xv. 44), chairs were substituted for couches in the case of goddesses,

and the lectisternium in their case became a sellisternium (the reading, however, is not certain). This was in accordance with Roman custom, since in the earliest times all the members of a family sat at meals, and in later times at least the women and children. This is a point of distinction between the original practice at the lectisternium and the epulum Jovis, the goddesses at the latter being provided with chairs, whereas in the lectisternium they reclined. In Christian times the word was used for a feast in memory of the dead (Sidonius Apollinaris, _Epistulae_, iv. 15).

See article by A. Bouché-Leclercq in Daremberg and Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquités_; Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 45, 187 (1885); G. Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus der Römer_, p. 355 seq.; monograph by Wackermann (Hanau, 1888); C. Pascal, _Studii di antichità e mitologia_ (1896).

LECTOR, or READER, a minor office-bearer in the Christian Church. From an early period men have been set apart, under the title of _anagnostae_, _lectores_, or readers, for the purpose of reading Holy Scripture in church. We do not know what the custom of the Church was in the first two centuries, the earliest reference to readers, as an order, occurring in the writings of Tertullian (_De praescript. haeret._ cap. 41); there are frequent allusions to them in the writings of St Cyprian and afterwards. Cornelius, bishop of Rome in A.D. 251-252, in a well-known letter mentions readers among the various church orders then existing at Rome. In the _Apostolic Church Order_ (canon 19), mention is made of the qualifications and duties of a reader, but no reference is made to their method of ordination. In the _Apostolic Didascalia_ there is recognition of three minor orders of men, subdeacons, readers and singers, in addition to two orders of women, deaconesses and widows. A century later, in the _Apostolic Constitutions_, we find not only a recognition of readers, but also a form of admission provided for them, consisting of the imposition of hands and prayer (lib. viii. cap. 22). In Africa the imposition of hands was not in use, but a Bible was handed to the newly appointed reader with words of commission to read it, followed by a prayer and a benediction (Fourth Council of Carthage, can. 8). This is the ritual of the Roman Church of to-day. With regard to age, the novels of Justinian (No. 123) forbade any one to be admitted to the office of reader under the age of eighteen. (F. E. W.)

LECTOURE, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Gers, 21 m. N. of Auch on the Southern railway between that city and Agen. Pop. (1906), town, 2426; commune, 4310. It stands on the right bank of the Gers, overlooking the river from the summit of a steep plateau. The church of St Gervais and St Protais was once a cathedral. The massive tower which flanks it on the north belongs to the 15th century; the rest of the church dates from the 13th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The hôtel de ville, the sous-préfecture and the museum occupy the palace of the former bishops, which was once the property of Marshal Jean Lannes, a native of the town. A recess in the wall of an old house contains the Fontaine de Houndélie, a spring sheltered by a double archway of the 13th century. At the bottom of the hill a church of the 16th century marks the site of the monastery of St Gény. Lectoure has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college. Its industries include distilling, the manufacture of wooden shoes and biscuits, and market gardening; it has trade in grain, cattle, wine and brandy.

Lectoure, capital of the Iberian tribe of the _Lactorates_ and for a short time of Novempopulania, became the seat of a bishopric in the 4th century. In the 11th century the counts of Lomagne made it their capital, and on the union of Lomagne with Armagnac, in 1325, it became the capital of the counts of Armagnac. In 1473 Cardinal Jean de Jouffroy besieged the town on behalf of Louis XI. and after its fall put the whole population to the sword. In 1562 it again suffered severely at the hands of the Catholics under Blaise de Montluc.

LEDA, in Greek mythology, daughter of Thestius, king of Aetolia, and Eurythemis (her parentage is variously given). She was the wife of Tyndareus and mother of Castor and Pollux, Clytaemnestra and Helen (see CASTOR AND POLLUX). In another account Nemesis was the mother of Helen (q.v.) whom Leda adopted as her daughter. This led to the identification of Leda and Nemesis. In the usual later form of the story, Leda herself, having been visited by Zeus in the form of a swan, produced two eggs, from one of which came Helen, from the other Castor and Pollux.

See Apollodorus iii. 10; Hyginus, _Fab._ 77; Homer, _Iliad_, iii. 426, _Od._ xi. 298; Euripides, _Helena_, 17; Isocrates, _Helena_, 59; Ovid, _Heroides_, xvii. 55; Horace, _Ars poetica_, 147; Stasinus in Athenaeus viii. 334 c.; for the representations of Leda and the swan in art, J. A. Overbeck, _Kunstmythologie_, i., and Atlas to the same; also article in Roscher's _Lexikon der Mythologie_.

LE DAIM (or LE DAIN), OLIVIER (d. 1484), favourite of Louis XI. of France, was born of humble parentage at Thielt near Courtrai in Flanders. Seeking his fortune at Paris, he became court barber and valet to Louis XI., and so ingratiated himself with the king that in 1474 he was ennobled under the title Le Daim and in 1477 made comte de Meulant. In the latter year he was sent to Burgundy to influence the young heiress of Charles the Bold, but he was ridiculed and compelled to leave Ghent. He thereupon seized and held Tournai for the French. Le Daim had considerable talent for intrigue, and, according to his enemies, could always be depended upon to execute the baser designs of the king. He amassed a large fortune, largely by oppression and violence, and was named gentleman-in-waiting, captain of Loches, and governor of Saint-Quentin. He remained in favour until the death of Louis XI., when the rebellious lords were able to avenge the slights and insults they had suffered at the hands of the royal barber. He was arrested on charges, the nature of which is uncertain, tried before the parlement of Paris, and on the 21st of May 1484 hanged at Montfaucon without the knowledge of Charles VIII., who might have heeded his father's request and spared the favourite. Le Daim's property was given to the duke of Orleans.

See the memoirs of the time, especially those of Ph. de Commines (ed. Mandrot, 1901-1903, Eng. trans. in Bohn Library); Robt. Gaguin, _Compendium de origine et gestis Francorum_ (Paris, 1586)--it was Gaguin who made the celebrated epigram concerning Le Daim: "Eras judex, lector, et exitium"; De Reiffenberg, _Olivier le Dain_ (Brussels, 1829); Delanone, _Le Barbier de Louis XI._ (Paris, 1832): G. Picot, "Procès d'Olivier le Dain," in the _Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques_, viii. (1877), 485-537. The memoirs of the time are uniformly hostile to Le Daim.

LEDBURY, a market town in the Ross parliamentary division of Herefordshire, England, 14½ m. E. of Hereford by the Great Western railway, pleasantly situated on the south-western slope of the Malvern Hills. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3259. Cider and agricultural produce are the chief articles of trade, and there are limestone quarries in the neighbouring hills. The town contains many picturesque examples of timbered houses, characteristic of the district, the principal being the Market House (1633) elevated on massive pillars of oak. The fine church of St Michael exhibits all the Gothic styles, the most noteworthy features being the Norman chancel and west door, and the remarkable series of ornate Decorated windows on the north side. Among several charities is the hospital of St Catherine, founded by Foliot, bishop of Hereford, in 1232. Hope End, 2 m. N.E. of Ledbury, was the residence of Elizabeth Barrett Browning during her early life. A clock-tower in the town commemorates her.

Wall Hills Camp, supposed to be of British origin, is the earliest evidence of a settlement near Ledbury (Liedeburge, Lidebury). The manor was given to the see of Hereford in the 11th century; but in 1561-1562 became crown property. As early as 1170-1171 an episcopal castle existed in Ledbury. The town was not incorporated, but was early called a borough; and in 1295 and 1304-1305 returned two members to parliament. A fair on the day of the decollation of John the Baptist was granted to the bishop in 1249. Of fairs which survived in 1792 those of the days of St Philip and St James and St Barnabas were granted in 1584-1585; those held on the Monday before Easter and St Thomas's day were reputed ancient, but not those of the 12th of May, the 22nd of June, the 2nd of October and the 21st of December. Existing fairs are on the second Tuesday in every month and in October. A weekly market, granted to the bishop by Stephen, John and Henry III., was obsolete in 1584-1585, when the present market of Tuesday was authorized. The wool trade was considerable in the 14th century; later Ledbury was inhabited by glovers and clothiers. The town was deeply involved in the operations of the Civil Wars, being occupied both by the royalist leader Prince Rupert and by the Parliamentarian Colonel Birch.

LEDGER (from the English dialect forms _liggen_ or _leggen_, to lie or lay; in sense adapted from the Dutch substantive _legger_), properly a book remaining regularly in one place, and so used of the copies of the Scriptures and service books kept in a church. The _New English Dictionary_ quotes from Charles Wriothesley's _Chronicle_, 1538 (ed. _Camden Soc._, 1875, by W. D. Hamilton), "the curates should provide a booke of the bible in Englishe, of the largest volume, to be a lidger in the same church for the parishioners to read on." It is an application of this original meaning that is found in the commercial usage of the term for the principal book of account in a business house (see BOOK-KEEPING). Apart from these applications to various forms of books, the word is used of the horizontal timbers in a scaffold (q.v.) lying parallel to the face of a building, which support the "put logs"; of a flat stone to cover a grave; and of a stationary form of tackle and bait in angling. In the form "lieger" the term was formerly frequently applied to a "resident," as distinguished from an "extraordinary" ambassador.

LEDOCHOWSKI, MIECISLAUS JOHANN, COUNT (1822-1902), Polish cardinal, was born on the 29th of October 1822 in Gorki (Russian Poland), and received his early education at the gymnasium and seminary of Warsaw. After finishing his studies at the Jesuit Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici in Rome, which strongly influenced his religious development and his attitude towards church affairs, he was ordained in 1845. From 1856 to 1858 he represented the Roman See in Columbia, but on the outbreak of the Columbian revolution had to return to Rome. In 1861 Pope Pius IX. made him his nuncio at Brussels, and in 1865 he was made archbishop of Gnesen-Posen. His preconization followed on the 8th of January 1866. This date marks the beginning of the second period in Ledochowski's life; for during the Prussian and German _Kulturkampf_ he was one of the most declared enemies of the state. It was only during the earliest years of his appointment as archbishop that he entertained a different view, invoking, for instance, an intervention of Prussia in favour of the Roman Church, when it was oppressed by the house of Savoy. On the 12th of December 1870 he presented an effective memorandum on the subject at the headquarters at Versailles. In 1872 the archbishop protested against the demand of the government that religious teaching should be given only in the German language, and in 1873 he addressed a circular letter on this subject to the clergy of his diocese. The government thereupon demanded a statement from the teachers of religion as to whether they intended to obey it or the archbishop, and on their declaring for the archbishop, dismissed them. The count himself was called upon at the end of 1873 to lay aside his office. On his refusing to do so, he was arrested between 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning on the 3rd of February 1874 by Standi the director of police, and taken to the military prison of Ostrowo. The pope made him a cardinal on the 13th of March, but it was not till the 3rd of February 1876 that he was released from prison. Having been expelled from the eastern provinces of Prussia, he betook himself to Cracow, where his presence was made the pretext for anti-Prussian demonstrations. Upon this he was also expelled from Austria, and went to Rome, whence, in spite of his removal from office, which was decreed on the 15th of April 1874, he continued to direct the affairs of his diocese, for which he was on several occasions from 1877 to 1879 condemned _in absentia_ by the Prussian government for "usurpation of episcopal rights." It was not till 1885 that Ledochowski resolved to resign his archbishopric, in which he was succeeded by Dinder at the end of the year. Ledochowski's return in 1884 was forbidden by the Prussian government (although the _Kulturkampf_ had now abated), on account of his having stirred up anew the Polish nationalist agitation. He passed the closing years of his life in Rome. In 1892 he became prefect of the Congregation of the Propaganda, and he died in Rome on the 22nd of July 1902.

See Ograbiszewski, _Deutschlands Episkopat in Lebensbildern_ (1876 and following years); Holtzmann-Zöppfel, _Lexikon für Theologie und Kirchenwesen_ (2nd ed., 1888); Vapereau, _Dictionnaire universel des contemporains_ (6th ed., 1893); Brück, _Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_ vol. 4 (1901 and 1908); Lauchert, _Biographisches Jahrbuch_, vol. 7 (1905). (J. Hn.)

