v. 12; the portion of Anti-Lebanon traversed by it was also called by

the same name (Canticles iv. 8). From the point where the southerly continuation of Anti-Lebanon begins to take a more westerly direction, a low ridge shoots out towards the south-west, trending farther and farther away from the eastern chain and narrowing the Buka'a; upon the eastern side of this ridge lies the elevated valley or hilly stretch known as Wadi et-Teim. In the north, beside 'Ain Faluj, it is connected by a low watershed with the Buka'a; from the gorge of the Litany it is separated by the ridge of Jebel ed-Dahr. At its southern end it contracts and merges into the plain of Banias, thus enclosing Mount Hermon on its north-west and west sides; eastward from the Hasbany branch of the Jordan lies the meadow-land Merj 'Iyun, the ancient Ijon (1 Kings xv. 20).

_Vegetation._--The western slope of Lebanon has the common characteristics of the flora of the Mediterranean coast, but the Anti-Lebanon belongs to the poorer region of the steppes, and the Mediterranean species are met with only sporadically along the water-courses. Forest and pasture land do not properly exist: the place of the first is for the most part taken by a low brushwood; grass is not plentiful, and the higher ridges maintain alpine plants only so long as patches of snow continue to lie. The rock walls harbour some rock plants, but many absolutely barren wildernesses of stone occur. (1) On the western slope, to a height of 1600 ft., is the coast region, similar to that of Syria in general and of the south of Asia Minor. Characteristic trees are the locust tree and the stone pine; in _Melia Azedarach_ and _Ficus Sycomorus_ (Beirut) is an admixture of foreign and partially subtropical elements. The great mass of the vegetation, however is of the low-growing type (_maquis_ or _garrigue_ of the western Mediterranean), with small and stiff leaves, and frequently thorny and aromatic, as for example the ilex (_Quercus coccifera_), _Smilax_, _Cistus_, _Lentiscus_, _Calycotome_, &c. (2) Next comes, from 1600 to 6500 ft., the mountain region, which may also be called the forest region, still exhibiting sparse woods and isolated trees wherever shelter, moisture and the inhabitants have permitted their growth. From 1600 to 3200 ft. is a zone of dwarf hard-leaved oaks, amongst which occur the Oriental forms _Fontanesia phillyraeoides_, _Acer syriacum_ and the beautiful red-stemmed _Arbutus Andrachne_. Higher up, between 3700 and 4200 ft., a tall pine, _Pinus Brutia_, is characteristic. Between 4200 and 6200 ft. is the region of the two most interesting forest trees of Lebanon, the cypress and the cedar. The former still grows thickly, especially in the valley of the Kadisha; the horizontal is the prevailing variety. In the upper Kadisha valley there is a cedar grove of about three hundred trees, amongst which five are of gigantic size. (See also CEDAR.) The cypress and cedar zone exhibits a variety of other leaf-bearing and coniferous trees; of the first may be mentioned several oaks--_Quercus subalpina_ (Kotschy), _Q. Cerris_ and the hop-hornbeam (_Ostrya_); of the second class the rare Cilician silver fir (_Abies cilicica_) may be noticed. Next come the junipers, sometimes attaining the size of trees (_Juniperus excelsa_, _J. rufescens_ and, with fruit as large as plums, _J. drupacea_). But the chief ornament of Lebanon is the _Rhododendron ponticum_, with its brilliant purple flower clusters; a peculiar evergreen, _Vinca libanotica_, also adds beauty to this zone. (3) Into the alpine region (6200 to 10,400 ft.) penetrate a few very stunted oaks (_Quercus subalpina_), the junipers already mentioned and a barberry (_Berberis cretica_), which sometimes spreads into close thickets. Then follow the low, dense, prone, pillow-like dwarf bushes, thorny and grey, common to the Oriental highlands--_Astragalus_ and the peculiar _Acantholimon_. They are found to within 300 ft. of the highest summits.

Upon the exposed mountain slopes a species of rhubarb (_Rheum Ribes_) is noticeable, and also a vetch (_Vicia canescens_) excellent for sheep. The spring vegetation, which lasts until July, appears to be rich, especially as regards showy plants, such as _Corydalis_, _Gagea_, _Colchicum_, _Puschkinia_, _Geranium_, _Ornithogalum_, &c. The flora of the highest ridges, along the edges of the snow patches, exhibits no forms related to the northern alpine flora, but suggestions of it are found in a _Draba_, an _Androsace_, an _Alsine_ and a violet, occurring, however, only in local species. Upon the highest summits are found _Saponaria Pumilio_ (resembling our _Silene acaulis_) and varieties of _Galium_, _Euphorbia_, _Astragalus_, _Veronica_, _Jurinea_, _Festuca_, _Scrophularia_, _Geranium_, _Asphodeline_, _Allium_, _Asperula_; and, on the margins of the snow fields, a _Taraxacum_ and _Ranunculus demissus_. The alpine flora of Lebanon thus connects itself directly with the Oriental flora of lower altitudes, and is unrelated to the glacial flora of Europe and northern Asia.

_Zoology._--There is nothing of special interest about the fauna of Lebanon. Bears are no longer numerous; the panther and the ounce are met with; the wild hog, hyaena, wolf and fox are by no means rare; jackals and gazelles are very common. The polecat and hedgehog also occur. As a rule there are not many birds, but the eagle and the vulture may occasionally be seen; of eatable kinds partridges and wild pigeons are the most abundant.

_Population._--In the following sections the Lebanon proper will alone be considered, without reference to Anti-Lebanon, because the peculiar political status of the former range since 1864 has effectually differentiated it; whereas the Anti-Lebanon still forms an integral part of the Ottoman province of Syria (q.v.), and neither its population nor its history is readily distinguishable from those of the surrounding districts.

The total population in the Lebanon proper is about 400,000, and is increasing faster than the development of the province will admit. There is consequently much emigration, the Christian surplus going mainly to Egypt, and to America, the Druses to the latter country and to the Hauran. The emigrants to America, however, usually return after making money, build new houses and settle down. The singularly complex population is composed of Christians, Maronites, and Orthodox Eastern and Uniate; of Moslems, both Sunni and Shiah (Metawali); and of Druses.

(a) _Maronites_ (q.v.) form about three-fifths of the whole and have the north of the Mountain almost to themselves, while even in the south, the old Druse stronghold, they are now numerous. Feudalism is practically extinct among them and with the decline of the Druses, and the great stake they have acquired in agriculture, they have laid aside much of their warlike habit together with their arms. Even their instinct of nationality is being sensibly impaired by their gradual assimilation to the Papal Church, whose agents exercise from Beirut an increasing influence on their ecclesiastical elections and church government. They are strong also in the Buka'a, and have colonies in most of the Syrian cities.

(b) _Orthodox_ Eastern form a little more than one-eighth of the whole, and are strongest in S. Lebanon (Metn and Kurah districts). Syrians by race and Arab-speaking, they are descendants of those "Melkites" who took the side of the Byzantine church in the time of Justinian II. against the Moslems and eventually the Maronites. They are among the most progressive of the Lebanon elements.

(c) _Greek Uniate_ are less numerous, forming little more than one-twelfth, but are equally progressive. Their headquarters is Zahleh; but they are found also in strength in Metn and Jezzin, where they help to counterbalance Druses. They sympathize with the Maronites against the Orthodox Eastern, and, like both, are of Syrian race, and Arab speech.

(d) _Sunnite Moslems_ are a weak element, strongest in Shuf and Kurah, and composed largely of Druse renegades and "Druse" families, which, like the Shehab, were of Arab extraction and never conformed to the creed of Hamza.

(e) _Shiite Moslems_ outnumber the Sunni, and make about one twenty-fifth of the whole. They are called _Metawali_ and are strongest in North Lebanon (Kesrawan and Batrun), but found also in the south, in Buka'a and in the coast-towns from Beirut to Acre. They are said to be descendants of Persian tribes; but the fact is very doubtful, and they may be at least as aboriginal as the Maronites, and a remnant of an old Incarnationist population which did not accept Christianity, and kept its heretical Islam free from those influences which modified Druse creed. They own a chief sheikh, resident at Jeba'a, and have the reputation, like most heretical communities in the Sunni part of the Moslem world, of being exceedingly fanatical and inhospitable. It is undoubtedly the case that they are suspicious of strangers and defiant of interference. Another small body of Shiites, the _Ismailites_ (Assassins (q.v.) of the crusading chronicles), also said to be of Persian origin, live about Kadmus at the extreme N. of Lebanon, but outside the limits of the privileged province. They are about 9000 strong.

(f) _Druses_ (q.v.), now barely an eighth of the whole and confined to Shuf and Metn in S. Lebanon, are tending to emigrate or conform to Sunni Islam. Since the establishment of the privileged province they have lost the Ottoman support which used to compensate for their numerical inferiority as compared with the Christians; and they are fast losing also their old habits and distinctiveness. No longer armed or wearing their former singular dress, the remnant of them in Lebanon seems likely ere long to be assimilated to the "Osmanli" Moslems. Their feud with the Maronites, whose accentuation in the middle of the 19th century was largely due to the tergiversations of the ruling Shehab family, now reduced to low estate, is dying away, but they retain something of their old clan feeling and feudal organization, especially in Shuf.

The mixed population, as a whole, displays the usual characteristics of mountaineers, fine physique and vigorous independent spirit; but its ancient truculence has given way before strong government action since the middle 19th century, and the great increase of agricultural pursuits, to which the purely pastoral are now quite secondary. The culture of the mulberry and silk, of tobacco, of the olive and vine, of many kinds of fruits and cereals, has expanded enormously, and the Lebanon is now probably the most productive region in Asiatic Turkey in proportion to its area. It exports largely through Beirut and Saida, using both the French railway which crosses S. Lebanon on its way to Damascus, and the excellent roads and mule-paths made since 1883. Lebanon has thick deposits of lignite coal, but of inferior quality owing to the presence of iron pyrites. The abundant iron is little worked. Manufactures are of small account, the raw material going mostly to the coast; but olive-oil is made, together with various wines, of which the most famous is the _vino d'oro_, a sweet liqueur-like beverage. This wine is not exported in any quantity, as it will not bear a voyage well and is not made to keep. Bee-keeping is general, and there is an export of eggs to Egypt.

