The Nuttall encyclopædia : being a concise and comprehensive dictionary of…
1882. London has a University (an examining body), 700 colleges and
3839 words | Chapter 33
endowed schools, among which Westminster, Christ's Hospital, and the
Charterhouse are famous, many medical hospitals, and schools and
charitable institutions of all kinds. London is the centre of the English
literary and artistic world, and of scientific interest and research;
here are the largest publishing houses, the chief libraries and
art-galleries, and museums; the British Museum and Library, the National
Galleries, &c., and magnificent botanical and zoological gardens. London
is also a grand emporium of commerce, and the banking centre of the
world. It has nine principal docks; its shipping trade is unrivalled,
55,000 vessels enter and clear annually; it pays more than half the
custom duties of the kingdom, and handles more than a quarter of the
total exports; its warehouse trade is second only to that of Manchester;
it manufactures everything, chiefly watches, jewellery, leather goods,
cycles, pianos, and glass. The control of traffic, the lighting, and
water-supply of so large a city are causing yearly more serious problems.
LONDON (30), the cap. of Middlesex county, Ontario, near the S. end
of the peninsula, in the middle of a fertile district, and a rising
place.
LONDONDERRY (152), maritime county in Ulster, washed by Lough Foyle
and the Atlantic, surrounded by Donegal in the W., Tyrone in the S., and
Antrim in the W., and watered by the Foyle, Roe, and Bann Rivers,
somewhat hilly towards the S., is largely under pasture; the cultivated
parts grow oats, potatoes, and flax; granted to the Corporation and
Guilds of London in 1609, a large part of the land is still owned by
them. The county town, LONDONDERRY (33), manufactures linen shirts,
whisky, and iron goods, and does a considerable shipping trade. Its siege
by the troops of James II. in 1689 is memorable.
LONG, GEORGE, a distinguished classical scholar, born in Lancashire;
became professor of Greek in London University; edited several useful
works, among others the "Penny Cyclopædia," on which he spent 11 years of
his life (1800-1870).
LONG ISLAND (774), a long narrow island, 115 m. long by from 12 to
24 broad, belonging to New York State, off the shores of New York and
Connecticut, from which it is separated by the East River and Long Island
Sound. It is low, much of it forest and sandy waste land, with great
lagoons in the S. The chief industry is market-gardening; fisheries and
oyster-beds are valuable. Principal towns, Brooklyn, Long Island City,
and Flushing.
LONG PARLIAMENT, the celebrated English Parliament which assembled
3rd November 1640, and was dissolved by Cromwell 20th April 1653, and
which was afterwards restored, and did not finally decease till 16th
March 1660.
LONG TOM COFFIN, a character in Cooper's novel "The Pilot," and of
wider celebrity than any of the sailor class.
LONGCHAMP, a racecourse on the W. side of the Bois du Boulogne,
Paris.
LONGCHAMP, WILLIAM DE, a low-born Norman favourite of Richard I.,
made by him bishop of Ely; became Justiciar of England 1190, and Papal
Legate 1191; clever, energetic, just, and faithful, he yet incurred
dislike by his ambition and arrogance, and was banished to Normandy; his
energy in gathering the money for Richard's ransom restored him to
favour, and he became Chancellor; _d_. 1197.
LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH, American poet, born at Portland, Maine;
after studying on the Continent, became professor of Modern Languages in
Harvard University; wrote "Hyperion," a romance in prose, and a
succession of poems as well as lyrics, among the former "Evangeline,"
"The Golden Legend," "Hiawatha," and "Miles Standish" (1807-1882).
LONGINUS, DIONYSIUS CASSIUS, a learned Greek philosopher,
rhetorician, and critic, and eminent in all three departments, being in
philosophy a Platonist of pure blood; his fame as a teacher reached the
ears of Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra, and being invited to her court he
became her political adviser as well as the educator of her children, but
on the surrender of the place he was beheaded by order of the Emperor
Aurelian as a traitor; he wrote several works, but the only one that
survives to some extent is his "Treatise on the Sublime," translated by
Boileau (210-273).