LEDRU-ROLLIN, ALEXANDRE AUGUSTE (1807-1874), French politician, was the grandson of Nicolas Philippe Ledru, the celebrated quack doctor known as "Comus" under Louis XIV., and was born in a house that was once Scarron's, at Fontenay-aux-Roses (Seine), on the 2nd of February 1807. He had just begun to practise at the Parisian bar before the revolution of July, and was retained for the Republican defence in most of the great political trials of the next ten years. In 1838 he bought for 330,000 francs Desiré Dalloz's place in the Court of Cassation. He was elected deputy for Le Mans in 1841 with hardly a dissentient voice; but for the violence of his electoral speeches he was tried at Angers and sentenced to four months' imprisonment and a fine, against which he appealed successfully on a technical point. He made a rich and romantic marriage in 1843, and in 1846 disposed of his charge at the Court of Cassation to give his time entirely to politics. He was now the recognized leader of the working-men of France. He had more authority in the country than in the Chamber, where the violence of his oratory diminished its effect. He asserted that the fortifications of Paris were directed against liberty, not against foreign invasion, and he stigmatized the law of regency (1842) as an audacious usurpation. Neither from official Liberalism nor from the press did he receive support; even the Republican _National_ was opposed to him because of his championship of labour. He therefore founded _La Réforme_ in which to advance his propaganda. Between Ledru-Rollin and Odilon Barrot with the other chiefs of the "dynastic Left" there were acute differences, hardly dissimulated even during the temporary alliance which produced the campaign of the banquets. It was the speeches of Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc at working-men's banquets in Lille, Dijon and Châlons that really heralded the revolution. Ledru-Rollin prevented the appointment of the duchess of Orleans as regent in 1848. He and Lamartine held the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies until the Parisian populace stopped serious discussion by invading the Chamber. He was minister of the interior in the provisional government, and was also a member of the executive committee[1] appointed by the Constituent Assembly, from which Louis Blanc and the extremists were excluded. At the crisis of the 15th of May he definitely sided with Lamartine and the party of order against the proletariat. Henceforward his position was a difficult one. He never regained his influence with the working classes, who considered they had been betrayed; but to his short ministry belongs the credit of the establishment of a working system of universal suffrage. At the presidential election in December he was put forward as the Socialist candidate, but secured only 370,000 votes. His opposition to the policy of President Louis Napoleon, especially his Roman policy, led to his moving the impeachment of the president and his ministers. The motion was defeated, and next day (June 13, 1849) he headed what he called a peaceful demonstration, and his enemies armed insurrection. He himself escaped to London where he joined the executive of the revolutionary committee of Europe, with Kossuth and Mazzini among his colleagues. He was accused of complicity in an obscure attempt (1857) against the life of Napoleon III., and condemned in his absence to deportation. Émile Ollivier removed the exceptions from the general amnesty in 1870, and Ledru-Rollin returned to France after twenty years of exile. Though elected in 1871 in three departments he refused to sit in the National Assembly, and took no serious part in politics until 1874 when he was returned to the Assembly as member for Vaucluse. He died on the 31st of December of that year.

Under Louis Philippe he made large contributions to French jurisprudence, editing the _Journal du palais, 1791-1837_ (27 vols., 1837), and _1837-1847_ (17 vols.), with a commentary _Répertoire général de la jurisprudence française_ (8 vols., 1843-1848), the introduction to which was written by himself. His later writings were political in character. See _Ledru-Rollin, ses discours et ses écrits politiques_ (2 vols., Paris, 1879), edited by his widow.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Arago, Garnier-Pagès, Marie, Lamartine, and Ledru-Rollin.

LEDYARD, JOHN (1751-1789), American traveller, was born in Groton, Connecticut, U.S.A. After vainly trying law and theology, Ledyard adopted a seaman's life, and, coming to London, was engaged as corporal of marines by Captain Cook for his third voyage (1776). On his return (1778) Ledyard had to give up to the Admiralty his copious journals, but afterwards published, from memory, a meagre narrative of his experiences--herein giving the only account of Cook's death by an eye-witness (Hartford, U.S.A., 1783). He continued in the British service till 1782, when he escaped, off Long Island. In 1784 he revisited Europe, to organize an expedition to the American North-West. Having failed in his attempts, he decided to reach his goal by travelling across Europe and Asia. Baffled in his hopes of crossing the Baltic on the ice (Stockholm to Abo), he walked right round from Stockholm to St Petersburg, where he arrived barefoot and penniless (March 1787). Here he made friends with Pallas and others, and accompanied Dr Brown, a Scotch physician in the Russian service, to Siberia. Ledyard left Dr Brown at Barnaul, went on to Tomsk and Irkutsk, visited Lake Baikal, and descended the Lena to Yakutsk (18th of September 1787). With Captain Joseph Billings, whom he had known on Cook's "Resolution," he returned to Irkutsk, where he was arrested, deported to the Polish frontier, and banished from Russia for ever. Reaching London, he was engaged by Sir Joseph Banks and the African Association to explore overland routes from Alexandria to the Niger, but in Cairo he succumbed to a dose of vitriol (17th of January 1789). Though a born explorer, little resulted from his immense but ill-directed activities.

See _Memoirs of the Life and Travels of John Ledyard_, by Jared Sparks (1828).

LEE, ANN (1736-1784), English religious visionary, was born in Manchester, where she was first a factory hand and afterwards a cook. She is remembered by her connexion with the sect known as Shakers (q.v.). She died at Watervliet, near Albany, New York.

LEE, ARTHUR (1740-1792), American diplomatist, brother of Richard Henry Lee, was born at Stratford, Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 20th of December 1740. He was educated at Eton, studied medicine at Edinburgh, practised as a physician in Williamsburg, Virginia, read law at the Temple, London, in 1766-1770, and practised law in London in 1770-1776. He was an intimate of John Wilkes, whom he aided in one of his London campaigns. In 1770-1775 he served as London agent for Massachusetts, second to Benjamin Franklin, whom he succeeded in 1775. At that time he had shown great ability as a pamphleteer, having published in London _The Monitor_ (1768), seven essays previously printed in Virginia; _The Political Detection: or the Treachery and Tyranny of Administration, both at Home and Abroad_ (1770), signed "Junius Americanus"; and _An Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of Great Britain in the Present Disputes with America_ (1774), signed "An Old Member of Parliament." In December 1775 the Committee of Secret Correspondence of Congress chose him its European agent principally for the purpose of ascertaining the views of France, Spain, and other European countries regarding the war between the colonies and Great Britain. In October 1776 he was appointed, upon the refusal of Jefferson, on the commission with Franklin and Silas Deane to negotiate a treaty of alliance, amity and commerce with France, and also to negotiate with other European governments. His letters to Congress, in which he expressed his suspicion of Deane's business integrity and criticized his accounts, resulted in Deane's recall; and other letters impaired the confidence of Congress in Franklin, of whom he was especially jealous. Early in 1777 he went to Spain as American commissioner, but received no official recognition, was not permitted to proceed farther than Burgos, and accomplished nothing; until the appointment of Jay, however, he continued to act as commissioner to Spain, held various conferences with the Spanish minister in Paris, and in January 1778 secured a promise of a loan of 3,000,000 livres, only a small part of which (some 170,000 livres) was paid. In June 1777 he went to Berlin, where, as in Spain, he was not officially recognized. Although he had little to do with the negotiations, he signed with Franklin and Deane in February 1778 the treaties between the United States and France. Having become unpopular at the courts of France and Spain, Lee was recalled in 1779, and returned to the United States in September 1780. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1781 and a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782-1785. With Oliver Wolcott and Richard Butler he negotiated a treaty with the Six Nations, signed at Fort Stanwix on the 22nd of October 1784, and with George Clark and Richard Butler a treaty with the Wyandot, Delaware, Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, signed at Ft. McIntosh on the 21st of January 1785. He was a member of the treasury board in 1784-1789. He strongly opposed the constitution, and after its adoption retired to his estate at Urbana, Virginia, where he died on the 12th of December 1792.

See R. H. Lee, _Life of Arthur Lee_ (2 vols., Boston, 1829), and C. H. Lee, _A Vindication of Arthur Lee_ (Richmond, Virginia, 1894), both partisan. Much of Lee's correspondence is to be found in Wharton's _Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence_ (Washington, 1889). Eight volumes of Lee's MSS. in the Harvard University Library are described and listed in _Library of Harvard University, Bibliographical Contributions_, No. 8 (Cambridge, 1882).

LEE, FITZHUGH (1835-1905), American cavalry general, was born at Clermont, in Fairfax county, Virginia, on the 19th of November 1835. He was the grandson of "Light Horse Harry" Lee, and the nephew of Robert E. Lee. His father, Sydney Smith Lee, was a fleet captain under Commodore Perry in Japanese waters and rose to the rank of commodore; his mother was a daughter of George Mason. Graduating from West Point in 1856, he was appointed to the 2nd Cavalry, which was commanded by Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, and in which his uncle, Robert E. Lee, was lieutenant-colonel. As a cavalry subaltern he distinguished himself by his gallant conduct in actions with the Comanches in Texas, and was severely wounded in 1859. In May 1860 he was appointed instructor of cavalry at West Point, but resigned on the secession of Virginia. Lee was at once employed in the organization of the forces of the South, and served at first as a staff officer to General R. S. Ewell, and afterwards, from September 1861, as lieutenant-colonel, and from April 1862 as colonel of the First Virginia Cavalry in the Army of Northern Virginia. He became brigadier-general on General J. E. B. Stuart's recommendation on the 25th of July 1862, and served under that general throughout the Virginian campaigns of 1862 and 1863, becoming major-general on the 3rd of September 1863. He conducted the cavalry action of Beverly Ford (17th March 1863) with skill and success. In the Wilderness and Petersburg campaigns he was constantly employed as a divisional commander under Stuart, and, after Stuart's death, under General Wade Hampton. He took part in Early's campaign against Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, and at Winchester (19th Sept. 1864) three horses were shot under him and he was severely wounded. On General Hampton's being sent to assist General Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina, the command of the whole of General Lee's cavalry devolved upon Fitzhugh Lee early in 1865, but the surrender of Appomattox followed quickly upon the opening of the campaign. Fitzhugh Lee himself led the last charge of the Confederates on the 9th of April that year at Farmville.

After the war he devoted himself to farming in Stafford county, Virginia, and was conspicuous in his efforts to reconcile the Southern people to the issue of the war, which he regarded as a final settlement of the questions at issue. In 1875 he attended the Bunker Hill centenary at Boston, Mass., and delivered a remarkable address. In 1885 he was a member of the board of visitors of West Point, and from 1886 to 1890 was governor of Virginia. In April 1896 he was appointed by President Cleveland consul-general at Havana, with duties of a diplomatic and military character added to the usual consular business. In this post (in which he was retained by President McKinley) he was from the first called upon to deal with a situation of great difficulty, which culminated with the destruction of the "Maine" (see SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR). Upon the declaration of war between Spain and the United States he re-entered the army. He was one of the three ex-Confederate general officers who were made major-generals of United States Volunteers. Fitzhugh Lee commanded the VII. army corps, but took no part in the actual operations in Cuba. He was military governor of Havana and Pinar del Rio in 1899, subsequently commanded the department of the Missouri, and retired as a brigadier-general U.S. Army in 1901. He died in Washington on the 28th of April 1905. He wrote _Robert E. Lee_ (1894) in the "Great Commanders" series, and _Cuba's Struggle Against Spain_ (1899).

LEE, GEORGE ALEXANDER (1802-1851), English musician, was born in London, the son of Henry Lee, a pugilist and innkeeper. He became "tiger" to Lord Barrymore, and his singing led to his being educated for the musical profession. After appearing as a tenor at the theatres in Dublin and London, he joined in producing opera at the Tottenham Street theatre in 1829, and afterwards was connected with musical productions at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. He married Mrs Waylett, a popular singer. Lee composed music for a number of plays, and also many songs, including the popular "Come where the Aspens quiver," and for a short time had a music-selling business in the Quadrant. He died on the 8th of October 1851.

LEE, HENRY (1756-1818), American general, called "Light Horse Harry," was born near Dumfries, Virginia, on the 29th of January 1756. His father was first cousin to Richard Henry Lee. With a view to a legal career he graduated (1773) at Princeton, but soon afterwards, on the outbreak of the War of Independence, he became an officer in the patriot forces. He served with great distinction under Washington, and in 1778 was promoted major and given the command of a small irregular corps, with which he won a great reputation as a leader of light troops. His services on the outpost line of the army earned for him the soubriquet of "Light Horse Harry." His greatest exploit was the brilliant surprise of Paulus Hook, N.J., on the 19th of August 1779; for this feat he received a gold medal, a reward given to no other officer below general's rank in the whole war. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel 1780, and sent with a picked corps of dragoons to the southern theatre of war. Here he rendered invaluable services in victory and defeat, notably at Guilford Court House, Camden and Eutaw Springs. He was present at Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown, and afterwards left the army owing to ill-health. From 1786 to 1788 he was a delegate to the Confederation Congress, and in the last-named year in the Virginia convention he favoured the adoption of the Federal constitution. From 1789 to 1791 he served in the General Assembly, and from 1791 to 1794 was governor of Virginia. In 1794 Washington sent him to help in the suppression of the "Whisky Insurrection" in western Pennsylvania. A new county of Virginia was named after him during his governorship. He was a major-general in 1798-1800. From 1799 to 1801 he served in Congress. He delivered the address on the death of Washington which contained the famous phrase, "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Soon after the War of 1812 broke out, Lee, while helping to resist the attack of a mob on his friend, A. C. Hanson, editor of the Baltimore _Federal Republican_, which had opposed the war, received grave injuries, from which he never recovered. He died at the house of General Nathanael Greene on Cumberland Island, Georgia, on the 25th of March 1818.

Lee wrote valuable _Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department_ (1812; 3rd ed., with memoir by Robert E. Lee, 1869).