_History._--The inhabitants of Lebanon have at no time played a conspicuous part in history. There are remains of prehistoric occupation, but we do not even know what races dwelt there in the historical period of antiquity. Probably they belonged chiefly to the Aramaean group of nationalities; the Bible mentions Hivites (Judges iii. 3) and Giblites (Joshua xiii. 5). Lebanon was included within the ideal boundaries of the land of Israel, and the whole region was well known to the Hebrews, by whose poets its many excellences are often praised. How far the Phoenicians had any effective control over it is unknown; the absence of their monuments does not argue much real jurisdiction. Nor apparently did the Greek Seleucid kingdom have much to do with the Mountain. In the Roman period the district of _Phoenice_ extended to Lebanon. In the 2nd century, with the inland districts, it constituted a subdivision of the province of Syria, having Emesa (Homs) for its capital. From the time of Diocletian there was a _Phoenice ad Libanum_, with Emesa as capital, as well as a _Phoenice Maritima_ of which Tyre was the chief city. Remains of the Roman period occur throughout Lebanon. By the 6th century it was evidently virtually independent again; its Christianization had begun with the immigration of Monothelite sectaries, flying from persecution in the Antioch district and Orontes valley. At all times Lebanon has been a place of refuge for unpopular creeds. Large part of the mountaineers took up Monothelism and initiated the national distinction of the Maronites, which begins to emerge in the history of the 7th century. The sectaries, after helping Justinian II. against the caliph Abdalmalik, turned on the emperor and his Orthodox allies, and were named Mardaites (rebels). Islam now began to penetrate S. Lebanon, chiefly by the immigration of various more or less heretical elements, Kurd, Turkoman, Persian and especially Arab, the latter largely after the break-up of the kingdom of Hira; and early in the 11th century these coalesced into a nationality (see Druses) under the congenial influence of the Incarnationist creed brought from Cairo by Ismael Darazi and other emissaries of the caliph Hakim and his vizier Hamza. The subsequent history of Lebanon to the middle of the 19th century will be found under Druses and Maronites, and it need only be stated here that Latin influence began to be felt in N. Lebanon during the Frank period of Antioch and Palestine, the Maronites being inclined to take the part of the crusading princes against the Druses and Moslems; but they were still regarded as heretic Monothelites by Abulfaragius (Bar-Hebraeus) at the end of the 13th century; nor is their effectual reconciliation to Rome much older than 1736, the date of the mission sent by the pope Clement XII., which fixed the actual status of their church. An informal French protection had, however, been exercised over them for some time previously, and with it began the feud of Maronites and Druses, the latter incited and spasmodically supported by Ottoman pashas. The feudal organization of both, the one under the house of Khazin, the other under those of Maan and Shehab successively, was in full force during the 17th and 18th centuries; and it was the break-up of this in the first part of the 19th century which produced the anarchy that culminated after 1840 in the civil war. The Druses renounced their Shehab amirs when Beshir al-Kassim openly joined the Maronites in 1841, and the Maronites definitely revolted from the Khazin in 1858. The events of 1860 led to the formation of the privileged Lebanon province, finally constituted in 1864. It should be added, however, that among the Druses of Shuf, feudalism has tended to re-establish itself, and the power is now divided between the Jumblat and Yezbeki families, a leading member of one of which is almost always Ottoman _kaimakam_ of the Druses, and locally called _amir_.

The Lebanon has now been constituted a _sanjak_ or _mutessariflik_, dependent directly on the Porte, which acts in this case in consultation with the six great powers. This province extends about 93 m. from N. to S. (from the boundary of the _sanjak_ of Tripoli to that of the _caza_ of Saida), and has a mean breadth of about 28 m. from one foot of the chain to the other, beginning at the edge of the littoral plain behind Beirut and ending at the W. edge of the Buka'a; but the boundaries are ill-defined, especially on the E. where the original line drawn along the crest of the ridge has not been adhered to, and the mountaineers have encroached on the Buka'a. The Lebanon is under a military governor (_mushir_) who must be a Christian in the service of the sultan, approved by the powers, and has, so far, been chosen from the Roman Catholics owing to the great preponderance of Latin Christians in the province. He resides at Deir al-Kamar, an old seat of the Druse amirs. At first appointed for three years, then for ten, his term has been fixed since 1892 at five years, the longer term having aroused the fear of the Porte, lest a personal domination should become established. Under the governor are seven _kaimakams_, all Christians except a Druse in Shuf, and forty-seven _mudirs_, who all depend on the kaimakams except one in the home district of Deir al-Kamar. A central _mejliss_ or Council of twelve members is composed of four Maronites, three Druses, one Turk, two Greeks (Orthodox), one Greek Uniate and one Metawali. This was the original proportion, and it has not been altered in spite of the decline of the Druses and increase of the Maronites. The members are elected by the seven cazas. In each _mudirieh_ there is also a local _mejliss_. The old feudal and _mukataji_ (see DRUSES) jurisdictions are abolished, i.e. they often persist under Ottoman forms, and three courts of First Instance, under the _mejliss_, and superior to the petty courts of the _mudirs_ and the village _sheikhs_, administer justice. Judges are appointed by the governor, but sheikhs by the villages. Commercial cases, and litigation in which strangers are concerned, are carried to Beirut. The police is recruited locally, and no regular troops appear in the province except on special requisition. The taxes are collected directly, and must meet the needs of the province, before any sum is remitted to the Imperial Treasury. The latter has to make deficits good. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction is exercised only over the clergy, and all rights of asylum are abolished.

This constitution has worked well on the whole, the only serious hitches having been due to the tendency of governors-general and _kaimakams_ to attempt to supersede the _mejliss_ by autocratic action, and to impair the freedom of elections. The attention of the porte was called to these tendencies in 1892 and again in 1902, on the appointments of new governors. Since the last date there has been no complaint. Nothing now remains of the former French predominance in the Lebanon, except a certain influence exerted by the fact that the railway is French, and by the precedence in ecclesiastical functions still accorded by the Maronites to official representatives of France. In the Lebanon, as in N. Albania, the traditional claim of France to protect Roman Catholics in the Ottoman Empire has been greatly impaired by the non-religious character of the Republic. Like Italy, she is now regarded by Eastern Catholics with distrust as an enemy of the Holy Father.

See DRUSES. Also V. Cuinet, _Syrie, Liban et Palestine_ (1896); N. Verney and G. Dambmann, _Puissances étrangères en Syrie_, &c. (1900); G. Young, _Corps de droit ottoman_, vol. i. (1905); G. E. Post, _Flora of Syria_, &c. (1896); M. von Oppenheim, _Vom Mittelmeer_, &c. (1899). (A. So.; D. G. H.)

LEBANON, a city of Saint Clair county, Illinois, U.S.A., on Silver Creek, about 24 m. E. of Saint Louis, Missouri. Pop. (1910) 1907. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio South-Western railroad and by the East Saint Louis & Suburban Electric line. It is situated on a high tableland. Lebanon is the seat of McKendree College, founded by Methodists in 1828 and one of the oldest colleges in the Mississippi valley. It was called Lebanon Seminary until 1830, when the present name was adopted in honour of William McKendree (1757-1835), known as the "Father of Western Methodism," a great preacher, and a bishop of the Methodist Church in 1808-1835, who had endowed the college with 480 acres of land. In 1835 the college was chartered as the "McKendreean College," but in 1839 the present name was again adopted. There are coal mines and excellent farming lands in the vicinity of Lebanon. Among the city's manufactures are flour, planing-mill products, malt liquors, soda and farming implements. The municipality owns and operates its electric-lighting plant. Lebanon was chartered as a city in 1874.

LEBANON, a city and the county-seat of Lebanon county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., in the fertile Lebanon Valley, about 25 m. E. by N. of Harrisburg. Pop. (1900) 17,628, of whom 618 were foreign-born, (1910 census) 19,240. It is served by the Philadelphia & Reading, the Cornwall and the Cornwall & Lebanon railways. About 5 m. S. of the city are the Cornwall (magnetite) iron mines, from which about 18,000,000 tons of iron ore were taken between 1740 and 1902, and 804,848 tons in 1906. The ore yields about 46% of iron, and contains about 2.5% of sulphur, the roasting of the ores being necessary--ore-roasting kilns are more extensively used here than in any other place in the country. The area of ore exposed is about 4000 ft. long and 400 to 800 ft. wide, and includes three hills; it has been one of the most productive magnetite deposits in the world. Limestone, brownstone and brick-clay also abound in the vicinity; and besides mines and quarries, the city has extensive manufactories of iron, steel, chains, and nuts and bolts. In 1905 its factory products were valued at $6,978,458. The municipality owns and operates its water-works.

The first settlement in the locality was made about 1730, and twenty years later a town was laid out by one of the landowners, George Steitz, and named Steitztown in his honour. About 1760 the town became known as Lebanon, and under this name it was incorporated as a borough in 1821 and chartered as a city in 1885.

LE BARGY, CHARLES GUSTAVE AUGUSTE (1858- ), French actor, was born at La Chapelle (Seine). His talent both as a comedian and a serious actor was soon made evident, and he became a member of the Comédie Française, his chief successes being in such plays as _Le Duel_, _L'Énigme_, _Le Marquis de Priola_, _L'Autre Danger_ and _Le Dédale_. His wife, Simone le Bargy née Benda, an accomplished actress, made her début at the Gymnase in 1902, and in later years had a great success in _La Rafale_ and other plays. In 1910 he had differences with the authorities of the Comédie Française and ceased to be a _sociétaire_.

LE BEAU, CHARLES (1701-1778), French historical writer, was born at Paris on the 15th of October 1701, and was educated at the Collège de Sainte-Barbe and the Collège du Plessis; at the latter he remained as a teacher until he obtained the chair of rhetoric in the Collège des Grassins. In 1748 he was admitted a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and in 1752 he was nominated professor of eloquence in the Collège de France. From 1755 he held the office of perpetual secretary to the Academy of Inscriptions, in which capacity he edited fifteen volumes (from the 25th to the 39th inclusive) of the _Histoire_ of that institution. He died at Paris on the 13th of March 1778.

The only work with which the name of Le Beau continues to be associated is his _Histoire du Bas-Empire, en commençant à Constantin le Grand_, in 22 vols. 12mo (Paris, 1756-1779), being a continuation of C. Rollin's _Histoire Romaine_ and J. B. L. Crevier's _Histoire des empereurs_. Its usefulness arises entirely from the fact of its being a faithful résumé of the Byzantine historians, for Le Beau had no originality or artistic power of his own. Five volumes were added by H. P. Ameilhon (1781-1811), which brought the work down to the fall of Constantinople. A later edition, under the care of M. de Saint-Martin and afterwards of Brosset, has had the benefit of careful revision throughout, and has received considerable additions from Oriental sources.

See his "Éloge" in vol. xlii. of the _Histoire de l'Académie des Inscriptions_ (1786), pp. 190-207.

LEBEAU, JOSEPH (1794-1865), Belgian statesman, was born at Huy on the 3rd of January 1794. He received his early education from an uncle who was parish priest of Hannut, and became a clerk. By dint of economy he raised money to study law at Liége, and was called to the bar in 1819. At Liége he formed a fast friendship with Charles Rogier and Paul Devaux, in conjunction with whom he founded at Liége in 1824 the _Mathieu Laensbergh_, afterwards _Le politique_, a journal which helped to unite the Catholic party with the Liberals in their opposition to the ministry, without manifesting any open disaffection to the Dutch government. Lebeau had not contemplated the separation of Holland and Belgium, but his hand was forced by the revolution. He was sent by his native district to the National Congress, and became minister of foreign affairs in March 1831 during the interim regency of Surlet de Chokier. By proposing the election of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg as king of the Belgians he secured a benevolent attitude on the part of Great Britain, but the restoration to Holland of part of the duchies of Limburg and Luxemburg provoked a heated opposition to the treaty of London, and Lebeau was accused of treachery to Belgian interests. He resigned the direction of foreign affairs on the accession of King Leopold, but in the next year became minister of justice. He was elected deputy for Brussels in 1833, and retained his seat until 1848. Differences with the king led to his retirement in 1834. He was subsequently governor of the province of Namur (1838), ambassador to the Frankfort diet (1839), and in 1840 he formed a short-lived Liberal ministry. From this time he held no office of state, though he continued his energetic support of liberal and anti-clerical measures. He died at Huy on the 19th of March 1865.