LONGMANS, famous and oldest publishing house in London; founded by
Thomas Longman of Bristol in 1726, and now in the hands of the fifth
generation; has been associated with the production of Johnson's
"Dictionary," Lindley Murray's "Grammar," the works of Wordsworth,
Southey, Coleridge, and Scott, and Macaulay's "Lays," "Essays," and
"History"; it absorbed the firm of Parker in 1863, and of Rivington in
1890.
LÖNNROT, ELIAS, a great Finnish scholar, born in Nyland; was
professor at Helsingfors; was editor of ancient Finnish compositions, and
author of a Finnish-Swedish Dictionary (1802-1884).
LOPE DE VEGA. See VEGA.
LORD OF THE ISLES, assumed title of Donald, a chief of Islay, who in
1346 reduced the whole of the Western Isles under his authority, and
borne by his successors, and, as some allege, his ancestors as well.
LORELEI or LURLEI, a famous steep rock, 430 ft. high, on the
Rhine, near St. Goar; dangerous to boatmen, on which it was fabled a
siren sat combing her hair and singing to lure them to ruin; the subject
of an exquisite Volkslied by Heine.
LORETTO, a city in Italy, 14 m. SE. of Ancona; celebrated as the
site of the SANTA CASA (q. v.), and for the numerous pilgrims
that annually resort to the holy shrine.
L'ORIENT (41), a seaport in Morbihan; contains the principal
shipbuilding yard in France; was founded by the French East India Company
in 1664 in connection with their trade in the East.
LORNE, MARQUIS OF, eldest son of the Duke of Argyll; entered
Parliament in 1868; married Princess Louise, fourth daughter of Queen
Victoria, in 1871; became Governor-General of Canada in 1878, member of
Parliament for South Manchester in 1895, and is Governor of Windsor
Castle; _b_. 1845.
LORRAINE, a district in France, between Metz and the Vosges;
belonged originally to Germany, became French in 1766, and was restored
to Germany in 1871.
LORRAINE, CLAUDE. See CLAUDE LORRAINE.
LOS ANGELES (11), a city in South California, 345 m. SE. of San
Francisco, and founded in 1781; is the centre of a great orange-growing
district, and a health resort.
LOST TRIBES, the ten tribes of the race of Israel whom the Assyrians
carried off into captivity (see 2 Kings xvii. 6), and of whom all trace
has been lost, and only in recent years guessed at.
LOTOPHAGI. See LOTUS EATERS.
LOTUS EATERS or LOTOPHAGI, an ancient people inhabiting a
district of Cyrenaica, on the NE. coast of Africa, who lived on the fruit
of the lotus-tree, from which they made wine. Ulysses and his companions
in their wanderings landed on their shores, but the soothing influence of
the lotus fruit so overpowered them with languor, that they felt no
inclination to leave, or any more a desire to pursue the journey
homewards. See Tennyson's poem "The Lotus-eaters."
LOTZE, RUDOLF HERMANN, German philosopher, born at Bautzen, in
Saxony; professor successively at Göttingen and Berlin; believed in
metaphysics as well as physics, and was versant in both; "Microcosmus" is
his principal work, published in 1864; he founded the system of
"teleological idealism," based on ethical considerations; he repudiated
agnosticism, and had as little patience with a mere mechanical view of
the universe as Carlyle (1817-1881).
LOUDON, JOHN CLAUDIUS, botanist and horticulturist, born at
Cambuslang, Lanarkshire; wrote largely on plants and their cultivation,
and an "Arboretum" on trees and shrubs (1783-1843).
LOUIS I., LE DÉBONNAIRE (i. e. the Gentle), was king of France
from 814 to 840 in succession to his father Charlemagne, but was too meek
and lowly to rule, and fitter for a monk than a king; suffered himself to
be taken advantage of by his nobles and the clergy; was dethroned by his
sons, and compelled to retire into a cloister, from which he was twice
over brought forth to stay the ravages of their enemies; he divided his
kingdom among them during his lifetime, and bequeathed it to them to
guard over it when he was gone, to its dismemberment.