LEE, JAMES PRINCE (1804-1869), English divine, was born in London on the 28th of July 1804, and was educated at St Paul's school and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he displayed exceptional ability as a classical scholar. After taking orders in 1830 he served under Thomas Arnold at Rugby school, and in 1838 was appointed head-master of King Edward's school, Birmingham, where he had among his pupils E. W. Benson, J. B. Lightfoot and B. F. Westcott. In 1848 Lord John Russell nominated him as first bishop of the newly-constituted see of Manchester. His pedagogic manner bore somewhat irksomely on his clergy. He is best remembered for his splendid work in church extension; during his twenty-one years' tenure of the see he consecrated 130 churches. He took a foremost part in founding the Manchester free library, and bequeathed his own valuable collection of books to Owens College. He died on the 24th of December 1869.

A memorial sermon was preached by Archbishop E. W. Benson, and was published with biographical details by J. F. Wickenden and others.

LEE, NATHANIEL (c. 1653-1692), English dramatist, son of Dr Richard Lee, a Presbyterian divine, was born probably in 1653. His father was rector of Hatfield, and held many preferments under the Commonwealth. He was chaplain to General Monk, afterwards duke of Albemarle, and after the Restoration he conformed to the Church of England, abjuring his former opinions, especially his approval of Charles I.'s execution. Nathaniel Lee was educated at Westminster school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his B.A. degree in 1668. Coming to London under the patronage, it is said, of the duke of Buckingham, he tried to earn his living as an actor, but though he was an admirable reader, his acute stage fright made acting impossible. His earliest play, _Nero, Emperor of Rome_, was acted in 1675 at Drury Lane. Two tragedies written in rhymed heroic couplets, in imitation of Dryden, followed in 1676--_Sophonisba, or Hannibal's Overthrow and Gloriana, or the Court of Augustus Caesar_. Both are extravagant in design and treatment. Lee made his reputation in 1677 with a blank verse tragedy, _The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great_. The play, which treats of the jealousy of Alexander's first wife, Roxana, for his second wife, Statira, was, in spite of much bombast, a favourite on the English stage down to the days of Edmund Kean. _Mithridates, King of Pontus_ (acted 1678), _Theodosius, or the Force of Love_ (acted 1680), _Caesar Borgia_ (acted 1680)--an imitation of the worst blood and thunder Elizabethan tragedies--_Lucius Junius Brutus, Father of His Country_ (acted 1681), and _Constantine the Great_ (acted 1684) followed. _The Princess of Cleve_ (1681) is a gross adaptation of Madame de La Fayette's exquisite novel of that name. _The Massacre of Paris_ (published 1690) was written about this time. Lee had given offence at court by his _Lucius Junius Brutus_, which had been suppressed after its third representation for some lines on Tarquin's character that were taken to be a reflection on Charles II. He therefore joined with Dryden, who had already admitted him as a collaborator in an adaptation of _Oedipus_, in _The Duke of Guise_ (1683), a play which directly advocated the Tory point of view. In it part of the _Massacre of Paris_ was incorporated. Lee was now thirty years of age, and had already achieved a considerable reputation. But he had lived in the dissipated society of the earl of Rochester and his associates, and imitated their excesses. As he grew more disreputable, his patrons neglected him, and in 1684 his mind was completely unhinged. He spent five years in Bethlehem Hospital, and recovered his health. He died in a drunken fit in 1692, and was buried in St Clement Danes, Strand, on the 6th of May.

Lee's _Dramatic Works_ were published in 1784. In spite of their extravagance, they contain many passages of great beauty.

LEE, RICHARD HENRY (1732-1794), American statesman and orator, was born at Stratford, in Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 20th of January 1732, and was one of six distinguished sons of Thomas Lee (d. 1750), a descendant of an old Cavalier family, the first representative of which in America was Richard Lee, who was a member of the privy council, and early in the reign of Charles I. emigrated to Virginia. Richard Henry Lee received an academic education in England, then spent a little time in travel, returned to Virginia in 1752, having come into possession of a fine property left him by his father, and for several years applied himself to varied studies. When twenty-five he was appointed justice of the peace of Westmoreland county, and in the same year was chosen a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, in which he served from 1758 to 1775. He kept a diffident silence during two sessions, his first speech being in strong opposition to slavery, which he proposed to discourage and eventually to abolish, by imposing a heavy tax on all further importations. He early allied himself with the Patriot or Whig element in Virginia, and in the years immediately preceding the War of Independence was conspicuous as an opponent of the arbitrary measures of the British ministry. In 1768, in a letter to John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, he suggested a private correspondence among the friends of liberty in the different colonies, and in 1773 he became a member of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence.

Lee was one of the delegates from Virginia to the first Continental Congress at Philadelphia in 1774, and prepared the address to the people of British America, and the second address to the people of Great Britain, which are among the most effective papers of the time. In accordance with instructions given by the Virginia House of Burgesses, Lee introduced in Congress, on the 7th of June 1776, the following famous resolutions: (1) "that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connexion between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved"; (2) "that it is expedient to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign alliances"; and (3) "that a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration and approbation." After debating the first of these resolutions for three days, Congress resolved that the further consideration of it should be postponed until the 1st of July, but that a committee should be appointed to prepare a declaration of independence. The illness of Lee's wife prevented him from being a member of that committee, but his first resolution was adopted on the 2nd of July, and the Declaration of Independence, prepared principally by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted two days later. Lee was in Congress from 1774 to 1780, and was especially prominent in connexion with foreign affairs. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1777, 1780-1784 and 1786-1787; was in Congress again from 1784 to 1787, being president in 1784-1786; and was one of the first United States senators chosen from Virginia after the adoption of the Federal constitution. Though strongly opposed to the adoption of that constitution, owing to what he regarded as its dangerous infringements upon the independent power of the states, he accepted the place of senator in hope of bringing about amendments, and proposed the Tenth Amendment in substantially the form in which it was adopted. He became a warm supporter of Washington's administration, and his prejudices against the constitution were largely removed by its working in practice. He retired from public life in 1792, and died at Chantilly, in Westmoreland county, on the 19th of June 1794.

See the _Life_ (Philadelphia, 1825), by his grandson, R. H. Lee; and _Letters_ (New York, 1910), edited by J. C. Ballagh.

His brother, WILLIAM LEE (1739-1795), was a diplomatist during the War of Independence. He accompanied his brother, Arthur Lee (q.v.), to England in 1766 to engage in mercantile pursuits, joined the Wilkes faction, and in 1775 was elected an alderman of London, then a life-position. In April 1777, however, he received notice of his appointment by the Committee of Secret Correspondence in America to act with Thomas Morris as commercial agent at Nantes. He went to Paris and became involved in his brother's opposition to Franklin and Deane. In May 1777 Congress chose William Lee commissioner to the courts of Vienna and Berlin, but he gained recognition at neither. In September 1778, however, while at Aix-la-Chapelle, he negotiated a plan of a treaty with Jan de Neufville, who represented Van Berckel, pensionary of Amsterdam. It was a copy of this proposed treaty which, on falling into the hands of the British on the capture of Henry Laurens, the duly appointed minister to the Netherlands, led to Great Britain's declaration of war against the Netherlands in December 1780. Lee was recalled from his mission to Vienna and Berlin in June 1779, without being required to return to America. He resigned his post as an alderman of London in January 1780, and returned to Virginia about 1784.

See _Letters of William Lee_, edited by W. C. Ford (Brooklyn, 1891).

Another brother, FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE (1734-1797), was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1770-1775. In 1775-1779 he was a delegate to the Continental Congress, and as such signed the Declaration of Independence. He served on the committee which drafted the Articles of Confederation, and contended that there should be no treaty of peace with Great Britain which did not grant to the United States both the right to the Newfoundland fisheries and the free navigation of the Mississippi. After retiring from Congress he served in 1780-1782 in the Virginia Senate.

LEE, ROBERT EDWARD (1807-1870), American soldier, general in the Confederate States army, was the youngest son of major-general Henry Lee, called "Light Horse Harry." He was born at Stratford, Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 19th of January 1807, and entered West Point in 1825. Graduating four years later second in his class, he was given a commission in the U.S. Engineer Corps. In 1831 he married Mary, daughter of G. W. P. Custis, the adopted son of Washington and the grandson of Mrs Washington. In 1836 he became first lieutenant, and in 1838 captain. In this rank he took part in the Mexican War, repeatedly winning distinction for conduct and bravery. He received the brevets of major for Cerro Gordo, lieut.-colonel for Contreras-Churubusco and colonel for Chapultepec. After the war he was employed in engineer work at Washington and Baltimore, during which time, as before the war, he resided on the great Arlington estate, near Washington, which had come to him through his wife. In 1852 he was appointed superintendent of West Point, and during his three years here he carried out many important changes in the academy. Under him as cadets were his son G. W. Custis Lee, his nephew, Fitzhugh Lee and J. E. B. Stuart, all of whom became general officers in the Civil War. In 1855 he was appointed as lieut.-colonel to the 2nd Cavalry, commanded by Colonel Sidney Johnston, with whom he served against the Indians of the Texas border. In 1859, while at Arlington on leave, he was summoned to command the United States troops sent to deal with the John Brown raid on Harper's Ferry. In March 1861 he was made colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry; but his career in the old army ended with the secession of Virginia in the following month. Lee was strongly averse to secession, but felt obliged to conform to the action of his own state. The Federal authorities offered Lee the command of the field army about to invade the South, which he refused. Resigning his commission, he made his way to Richmond and was at once made a major-general in the Virginian forces. A few weeks later he became a brigadier-general (then the highest rank) in the Confederate service.

The military operations with which the great Civil War opened in 1861 were directed by President Davis and General Lee. Lee was personally in charge of the unsuccessful West Virginian operations in the autumn, and, having been made a full general on the 31st of August, during the winter he devoted his experience as an engineer to the fortification and general defence of the Atlantic coast. Thence, when the well-drilled Army of the Potomac was about to descend upon Richmond, he was hurriedly recalled to Richmond. General Johnston was wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) on the 31st of May 1862, and General Robert E. Lee was assigned to the command of the famous Army of Northern Virginia which for the next three years "carried the rebellion on its bayonets." Little can be said of Lee's career as a commander-in-chief that is not an integral part of the history of the Civil War. His first success was the "Seven Days' Battle" (q.v.) in which he stopped McClellan's advance; this was quickly followed up by the crushing defeat of the Federal army under Pope, the invasion of Maryland and the sanguinary and indecisive battle of the Antietam (q.v.). The year ended with another great victory at Fredericksburg (q.v.). Chancellorsville (see WILDERNESS), won against odds of two to one, and the great three days' battle of Gettysburg (q.v.), where for the first time fortune turned decisively against the Confederates, were the chief events of 1863. In the autumn Lee fought a war of manoeuvre against General Meade. The tremendous struggle of 1864 between Lee and Grant included the battles of the Wilderness (q.v.), Spottsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor and the long siege of Petersburg (q.v.), in which, almost invariably, Lee was locally successful. But the steady pressure of his unrelenting opponent slowly wore down his strength. At last with not more than one man to oppose to Grant's three he was compelled to break out of his Petersburg lines (April 1865). A series of heavy combats revealed his purpose, and Grant pursued the dwindling remnants of Lee's army to the westward. Headed off by the Federal cavalry, and pressed closely in rear by Grant's main body, General Lee had no alternative but to surrender. At Appomattox Court House, on the 9th of April, the career of the Army of Northern Virginia came to an end. Lee's farewell order was issued on the following day, and within a few weeks the Confederacy was at an end. For a few months Lee lived quietly in Powhatan county, making his formal submission to the Federal authorities and urging on his own people acceptance of the new conditions. In August he was offered, and accepted, the presidency of Washington College, Lexington (now Washington and Lee University), a post which he occupied until his death on the 12th of October 1870. He was buried in the college grounds.

For the events of Lee's military career briefly indicated in this notice the reader is referred to the articles AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, &c. By his achievements he won a high place amongst the great generals of history. Though hampered by lack of materials and by political necessities, his strategy was daring always, and he never hesitated to take the gravest risks. On the field of battle he was as energetic in attack as he was constant in defence, and his personal influence over the men whom he led was extraordinary. No student of the American Civil War can fail to notice how the influence of Lee dominated the course of the struggle, and his surpassing ability was never more conspicuously shown than in the last hopeless stages of the contest. The personal history of Lee is lost in the history of the great crisis of America's national life; friends and foes alike acknowledged the purity of his motives, the virtues of his private life, his earnest Christianity and the unrepining loyalty with which he accepted the ruin of his party.

See A. L. Long, _Memoirs of Robert E. Lee_ (New York, 1886); Fitzhugh Lee, _General Lee_ (New York, 1894, "Great Commanders" series); R. A. Brock, _General Robert E. Lee_ (Washington, 1904); R. E. Lee, _Recollections and Letters of General R. E. Lee_ (London, 1904); H. A. White, _Lee_ ("Heroes of the Nations") (1897); P. A. Bruce, _Robert E. Lee_ (1907); T. N. Page, _Lee_ (1909); W. H. Taylor, _Four Years with General Lee_; J. W. Jones, _Personal Reminiscences of Robert E. Lee_ (1874).