Lebeau published _La Belgique depuis 1847_ (Brussels, 4 vols., 1852), _Lettres aux électeurs belges_ (8 vols., Brussels, 1853-1856). His _Souvenirs personnels et correspondance diplomatique 1824-1841_ (Brussels, 1883) were edited by A. Fréson. See an article by A. Fréson in the _Biographie nationale de Belgique_; and T. Juste, _Joseph Lebeau_ (Brussels, 1865).

LEBEL, JEAN (d. 1370), Belgian chronicler, was born near the end of the 13th century. His father, Gilles le Beal des Changes, was an alderman of Liége. Jean entered the church and became a canon of the cathedral church, but he and his brother Henri followed Jean de Beaumont to England in 1327, and took part in the border warfare against the Scots. His will is dated 1369, and his epitaph gives the date of his death as 1370. Nothing more is known of his life, but Jacques de Hemricourt, author of the _Miroir des nobles de Hesbaye_, has left a eulogy of his character, and a description of the magnificence of his attire, his retinue and his hospitality. Hemricourt asserts that he was eighty years old or more when he died. For a long time Jean Lebel (or le Bel) was only known as a chronicler through a reference by Froissart, who quotes him in the prologue of his first book as one of his authorities. A fragment of his work, in the MS. of Jean d'Outremeuse's _Mireur des istores_, was discovered in 1847; and the whole of his chronicle, preserved in the library of Châlons-sur-Marne, was edited in 1863 by L. Polain. Jean Lebel gives as his reason for writing a desire to replace a certain misleading rhymed chronicle of the wars of Edward III. by a true relation of his enterprises down to the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. In the matter of style Lebel has been placed by some critics on the level of Froissart. His chief merit is his refusal to narrate events unless either he himself or his informant had witnessed them. This scrupulousness in the acceptance of evidence must be set against his limitations. He takes on the whole a similar point of view to Froissart's; he has no concern with national movements or politics; and, writing for the public of chivalry, he preserves no general notion of a campaign, which resolves itself in his narrative into a series of exploits on the part of his heroes. Froissart was considerably indebted to him, and seems to have borrowed from him some of his best-known episodes, such as the death of Robert the Bruce, Edward III. and the countess of Salisbury, and the devotion of the burghers of Calais. The songs and virelais, in the art of writing which he was, according to Hemricourt, an expert, have not come to light.

See L. Polain, _Les Vraies Chroniques de messire Jehan le Bel_ (1863); Kervyn de Lettenhove, _Bulletin de la société d'émulation de Bruges_, series ii. vols. vii. and ix.; and H. Pirenne in _Biographie nationale de Belgique_.

LEBER, JEAN MICHEL CONSTANT (1780-1859), French historian and bibliophile, was born at Orléans on the 8th of May 1780. His first work was a poem on Joan of Arc (1804); but he wrote at the same time a _Grammaire général synthétique_, which attracted the attention of J. M. de Gérando, then secretary-general to the ministry of the interior. The latter found him a minor post in his department, which left him leisure for his historical work. He even took him to Italy when Napoleon was trying to organize, after French models, the Roman states which he had taken from the pope in 1809. Leber however did not stay there long, for he considered the attacks on the temporal property of the Holy See to be sacrilegious. On his return to Paris he resumed his administrative work, literary recreations and historical researches. While spending a part of his time writing vaudevilles and comic operas, he began to collect old essays and rare pamphlets by old French historians. His office was preserved to him by the Restoration, and Leber put his literary gifts at the service of the government. When the question of the coronation of Louis XVIII. arose, he wrote, as an answer to Volney, a minute treatise on the _Cérémonies du sacre_, which was published at the time of the coronation of Charles X. Towards the end of Villèle's ministry, when there was a movement of public opinion in favour of extending municipal liberties, he undertook the defence of the threatened system of centralization, and composed, in answer to Raynouard, an _Histoire critique du pouvoir municipal depuis l'origine de la monarchie jusqu'à nos jours_ (1828). He also wrote a treatise entitled _De l'état réel de la presse et des pamphlets depuis François I^(er) jusqu'à Louis XIV_., in which he refuted an empty paradox of Charles Nodier, who had tried to prove that the press had never been, and could never be, so free as under the Grand Monarch. A few years later, Leber retired (1839), and sold to the library of Rouen the rich collection of books which he had amassed during thirty years of research. The catalogue he made himself (4 vols., 1839 to 1852). In 1840 he read at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres two dissertations, an "Essai sur l'appréciation de la fortune privée au moyen âge," followed by an "Examen critique des tables de prix du marc d'argent depuis l'époque de Saint Louis"; these essays were included by the Academy in its _Recueil de mémoires présentés par divers savants_ (vol. i., 1844), and were also revised and published by Leber (1847). They form his most considerable work, and assure him a position of eminence in the economic history of France. He also rendered good service to historians by the publication of his _Collection des meilleures dissertations, notices et traités relatifs à l'histoire de France_ (20 vols., 1826-1840); in the absence of an index, since Leber did not give one, an analytical table of contents is to be found in Alfred Franklin's _Sources de l'histoire de France_ (1876, pp. 342 sqq.). In consequence of the revolution of 1848, Leber decided to leave Paris. He retired to his native town, and spent his last years in collecting old engravings. He died at Orléans on the 22nd of December 1859.

In 1832 he had been elected as a member of the _Société des Antiquaires de France_, and in the _Bulletin_ of this society (vol. i., 1860) is to be found the most correct and detailed account of his life's works.

LEBEUF, JEAN (1687-1760), French historian, was born on the 7th of March 1687 at Auxerre, where his father, a councillor in the parlement, was _receveur des consignations_. He began his studies in his native town, and continued them in Paris at the Collège Ste Barbe. He soon became known as one of the most cultivated minds of his time. He made himself master of practically every branch of medieval learning, and had a thorough knowledge of the sources and the bibliography of his subject. His learning was not drawn from books only; he was also an archaeologist, and frequently went on expeditions in France, always on foot, in the course of which he examined the monuments of architecture and sculpture, as well as the libraries, and collected a number of notes and sketches. He was in correspondence with all the most learned men of the day. His correspondence with Président Bouhier was published in 1885 by Ernest Petit; his other letters have been edited by the _Société des sciences historiques et naturelles de l'Yonne_ (2 vols., 1866-1867). He also wrote numerous articles, and, after his election as a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1740), a number of _Mémoires_ which appeared in the _Recueil_ of this society. He died at Paris on the 10th of April 1760. His most important researches had Paris as their subject.

He published first a collection of _Dissertations sur l'histoire civile et ecclésiastique de Paris_ (3 vols., 1739-1743), then an _Histoire de la ville et de tout le diocèse de Paris_ (15 vols., 1745-1760), which is a mine of information, mostly taken from the original sources. In view of the advance made by scholarship in the 19th century, it was found necessary to publish a second edition. The work of reprinting it was undertaken by H. Cocheris, but was interrupted (1863) before the completion of vol. iv. Adrien Augier resumed the work, giving Lebeuf's text, though correcting the numerous typographical errors of the original edition (5 vols., 1883), and added a sixth volume containing an analytical table of contents. Finally, Fernand Bournon completed the work by a volume of _Rectifications et additions_ (1890), worthy to appear side by side with the original work.

The bibliography of Lebeuf's writings is, partly, in various numbers of the _Bibliothèque des écrivains de Bourgogne_ (1716-1741). His biography is given by Lebeau in the _Histoire de l'Académie royale des Inscriptions_ (xxix., 372, published 1764), and by H. Cocheris, in the preface to his edition.

LE BLANC, NICOLAS (1742-1806), French chemist, was born at Issoudun, Indre, in 1742. He made medicine his profession and in 1780 became surgeon to the duke of Orleans, but he also paid much attention to chemistry. About 1787 he was attracted to the urgent problem of manufacturing carbonate of soda from ordinary sea-salt. The suggestion made in 1789 by Jean Claude de la Métherie (1743-1817), the editor of the _Journal de physique_, that this might be done by calcining with charcoal the sulphate of soda formed from salt by the action of oil of vitriol, did not succeed in practice because the product was almost entirely sulphide of soda, but it gave Le Blanc, as he himself acknowledged, a basis upon which to work. He soon made the crucial discovery--which proved the foundation of the huge industry of artificial alkali manufacture--that the desired end was to be attained by adding a proportion of chalk to the mixture of charcoal and sulphate of soda. Having had the soundness of this method tested by Jean Darcet (1725-1801), the professor of chemistry at the Collège de France, the duke of Orleans in June 1791 agreed to furnish a sum of 200,000 francs for the purpose of exploiting it. In the following September Le Blanc was granted a patent for fifteen years, and shortly afterwards a factory was started at Saint-Denis, near Paris. But it had not long been in operation when the Revolution led to the confiscation of the duke's property, including the factory, and about the same time the Committee of Public Safety called upon all citizens who possessed soda-factories to disclose their situation and capacity and the nature of the methods employed. Le Blanc had no choice but to reveal the secrets of his process, and he had the misfortune to see his factory dismantled and his stocks of raw and finished materials sold. By way of compensation for the loss of his rights, the works were handed back to him in 1800, but all his efforts to obtain money enough to restore them and resume manufacturing on a profitable scale were vain, and, worn out with disappointment, he died by his own hand at Saint-Denis on the 16th of January 1806.

Four years after his death, Michel Jean Jacques Dizê (1764-1852), who had been _préparateur_ to Darcet at the time he examined the process and who was subsequently associated with Le Blanc in its exploitation, published in the _Journal de physique_ a paper claiming that it was he himself who had first suggested the addition of chalk; but a committee of the French Academy, which reported fully on the question in 1856, came to the conclusion that the merit was entirely Le Blanc's (_Com. rend._, 1856, p. 553).

LE BLANC, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement, in the department of Indre, 44 m. W.S.W, of Châteauroux on the Orléans railway between Argenton and Poitiers. Pop. (1906) 4719. The Creuse divides it into a lower and an upper town. The church of St Génitour dates from the 12th, 13th and 15th centuries, and there is an old castle restored in modern times. It is the seat of a subprefect, and has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college. Wool-spinning, and the manufacture of linen goods and edge-tools are among the industries. There is trade in horses and in the agricultural and other products of the surrounding region.

