Wells, St Albans, Chichester, Peterborough and Norwich cathedrals,—in the two latter cases now destroyed. The earliest Lady-chapel built was that in the Saxon cathedral of Canterbury; this was transfered in the rebuilding by Archbishop Lanfranc to the west end of the nave, and again shifted in 1450 to the chapel on the east side of the north transept. The Lady-chapel at Ely cathedral is a distinct building attached to the north transept; at Rochester the Lady-chapel is west of the south transept. Probably the largest Lady-chapel was that built by Henry III. in 1220 at Westminster Abbey, which was 30 ft. wide, much in excess of any foreign example, and extended to the end of the site now occupied by Henry VII.’s chapel. Among other notable English examples of Lady-chapels are those at Ottery-St-Mary, Thetford, Bury St Edmund’s, Wimborne, Christ-church, Hampshire; in Compton Church, Surrey, and Compton Martin, Somersetshire, and Darenth, Kent, it was built over the chancel. At Croyland Abbey there were two Lady-chapels. Lady-chapels exist in most of the French cathedrals and churches, where they form part of the chevet; in Belgium they were not introduced before the 14th century; in some cases they are of the same size as the other chapels of the chevet, but in others, probably rebuilt at a later period, they became much more important features, and in Italy and Spain during the Renaissance period constitute some of its best examples.
LADY DAY, originally the name for all the days in the church calendar marking any event in the Virgin Mary’s life, but now restricted to the feast of the Annunciation, held on the 25th of March in each year. Lady Day was in medieval and later times the beginning of the legal year in England. In 1752 this was altered to the 1st of January, but the 25th of March remains one of the Quarter Days; though in some parts old Lady Day, on the 6th of April, is still the date for rent paying. See Annunciation.
LADYSMITH, a town of Natal, 189 m. N.W. of Durban by rail, on the left bank of the Klip tributary of the Tugela. Pop. (1904) 5568, of whom 2269 were whites. It lies 3284 ft. above the sea and is encircled by hills, while the Drakensberg are some 30 m. distant to the N.W. Ladysmith is the trading centre of northern Natal, and is the chief railway junction in the province, the main line from the south dividing here. One line crosses Van Reenen’s pass into the Orange Free State, the other runs northwards to the Transvaal. There are extensive railway workshops. Among the public buildings are the Anglican church and the town hall. The church contains tablets with the names of 3200 men who perished in the defence and relief of the town in the South African War (see below), while the clock tower of the town hall, partially destroyed by a Boer shell, is kept in its damaged condition.
Ladysmith, founded in 1851, is named after Juana, Lady Smith, wife of Sir Harry Smith, then governor of Cape Colony. It stands near the site of the camp of the Dutch farmers who in 1848 assembled for the purpose of trekking across the Drakensberg. Here they were visited by Sir Harry Smith, who induced the majority of the farmers to remain in Natal. The growth of the town, at first slow, increased with the opening of the railway from Durban in 1886 and the subsequent extension of the line to Johannesburg.