LEE (or LEGH) ROWLAND (d. 1543), English bishop, belonged to a Northumberland family and was educated at Cambridge. Having entered the Church he obtained several livings owing to the favour of Cardinal Wolsey; after Wolsey's fall he rose high in the esteem of Henry VIII. and of Thomas Cromwell, serving both king and minister in the business of suppressing the monasteries, and he is said to have celebrated Henry's secret marriage with Anne Boleyn in January 1533. Whether this be so or not, Lee took part in preparing for the divorce proceedings against Catherine of Aragon, and in January 1534 he was elected bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, or Chester as the see was often called, taking at his consecration the new oath to the king as head of the English Church and not seeking confirmation from the pope. As bishop he remained in Henry's personal service, endeavouring to establish the legality of his marriage with Anne, until May 1534, when he was appointed lord president of the council in the marches of Wales. At this time the Welsh marches were in a very disorderly condition. Lee acted in a stern and energetic fashion, holding courts, sentencing many offenders to death and overcoming the hostility of the English border lords. After some years of hard and successful work in this capacity, "the last survivor of the old martial prelates, fitter for harness than for bishops' robes, for a court of justice than a court of theology," died at Shrewsbury in June 1543. Many letters from Lee to Cromwell are preserved in the Record Office, London; these throw much light on the bishop's career and on the lawless condition of the Welsh marches in his time.

One of his contemporaries was EDWARD LEE (c. 1482-1544) archbishop of York, famous for his attack on Erasmus, who replied to him in his _Epistolae aliquot eruditorum virorum_. Like Rowland, Edward was useful to Henry VIII. in the matter of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon, and was sent by the king on embassies to the emperor Charles V. and to Pope Clement VII. In 1531 he became archbishop of York, but he came under suspicion as one who disliked the king's new position as head of the English Church. At Pontefract in 1536, during the Pilgrimage of Grace, the archbishop was compelled to join the rebels, but he did not sympathize with the rising and in 1539 he spoke in parliament in favour of the six articles of religion. Lee, who was the last archbishop of York to coin money, died on the 13th of September 1544.

LEE, SIDNEY (1859- ), English man of letters, was born in London on the 5th of December 1859. He was educated at the City of London school, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in modern history in 1882. In the next year he became assistant-editor of the _Dictionary of National Biography_. In 1890 he was made joint-editor, and on the retirement of Sir Leslie Stephen in 1891 succeeded him as editor. He was himself a voluminous contributor to the work, writing some 800 articles, mainly on Elizabethan authors or statesmen. While he was still at Balliol he wrote two articles on Shakespearian questions, which were printed in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and in 1884 he published a book on Stratford-on-Avon. His article on Shakespeare in the fifty-first volume (1897) of the _Dictionary of National Biography_ formed the basis of his _Life of William Shakespeare_ (1898), which reached its fifth edition in 1905. Mr Lee edited in 1902 the Oxford facsimile edition of the first folio of _Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies_, followed in 1902 and 1904 by supplementary volumes giving details of extant copies, and in 1906 by a complete edition of Shakespeare's _Works_. Besides editions of English classics his works include a _Life of Queen Victoria_ (1902), _Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century_ (1904), based on his Lowell Institute lectures at Boston, Mass., in 1903, and _Shakespeare and the Modern Stage_ (1906).

LEE, SOPHIA (1750-1824), English novelist and dramatist, daughter of John Lee (d. 1781), actor and theatrical manager, was born in London. Her first piece, _The Chapter of Accidents_, a one-act-opera based on Diderot's _Père de famille_, was produced by George Colman at the Haymarket Theatre on the 5th of August 1780. The proceeds were spent in establishing a school at Bath, where Miss Lee made a home for her sisters. Her subsequent productions included _The Recess, or a Tale of other Times_ (1785), a historical romance; and _Almeyda, Queen of Grenada_ (1796), a tragedy in blank verse; she also contributed to her sister's _Canterbury Tales_ (1797). She died at her house near Clifton on the 13th of March 1824.

Her sister, HARRIET LEE (1757-1851), published in 1786 a novel written in letters, _The Errors of Innocence_. _Clara Lennox_ followed in 1797. Her chief work is the _Canterbury Tales_ (1797-1805), a series of twelve stories which became very popular. Lord Byron dramatized one of the tales, "Kruitzner," as _Werner, or the Inheritance_. She died at Clifton on the 1st of August 1851.

LEE, STEPHEN DILL (1833-1908), Confederate general in the American Civil War, came of a family distinguished in the history of South Carolina, and was born at Charleston, S.C., on the 22nd of September 1833. Graduating from West Point in 1854, he served for seven years in the United States army and resigned in 1861 on the secession of South Carolina. He was aide de camp to General Beauregard in the attack on Fort Sumter, and captain commanding a light battery in General Johnston's army later in the year 1861. Thereafter, by successive steps, each gained by distinguished conduct on the field of battle, he rose to the rank of brigadier-general in November 1862, being ordered to take command of defences at Vicksburg. He served at this place with great credit until its surrender to General Grant in July 1863, and on becoming a prisoner of war, he was immediately exchanged and promoted major-general. His regimental service had been chiefly with artillery, but he had generally worked with and at times commanded cavalry, and he was now assigned to command the troops of that arm in the south-western theatre of war. After harassing, as far as his limited numbers permitted, the advance of Sherman's column on Meridian, he took General Polk's place as commander of the department of Mississippi. In June 1864, on Hood's promotion to command the Army of Tennessee, S. D. Lee was made a lieutenant-general and assigned to command Hood's old corps in that army. He fought at Atlanta and Jonesboro and in the skirmishing and manoeuvring along middle Tennessee which ended in the great crisis of Nashville and the "March to the Sea." Lee's corps accompanied Hood in the bold advance to Nashville, and fought in the battles of Franklin and Nashville, after which, in the rout of the Confederate army Lee kept his troops closed up and well in hand, and for three consecutive days formed the fighting rearguard of the otherwise disintegrated army. Lee was himself wounded, but did not give up the command until an organized rearguard took over the post of danger. On recovery he joined General J. E. Johnston in North Carolina, and he surrendered with Johnston in April 1865. After the war he settled in Mississippi, which was his wife's state and during the greater part of the war his own territorial command, and devoted himself to planting. He was president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi from 1880 to 1899, took some part in state politics and was an active member--at the time of his death commander-in-chief--of the "United Confederate Veterans" society. He died at Vicksburg on the 28th of May 1908.

LEE, a township of Berkshire county, in western Massachusetts, U.S.A. Pop. (1900) 3596; (1905) 3972; (1910) 4106. The township is traversed by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, covers an area of 22½ sq. m., and includes the village of Lee, 10 m. S. of Pittsfield, East Lee, adjoining it on the S.E., and South Lee, about 3 m. to the S.W. Lee and South Lee are on, and East Lee is near, the Housatonic river. The eastern part of the township is generally hilly, reaching a maximum altitude of about 2200 ft., and there are two considerable bodies of water--Laurel Lake in the N.W. (partly in Lenox) and Goose Pond, in the S.E. (partly in Tyringham). The region is healthy as well as beautiful, and is much frequented as a summer resort. Memorial Hall was built in memory of the soldiers from Lee who died during the Civil War. The chief manufactures are paper and wire, and from the quarries near the village of Lee is obtained an excellent quality of marble; these quarries furnished the marble for the extension of the Capitol at Washington, for St Patrick's cathedral in New York City and for the Lee High School and the Lee Public Library (1908). Lime is quarried in the township. Lee was formerly a paper-manufacturing place of great importance. The first paper mill in the township was built in South Lee in 1806, and for a time more paper was made in Lee than in any other place in the United States; the Housatonic Mill in Lee was probably the first (1867) in the United States to manufacture paper from wood pulp.

The first settlement within the present township of Lee was made in 1760. The township was formed from parts of Great Barrington and Washington, was incorporated in 1777 and was named in honour of General Charles Lee (1731-1782). In the autumn of 1786 there was an encounter near the village of East Lee between about 250 adherents of Daniel Shays (many of them from Lee township) and a body of state troops under General John Paterson, wherein the Shays contingent paraded a bogus cannon (made of a yarn beam) with such effect that the state troops fled.

See Amory Gale, _History of the Town of Lee_ (Lee, 1854), and _Lee, The Centennial Celebration and Centennial History of the Town of Lee_ (Springfield, Mass., 1878), compiled by Charles M. Hyde and Alexander Hyde.

LEE. (1) (In O. Eng. _hléo_; cf. the pronunciation _lew-ward_ of "leeward"; the word appears in several Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch _lij_, Dan. _lae_), properly a shelter or protection, chiefly used as a nautical term for that side of a ship, land, &c., which is farthest from the wind, hence a "lee shore," land under the lee of a ship, i.e. one on which the wind blows directly and which is unsheltered. A ship is said to make "leeway" when she drifts laterally away from her course. (2) A word now always used in the plural "lees," meaning dregs, sediment, particularly of wine. It comes through the O. Fr. _lie_ from a Gaulish Lat. _lia_, and is probably of Celtic origin.

LEECH, JOHN (1817-1864), English caricaturist, was born in London on the 29th of August 1817. His father, a native of Ireland, was the landlord of the London Coffee House on Ludgate Hill, "a man," on the testimony of those who knew him, "of fine culture, a profound Shakespearian, and a thorough gentleman." His mother was descended from the family of the famous Richard Bentley. It was from his father that Leech inherited his skill with the pencil, which he began to use at a very early age. When he was only three, he was discovered by Flaxman, who had called on his parents, seated on his mother's knee, drawing with much gravity. The sculptor pronounced his sketch to be wonderful, adding, "Do not let him be cramped with lessons in drawing; let his genius follow its own bent; he will astonish the world"--an advice which was strictly followed. A mail-coach, done when he was six years old, is already full of surprising vigour and variety in its galloping horses. Leech was educated at Charterhouse, where Thackeray, his lifelong friend, was his schoolfellow, and at sixteen he began to study for the medical profession at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he won praise for the accuracy and beauty of his anatomical drawings. He was then placed under a Mr Whittle, an eccentric practitioner, the original of "Rawkins" in Albert Smith's _Adventures of Mr Ledbury_, and afterwards under Dr John Cockle; but gradually the true bent of the youth's mind asserted itself, and he drifted into the artistic profession. He was eighteen when his first designs were published, a quarto of four pages, entitled _Etchings and Sketchings by A. Pen, Esq._, comic character studies from the London streets. Then he drew some political lithographs, did rough sketches for _Bell's Life_, produced an exceedingly popular parody on Mulready's postal envelope, and, on the death of Seymour, applied unsuccessfully to illustrate the _Pickwick Papers_. In 1840 Leech began his contributions to the magazines with a series of etchings in _Bentley's Miscellany_, where Cruikshank had published his splendid plates to _Jack Sheppard_ and _Oliver Twist_, and was illustrating _Guy Fawkes_ in sadly feebler fashion. In company with the elder master Leech designed for the _Ingoldsby Legends_ and _Stanley Thorn_, and till 1847 produced many independent series of etchings. These cannot be ranked with his best work; their technique is exceedingly imperfect; they are rudely bitten, with the light and shade out of relation; and we never feel that they express the artist's individuality, the _Richard Savage_ plates, for instance, being strongly reminiscent of Cruikshank, and "The Dance at Stamford Hall" of Hablot Browne. In 1845 Leech illustrated _St Giles and St James_ in Douglas Jerrold's newly started _Shilling Magazine_, with plates more vigorous and accomplished than those in _Bentley_, but it is in subjects of a somewhat later date, and especially in those lightly etched and meant to be printed with colour, that we see the artist's best powers with the needle and the acid. Among such of his designs are four charming plates to Dickens's _Christmas Carol_ (1844), the broadly humorous etchings in the _Comic History of England_ (1847-1848), and the still finer illustrations to the _Comic History of Rome_ (1852)--which last, particularly in its minor woodcuts, shows some exquisitely graceful touches, as witness the fair faces that rise from the surging water in "Cloelia and her Companions Escaping from the Etruscan Camp." Among the other etchings which deserve very special reference are those in _Young Master Troublesome or Master Jacky's Holidays_, and the frontispiece to _Hints on Life, or How to Rise in Society_ (1845)--a series of minute subjects linked gracefully together by coils of smoke, illustrating the various ranks and conditions of men, one of them--the doctor by his patient's bedside--almost equalling in vivacity and precision the best of Cruikshank's similar scenes. Then in the 'fifties we have the numerous etchings of sporting scenes, contributed, together with woodcuts, to the _Handley Cross_ novels.