Le Blanc, which is identified with the Roman _Oblincum_, was in the middle ages a lordship belonging to the house of Naillac and a frontier fortress of the province of Berry.

LEBOEUF, EDMOND (1809-1888), marshal of France, was born at Paris on the 5th of November 1809, passed through the École Polytechnique and the school of Metz, and distinguished himself as an artillery officer in Algerian warfare, becoming colonel in 1852. He commanded the artillery of the 1st French corps at the siege of Sebastopol, and was promoted in 1854 to the rank of general of brigade, and in 1857 to that of general of division. In the Italian War of 1859 he commanded the artillery, and by his action at Solferino materially assisted in achieving the victory. In September 1866, having in the meantime become aide-de-camp to Napoleon III., he was despatched to Venetia to hand over that province to Victor Emmanuel. In 1869, on the death of Marshal Niel, General Leboeuf became minister of war, and earned public approbation by his vigorous reorganization of the War Office and the civil departments of the service. In the spring of 1870 he received the marshal's baton. On the declaration of war with Germany Marshal Leboeuf delivered himself in the Corps Législatif of the historic saying, "So ready are we, that if the war lasts two years, not a gaiter button would be found wanting." It may be that he intended this to mean that, given time, the reorganization of the War Office would be perfected through experience, but the result inevitably caused it to be regarded as a mere boast, though it is now known that the administrative confusion on the frontier in July 1870 was far less serious than was supposed at the time. Leboeuf took part in the Lorraine campaign, at first as chief of staff (major-general) of the Army of the Rhine, and afterwards, when Bazaine became commander-in-chief, as chief of the III. corps, which he led in the battles around Metz. He distinguished himself, whenever engaged, by personal bravery and good leadership. Shut up with Bazaine in Metz, on its fall he was confined as a prisoner in Germany. On the conclusion of peace he returned to France and gave evidence before the commission of inquiry into the surrender of that stronghold, when he strongly denounced Bazaine. After this he retired into private life to the Château du Moncel near Argentan, where he died on the 7th of June 1888.

LE BON, JOSEPH (1765-1795), French politician, was born at Arras on the 29th of September 1765. He became a priest in the order of the Oratory, and professor of rhetoric at Beaune. He adopted revolutionary ideas, and became a curé of the Constitutional Church in the department of Pas-de-Calais, where he was later elected as a _député suppléant_ to the Convention. He became _maire_ of Arras and _administrateur_ of Pas-de-Calais, and on the 2nd of July 1793 took his seat in the Convention. He was sent as a representative on missions into the departments of the Somme and Pas-de-Calais, where he showed great severity in dealing with offences against revolutionaries (8th Brumaire, year II. to 22nd Messidor, year II.; i.e. 29th October 1793 to 10th July 1794). In consequence, during the reaction which followed the 9th Thermidor (27th July 1794) he was arrested on the 22nd Messidor, year III. (10th July 1795). He was tried before the criminal tribunal of the Somme, condemned to death for abuse of his power during his mission, and executed at Amiens on the 24th Vendémiaire in the year IV. (10th October 1795). Whatever Le Bon's offences, his condemnation was to a great extent due to the violent attacks of one of his political enemies, Armand Guffroy; and it is only just to remember that it was owing to his courage that Cambrai was saved from falling into the hands of the Austrians.

His son, Émile le Bon, published a _Histoire de Joseph le Bon et des tribunaux révolutionnaires d'Arras et de Cambrai_ (2nd ed., 2 vols., Arras, 1864).

LEBRIJA, or LEBRIXA, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Seville, near the left bank of the Guadalquivir, and on the eastern edge of the marshes known as Las Marismas. Pop. (1900) 10,997. Lebrija is 44 m. S. by W. of Seville, on the Seville-Cadiz railway. Its chief buildings are a ruined Moorish castle and the parish church, an imposing structure in a variety of styles--Moorish, Gothic, Romanesque--dating from the 14th century to the 16th, and containing some early specimens of the carving of Alonso Cano (1601-1667). There are manufactures of bricks, tiles and earthenware, for which clay is found in the neighbourhood; and some trade in grain, wine and oil.

Lebrija is the _Nabrissa_ or _Nebrissa_, surnamed _Veneria_, of the Romans; by Silius Italicus (iii. 393), who connects it with the worship of Dionysus, the name is derived from the Greek [Greek: nebris] (a "fawn-skin," associated with Dionysiac ritual). _Nebrishah_ was a strong and populous place during the period of Moorish domination (from 711); it was taken by St Ferdinand in 1249, but again lost, and became finally subject to the Castilian crown only under Alphonso the Wise in 1264. It was the birthplace of Elio Antonio de Lebrija or Nebrija (1444-1522), better known as Nebrissensis, one of the most important leaders in the revival of learning in Spain, the tutor of Queen Isabella, and a collaborator with Cardinal Jimenes in the preparation of the Complutensian Polyglot (see ALCALA DE HENARES).

LE BRUN, CHARLES (1619-1690), French painter, was born at Paris on the 24th of February 1619, and attracted the notice of Chancellor Séguier, who placed him at the age of eleven in the studio of Vouet. At fifteen he received commissions from Cardinal Richelieu, in the execution of which he displayed an ability which obtained the generous commendations of Poussin, in whose company Le Brun started for Rome in 1642. In Rome he remained four years in the receipt of a pension due to the liberality of the chancellor. On his return to Paris Le Brun found numerous patrons, of whom Superintendent Fouquet was the most important. Employed at Vaux le Vicomte, Le Brun ingratiated himself with Mazarin, then secretly pitting Colbert against Fouquet. Colbert also promptly recognized Le Brun's powers of organization, and attached him to his interests. Together they founded the Academy of Painting and Sculpture (1648), and the Academy of France at Rome (1666), and gave a new development to the industrial arts. In 1660 they established the Gobelins, which at first was a great school for the manufacture, not of tapestries only, but of every class of furniture required in the royal palaces. Commanding the industrial arts through the Gobelins--of which he was director--and the whole artist world through the Academy--in which he successively held every post--Le Brun imprinted his own character on all that was produced in France during his lifetime, and gave a direction to the national tendencies which endured after his death. The nature of his emphatic and pompous talent was in harmony with the taste of the king, who, full of admiration at the decorations designed by Le Brun for his triumphal entry into Paris (1660), commissioned him to execute a series of subjects from the history of Alexander. The first of these, "Alexander and the Family of Darius," so delighted Louis XIV. that he at once ennobled Le Brun (December, 1662), who was also created first painter to his majesty with a pension of 12,000 livres, the same amount as he had yearly received in the service of the magnificent Fouquet. From this date all that was done in the royal palaces was directed by Le Brun. The works of the gallery of Apollo in the Louvre were interrupted in 1677 when he accompanied the king to Flanders (on his return from Lille he painted several compositions in the Château of St Germains), and finally--for they remained unfinished at his death--by the vast labours of Versailles, where he reserved for himself the Halls of War and Peace, the Ambassadors' Staircase, and the Great Gallery, other artists being forced to accept the position of his assistants. At the death of Colbert, Louvois, who succeeded him in the department of public works, showed no favour to Le Brun, and in spite of the king's continued support he felt a bitter change in his position. This contributed to the illness which on the 22nd of February 1690 ended in his death in the Gobelins. Besides his gigantic labours at Versailles and the Louvre, the number of his works for religious corporations and private patrons is enormous. He modelled and engraved with much facility, and, in spite of the heaviness and poverty of drawing and colour, his extraordinary activity and the vigour of his conceptions justify his claim to fame. Nearly all his compositions have been reproduced by celebrated engravers.

LEBRUN, CHARLES FRANÇOIS, duc de Plaisance (1739-1824), French statesman, was born at St-Sauveur-Lendelin (Manche) on the 19th of March 1739, and in 1762 made his first appearance as a lawyer at Paris. He filled the posts successively of _censeur royale_ (1766) and of inspector general of the domains of the crown (1768); he was also one of the chief advisers of the chancellor Maupeou, took part in his struggle against the parlements, and shared in his downfall in 1774. He then devoted himself to literature, translating Tasso's _Gerusalemme liberata_ (1774), and the _Iliad_ (1776). At the outset of the Revolution he foresaw its importance, and in the _Voix du citoyen_, which he published in 1789, predicted the course which events would take. In the Constituent Assembly, where he sat as deputy for Dourdan, he professed liberal views, and was the proposer of various financial laws. He then became president of the directory of Seine-et-Oise, and in 1795 was elected as a deputy to the Council of Ancients. After the _coup d'état_ of the 18th Brumaire in the year VIII. (9th November 1799), Lebrun was made third consul. In this capacity he took an active part in the reorganization of finance and of the administration of the departments of France. In 1804 he was appointed arch-treasurer of the empire, and in 1805-1806 as governor-general of Liguria effected its annexation to France. He opposed Napoleon's restoration of the noblesse, and in 1808 only reluctantly accepted the title of duc de Plaisance (Piacenza). He was next employed in organizing the departments which were formed in Holland, of which he was governor-general from 1811 to 1813. Although to a certain extent opposed to the despotism of the emperor, he was not in favour of his deposition, though he accepted the _fait accompli_ of the Restoration in April 1814. Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France; but during the Hundred Days he accepted from Napoleon the post of Grand Master of the university. On the return of the Bourbons in 1815 he was consequently suspended from the House of Peers, but was recalled in 1819. He died at St Mesmes (Seine-et-Oise) on the 16th of June 1824. He had been made a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1803.

See M. de Caumont la Force, _L'Architrésorier Lebrun_ (Paris, 1907); M. Marie du Mesnil, _Mémoire sur le prince Le Brun, duc de Plaisance_ (Paris, 1828); _Opinions, rapports et choix d'écrits politiques de C. F. Lebrun_ (1829), edited, with a biographical notice, by his son Anne-Charles Lebrun.

LEBRUN, PIERRE ANTOINE (1785-1873), French poet, was born in Paris on the 29th of November 1785. An _Ode à la grande armée_, mistaken at the time for the work of Écouchard Lebrun, attracted Napoleon's attention, and secured for the author a pension of 1200 francs. Lebrun's plays, once famous, are now forgotten. They are: _Ulysse_ (1814), _Marie Stuart_ (1820), which obtained a great success, and _Le Cid d'Andalousie_ (1825). Lebrun visited Greece in 1820, and on his return to Paris he published in 1822 an ode on the death of Napoleon which cost him his pension. In 1825 he was the guest of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. The coronation of Charles X. in that year inspired the verses entitled _La Vallée de Champrosay_, which have, perhaps, done more to secure his fame than his more ambitious attempts. In 1828 appeared his most important poem, _La Grèce_, and in the same year he was elected to the Academy. The revolution of 1830 opened up for him a public career; in 1831 he was made director of the Imprimerie Royale, and subsequently filled with distinction other public offices, becoming senator in 1853. He died on the 27th of May 1873.

See Sainte-Beuve, _Portraits contemporains_, vol. ii.