LOUIS VI., LE GROS (i. e. the Fat), was son of Philip I.; was
associated in the royal power with his father from 1098 to 1108, and sole
king from 1108 till 1137; in his struggle against the great vassals he,
by the help of the clergy and the bourgeois, centralised the government
in the crown; had trouble with Henry I. of England as Lord Superior of
Normandy, and was defeated by him in battle in 1119; under his reign the
burgesses achieved their independence, and though he did nothing to
initiate the movement he knew how to profit from the achievement in the
interest of the monarchy.
LOUIS VII., THE YOUNG, son of the preceding, married Eleanor of
Aquitaine; took part in the second crusade; on his return divorced his
queen for her profligacy in his absence, who married Henry II. of
England, and brought with her as dowry to Henry the richest provinces of
France, which gave rise to the Hundred Years' War (1120-1180).
LOUIS VIII., THE LION, son of Philip Augustus; offered by the barons
of England the crown of England, he was crowned at London in 1216, but
defeated at Lincoln next year, he was obliged to recross the Channel;
became king of France in 1223; he took several towns from the English,
and conducted a crusade against the Albigenses (1187-1226).
LOUIS IX., SAINT LOUIS, son of the preceding; was a minor at the
death of his father, and the country was governed by his mother, Blanche
of Castile, with a strong hand; on attaining his majority he found
himself engaged with the English under Henry, who had been called on to
assist certain of the great barons in revolt, but in 1242 he defeated
them in three engagements; under a vow he made during a dangerous illness
he became a crusader, and in 1249 landed in Egypt with 40,000 men, but in
an engagement was taken prisoner by the Saracens; released in 1250 on
payment of a large ransom, though he did not return home for two years
after, till on hearing of the death of his mother, who had been regent
during his absence; on his return he applied himself to the affairs of
his kingdom and the establishment of the royal power, but undertaking a
second crusade in 1270, he got as far as Tunis, where a plague broke out
in the camp, and he became one of the victims, and one of his sons before
him; he was an eminently good and pious man, and was canonised by
Boniface VIII. in 1297 (1215-1270).
LOUIS XI., son of Charles VII., born at Bourges, of a cruel and
treacherous nature, took part in two insurrections against his father, by
whom he had been pardoned after the first and from whom he had to flee
after the second for refuge to Burgundy, where he remained till his
father's death in 1461; he signalised the commencement of his reign by
severe measures against the great vassals, which provoked a revolt,
headed by the Dukes of Burgundy and Bretagne, which he succeeded in
subduing more by his crafty policy than force of arms; involved
afterwards in a war with Charles the Bold of Burgundy and soliciting an
interview, he was discovered by Charles to have been sowing treason among
his subjects, taken prisoner, and only released on a solemn protestation
of innocence; notwithstanding the sinister and often cruel character of
his policy, he did much to develop the resources of the country and
advance the cause of good government by the patronage of learning; the
crimes he had committed weighed heavily on his mind towards the end of
his days, and he died in great fear of death and the judgment
(1423-1483).
LOUIS XIII., the son of Henry IV.; being only nine years old at the
death of his father, the government was conducted by Marie de' Medicis,
his mother, and at his accession the country was a prey to civil
dissensions, which increased on the young king's marriage with a Spanish
princess; the Huguenots rose in arms, but a peace was concluded in 1623;
it was now Richelieu came to the front and assumed the reins with his
threefold policy of taming the nobles, checkmating the Huguenots, and
humbling the house of Austria; Rochelle, the head-quarters of the
Huguenots, revolted, the English assisting them, but by the strategy
adopted the city was taken and the English driven to sea; henceforth the
king was nobody and the cardinal was king; the cardinal died in 1642 and
the king the year after, leaving two sons, Louis, who succeeded him, and
Philip, Duke of Orleans and the first of his line (1601-1644).