Turning to Leech's lithographic work, we have, in 1841, the _Portraits of the Children of the Mobility_, an important series dealing with the humorous and pathetic aspects of London street Arabs, which were afterwards so often and so effectively to employ the artist's pencil. Amid all the squalor which they depict, they are full of individual beauties in the delicate or touching expression of a face, in the graceful turn of a limb. The book is scarce in its original form, but in 1875 two reproductions of the outline sketches for the designs were published--a lithographic issue of the whole series, and a finer photographic transcript of six of the subjects, which is more valuable than even the finished illustrations of 1841, in which the added light and shade is frequently spotty and ineffective, and the lining itself has not the freedom which we find in some of Leech's other lithographs, notably in the _Fly Leaves_, published at the _Punch_ office, and in the inimitable subject of the nuptial couch of the Caudles, which also appeared, in woodcut form, as a political cartoon, with Mrs Caudle, personated by Brougham, disturbing by untimely loquacity the slumbers of the lord chancellor, whose haggard cheek rests on the woolsack for pillow.

But it was in work for the wood-engravers that Leech was most prolific and individual. Among the earlier of such designs are the illustrations to the _Comic English_ and _Latin Grammars_ (1840), to _Written Caricatures_ (1841), to Hood's _Comic Annual_, (1842), and to Albert Smith's _Wassail Bowl_ (1843), subjects mainly of a small vignette size, transcribed with the best skill of such woodcutters as Orrin Smith, and not, like the larger and later _Punch_ illustrations, cut at speed by several engravers working at once on the subdivided block. It was in 1841 that Leech's connexion with _Punch_ began, a connexion which subsisted till his death on the 29th of October 1864, and resulted in the production of the best-known and most admirable of his designs. His first contribution appeared in the issue of the 7th of August, a full-page illustration--entitled "Foreign Affairs"--of character studies from the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. His cartoons deal at first mainly with social subjects, and are rough and imperfect in execution, but gradually their method gains in power and their subjects become more distinctly political, and by 1849 the artist is strong enough to produce the splendidly humorous national personification which appears in "Disraeli Measuring the British Lion." About 1845 we have the first of that long series of half-page and quarter-page pictures of life and manners, executed with a hand as gentle as it was skilful, containing, as Ruskin has said, "admittedly the finest definition and natural history of the classes of our society, the kindest and subtlest analysis of its foibles, the tenderest flattery of its pretty and well-bred ways," which has yet appeared. In addition to his work for the weekly issue of _Punch_, Leech contributed largely to the _Punch_ almanacks and pocket-books, to _Once a Week_ from 1859 till 1862, to the _Illustrated London News_, where some of his largest and best sporting scenes appeared, and to innumerable novels and miscellaneous volumes besides, of which it is only necessary to specify _A Little Tour in Ireland_ (1859), which is noticeable as showing the artist's treatment of pure landscape, though it also contains some of his daintiest figure-pieces, like that of the wind-blown girl, standing on the summit of a pedestal, with the swifts darting around her and the breadth of sea beyond.

In 1862 Leech appealed to the public with a very successful exhibition of some of the most remarkable of his _Punch_ drawings. These were enlarged by a mechanical process, and coloured in oils by the artist himself, with the assistance and under the direction of his friend J. E. Millais.

Leech was a singularly rapid and indefatigable worker. Dean Hole tells us, when he was his guest, "I have known him send off from my house three finished drawings on the wood, designed, traced, and rectified, without much effort as it seemed, between breakfast and dinner." The best technical qualities of Leech's art, his unerring precision, his unfailing vivacity in the use of the line, are seen most clearly in the first sketches for his woodcuts, and in the more finished drawings made on tracing-paper from these first outlines, before the chiaroscuro was added and the designs were transcribed by the engraver. Turning to the mental qualities of his art, it would be a mistaken criticism which ranked him as a comic draughtsman. Like Hogarth he was a true humorist, a student of human life, though he observed humanity mainly in its whimsical aspects,

"Hitting all he saw with shafts With gentle satire, kin to charity, That harmed not."

The earnestness and gravity of moral purpose which is so constant a note in the work of Hogarth is indeed far less characteristic of Leech, but there are touches of pathos and of tragedy in such of the _Punch_ designs as the "Poor Man's Friend" (1845), and "General Février turned Traitor" (1855), and in "The Queen of the Arena" in the first volume of _Once a Week_, which are sufficient to prove that more solemn powers, for which his daily work afforded no scope, lay dormant in their artist. The purity and manliness of Leech's own character are impressed on his art. We find in it little of the exaggeration and grotesqueness, and none of the fierce political enthusiasm, of which the designs of Gillray are so full. Compared with that of his great contemporary George Cruikshank, his work is restricted both in compass of subject and in artistic dexterity.

Biographies of Leech have been written by John Brown (1882), and Frith (1891); see also "John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character," by Thackeray, _Quarterly Review_ (December 1854); letter by John Ruskin, _Arrows of the Chace_, vol. i. p. 161; "Un Humoriste Anglais," by Ernest Chesneau, _Gazette des Beaux Arts_ (1875). (J. M. G.)

LEECH, the common name of members of the Hirudinea, a division of Chaetopod worms. It is doubtful whether the medicinal leech, _Hirudo medicinalis_, which is rarer in England than on the continent of Europe, or the horse leech, _Aulastoma gulo_, often confused with it, has the best right to the original possession of this name. But at present the word "leech" is applied to every member of the group Hirudinea, for the general structure and classification of which see CHAETOPODA. There are many genera and species of leeches, the exact definitions of which are still in need of a more complete survey. They occur in all parts of the world and are mostly aquatic, though sometimes terrestrial, in habit. The aquatic forms frequent streams, ponds and marshes, and the sea. The members of this group are always carnivorous or parasitic, and prey upon both vertebrates and invertebrates. In relation to their parasitic habit one or two suckers are always developed, the one at the anterior and the other at the posterior end of the body. In one subdivision of the leeches, the _Gnathobdellidae_, the mouth has three chitinous jaws which produce a triangular bite, though the action has been described as like that of a circular saw. Leeches without biting jaws possess a protrusible proboscis, and generally engulf their prey, as does the horse leech when it attacks earthworms. But some of them are also ectoparasites. The leech has been used in medicine from remote antiquity as a moderate blood-letter; and it is still so used, though more rarely than formerly. As unlicensed blood-letters, certain land-leeches are among the most unpleasant of parasites that can be encountered in a tropical jungle. A species of _Haemadipsa_ of Ceylon attaches itself to the passer-by and draws blood with so little irritation that the sufferer is said to be aware of its presence only by the trickling from the wounds produced. Small leeches taken into the mouth with drinking-water may give rise to serious symptoms by attaching themselves to the fauces and neighbouring parts and thence sucking blood. The effects of these parasites have been mistaken for those of disease. All leeches are very extensile and can contract the body to a plump, pear-shaped form, or extend it to a long and worm-like shape. They frequently progress after the fashion of a "looper" caterpillar, attaching themselves alternately by the anterior and the posterior sucker. Others swim with eel-like curves through the water, while one land-leech, at any rate, moves in a gliding way like a land Planarian, and leaves, also like the Planarian, a slimy trail behind it. Leeches are usually olive green to brown in colour, darker patches and spots being scattered over a paler ground. The marine parasitic leech _Pontobdella_ is of a bright green, as is also the land-leech _Trocheta_.

The term "leech," as an old English synonym for physician, is from a Teutonic root meaning "heal," and is etymologically distinct from the name (O. Eng. _lyce_) of the _Hirudo_, though the use of the one by the other has helped to assimilate the two words. (F. E. B.)

LEEDS, THOMAS OSBORNE, 1st DUKE OF (1631-1712), English statesman, commonly known also by his earlier title of EARL OF DANBY, son of Sir Edward Osborne, Bart., of Kiveton, Yorkshire, was born in 1631. He was great-grandson of Sir Edward Osborne (d. 1591), lord mayor of London, who, according to the accepted account, while apprentice to Sir William Hewett, cloth worker and lord mayor in 1559, made the fortunes of the family by leaping from London Bridge into the river and rescuing Anne (d. 1585), the daughter of his employer, whom he afterwards married.[1] Thomas Osborne, the future lord treasurer, succeeded to the baronetcy and estates in Yorkshire on his father's death in 1647, and after unsuccessfully courting his cousin Dorothy Osborne, married Lady Bridget Bertie, daughter of the earl of Lindsey. He was introduced to public life and to court by his neighbour in Yorkshire, George, 2nd duke of Buckingham, was elected M.P. for York in 1665, and gained the "first step in his future rise" by joining Buckingham in his attack on Clarendon in 1667. In 1668 he was appointed joint treasurer of the navy with Sir Thomas Lyttelton, and subsequently sole treasurer. He succeeded Sir William Coventry as commissioner for the state treasury in 1669, and in 1673 was appointed a commissioner for the admiralty. He was created Viscount Osborne in the Scottish peerage on the 2nd of February 1673, and a privy councillor on the 3rd of May. On the 19th of June, on the resignation of Lord Clifford, he was appointed lord treasurer and made Baron Osborne of Kiveton and Viscount Latimer in the peerage of England, while on the 27th of June 1674 he was created earl of Danby, when he surrendered his Scottish peerage of Osborne to his second son Peregrine Osborne. He was appointed the same year lord-lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1677 received the Garter.

Danby was a statesman of very different calibre from the leaders of the Cabal ministry, Buckingham and Arlington. His principal aim was no doubt the maintenance and increase of his own influence and party, but his ambition corresponded with definite political views. A member of the old cavalier party, a confidential friend and correspondent of the despotic Lauderdale, he desired to strengthen the executive and the royal authority. At the same time he was a keen partisan of the established church, an enemy of both Roman Catholics and dissenters, and an opponent of all toleration. In 1673 he opposed the Indulgence, supported the Test Act, and spoke against the proposal for giving relief to the dissenters. In June 1675 he signed the paper of advice drawn up by the bishops for the king, urging the rigid enforcement of the laws against the Roman Catholics, their complete banishment from the court, and the suppression of conventicles,[2] and a bill introduced by him imposing special taxes on recusants and subjecting Roman Catholic priests to imprisonment for life was only thrown out as too lenient because it secured offenders from the charge of treason. The same year he introduced a Test Oath by which all holding office or seats in either House of Parliament were to declare resistance to the royal power a crime, and promise to abstain from all attempts to alter the government of either church or state; but this extreme measure of retrograde toryism was successfully opposed by wiser statesmen. The king himself as a Roman Catholic secretly opposed and also doubted the wisdom and practicability of this "thorough" policy of repression. Danby therefore ordered a return from every diocese of the numbers of dissenters, both Romanist and Protestant, in order by a proof of their insignificance to remove the royal scruples.[3] In December 1676 he issued a proclamation for the suppression of coffee-houses because of the "defamation of His Majesty's Government" which took place in them, but this was soon withdrawn. In 1677, to secure Protestantism in case of a Roman Catholic succession, he introduced a bill by which ecclesiastical patronage and the care of the royal children were entrusted to the bishops; but this measure, like the other, was thrown out.

In foreign affairs Danby showed a stronger grasp of essentials. He desired to increase English trade, credit and power abroad. He was a determined enemy both to Roman influence and to French ascendancy. He terminated the war with Holland in 1674, and from that time maintained a friendly correspondence with William; while in 1677, after two years of tedious negotiations, he overcame all obstacles, and in spite of James's opposition, and without the knowledge of Louis XIV., effected the marriage between William and Mary that was the germ of the Revolution and the Act of Settlement. This national policy, however, could only be pursued, and the minister could only maintain himself in power, by acquiescence in the king's personal relations with the king of France settled by the disgraceful Treaty of Dover in 1670, which included Charles's acceptance of a pension, and bound him to a policy exactly opposite to Danby's, one furthering French and Roman ascendancy. Though not a number of the Cabal ministry, and in spite of his own denial, Danby must, it would seem, have known of these relations after becoming lord treasurer. In any case, in 1676, together with Lauderdale alone, he consented to a treaty between Charles and Louis according to which the foreign policy of both kings was to be conducted in union, and Charles received an annual subsidy of £100,000. In 1678 Charles, taking advantage of the growing hostility to France in the nation and parliament, raised his price, and Danby by his directions demanded through Ralph Montagu (afterwards duke of Montagu) six million livres a year (£300,000) for three years. Simultaneously Danby guided through parliament a bill for raising money for a war against France; a league was concluded with Holland, and troops were actually sent there. That Danby, in spite of these compromising transactions, remained in intention faithful to the national interests, appears clearly from the hostility with which he was still regarded by France. In 1676 he is described by Ruvigny to Louis XIV. as intensely antagonistic to France and French interests, and as doing his utmost to prevent the treaty of that year.[4] In 1678, on the rupture of relations between Charles and Louis, a splendid opportunity was afforded Louis of paying off old scores by disclosing Danby's participation in the king's demands for French gold.