LEBRUN, PONCE DENIS ÉCOUCHARD (1729-1807), French lyric poet, was born in Paris on the 11th of August 1729, in the house of the prince de Conti, to whom his father was valet. Young Lebrun had among his schoolfellows a son of Louis Racine whose disciple he became. In 1755 he published an _Ode sur les désastres de Lisbon_. In 1759 he married Marie Anne de Surcourt, addressed in his _Élégies_ as Fanny. To the early years of his marriage belongs his poem _Nature_. His wife suffered much from his violent temper, and when in 1774 she brought an action against him to obtain a separation, she was supported by Lebrun's own mother and sister. He had been _secrétaire des commandements_ to the prince de Conti, and on his patron's death was deprived of his occupation. He suffered a further misfortune in the loss of his capital by the bankruptcy of the prince de Guémené. To this period belongs a long poem, the _Veillées des Muses_, which remained unfinished, and his ode to Buffon, which ranks among his best works. Dependent on government pensions he changed his politics with the times. Calonne he compared to the great Sully, and Louis XVI. to Henry IV., but the Terror nevertheless found in him its official poet. He occupied rooms in the Louvre, and fulfilled his obligations by shameless attacks on the unfortunate king and queen. His excellent ode on the _Vengeur_ and the _Ode nationale contre Angleterre_ on the occasion of the projected invasion of England are in honour of the power of Napoleon. This "versatility" has so much injured Lebrun's reputation that it is difficult to appreciate his real merit. He had a genius for epigram, and the quatrains and dizaines directed against his many enemies have a verve generally lacking in his odes. The one directed against La Harpe is called by Sainte-Beuve the "queen of epigrams." La Harpe has said that the poet, called by his friends, perhaps with a spice of irony, Lebrun-Pindare, had written many fine strophes but not one good ode. The critic exposed mercilessly the obscurities and unlucky images which occur even in the ode to Buffon, and advised the author to imitate the simplicity and energy that adorned Buffon's prose. Lebrun died in Paris on the 31st of August 1807.

His works were published by his friend P. L. Ginguené in 1811. The best of them are included in Prosper Poitevin's "_Petits poètes français_," which forms part of the "_Panthéon littéraire_."

LE CARON, HENRI (whose real name was THOMAS MILLER BEACH) (1841-1894), British secret service agent, was born at Colchester, on the 26th of September 1841. He was of an adventurous character, and when nineteen years old went to Paris, where he found employment in business connected with America. Infected with the excitement of the American Civil War, he crossed the Atlantic in 1861 and enlisted in the Northern army, taking the name of Henri Le Caron. In 1864 he married a young lady who had helped him to escape from some Confederate marauders; and by the end of the war he rose to be major. In 1865, through a companion in arms named O'Neill, he was brought into contact with Fenianism, and having learnt of the Fenian plot against Canada, he mentioned the designs when writing home to his father. Mr Beach told his local M.P., who in turn told the Home Secretary, and the latter asked Mr Beach to arrange for further information. Le Caron, inspired (as all the evidence shows) by genuinely patriotic feeling, from that time till 1889 acted for the British government as a paid military spy. He was a proficient in medicine, among other qualifications for this post, and he remained for years on intimate terms with the most extreme men in the Fenian organization under all its forms. His services enabled the British government to take measures which led to the fiasco of the Canadian invasion of 1870 and Riel's surrender in 1871, and he supplied full details concerning the various Irish-American associations, in which he himself was a prominent member. He was in the secrets of the "new departure" in 1879-1881, and in the latter year had an interview with Parnell at the House of Commons, when the Irish leader spoke sympathetically of an armed revolution in Ireland. For twenty-five years he lived at Detroit and other places in America, paying occasional visits to Europe, and all the time carrying his life in his hand. The Parnell Commission of 1889 put an end to this. Le Caron was subpoenaed by _The Times_, and in the witness-box the whole story came out, all the efforts of Sir Charles Russell in cross-examination failing to shake his testimony, or to impair the impression of iron tenacity and absolute truthfulness which his bearing conveyed. His career, however, for good or evil, was at an end. He published the story of his life, _Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service_, and it had an immense circulation. But he had to be constantly guarded, his acquaintances were hampered from seeing him, and he was the victim of a painful disease, of which he died on the 1st of April 1894. The report of the Parnell Commission is his monument.

LE CATEAU, or CATEAU-CAMBRÉSIS, a town of northern France, in the department of Nord, on the Selle, 15 m. E.S.E. of Cambrai by road. Pop. (1906) 10,400. A church of the early 17th century and a town-hall in the Renaissance style are its chief buildings. Its institutions include a board of trade-arbitration and a communal college, and its most important industries are wool-spinning and weaving. Formed by the union of the two villages of Péronne and Vendelgies, under the protection of a castle built by the bishop of Cambrai, Le Cateau became the seat of an abbey in the 11th century. In the 15th it was frequently taken and retaken, and in 1556 it was burned by the French, who in 1559 signed a celebrated treaty with Spain in the town. It was finally ceded to France by the peace of Nijmwegen in 1678.

LECCE (anc. _Lupiae_), a town and archiepiscopal see of Apulia, Italy, capital of the province of Lecce, 24 m. S.E. of Brindisi by rail. Pop. (1906) 35,179. The town is remarkable for the number of buildings of the 17th century, in the rococo style, which it contains; among these are the cathedral of S. Oronzo, and the churches of S. Chiara, S. Croce, S. Domenico, &c., the Seminario, and the Prefettura (the latter contains a museum, with a collection of Greek vases, &c.). Buildings of an earlier period are not numerous, but the fine portal of the Romanesque church of SS. Nicola e Cataldo, built by Tancred in 1180, may be noted. Another old church is S. Maria di Cerrate, near the town. Lecce contains a large government tobacco factory, and is the centre of a fertile agricultural district. To the E. 7½ m. is the small harbour of S. Cataldo, reached by electric tramway. Lecce is quite close to the site of the ancient Lupiae, equidistant (25 m.) from Brundusium and Hydruntum, remains of which are mentioned as existing up to the 15th century. A colony was founded there in Roman times, and Hadrian made a harbour--no doubt at S. Cataldo. Hardly a mile west was Rudiae, the birthplace of the poet Ennius, spoken of by Silius Italicus as worthy of mention for that reason alone. Its site was marked by the now deserted village of Rugge. The name Lycea, or Lycia, begins to appear in the 6th century. The city was for some time held by counts of Norman blood, among whom the most noteworthy is Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard. It afterwards passed to the Orsini. The rank of provincial capital was bestowed by Ferdinand of Aragon in acknowledgment of the fidelity of Lecce to his cause. (T. As.)

See M. S. Briggs, _In the Heel of Italy_ (1910).

LECCO, a town of Lombardy, in the province of Como, 32 m. by rail N. by E. of Milan, and reached by steamer from Como, 673 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 10,352. It is situated near the southern extremity of the eastern branch of the Lake of Como, which is frequently distinguished as the Lake of Lecco. At Lecco begins the line (run by electricity) to Colico, whence there are branches to Chiavenna and Sondrio; and another line runs to Bergamo. To the south the Adda is crossed by a fine bridge originally constructed in 1335, and rebuilt in 1609 by Fuentes. Lecco, in spite of its antiquity, presents a modern appearance, almost the only old building being its castle, of which a part remains. Its schools are particularly good. Besides iron-works, there are copper-works, brass-foundries, olive-oil mills and a manufacture of wax candles; and silk-spinning, cotton-spinning and wood-carving. In the neighbourhood is the villa of Caleotto, the residence of Alessandro Manzoni, who in his _Promessi Sposi_, has left a full description of the district. A statue has been erected to him.

In the 11th century Lecco, previously the seat of a marquisate, was presented to the bishops of Como by Otto II.; but in the 12th century it passed to the archbishops of Milan, and in 1127 it assisted the Milanese in the destruction of Como. During the 13th century it was struggling for its existence with the metropolitan city; and its fate seemed to be sealed when the Visconti drove its inhabitants across the lake to Valmadrera, and forbade them to raise their town from its ashes. But in a few years the people returned; Azzone Visconti made Lecco a strong fortress, and in 1335 united it with the Milanese territory by a bridge across the Adda. During the 15th and 16th centuries the citadel of Lecco was an object of endless contention. In 1647 the town with its territory was made a countship. Morone, Charles V.'s Italian chancellor, was born in Lecco.

See A. L. Apostolo, _Lecco ed il suo territorio_ (Lecco, 1855).

LECH (_Licus_), a river of Germany in the kingdom of Bavaria, 177 m. long, with a drainage basin of 2550 sq. m. It rises in the Vorarlberg Alps, at an altitude of 6120 ft. It winds out of the gloomy limestone mountains, flows in a north-north-easterly direction, and enters the plains at Füssen (2580 ft.), where it forms rapids and a fall, then pursues a northerly course past Augsburg, where it receives the Wertach, and joins the Danube from the right just below Donauwörth (1330 ft.). It is not navigable, owing to its torrential character and the gravel beds which choke its channel. More than once great historic events have been decided upon its banks. On the Lechfeld, a stony waste some miles long, between the Lech and the Wertach, the emperor Otto I. defeated the Hungarians in August 955. Tilly, in attempting to defend the passage of the stream at Rain against the forces of Gustavus Adolphus, was fatally wounded, on the 5th of April 1632. The river was formerly the boundary between Bavaria and Swabia.

LE CHAMBON, or LE CHAMBON-FEUGEROLLES, a town of east-central France in the department of Loire, 7½ m. S.W. of St Étienne by rail, on the Ondaine, a tributary of the Loire. Pop. (1906) town, 7525; commune, 12,011. Coal is mined in the neighbourhood, and there are forges, steel works, manufactures of tools and other iron goods, and silk mills. The feudal castle of Feugerolles on a hill to the south-east dates in part from the 11th century.

Between Le Chambon and St Étienne is La Ricamarie (pop. of town 5289) also of importance for its coal-mines. Many of the galleries of a number of these mines are on fire, probably from spontaneous combustion. According to popular tradition these fires date from the time of the Saracens; more authentically from the 15th century.

LE CHAPELIER, ISAAC RENÉ GUY (1754-1794), French politician, was born at Rennes on the 12th of June 1754, his father being _bâtonnier_ of the corporation of lawyers in that town. He entered his father's profession, and had some success as an orator. In 1789 he was elected as a deputy to the States General by the Tiers-État of the _sénéchaussée_ of Rennes. He adopted advanced opinions, and was one of the founders of the Breton Club (see JACOBIN CLUB); his influence in the Constituent Assembly was considerable, and on the 3rd of August 1789 he was elected its president. Thus he presided over the Assembly during the important period following the 4th of August; he took an active part in the debates, and was a leading member of the committee which drew up the new constitution; he further presented a report on the liberty of theatres and on literary copyright. He was also conspicuous as opposing Robespierre when he proposed that members of the Constituent Assembly should not be eligible for election to the proposed new Assembly. After the flight of the king to Varennes (20th of June 1792), his opinions became more moderate, and on the 29th of September he brought forward a motion to restrict the action of the clubs. This, together with a visit which he paid to England in 1792 made him suspect, and he was denounced on his return for conspiring with foreign nations. He went into hiding, but was discovered in consequence of a pamphlet which he published to defend himself, arrested and condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was executed at Paris on the 22nd of April 1794.

See A. Aulard, _Les Orateurs de la constituante_ (2nd ed., Paris, 1905); R. Kerviler, _Récherches et notices sur les députés de la Bretagne aux états généraux_ (2 vols., Rennes, 1888-1889); P. J. Levot, _Biographie bretonne_ (2 vols., 1853-1857).

LECHLER, GOTTHARD VICTOR (1811-1888), German Lutheran theologian, was born on the 18th of April 1811 at Kloster Reichenbach in Württemberg. He studied at Tübingen under F. C. Baur, and became in 1858 pastor of the church of St Thomas, professor Ordinarius of historical theology and superintendent of the Lutheran church of Leipzig. He died on the 26th of December 1888. A disciple of Neander, he belonged to the extreme right of the school of mediating theologians. He is important as the historian of early Christianity and of the pre-Reformation period. Although F. C. Baur was his teacher, he did not attach himself to the Tübingen school; in reply to the contention that there are traces of a sharp conflict between two parties, Paulinists and Petrinists, he says that "we find variety coupled with agreement, and unity with difference, between Paul and the earlier apostles; we recognize the one spirit in the many gifts." His _Das apostolische und das nachapostolische Zeitalter_ (1851), which developed out of a prize essay (1849), passed through three editions in Germany (3rd ed., 1885), and was translated into English (2 vols., 1886). The work which in his own opinion was his greatest, _Johann von Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der Reformation_ (2 vols., 1873), appeared in English with the title _John Wiclif and his English Precursors_ (1878, new ed., 1884). An earlier work, _Geschichte des engl. Deïsmus_ (1841), is still regarded as a valuable contribution to the study of religious thought in England.

Lechler's other works include _Geschichte der Presbyterial- und Synodal-verfassung_ (1854), _Urkundenfunde zur Geschichte des christl. Altertums_ (1886), and biographies of Thomas Bradwardine (1862) and Robert Grosseteste (1867). He wrote part of the commentary on the Acts of the Apostles in J. P. Lange's _Bibelwerk_. From 1882 he edited with F. W. Dibelius the _Beiträge zur sächsischen Kirchengeschichte_. _Johannes Hus_ (1890) was published after his death.

LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE (1838-1903), Irish historian and publicist, was born at Newtown Park, near Dublin, on the 26th of March 1838, being the eldest son of John Hartpole Lecky, whose family had for many generations been landowners in Ireland. He was educated at Kingstown, Armagh, and Cheltenham College, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1859 and M.A. in 1863, and where, with a view to becoming a clergyman in the Irish Protestant Church, he went through a course of divinity. In 1860 he published anonymously a small book entitled _The Religious Tendencies of the Age_, but on leaving college he abandoned his first intention and turned to historical work. In 1861 he published _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, a brief sketch of the lives and work of Swift, Flood, Grattan and O'Connell, which gave decided promise of his later admirable work in the same field. This book, originally published anonymously, was republished in 1871; and the essay on Swift, rewritten and amplified, appeared again in 1897 as an introduction to a new edition of Swift's works. Two learned surveys of certain aspects of history followed: _A History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe_ (2 vols., 1865), and _A History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne_ (2 vols., 1869). Some criticism was aroused by these books, especially by the last named, with its opening dissertation on "the natural history of morals," but both have been generally accepted as acute and suggestive commentaries upon a wide range of facts. Lecky then devoted himself to the chief work of his life, _A History of England during the Eighteenth Century_, vols. i. and ii. of which appeared in 1878, and vols. vii. and viii. (completing the work) in 1890. His object was "to disengage from the great mass of facts those which relate to the permanent forces of the nation, or which indicate some of the more enduring features of national life," and in the carrying out of this task Lecky displays many of the qualities of a great historian. The work is distinguished by the lucidity of its style, but the fulness and extent of the authorities referred to, and, above all, by the judicial impartiality maintained by the author throughout. These qualities are perhaps most conspicuous and most valuable in the chapters which deal with the history of Ireland, and in the cabinet edition of 1892, in 12 vols. (frequently reprinted) this part of the work is separated from the rest, and occupies five volumes under the title of _A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century_. A volume of _Poems_, published in 1891, was characterized by a certain frigidity and by occasional lapses into commonplace, objections which may also be fairly urged against much of Lecky's prose-writing. In 1896 he published two volumes entitled _Democracy and Liberty_, in which he considered, with special reference to Great Britain, France and America, some of the tendencies of modern democracies. The somewhat gloomy conclusions at which he arrived provoked much criticism both in Great Britain and America, which was renewed when he published in a new edition (1899) an elaborate and very depreciatory estimate of Gladstone, then recently dead. This work, though essentially different from the author's purely historical writings, has many of their merits, though it was inevitable that other minds should take a different view of the evidence. In _The Map of Life_ (1900) he discussed in a popular style some of the ethical problems which arise in everyday life. In 1903 he published a revised and greatly enlarged edition of _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, in two volumes, from which the essay on Swift was omitted and that on O'Connell was expanded into a complete biography of the great advocate of repeal of the Union. Though always a keen sympathizer with the Irish people in their misfortunes and aspirations, and though he had criticized severely the methods by which the Act of Union was passed, Lecky, who grew up as a moderate Liberal, was from the first strenuously opposed to Gladstone's policy of Home Rule, and in 1895 he was returned to parliament as Unionist member for Dublin University. In 1897 he was made a privy councillor, and among the coronation honours in 1902 he was nominated an original member of the new Order of Merit. His university honours included the degree of LL.D. from Dublin, St Andrews and Glasgow, the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford and the degree of Litt.D. from Cambridge. In 1894 he was elected corresponding member of the Institute of France. He contributed occasionally to periodical literature, and two of his addresses, _The Political Value of History_ (1892) and _The Empire, its Value and its Growth_ (1893), were published. He died in London on the 22nd of October 1903. He married in 1871 Elizabeth, baroness de Dedem, daughter of baron de Dedem, a general in the Dutch service, but had no children. Mrs Lecky contributed to various reviews a number of articles, chiefly on historical and political subjects. A volume of Lecky's _Historical and Political Essays_ was published posthumously (London, 1908).

LE CLERC [CLERICUS], JEAN (1657-1736), French Protestant theologian, was born on the 19th of March 1657 at Geneva, where his father, Stephen Le Clerc, was professor of Greek. The family originally belonged to the neighbourhood of Beauvais in France, and several of its members acquired some name in literature. Jean Le Clerc applied himself to the study of philosophy under J. R. Chouet (1642-1731) the Cartesian, and attended the theological lectures of P. Mestrezat, Franz Turretin and Louis Tronchin (1629-1705). In 1678-1679 he spent some time at Grenoble as tutor in a private family; on his return to Geneva he passed his examinations and received ordination. Soon afterwards he went to Saumur, where in 1679 were published _Liberii de Sancto Amore Epistolae Theologicae_ (Irenopoli: Typis Philalethianis), usually attributed to him; they deal with the doctrine of the Trinity, the hypostatic union of the two natures in Jesus Christ, original sin, and the like, in a manner sufficiently far removed from that of the conventional orthodoxy of the period. In 1682 he went to London, where he remained six months, preaching on alternate Sundays in the Walloon church and in the Savoy chapel. Passing to Amsterdam he was introduced to John Locke and to Philip v. Limborch, professor at the Remonstrant college; the acquaintance with Limborch soon ripened into a close friendship, which strengthened his preference for the Remonstrant theology, already favourably known to him by the writings of his grand-uncle, Stephan Curcellaeus (d. 1645) and by those of Simon Episcopius. A last attempt to live at Geneva, made at the request of relatives there, satisfied him that the theological atmosphere was uncongenial, and in 1684 he finally settled at Amsterdam, first as a moderately successful preacher, until ecclesiastical jealousy shut him out from that career, and afterwards as professor of philosophy, belles-lettres and Hebrew in the Remonstrant seminary. This appointment, which he owed to Limborch, he held from 1684, and in 1712 on the death of his friend he was called to occupy the chair of church history also. His suspected Socinianism was the cause, it is said, of his exclusion from the chair of dogmatic theology. Apart from his literary labours, Le Clerc's life at Amsterdam was uneventful. In 1691 he married a daughter of Gregorio Leti. From 1728 onward he was subject to repeated strokes of paralysis, and he died on the 8th of January 1736.

A full catalogue of the publications of Le Clerc will be found, with biographical material, in E. and E. Haag's _France Protestante_ (where seventy-three works are enumerated), or in J. G. de Chauffepié's Dictionnaire. Only the most important of these can be mentioned here. In 1685 he published _Sentimens de quelques théologiens de Hollande sur l'histoire critique du Vieux Testament composée par le P. Richard Simon_, in which, while pointing out what he believed to be the faults of that author, he undertook to make some positive contributions towards a right understanding of the Bible. Among these last may be noted his argument against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, his views as to the manner in which the five books were composed, his opinions (singularly free for the time in which he lived) on the subject of inspiration in general, and particularly as to the inspiration of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles. Richard Simon's _Réponse_ (1686) elicited from Le Clerc a _Défense des sentimens_ in the same year, which was followed by a new _Réponse_ (1687). In 1692 appeared his _Logica sive Ars Ratiocinandi_, and also _Ontologia et Pneumatologia_; these, with the _Physica_ (1695), are incorporated with the _Opera Philosophica_, which have passed through several editions. In 1693 his series of Biblical commentaries began with that on Genesis; the series was not completed until 1731. The portion relating to the New Testament books included the paraphrase and notes of Henry Hammond (1605-1660). Le Clerc's commentary had a great influence in breaking up traditional prejudices and showing the necessity for a more scientific inquiry into the origin and meaning of the biblical books. It was on all sides hotly attacked. His _Ars Critica_ appeared in 1696, and, in continuation, _Epistolae Criticae et Ecclesiasticae_ in 1700. Le Clerc's new edition of the _Apostolic Fathers_ of Johann Cotelerius (1627-1686), published in 1698, marked an advance in the critical study of these documents. But the greatest literary influence of Le Clerc was probably that which he exercised over his contemporaries by means of the serials, or, if one may so call them, reviews, of which he was editor. These were the _Bibliothèque universelle et historique_ (Amsterdam, 25 vols. 12 mo., 1686-1693), begun with J. C. de la Croze; the _Bibliothèque choisie_ (Amsterdam, 28 vols., 1703-1713); and the _Bibliothèque ancienne et moderne_, (29 vols., 1714-1726).