Every circumstance now conspired to effect his fall. Although both abroad and at home his policy had generally embodied the wishes of the ascendant party in the state, Danby had never obtained the confidence of the nation. His character inspired no respect, and he could not reckon during the whole of his long career on the support of a single individual. Charles is said to have told him when he made him treasurer that he had only two friends in the world, himself and his own merit.[5] He was described to Pepys on his acquiring office as "one of a broken sort of people that have not much to lose and therefore will venture all," and as "a beggar having £1100 or £1200 a year, but owes above £10,000." His office brought him in £20,000 a year,[6] and he was known to be making large profits by the sale of offices; he maintained his power by corruption and by jealously excluding from office men of high standing and ability. Burnet described him as "the most hated minister that had ever been about the king." Worse men had been less detested, but Danby had none of the amiable virtues which often counteract the odium incurred by serious faults. Evelyn, who knew him intimately from his youth, describes him as "a man of excellent natural parts but nothing of generous or grateful." Shaftesbury, doubtless no friendly witness, speaks of him as an inveterate liar, "proud, ambitious, revengeful, false, prodigal and covetous to the highest degree,"[7] and Burnet supports his unfavourable judgment to a great extent. His corruption, his mean submission to a tyrant wife, his greed, his pale face and lean person, which had succeeded to the handsome features and comeliness of earlier days,[8] were the subject of ridicule, from the witty sneers of Halifax to the coarse jests of the anonymous writers of innumerable lampoons. By his championship of the national policy he had raised up formidable foes abroad without securing a single friend or supporter at home,[9] and his fidelity to the national interests was now, through a very mean and ignoble act of personal spite, to be the occasion of his downfall.

Danby in appointing a new secretary of state had preferred Sir W. Temple, a strong adherent of the anti-French policy, to Montagu. The latter, after a quarrel with the duchess of Cleveland, was dismissed from the king's employment. He immediately went over to the opposition, and in concert with Louis XIV. and Barillon, the French ambassador, by whom he was supplied with a large sum of money, arranged a plan for effecting Danby's ruin. He obtained a seat in parliament; and in spite of Danby's endeavour to seize his papers by an order in council, on the 20th of December 1678 caused two of the incriminating letters written by Danby to him to be read aloud to the House of Commons by the Speaker. The House immediately resolved on Danby's impeachment. At the foot of each of the letters appeared the king's postscripts, "I approve of this letter. C.R.," in his own handwriting; but they were not read by the Speaker, and were entirely neglected in the proceedings against the minister, thus emphasizing the constitutional principle that obedience to the orders of the sovereign can be no bar to an impeachment. He was charged with having encroached to himself royal powers by treating matters of peace and war without the knowledge of the council, with having promoted the raising of a standing army on pretence of a war with France, with having obstructed the assembling of parliament, with corruption and embezzlement in the treasury. Danby, while communicating the "Popish Plot" to the parliament, had from the first expressed his disbelief in the so-called revelations of Titus Oates, and his backwardness in the matter now furnished an additional charge of having "traitorously concealed the plot." He was voted guilty by the Commons; but while the Lords were disputing whether the accused peer should have bail, and whether the charges amounted to more than a misdemeanour, parliament was prorogued on the 30th of December and dissolved three weeks later. In March 1679 a new parliament hostile to Danby was returned, and he was forced to resign the treasurership; but he received a pardon from the king under the Great Seal, and a warrant for a marquessate.[10] His proposed advancement in rank was severely reflected upon in the Lords, Halifax declaring it in the king's presence the recompense of treason, "not to be borne"; and in the Commons his retirement from office by no means appeased his antagonists. The proceedings against him were revived, a committee of privileges deciding on the 19th of March 1679 that the dissolution of parliament was no abatement of an impeachment. A motion was passed for his committal by the Lords, who, as in Clarendon's case, voted his banishment. This was, however, rejected by the Commons, who now passed an act of attainder. Danby had removed to the country, but returned on the 21st of April to avoid the threatened passing by the Lords of the attainder, and was sent to the Tower. In his written defence he now pleaded the king's pardon, but on the 5th of May 1679 it was pronounced illegal by the Commons. This declaration was again repeated by the Commons in 1689 on the occasion of another attack made upon Danby in that year, and was finally embodied in the Act of Settlement in 1701.

The Commons now demanded judgment against the prisoner from the Lords. Further proceedings, however, were stopped by the dissolution of parliament again in July; but for nearly five years Danby remained a prisoner in the Tower. A number of pamphlets asserting the complicity of the fallen minister in the Popish Plot, and even accusing him of the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, were published in 1679 and 1680; they were answered by Danby's secretary, Edward Christian, in _Reflections_; and in May 1681 Danby was actually indicted by the Grand Jury of Middlesex for Godfrey's murder on the accusation of Edward FitzHarris. His petition to the king for a trial by his peers on this indictment was refused, and an attempt to prosecute the publishers of the false evidence in the king's bench was unsuccessful. For some time all appeals to the king, to parliament, and to the courts of justice were unavailing; but on the 12th of February 1684 his application to Chief Justice Jeffreys was at last successful, and he was set at liberty on finding bail to the amount of £40,000, to appear in the House of Lords in the following session. He visited the king at court the same day; but took no part in public affairs for the rest of the reign.

After James's accession Danby was discharged from his bail by the Lords on the 19th of May 1685, and the order declaring a dissolution of parliament to be no abatement of an impeachment was reversed. He again took his seat in the Lords as a leader of the moderate Tory party. Though a strong Tory and supporter of the hereditary principle, James's attacks on Protestantism soon drove him into opposition. He was visited by Dykvelt, William of Orange's agent; and in June 1687 he wrote to William assuring him of his support. On the 30th of June 1688 he was one of the seven leaders of the Revolution who signed the invitation to William. In November he occupied York in the prince's interest, returning to London to meet William on the 26th of December. He appears to have thought that William would not claim the crown,[11] and at first supported the theory that the throne having been vacated by James's flight the succession fell as of right to Mary; but as this met with little support, and was rejected both by William and by Mary herself, he voted against the regency and joined with Halifax and the Commons in declaring the prince and princess joint sovereigns.

Danby had rendered extremely important services to William's cause. On the 20th of April 1689 he was created marquess of Carmarthen and was made lord-lieutenant of the three ridings of Yorkshire. He was, however, still greatly disliked by the Whigs, and William, instead of reinstating him in the lord treasurership, only appointed him president of the council in February 1689. He did not conceal his vexation and disappointment, which were increased by the appointment of Halifax to the office of lord privy seal. The antagonism between the "black" and the "white marquess" (the latter being the nickname given to Carmarthen in allusion to his sickly appearance), which had been forgotten in their common hatred to the French policy and to Rome, revived in all its bitterness. He retired to the country and was seldom present at the council. In June and July new motions were made in parliament for his removal; but notwithstanding his great unpopularity, on the retirement of Halifax in 1690 he again acquired the chief power in the state, which he retained till 1695 by bribery in parliament and by the support of the king and queen. In 1690, during William's absence in Ireland, he was appointed Mary's chief adviser. In 1691, desiring to compromise Halifax, he discredited himself by the patronage of an informer named Fuller, soon proved an impostor. He was absent in 1692 when the Place Bill was thrown out. In 1693 he presided in great state as lord high steward at the trial of Lord Mohun; and on the 4th of May 1694 he was created duke of Leeds.[12] The same year he supported the Triennial Bill, but opposed the new treason bill as weakening the hands of the executive. Meanwhile fresh attacks had been made upon him. He was accused unjustly of Jacobitism. In April 1695 he was impeached once more by the Commons for having received a bribe of 5000 guineas to procure the new charter for the East India Company. In his defence, whilst denying that he had received the money and appealing to his past services, he did not attempt to conceal the fact that according to his experience bribery was an acknowledged and universal custom in public business, and that he himself had been instrumental in obtaining money for others. Meanwhile his servant, who was said to have been the intermediary between the duke and the Company in the transaction, fled the country; and no evidence being obtainable to convict, the proceedings fell to the ground. In May 1695 he had been ordered to discontinue his attendance at the council. He returned in October, but was not included among the lords justices appointed regents during William's absence in this year. In November he was created D.C.L. by the university of Oxford; in December he became a commissioner of trade, and in December 1696 governor of the Royal Fishery Company. He opposed the prosecution of Sir John Fenwick, but supported the action taken by members of both Houses in defence of William's rights in the same year. On the 23rd of April 1698 he entertained the tsar, Peter the Great, at Wimbledon. He had for some time lost the real direction of affairs, and in May 1699 he was compelled to retire from office and from the lord-lieutenancy of Yorkshire.

In Queen Anne's reign, in his old age, he is described as "a gentleman of admirable natural parts, great knowledge and experience in the affairs of his own country, but of no reputation with any party. He hath not been regarded, although he took his place at the council board."[13] The veteran statesman, however, by no means acquiesced in his enforced retirement, and continued to take an active part in politics. As a zealous churchman and Protestant he still possessed a following. In 1705 he supported a motion that the church was in danger, and in 1710 in Sacheverell's case spoke in defence of hereditary right.[14] In November of this year he obtained a renewal of his pension of £3500 a year from the post office which he was holding in 1694,[15] and in 1711 at the age of eighty was a competitor for the office of lord privy seal.[16] His long and eventful career, however, terminated soon afterwards by his death on the 26th of July 1712.

In 1710 the duke had published _Copies and Extracts of some letters written to and from the Earl of Danby ... in the years 1676, 1677 and 1678_, in defence of his conduct, and this was accompanied by _Memoirs relating to the Impeachment of Thomas, Earl of Danby_. The original letters, however, of Danby to Montagu have now been published (by the Historical MSS. Commission from the MSS. of J. Eliot Hodgkin), and are seen to have been considerably garbled by Danby for the purposes of publication, several passages being obliterated and others altered by his own hand.

See the lives, by Sidney Lee in the _Dict. Nat. Biography_ (1895); by T. P. Courtenay in _Lardner's Encyclopaedia_, "Eminent British Statesmen," vol. v. (1850); in Lodge's _Portraits_, vii.; and _Lives and Characters of ... Illustrious Persons_, by J. le Neve (1714). Further material for his biography exists in _Add. MSS._, 26040-95 (56 vols., containing his papers); in the _Duke of Leeds MSS. at Hornby Castle_, calendered in _Hist. MSS. Comm._ 11th Rep. pt. vii. pp. 1-43; _MSS. of Earl of Lindsay and J. Eliot Hodgkin_; and _Calendars of State Papers Dom_. See also _Add. MSS. 1894-1899_, Index and Calendar; _Hist. MSS. Comm._ 11th Rep. pt. ii., _House of Lords MSS.; Gen. Cat. British Museum_ for various pamphlets. (P. C. Y.)

_Later Dukes of Leeds._

The duke's only surviving son, Peregrine (1659-1729), who became 2nd duke of Leeds on his father's death, had been a member of the House of Lords as Baron Osborne since 1690, but he is better known as a naval officer; in this service he attained the rank of a vice-admiral. He died on the 25th of June 1729, when his son Peregrine Hyde (1691-1731) became 3rd duke. The 4th duke was the latter's son Thomas (1713-1789), who was succeeded by his son Francis.

Francis Osborne, 5th duke of Leeds (1751-1799), was born on the 29th of January 1751 and was educated at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was a member of parliament in 1774 and 1775; in 1776 he became a peer as Baron Osborne, and in 1777 lord chamberlain of the queen's household. In the House of Lords he was prominent as a determined foe of the prime minister, Lord North, who, after he had resigned his position as chamberlain, deprived him of the office of lord-lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire in 1780. He regained this, however, two years later. Early in 1783 the marquess of Carmarthen, as he was called, was selected as ambassador to France, but he did not take up this appointment, becoming instead secretary for foreign affairs under William Pitt in December of the same year. As secretary he was little more than a cipher, and he left office in April 1791. Subsequently he took some slight part in politics, and he died in London on the 31st of January 1799. His _Political Memoranda_ were edited by Oscar Browning for the Camden Society in 1884, and there are eight volumes of his official correspondence in the British Museum. His first wife was Amelia (1754-1784), daughter of Robert Darcy, 4th earl of Holdernesse, who became Baroness Conyers in her own right in 1778. Their elder son, George William Frederick (1775-1838), succeeded his father as duke of Leeds and his mother as Baron Conyers. These titles were, however, separated when his son, Francis Godolphin Darcy, the 7th Duke (1798-1859), died without sons in May 1859. The barony passed to his nephew, Sackville George Lane-Fox (1827-1888), falling into abeyance on his death in August 1888, and the dukedom passed to his cousin, George Godolphin Osborne (1802-1872), a son of Francis Godolphin Osborne (1777-1850), who was created Baron Godolphin in 1832. In 1895 George's grandson George Godolphin Osborne (b. 1862) became 10th duke of Leeds. The name of Godolphin, which is borne by many of the Osbornes, was introduced into the family through the marriage of the 4th duke with Mary (d. 1764), daughter and co-heiress of Francis Godolphin, 2nd earl of Godolphin, and grand-daughter of the great duke of Marlborough.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Chronicles of London Bridge_, by R. Thomson (1827), 313, quoting Stow.

[2] _Cal. of St Pap. Dom._ (1673-1675), p. 449.

[3] Letter of Morley, Bishop of Winchester, to Danby (June 10, 1676). (_Hist. MSS. Com._ xi. Rep. pt. vii. 14.)

[4] _Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland_, by Sir J. Dalrymple (1773), i. app. 104.

[5] _Letters to Sir Joseph Williamson_ (Camden Soc., 1874), i. 64.