See Le Clerc's _Parrhasiana ou pensées sur des matières de critique, d'histoire, de morale, et de politique: avec la défense de divers ouvrages de M. L. C. par Théodore Parrhase_ (Amsterdam, 1699); and _Vita et opera ad annum MDCCXI., amici ejus opusculum, philosophicis Clerici operibus subjiciendum_, also attributed to himself. The supplement to Hammond's notes was translated into English in 1699, _Parrhasiana, or Thoughts on Several Subjects_, in 1700, the _Harmony of the Gospels_ in 1701, and _Twelve Dissertations out of M. Le Clerc's Genesis_ in 1696.

LECOCQ, ALEXANDRE CHARLES (1832- ), French musical composer, was born in Paris, on the 3rd of June 1832. He was admitted into the Conservatoire in 1849, being already an accomplished pianist. He studied under Bazin, Halévy and Benoist, winning the first prize for harmony in 1850, and the second prize for fugue in 1852. He first gained notice by dividing with Bizet the first prize for an operetta in a competition instituted by Offenbach. His operetta, _Le Docteur miracle_, was performed at the Bouffes Parisiens in 1857. After that he wrote constantly for theatres, but produced nothing worthy of mention until _Fleur de thé_ (1868), which ran for more than a hundred nights. _Les Cent vierges_ (1872) was favourably received also, but all his previous successes were cast into the shade by _La Fille de Madame Angot_ (Paris, 1873; London, 1873), which was performed for 400 nights consecutively, and has since gained and retained enormous popularity. After 1873 Lecocq produced a large number of comic operas, though he never equalled his early triumph in _La Fille de Madame Angot_. Among the best of his pieces are _Giroflé-Girofla_ (Paris and London, 1874); _Les Prés Saint-Gervais_ (Paris and London, 1874); _La Petite Mariée_ (Paris, 1875; London, 1876, revived as _The Scarlet Feather_, 1897); _Le Petit Duc_ (Paris, 1878; London, as _The Little Duke_, 1878); _La Petite Mademoiselle_ (Paris, 1879; London, 1880); _Le Jour et la Nuit_ (Paris, 1881; London, as _Manola_, 1882); _Le Coeur et la main_ (Paris, 1882; London, as _Incognita_, 1893); _La Princesse des Canaries_ (Paris, 1883; London, as _Pepita_, 1888). In 1899 a ballet by Lecocq, entitled _Le Cygne_, was staged at the Opéra Comique, Paris; and in 1903 _Yetta_ was produced at Brussels.

LECOINTE-PUYRAVEAU, MICHEL MATHIEU (1764-1827), French politician, was born at Saint-Maixent (Deux-Sèvres) on the 13th of December 1764. Deputy for his department to the Legislative Assembly in 1792, and to the Convention in the same year, he voted for "the death of the tyrant." His association with the Girondins nearly involved him in their fall, in spite of his vigorous republicanism. He took part in the revolution of Thermidor, but protested against the establishment of the Directory, and continually pressed for severer measures against the _émigrés_, and even their relations who had remained in France. He was secretary and then president of the Council of Five Hundred, and under the Consulate a member of the Tribunate. He took no part in public affairs under the Empire, but was lieutenant-general of police for south-east France during the Hundred Days. After Waterloo he took ship from Toulon, but the ship was driven back by a storm and he narrowly escaped massacre at Marseilles. After six weeks' imprisonment in the Château d'If he returned to Paris, escaping, after the proscription of the regicides, to Brussels, where he died on the 15th of January 1827.

LE CONTE, JOSEPH (1823-1901), American geologist, of Huguenot descent, was born in Liberty county, Georgia, on the 26th of February 1823. He was educated at Franklin College, Georgia, where he graduated (1841); he afterwards studied medicine and received his degree at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1845. After practising for three or four years at Macon, Georgia, he entered Harvard, and studied natural history under L. Agassiz. An excursion made with Professors J. Hall and Agassiz to the Helderberg mountains of New York developed a keen interest in geology. After graduating at Harvard, Le Conte in 1851 accompanied Agassiz on an expedition to study the Florida reefs. On his return he became professor of natural science in Oglethorpe University, Georgia; and from 1852 to 1856 professor of natural history and geology in Franklin College. From 1857 to 1869 he was professor of chemistry and geology in South Carolina College, and he was then appointed professor of geology and natural history in the university of California, a post which he held until his death. He published a series of papers on monocular and binocular vision, and also on psychology. His chief contributions, however, related to geology, and in all he wrote he was lucid and philosophical. He described the fissure-eruptions in western America, discoursed on earth-crust movements and their causes and on the great features of the earth's surface. As separate works he published _Elements of Geology_ (1878, 5th ed. 1889); _Religion and Science_ (1874); and _Evolution: its History, its Evidences, and its Relation to Religious Thought_ (1888). He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1892, and of the Geological Society of America in 1896. He died in the Yosemite Valley, California, on the 6th of June 1901.

See Obituary by J. J. Stevenson, _Annals of New York Acad. of Sciences_, vol. xiv. (1902), p. 150.

LECONTE DE LISLE, CHARLES MARIE RENÉ (1818-1894), French poet, was born in the island of Réunion on the 22nd of October 1818. His father, an army surgeon, who brought him up with great severity, sent him to travel in the East Indies with a view to preparing him for a commercial life. After this voyage he went to Rennes to complete his education, studying especially Greek, Italian and history. He returned once or twice to Réunion, but in 1846 settled definitely in Paris. His first volume, _La Vénus de Milo_, attracted to him a number of friends many of whom were passionately devoted to classical literature. In 1873 he was made assistant librarian at the Luxembourg; in 1886 he was elected to the Academy in succession to Victor Hugo. His _Poèmes antiques_ appeared in 1852; _Poèmes et poésies_ in 1854; _Le Chemin de la croix_ in 1859; the _Poèmes barbares_, in their first form, in 1862; _Les Erinnyes_, a tragedy after the Greek model, in 1872; for which occasional music was provided by Jules Massenet; the _Poèmes tragiques_ in 1884; _L'Apollonide_, another classical tragedy, in 1888; and two posthumous volumes, _Derniers poèmes_ in 1899, and _Premières poésies et lettres intimes_ in 1902. In addition to his original work in verse, he published a series of admirable prose translations of Theocritus, Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Horace. He died at Voisins, near Louveciennes (Seine-et-Oise), on the 18th of July 1894.

In Leconte de Lisle the Parnassian movement seems to crystallize. His verse is clear, sonorous, dignified, deliberate in movement, classically correct in rhythm, full of exotic local colour, of savage names, of realistic rhetoric. It has its own kind of romance, in its "legend of the ages," so different from Hugo's, so much fuller of scholarship and the historic sense, yet with far less of human pity. Coldness cultivated as a kind of artistic distinction seems to turn all his poetry to marble, in spite of the fire at its heart. Most of Leconte de Lisle's poems are little chill epics, in which legend is fossilized. They have the lofty monotony of a single conception of life and of the universe. He sees the world as what Byron called it, "a glorious blunder," and desires only to stand a little apart from the throng, meditating scornfully. Hope, with him, becomes no more than this desperate certainty:--

"Tu te tairas, ô voix sinistre des vivants!"

His only prayer is to Death, "divine Death," that it may gather its children to its breast:--

"Affranchis-nous du temps, du nombre et de l'espace, Et rends-nous le repos que la vie a troublé!"

The interval which is his he accepts with something of the defiance of his own Cain, refusing to fill it with the triviality of happiness, waiting even upon beauty with a certain inflexible austerity. He listens and watches, throughout the world, for echoes and glimpses of great tragic passions, languid with fire in the East, a tumultuous conflagration in the middle ages, a sombre darkness in the heroic ages of the North. The burning emptiness of the desert attracts him, the inexplicable melancholy of the dogs that bark at the moon; he would interpret the jaguar's dreams, the sleep of the condor. He sees nature with the same wrathful impatience as man, praising it for its destructive energies, its haste to crush out human life before the stars fall into chaos, and the world with them, as one of the least of stars. He sings the "Dies Irae" exultingly; only seeming to desire an end of God as well as of man, universal nothingness. He conceives that he does well to be angry, and this anger is indeed the personal note of his pessimism; but it leaves him somewhat apart from the philosophical poets, too fierce for wisdom and not rapturous enough for poetry. (A. Sy.)

See J. Dornis, _Leconte de Lisle intime_ (1895); F. Calmette, _Un Demi siècle littéraire, Leconte de Lisle et ses amis_ (1902); Paul Bourget, _Nouveaux essais de psychologie contemporaine_ (1885); F. Brunetière, _L'Évolution de la poésie lyrique en France au XIX^e siècle_ (1894); Maurice Spronck, _Les Artistes littéraires_ (1889); J. Lemaître, _Les Contemporains_ (2nd series, 1886); F. Brunetière, _Nouveaux essais sur la litt. contemp._ (1895).

LE COQ, ROBERT (d. 1373), French bishop, was born at Montdidier, although he belonged to a bourgeois family of Orléans, where he first attended school before coming to Paris. In Paris he became advocate to the parlement (1347); then King John appointed him master of requests, and in 1351, a year during which he received many other honours, he became bishop of Laon. At the opening of 1354 he was sent with the cardinal of Boulogne, Pierre I., duke of Bourbon, and Jean VI., count of Vendome, to Mantes to treat with Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, who had caused the constable, Charles of Spain, to be assassinated, and from this time dates his connexion with this king. At the meeting of the estates which opened in Paris in October 1356 Le Coq played a leading rôle and was one of the most outspoken of the orators, especially when petitions were presented to the dauphin Charles, denouncing the bad government of the realm and demanding the banishment of the royal councillors. Soon, however, the credit of the estates having gone down, he withdrew to his diocese, but at the request of the bourgeois of Paris he speedily returned. The king of Navarre had succeeded in escaping from prison and had entered Paris, where his party was in the ascendant; and Robert le Coq became the most powerful person in his council. No one dared to contradict him, and he brought into it whom he pleased. He did not scruple to reveal to the king of Navarre secret deliberations, but his fortune soon turned. He ran great danger at the estates of Compiègne in May 1358, where his dismissal was demanded, and he had to flee to St Denis, where Charles the Bad and Étienne Marcel came to find him. After the death of Marcel, he tried, unsuccessfully, to deliver Laon, his episcopal town, to the king of Navarre, and he was excluded from the amnesty promised in the treaty of Calais (1360) by King John to the partisans of Charles the Bad. His temporalities had been seized, and he was obliged to flee from France. In 1363, thanks to the support of the king of Navarre, he was given the bishopric of Calahorra in the kingdom of Aragon, which he administered until his death in 1373.

See L. C. Douët d'Arcq, "Acte d'accusation contre Robert le Coq, évêque de Laon" in _Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes_, 1st series, t. ii., pp. 350-387; and R. Delachenal, "La Bibliothèque d'un avocat du XIV^e siècle, inventaire estimatif des livres de Robert le Coq," in _Nouvelle revue historique de droit français et étranger_ (1887), pp. 524-537.