[6] Halifax note-book in Devonshire House collection, quoted in Foxcroft's _Life of Halifax_, ii. 63, note.

[7] _Life of Shaftesbury_, by W. D. Christie (1871), ii. 312.

[8] Macky's _Memoirs_, 46; Pepys's _Diary_, viii. 143.

[9] See the description of his position at this time by Sir W. Temple in _Lives of Illustrious Persons_ (1714), 40.

[10] Add. MSS. 28094, f. 47.

[11] Boyer's _Annals_ (1722), 433.

[12] The title was taken, not from Leeds in Yorkshire, but from Leeds in Kent, 4½ m. from Maidstone, which in the 17th century was a more important place than its Yorkshire namesake.

[13] _Memoirs of Sir John Macky_ (Roxburghe Club, 1895), 46.

[14] Boyer's _Annals_, 219, 433.

[15] _Harleian MSS._ 2264, No. 239.

[16] Boyer's _Annals_, 515.

LEEDS, a city and municipal county and parliamentary borough in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 185 m. N.N.W. from London. Pop. (1891) 367,505; (1901) 428,968. It is served by the Great Northern railway (Central station), the Midland (Wellington station), North-Eastern and London & North-Western (New station), and Great Central and Lancashire & Yorkshire railways (Central station). It lies nearly in the centre of the Riding, in the valley of the river Aire.

The plan of the city is in no way regular, and the numerous handsome public buildings are distributed among several streets, principally on the north side of the narrow river. The town hall is a fine building in Grecian style, well placed in a square between Park Lane and Great George Street. It is of oblong shape, with a handsome façade over which rises a domed clock-tower. The principal apartment is the Victoria Hall, a richly ornamented chamber measuring 161 ft. in length, 72 in breadth and 75 in height. It was opened in 1858 by Queen Victoria. Immediately adjacent to it are the municipal offices (1884) in Italian style. The Royal Exchange (1872) in Boar Lane is an excellent Perpendicular building. In ecclesiastical architecture Leeds is not rich. The church of St John, however, is an interesting example of the junction of Gothic traditions with Renaissance tendencies in architecture. It dates from 1634 and contains some fine contemporary woodwork. St Peter's parish church occupies an ancient site, and preserves a very early cross from the former building. The church was rebuilt in 1840 at the instance of the vicar, Dr Walter Farquhar Hook (1798-1875), afterwards dean of Chichester, whose work here in a poor and ill-educated parish brought him fame. The church of All Souls (1880) commemorates him. It may be noted that the vicarage of Leeds has in modern times commonly formed a step to the episcopal bench. There are numerous other modern churches and chapels, of which the Unitarian chapel in Park Row is noteworthy. Leeds is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop, with a pro-cathedral dedicated to St Anne. There is a large free library in the municipal offices, and numerous branch libraries are maintained. The Leeds old library is a private institution founded in 1768 by Dr Priestley, who was then minister of the Unitarian chapel. It occupies a building in Commercial Street. The Philosophical and Literary Society, established in 1820, possesses a handsome building in Park Row, known as the Philosophical Hall, containing a laboratory, scientific library, lecture room, and museum, with excellent natural history, geological and archaeological collections. The City Art Gallery was completed in 1888, and contains a fine permanent collection, while exhibitions are also held. The University, incorporated in 1904, grew out of Yorkshire College, established in 1875 for the purpose of supplying instruction in the arts and sciences which are applicable to the manufactures, engineering, mining and agriculture of the county. In 1887 it became one of the constituent colleges of Victoria University, Manchester, and so remained until its separate incorporation. The existing building was completed in 1885, and contains a hall of residence, a central hall and library, and complete equipments in all departments of instruction. New departments have been opened in extension of the original scheme, such as the medical department (1894). A day training college is a branch of the institution. The Mechanics' Institute (1865) occupies a handsome Italian building in Cookridge Street near the town hall. It comprises a lecture room, library, reading and class rooms; and day and evening classes and an art school are maintained. The grammar school, occupying a Gothic building (1858) at Woodhouse Moor, dates its foundation from 1552. It is largely endowed, and possesses exhibitions tenable at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham universities. There is a large training college for the Wesleyan Methodist ministry in the suburb of Headingley. The Yorkshire Ladies' Council of Education has as its object the promotion of female education, and the instruction of girls and women of the artisan class in domestic economy, &c. The general infirmary in Great George Street is a Gothic building of brick with stone dressings with a highly ornamental exterior by Sir Gilbert Scott, of whose work this is by no means the only good example in Leeds. The city possesses further notable buildings in its market-halls, theatres, clubs, &c.

Among open spaces devoted by the corporation to public use that of Woodhouse Moor is the principal one within the city, but 3 m. N.E. of the centre is Roundhay Park, a tract of 700 acres, beautifully laid out and containing a picturesque lake. In 1889 there came into the possession of the corporation the ground, lying 3 m. up the river from the centre of the city, containing the celebrated ruins of Kirkstall Abbey. The remains of this great foundation, of the middle of the 12th century, are extensive, and so far typical of the usual arrangement of Cistercian houses as to be described under the heading Abbey. The ruins are carefully preserved, and form a remarkable contrast with the surrounding industrial district. Apart from Kirkstall there are few antiquarian remains in the locality. In Guildford Street, near the town hall, is the Red Hall, where Charles I. lay during his enforced journey under the charge of the army in 1647.

For manufacturing and commercial purposes the situation of Leeds is highly advantageous. It occupies a central position in the railway system of England. It has communication with Liverpool by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and with Goole and the Humber by the Aire and Calder Navigation. It is moreover the centre of an important coal and iron district. Though regarded as the capital of the great manufacturing district of the West Riding, Leeds is not in its centre but on its border. Eastward and northward the country is agricultural, but westward and southward lies a mass of manufacturing towns. The characteristic industry is the woollen manufacture. The industry is carried on in a great number of neighbouring townships, but the cloth is commonly finished or dressed in the city itself, this procedure differing from that of the wool manufacturers in Gloucestershire and the west of England, who carry out the entire process in one factory. Formerly much of the business between manufacturer and merchant was transacted in the cloth halls, which formed a kind of market, but merchants now order goods directly from the manufacturers. Artificial silk is important among the textile products. Subsidiary to these leading industries is the production of machine-made clothing, hats and caps. The leather trade of Leeds is the largest in England, though no sole leather is tanned. The supply comes chiefly from British India. Boots and shoes are extensively manufactured. The iron trade in its different branches rivals the woollen trade in wealth, including the casting of metal, and the manufacture of steam engines, steam wagons, steam ploughs, machinery, tools, nails, &c. Leeds was formerly famed for the production of artistic pottery, and specimens of old Leeds ware are highly prized. The industry lapsed about the end of the 18th century, but has been revived in modern times. Minor and less specialized industries are numerous.

The parliamentary borough is divided into five divisions (North, Central, South, East and West), each returning one member. The county borough was created in 1888. Leeds was raised to the rank of a city in 1893. The municipal borough is under a lord mayor (the title was conferred in 1897 on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee), 16 aldermen and 48 councillors. Area, 21,572 acres.

Leeds (Loidis, Ledes) is mentioned by Bede as the district where the Northumbrian kings had a royal vill in 627, and where Oswy, king of Northumbria, defeated Penda, king of the Mercians, in 665. Before the Norman Conquest seven thanes held it of Edward the Confessor as seven manors, but William the Conqueror granted the whole to Ilbert de Lacy, and at the time of the Domesday Survey it was held of him by Ralph Paganel, who is said to have raised Leeds castle, possibly on the site of an earlier fortification. In 1207 Maurice Paganel constituted the inhabitants of Leeds free burgesses, granting them the same liberties as Robert de Lacy had granted to Pontefract, including the right of selling burgher land to whom they pleased except to religious houses, and freedom from toll. He also appointed as the chief officer of the town a reeve who was to be chosen by the lord of the manor, the burgesses being "more eligible if only they would pay as much as others for the office." The town was incorporated by Charles I. in 1626 under the title of an alderman, 7 principal burgesses and 24 assistants. A second charter granted by Charles II. in 1661 appointed a mayor, 12 aldermen and 24 assistants, and is still the governing charter of the borough. The woollen manufacture is said to have been introduced into Leeds in the 14th century, and owing to the facilities for trade afforded by its position on the river Aire soon became an important industry. Camden, writing about 1590, says, "Leeds is rendered wealthy by its woollen manufactures," and the incorporation charter of 1626 recites that "the inhabitants have for a long time exercised the art of making cloth." The cloth was then, as it is now, made in the neighbouring villages and only finished and sold in the town. A successful attempt was made in the beginning of the 19th century by Mr William Hirst to introduce goods of a superior quality which were made and finished in his own factory. Other manufacturers followed his example, but their factories are now only used for the finishing process. The worsted trade which was formerly carried on to some extent has now almost disappeared. The spinning of flax by machinery was introduced early in the 19th century by Mr John Marshall, a Holbeck manufacturer, who was one of the first to apply Sir Richard Arkwright's water frame, invented for cotton manufacture, to the spinning of linen yarn. The burgesses were represented in parliament by one member during the Commonwealth, but not again until by the Reform Act of 1832 they were allowed to return two members. In 1867 they were granted an additional member.

See James Wardell, _The Municipal History of the Borough of Leeds_ (1846); J. D. Whitaker, _Loidis and Elmete: or an Attempt to illustrate the Districts described in these words by Bede_ (1816); D. H. Atkinson, _Ralph Thoresby, the Topographer; his Town (Leeds) and Times_ (1885-1887).

LEEK, a market town in the Leek parliamentary division of Staffordshire, England, 157 m. N.W. from London, on the Churnet Valley branch of the North Staffordshire railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 15,484. The town lies high in a picturesque situation near the head of the river Churnet. The church of St Edward the Confessor is mainly Decorated, and stands in a churchyard commanding a beautiful view from an elevation of some 640 ft. There is here a curious pillar of Danish work ornately carved. An institute contains a free library, lecture hall, art gallery and school of art. A grammar school was established in 1723. In the vicinity are ruins of the Cistercian abbey De la Croix, or Dieulacresse, erected in 1214 by Ralph de Blundevill, earl of Chester. The slight remains are principally embodied in a farm-house. The silk manufacture includes sewing silk, braids, silk buttons, &c. Cloud Hill, rising to 1190 ft. W. of the town, causes a curious phenomenon in the height of summer, the sun sinking behind one flank to reappear beyond the other, and thus appearing to set twice.

Leek (Lee, Leike, Leeke) formed part of the great estates of Ælfgar, earl of Mercia; it escheated to William the Conqueror who held it at the time of the Domesday Survey. Later it passed to the earls Palatine of Chester, remaining in their hands until Ralph de Blundevill, earl of Chester, gave it to the abbey of Dieulacresse, which continued to hold it until its dissolution. The same earl in a charter which he gave to the town (_temp._ John) calls it a borough and grants to his free burgesses various privileges, including freedom from toll throughout Cheshire. These privileges were confirmed by Richard, abbot of Dieulacresse, but the town received no royal charter and failed to establish its burghal position. The Wednesday market which is still held dates from a grant of John to the earl of Chester: in the 17th century it was very considerable. A fair, also granted by John, beginning on the third day before the Translation of Edward the Confessor is still held. The silk manufacture which can be traced to the latter part of the 17th century is thought to have been aided by the settlement in Leek of some Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In the 17th and 18th centuries the town was famous for its ale. Prince Charles Edward passed through Leek on his march to Derby (1745) and again on his return journey to Scotland. A story in connexion with the Civil Wars is told to explain the expression "Now thus" occurring on the tombstone of a citizen, who by this meaningless answer to all questions sought escape on the plea of insanity.

LEEK, the _Allium Porrum_ of botanists, a plant now considered as a mere variety of _Allium Ampeloprasum_, wild leek, produced by cultivation. The plant is probably of Eastern origin, since it was commonly cultivated in Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs, and is so to the present day; while as regards its first appearance in England both Tusser and Gerard--two of the earliest writers on this class of subjects, the former of whom flourished in the early part and the latter in the later part of the 16th century--speak of it as being then commonly cultivated and used.[1] The Romans, it would appear, made great use of the leek for savouring their dishes, as seems proved by the number of recipes for its use referred to by Celsius. Hence it is more than probable that it was brought to England by the Romans. Italy was celebrated for leeks in the time of Pliny (_H.N._ xix. c. 6), according to whom they were brought into great esteem through the emperor Nero, derisively surnamed "Porrophagus," who used to eat them for several days in every month to clear his voice. The leek is very generally cultivated in Great Britain as an esculent, but more especially in Scotland and in Wales, being esteemed as an excellent and wholesome vegetable, with properties very similar to those of the onion, but of a milder character. In America it is not much cultivated except by market gardeners in the neighbourhood of large cities. The whole plant, with the exception of the fibrous roots, is used in soups and stews. The sheathing stalks of the leaves lap over each other, and form a thickish stem-like base, which is blanched, and is the part chiefly preferred. These blanched stems are much employed in French cookery. They form an important ingredient in Scotch winter broth, and particularly in the national dish _cock-a-leekie_, and are also largely used boiled, and served with toasted bread and white sauce, as in the case of asparagus. Leeks are sown in the spring, earlier or later according to the soil and the season, and are planted out for the summer, being dropped into holes made with a stout dibble and left unfilled in order to allow the stems space to swell. When they are thus planted deeply the holes gradually fill up, and the base of the stem becomes blanched and prepared for use, a process aided by drawing up the earth round about the stems as they elongate. The leek is one of the most useful vegetables the cottager can grow, as it will supply him with a large amount of produce during the winter and spring. It is extremely hardy, and presents no difficulty in its cultivation, the chief point, as with all succulent esculents, being that it should be grown quickly upon well-enriched soil. The plant is of biennial duration, flowering the second year, and perishing after perfecting its seeds. The leek is the national symbol or badge of the Welsh, who wear it in their hats on St David's Day. The origin of this custom has received various explanations, all of which are more or less speculative.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Tusser, in his verse for the month of March, writes:--

"Now leckes are in season, for pottage ful good, And spareth the milck cow, and purgeth the blood, These hauving with peason, for pottage in Lent, Thou spareth both otemel and bread to be spent."