LECOUVREUR, ADRIENNE (1692-1730), French actress, was born on the 5th of April 1692, at Damery, Marne, the daughter of a hatter, Robert Couvreur. She had an unhappy childhood in Paris. She showed a natural talent for declamation and was instructed by La Grand, _sociétaire_ of the Comédie Française, and with his help she obtained a provincial engagement. It was not until 1717, after a long apprenticeship, that she made her Paris début as Electre, in Crébillon's tragedy of that name, and Angélique in Molière's _George Dandin_. Her success was so great that she was immediately received into the Comédie Française, and for thirteen years she was the queen of tragedy there, attaining a popularity never before accorded an actress. She is said to have played no fewer than 1184 times in a hundred rôles, of which she created twenty-two. She owed her success largely to her courage in abandoning the stilted style of elocution of her predecessors for a naturalness of delivery and a touching simplicity of pathos that delighted and moved her public. In Baron, who returned to the stage at the age of sixty-seven, she had an able and powerful coadjutor in changing the stage traditions of generations. The jealousy she aroused was partly due to her social successes, which were many, in spite of the notorious freedom of her manner of life. She was on visiting and dining terms with half the court, and her _salon_ was frequented by Voltaire and all the other notables and men of letters. She was the mistress of Maurice de Saxe from 1721, and sold her plate and jewels to supply him with funds for his ill-starred adventures as duke of Courland. By him she had a daughter, her third, who was grandmother of the father of George Sand. Adrienne Lecouvreur died on the 20th of March 1730. She was denied the last rites of the Church, and her remains were refused burial in consecrated ground. Voltaire, in a fine poem on her death, expressed his indignation at the barbarous treatment accorded to the woman whose "friend, admirer, lover" he was.

Her life formed the subject of the well-known tragedy (1849), by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé.

LE CREUSOT, a town of east-central France in the department of Saône-et-Loire, 55 m. S.W. of Dijon on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906), town, 22,535; commune, 33,437. Situated at the foot of lofty hills in a district rich in coal and iron, it has the most extensive iron works in France. The coal bed of Le Creusot was discovered in the 13th century; but it was not till 1774 that the first workshops were founded there. The royal crystal works were transferred from Sèvres to Le Creusot in 1787, but this industry came to an end in 1831. Meanwhile two or three enterprises for the manufacture of metal had ended in failure, and it was only in 1836 that the foundation of iron works by Adolphe and Eugène Schneider definitely inaugurated the industrial prosperity of the place. The works supplied large quantities of war material to the French armies during the Crimean and Franco-German wars. Since that time they have continuously enlarged the scope of their operations, which now embrace the manufacture of steel, armour-plate, guns, ordnance-stores, locomotives, electrical machinery and engineering material of every description. A network of railways about 37 m. in length connects the various branches of the works with each other and with the neighbouring Canal du Centre. Special attention is paid to the welfare of the workers who, not including the miners, number about 12,000, and good schools have been established. In 1897 the ordnance-manufacture of the Société des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée at Havre was acquired by the Company, which also has important branches at Chalon-sur-Saône, where ship-building and bridge-construction is carried on, and at Cette (Hérault).

LECTERN (through O. Fr. _leitrun_, from Late Lat. _lectrum_, or _lectrinum_, _legere_, to read; the French equivalent is _lutrin_; Ital. _leggio_; Ger. _Lesepult_), in the furniture of certain Christian churches, a reading-desk, used more especially for the reading of the lessons and in the Anglican Church practically confined to that purpose. In the early Christian Church this was done from the ambo (q.v.), but in the 15th century, when the books were often of great size, it became necessary to provide a lectern to hold them. These were either in wood or metal, and many fine examples still exist; one at Detling in wood, in which there are shelves on all four sides to hold books, is perhaps the most elaborate. Brass lecterns, as in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, are common; in the usual type the book is supported on the outspread wings of an eagle or pelican, which is raised on a moulded stem, carried on three projecting ledges or feet with lions on them. In the example in Norwich cathedral, the pelican supporting the book stands on a rock enclosed with a rich cresting of Gothic tabernacle work; the central stem or pillar, on which this rests, is supported by miniature projecting buttresses, standing on a moulded base with lions on it.

LECTION, LECTIONARY. The custom of reading the books of Moses in the synagogues on the Sabbath day was a very ancient one in the Jewish Church. The addition of lections (i.e. readings) from the prophetic books had been made afterwards and was in existence in our Lord's time, as may be gathered from such passages as St Luke iv. 16-20, xvi. 29. This element in synagogue worship was taken over with others into the Christian divine service, additions being made to it from the writings of the apostles and evangelists. We find traces of such additions within the New Testament itself in such directions as are contained in Col. iv. 16; 1 Thess. v. 27.

From the 2nd century onwards references multiply, though the earlier references do not prove the existence of a fixed lectionary or order of lessons, but rather point the other way. Justin Martyr, describing divine worship in the middle of the 2nd century says: "On the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the Apostles, or the writings of the Prophets are read as long as time permits" (_Apol._ i. cap. 67). Tertullian about half a century later makes frequent reference to the reading of Holy Scripture in public worship (_Apol._ 39; _De praescript._ 36; _De amina_, 9).

In the canons of Hippolytus in the first half of the 3rd century we find this direction: "Let presbyters, subdeacons and readers, and all the people assemble daily in the church at time of cock-crow, and betake themselves to prayers, to psalms and to the reading of the Scriptures, according to the command of the Apostles, until I come attend to reading" (canon xxi.).

But there are traces of fixed lessons coming into existence in the course of this century; Origen refers to the book of Job being read in Holy Week (_Commentaries on Job_, lib. i.). Allusions of a similar kind in the 4th century are frequent. John Cassian (c. 380) tells us that throughout Egypt the Psalms were divided into groups of twelve, and that after each group there followed two lessons, one from the Old, one from the New Testament (_De caenob. inst._ ii. 4), implying but not absolutely stating that there was a fixed order of such lessons just as there was of the Psalms. St Basil the Great mentions fixed lessons on certain occasions taken from Isaiah, Proverbs, St Matthew and Acts (Hom. xiii. _De bapt._). From Chrysostom (Hom. lxiii _in Act._ &c.), and Augustine (Tract. vi. _in Joann._ &c.) we learn that Genesis was read in Lent, Job and Jonah in Passion Week, the Acts of the Apostles in Eastertide, lessons on the Passion on Good Friday and on the Resurrection on Easter Day. In the _Apostolical Constitutions_ (ii. 57) the following service is described and enjoined. First come two lessons from the Old Testament by a reader, the whole of the Old Testament being made use of except the books of the Apocrypha. The Psalms of David are then to be sung. Next the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul are to be read, and finally the four Gospels by a deacon or a priest. Whether the selections were _ad libitum_ or according to a fixed table of lessons we are not informed. Nothing in the shape of a lectionary is extant older than the 8th century, though there is evidence that Claudianus Mamercus made one for the church at Vienne in 450, and that Musaeus made one for the church at Marseilles c. 458. The _Liber comitis_ formerly attributed to St Jerome must be three, or nearly three, centuries later than that saint, and the Luxeuil lectionary, or _Lectionarium Gallicanum_, which Mabillon attributed to the 7th, cannot be earlier than the 8th century; yet the oldest MSS. of the Gospels have marginal marks, and sometimes actual interpolations, which can only be accounted for as indicating the beginnings and endings of liturgical lessons. The third council of Carthage in 397 forbade anything but Holy Scripture to be read in church; this rule has been adhered to so far as the liturgical epistle and gospel, and occasional additional lessons in the Roman missal are concerned, but in the divine office, on feasts when nine lessons are read at matins, only the first three lessons are taken from Holy Scripture, the next three being taken from the sermons of ecclesiastical writers, and the last three from expositions of the day's gospel; but sometimes the lives or _Passions_ of the saints, or of some particular saints, were substituted for any or all of these breviary lessons. (F. E. W.)

LECTISTERNIUM (from Lat. _lectum sternere_, "to spread a couch"; [Greek: strômnai] in Dion. Halic. xii. 9), in ancient Rome, a propitiatory ceremony, consisting of a meal offered to gods and goddesses, represented by their busts or statues, or by portable figures of wood, with heads of bronze, wax or marble, and covered with drapery. Another suggestion is that the symbols of the gods consisted of bundles of sacred herbs, tied together in the form of a head, covered by a waxen mask so as to resemble a kind of bust (cf. the straw puppets called Argei). These symbols were laid upon a couch (_lectus_), the left arm resting on a cushion (_pulvinus_, whence the couch itself was often called _pulvinar_) in the attitude of reclining. In front of the couch, which was placed in the open street, a meal was set out on a table. It is definitely stated by Livy (v. 13) that the ceremony took place "for the first time" in Rome in the year 399 B.C., after the Sibylline books had been consulted by their keepers and interpreters (_duumviri sacris faciendis_), on the occasion of a pestilence. Three couches were prepared for three pairs of gods--Apollo and Latona, Hercules and Diana, Mercury and Neptune. The feast, which on that occasion lasted for eight (or seven) days, was also celebrated by private individuals; the citizens kept open house, quarrels were forgotten, debtors and prisoners were released, and everything done to banish sorrow. Similar honours were paid to other divinities in subsequent times--Fortuna, Saturnus, Juno Regina of the Aventine, the three Capitoline deities (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva), and in 217, after the defeat of lake Trasimenus, a lectisternium was held for three days to six pairs of gods, corresponding to the twelve great gods of Olympus--Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Mars, Venus, Apollo, Diana, Vulcan, Vesta, Mercury, Ceres. In 205, alarmed by unfavourable prodigies, the Romans were ordered to fetch the Great Mother of the gods from Pessinus in Phrygia; in the following year the image was brought to Rome, and a lectisternium held. In later times, the lectisternium became of constant (even daily) occurrence, and was celebrated in the different temples. Such celebrations must be distinguished from those which were ordered, like the earlier lectisternia, by the Sibylline books in special emergencies. Although undoubtedly offerings of food were made to the gods in very early Roman times on such occasions as the ceremony of _confarreatio_, and the _epulum Jovis_ (often confounded with the lectisternium), it is generally agreed that the lectisternia were of Greek origin. In favour of this may be mentioned: the similarity of the Greek [Greek: Theoxenia], in which, however, the gods played the part of hosts; the gods associated with it were either previously unknown to Roman religion, though often concealed under Roman names, or were provided with a new cult (thus Hercules was not worshipped as at the Ara Maxima, where, according to Servius on _Aeneid_, viii. 176 and Cornelius Balbus, _ap._ Macrobius, _Sat._ iii. 6, a lectisternium was forbidden); the Sibylline books, which decided whether a lectisternium was to be held or not, were of Greek origin; the custom of reclining at meals was Greek. Some, however, assign an Etruscan origin to the ceremony, the Sibylline books themselves being looked upon as old Italian "black books." A probable explanation of the confusion between the lectisternia and genuine old Italian ceremonies is that, as the lectisternia became an almost everyday occurrence in Rome, people forgot their foreign origin and the circumstances in which they were first introduced, and then the word _pulvinar_ with its associations was transferred to times in which it had no existence. In imperial times, according to Tacitus (_Annals_,