LEER, a town and river port in the Prussian province of Hanover, lying in a fertile plain on the right bank of the Leda near its confluence with the Ems, and at the junction of railways to Bremen, Emden and Münster. Pop. (1905) 12,347. The streets are broad, well paved, and adorned with many elegant buildings, among which are Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist churches, and a new town hall with a tower 165 ft. high. Among its educational establishments are a classical school and a school of navigation. Linen and woollen fabrics, hosiery, paper, cigars, soap, vinegar and earthenware are manufactured, and there are iron-foundries, distilleries, tanneries and shipbuilding yards. Many markets for horses and cattle are held. The transit trade from the regions traversed by the Westphalian and Oldenburg railways is considerable. The principal exports are cattle, horses, cheese, butter, honey, wax, flour, paper, hardware and Westphalian coal. Leer is one of the principal ports for steamboat communication with the North Sea watering-places of Borkum and Norderney. Leer is a very old place, although it only obtained municipal privileges in 1823. Near the town is the Plitenberg, formerly a heathen place of sacrifice.

LEEUWARDEN, the capital of the province of Friesland, Holland, on the canal between Harlingen and Groningen, 33 m. by rail W. of Groningen. Pop (1901) 32,203. It is one of the most prosperous towns in the country. To the name of the Frisian Hague, it is entitled as well by similarity of history as by similarity of appearance. As the Hague grew up round the court of the counts of Holland, so Leeuwarden round the court of the Frisian stadtholders; and, like the Hague, it is an exceptionally clean and attractive town, with parks, pleasure grounds, and drives. The old gates have been somewhat ruthlessly cleared away, and the site of the town walls on the north and west competes with the park called the Prince's Garden as a public pleasure ground. The Prince's Garden was originally laid out by William Frederick of Nassau in 1648, and was presented to the town by King William I. in 1819. The royal palace, which was the seat of the Frisian court from 1603 to 1747, is now the residence of the royal commissioner for Friesland. It was restored in 1816 and contains a portrait gallery of the Frisian stadtholders. The fine mansion called the Kanselary was begun in 1502 as a residence for the chancellor of George of Saxony (1539), governor of Friesland, but was only completed in 1571 and served as a court house until 1811. It was restored at the end of the 19th century to contain the important provincial library and national archives. Other noteworthy buildings are the picturesque weigh-house (1595), the town hall (1715), the provincial courts (1850), and the great church of St Jacob, once the church of the Jacobins, and the largest monastic church in the Netherlands. The splendid tombs of the Frisian stadtholders buried here (Louis of Nassau, Anne of Orange, and others) were destroyed in the revolution 1795. The unfinished tower of Oldehove dates from 1529-1532. The museum of the Frisian Society is of modern foundation and contains a collection of provincial antiquities, including two rooms from Hindeloopen, an ancient village of Friesland, some 16th- and 17th-century portraits, some Frisian works in silver of the 17th and 18th centuries, and a collection of porcelain and faience.

Leeuwarden is the centre of a flourishing trade, being easily accessible from all parts of the province by road, rail and canal. The chief business is in stock of every kind, dairy and agricultural produce and fresh-water fish, a large quantity of which is exported to France. The industries include boat-building and timber yards, iron-foundries, copper and lead works, furniture, organ, tobacco and other factories, and the manufacture of gold and silver wares. The town is first mentioned in documents of the 13th century.

LEEUWENHOEK, or LEUWENHOEK, ANTHONY VAN (1632-1723), Dutch microscopist, was born at Delft on the 24th of October 1632. For a short time he was in a merchant's office in Amsterdam, but early devoted himself to the manufacture of microscopes and to the study of the minute structure of organized bodies by their aid. He appears soon to have found that single lenses of very short focus were preferable to the compound microscopes then in use; and it is clear from the discoveries he made with these that they must have been of very excellent quality. His discoveries were for the most part made public in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of the Royal Society, to the notice of which body he was introduced by R. de Graaf in 1673, and of which he was elected a fellow in 1680. He was chosen a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1697. He died at his native place on the 26th of August 1723. Though his researches were not conducted on any definite scientific plan, his powers of careful observation enabled him to make many interesting discoveries in the minute anatomy of man, the higher animals and insects. He confirmed and extended M. Malpighi's demonstration of the blood capillaries in 1668, and six years later he gave the first accurate description of the red blood corpuscles, which he found to be circular in man but oval in frogs and fishes. In 1677 he described and illustrated the spermatozoa in dogs and other animals, though in this discovery Stephen Hamm had anticipated him by a few months; and he investigated the structure of the teeth, crystalline lens, muscle, &c. In 1680 he noticed that yeast consists of minute globular particles, and he described the different structure of the stem in monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants.

His researches in the life-history of various of the lower forms of animal life were in opposition to the doctrine that they could be "produced spontaneously, or bred from corruption." Thus he showed that the weevils of granaries, in his time commonly supposed to be bred _from_ wheat, as well as _in_ it, are grubs hatched from eggs deposited by winged insects. His chapter on the flea, in which he not only describes its structure, but traces out the whole history of its metamorphoses from its first emergence from the egg, is full of interest--not so much for the exactness of his observations, as for its incidental revelation of the extraordinary ignorance then prevalent in regard to the origin and propagation of "this minute and despised creature," which some asserted to be produced from sand, others from dust, others from the dung of pigeons, and others from urine, but which he showed to be "endowed with as great perfection in its kind as any large animal," and proved to breed in the regular way of winged insects. He even noted the fact that the pupa of the flea is sometimes attacked and fed upon by a mite--an observation which suggested the well known lines of Swift. His attention having been drawn to the blighting of the young shoots of fruit-trees, which was commonly attributed to the ants found upon them, he was the first to find the _Aphides_ that really do the mischief; and, upon searching into the history of their generation, he observed the young within the bodies of their parents. He carefully studied also the history of the ant and was the first to show that what had been commonly reputed to be "ants' eggs" are really their pupae, containing the perfect insect nearly ready for emersion, whilst the true eggs are far smaller, and give origin to "maggots" or larvae. Of the sea-mussel, again, and other shell-fish, he argued (in reply to a then recent defence of Aristotle's doctrine by F. Buonanni, a learned Jesuit of Rome) that they are not generated out of the mud or sand found on the seashore or the beds of rivers at low water, but from spawn, by the regular course of generation; and he maintained the same to be true of the fresh-water mussel (_Unio_), whose ova he examined so carefully that he saw in them the rotation of the embryo, a phenomenon supposed to have been first discovered long afterwards. In the same spirit he investigated the generation of eels, which were at that time supposed, not only by the ignorant vulgar, but by "respectable and learned men," to be produced from dew without the ordinary process of generation. Not only was he the first discoverer of the rotifers, but he showed "how wonderfully nature has provided for the preservation of their species," by their tolerance of the drying-up of the water they inhabit, and the resistance afforded to the evaporation of the fluids of their bodies by the impermeability of the casing in which they then become enclosed. "We can now easily conceive," he says, "that in all rain-water which is collected from gutters in cisterns, and in all waters exposed to the air, animalcules may be found; for they may be carried thither by the particles of dust blown about by the winds."

Leeuwenhoek's contributions to the _Philosophical Transactions_ amounted to one hundred and twelve; he also published twenty-six papers in the _Memoirs of the Paris Academy of Sciences_. Two collections of his works appeared during his life, one in Dutch (Leiden and Delft, 1685-1718), and the other in Latin (_Opera omnia s. Arcana naturae ope exactissimorum microscopiorum selecta_, Leiden, 1715-1722); and a selection from them was translated by S. Hoole and published in English (London, 1781-1798).

LEEWARD ISLANDS, a group in the West Indies. They derive their name from being less exposed to the prevailing N.E. trade wind than the adjacent Windward Islands. They are the most northerly of the Lesser Antilles, and form a curved chain stretching S.W. from Puerto Rico to meet St Lucia, the most northerly of the Windward Islands. They consist of the Virgin Islands, with St Kitts, Antigua, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique and their various dependencies. The Virgin Islands are owned by Great Britain and Denmark, Holland having St Eustatius, with Saba, and part of St Martin. France possesses Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Bartholomew and the remainder of St Martin. The rest of the islands are British, and (with the exception of Sombrero, a small island used only as a lighthouse-station) form, under one governor, a colony divided into five presidencies, namely: Antigua (with Barbuda and Redonda), St Kitts (with Nevis and Anguilla), Dominica, Montserrat and the Virgin Islands. Total pop. (1901) 127,536. There is one federal executive council nominated by the crown, and one federal legislative council--ten nominated and ten elected members. Of the latter, four are chosen by the unofficial members of the local legislative council of Antigua, two by those of Dominica, and four by the non-official members of the local legislative council of St Kitts-Nevis. The federal legislative council meets once annually, usually at St John, Antigua.

LE FANU, JOSEPH SHERIDAN (1814-1873), Irish journalist and author, was born of an old Huguenot family at Dublin on the 28th of August 1814. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1833. At an early age he had given proof of literary talent, and in 1837 he joined the staff of the _Dublin University Magazine_, of which he became later editor and proprietor. In 1837 he produced the Irish ballad _Phaudhrig Croohore_, which was shortly afterwards followed by a second, _Shamus O'Brien_, successfully recited in the United States by Samuel Lover. In 1839 he became proprietor of the _Warder_, a Dublin newspaper, and, after purchasing the _Evening Packet_ and a large interest in the _Dublin Evening Mail_, he combined the three papers under the title the _Evening Mail_, a weekly reprint from which was issued as the _Warder_. After the death of his wife in 1858 he lived in retirement, and his best work was produced at this period of his life. He wrote some clever novels, of a sensational order, in which his vigorous imagination and his Irish love of the supernatural have full play. He died in Dublin on the 7th of February 1873. His best-known novels are _The House by the Churchyard_ (1863) and _Uncle Silas, a Tale of Bartram Haugh_ (1864). _The Purcell Papers_, Irish stories dating from his college days, were edited with a memoir of the author by A. P. Graves in 1880.

LEFEBVRE, PIERRE FRANÇOIS JOSEPH, duke of Danzig (1755-1820), marshal of France, was born at Rouffach in Alsace on the 20th of October 1755. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was a sergeant in the Gardes françaises, and with many of his comrades of this regiment took the popular side. He distinguished himself by bravery and humanity in many of the street fights in Paris, and becoming an officer and again distinguishing himself--this time against foreign invaders--he was made a general of division in 1794. He took part in the Revolutionary Wars from Fleurus to Stokach, always resolute, strictly obedient and calm. At Stokach (1799) he received a severe wound and had to return to France, where he assisted Napoleon during the _coup d'état_ of 18 Brumaire. He was one of the first generals of division to be made marshal at the beginning of the First Empire. He commanded the guard infantry at Jena, conducted the siege of Danzig 1806-1807 (from which town he received his title in 1808), commanded a corps in the emperor's campaign of 1808-1809 in Spain, and in 1809 was given the difficult task of commanding the Bavarian contingent, which he led in the containing engagements of Abensberg and Rohr and at the battle of Eckmühl. He commanded the Imperial Guard in Russia, 1812, fought through the last campaign of the Empire, and won fresh glory at Montmirail, Areis-sur-Aube and Champaubert. He was made a peer of France by Louis XVIII. but joined Napoleon during the Hundred Days, and was only amnestied and permitted to resume his seat in the upper chamber in 1819. He died at Paris on the 14th of September 1820. Marshal Lefebvre was a simple soldier, whose qualifications for high rank, great as they were, came from experience and not from native genius. He was incapable of exercising a supreme command, even of leading an important detachment, but he was absolutely trustworthy as a subordinate, as brave as he was experienced, and intensely loyal to his chief. He maintained to the end of his life a rustic simplicity of speech and demeanour. Of his wife (formerly a _blanchisseuse_ to the Gardes Françaises) many stories have been told, but in so far as they are to her discredit they seem to be false, she being, like the marshal, a plain "child of the people."