LOUIS XIV., the "Grand Monarque," son of the preceding, was only
nine when his father died, and the government was in the hands of his
mother, Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin, her minister; under the
regency the glory of France was maintained in the field, but her internal
peace was disturbed by the insubordination of the parlement and the
troubles of the Fronde; by a compact on the part of Mazarin with Spain
before he died Louis was married to the Infanta Maria Theresa in 1659,
and in 1660 he announced his intention to rule the kingdom alone, which
he did for 54 years with a decision and energy no one gave him credit
for, in fulfilment of his famous protestation _L'état, c'est moi_,
choosing Colbert to control finance, Louvois to reorganise the army, and
Vauban to fortify the frontier towns; he sought to be as absolute in his
foreign relations as in his internal administration, and hence the long
succession of wars which, while they brought glory to France, ended in
exhausting her; at home he suffered no one in religious matters to think
otherwise than himself; he revoked the Edict of Nantes, sanctioned the
dragonnades in the Cévennes, and to extirpate heresy encouraged every
form of cruelty; yet when we look at the men who adorned it, the reign of
Louis XIV. was one of the most illustrious in letters and the arts in the
history of France: Corneille, Racine, and Molière eminent in the drama,
La Fontaine and Boileau in poetry, Bossuet in oratory, Bruyère and
Rochefoucauld in morals, Pascal in philosophy, Saint-Simon and Retz in
history, and Poussin, Lorraine, Lebrun, Perault, &c., in art (1636-1715).
LOUIS XV., _Bien-Aimé_ (i. e. Well-Beloved), great-grandson of the
preceding, and only five at his death, the country during his minority
being under the regency of Philip, Duke of Orleans; the regency was
rendered disastrous by the failure of the Mississippi Scheme of Law and a
war with Spain, caused by the rejection of a Spanish princess for Louis,
and by his marriage to Maria Lesczynski, the daughter of Stanislas of
Poland; Louis was crowned king in 1722 and declared of age the following
year; in 1726 Cardinal Fleury, who had been his tutor, became his
minister, and under him occurred the war of the succession to Poland,
concluded by the treaty of Vienna, and the war of the Austrian
succession, concluded by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle; with the death of
his minister Louis gave way to his licentious propensities, and in all
matters of state allowed himself to be swayed by unworthy favourites who
pandered to his lusts, the most conspicuous among them being Madame de
Pompadour and Dame de Barry, her successor in crime; under them, and the
corrupt court they presided over, the country went step by step to ruin,
and she was powerless to withstand the military ascendency of England,
which deprived her of all her colonies both in the East and in the West;
though Choiseul, his last "substantial" minister, tried hard by a family
compact of the Bourbons to collect her scattered strength; the situation
did not trouble Louis; "it will last all my time," he said, and he let
things go; suffering from a disease contracted by vice, he was seized
with confluent smallpox, and died in misery, to the relief of the nation,
which could not restrain its joy (1710-1774).
LOUIS XVI., the grandson of the preceding and his successor; had in
1770 married Marie Antoinette, the youngest daughter of Maria Theresa of
Austria, and a woman young, beautiful, and accomplished, in high esteem
for the purity of her character; his accession was hailed with
enthusiasm, and he set himself to restore the ruined finances of the
country by taking into his counsel those who could best advise him in her
straitened state, but these one and all found the problem an impossible
one, owing to the unwillingness of the nobility to sacrifice any of their
privileges for the public good; this led to the summoning of the
States-General in 1789, and the outbreak of the Revolution by the fall of
the Bastille in July of that year; in the midst of this Louis,
well-intentioned but without strength of character, was submissive to the
wishes of his court and the queen, lost his popularity by his hesitating
conduct, the secret support he gave to the EMIGRANTS (q. v.),
his attempt at flight, and by his negotiations with foreign enemies, and
subjected himself to persecution at the hands of the nation; he was
therefore suspended from his functions, shut up in the Temple, arraigned
before the Convention, and condemned to death as "guilty of conspiracy
against the liberty of the nation and a crime against the general safety
of the State"; he was accordingly guillotined on the 21st January; he
protested his innocence on the scaffold, but his voice was drowned by the
beating of drums; he was accompanied by the Abbé Edgeworth, his
confessor, who, as he laid his head on the block, exclaimed, "Son of St.
Louis, ascend to heaven" (1754-1793).
LOUIS XVII., second son of the preceding, shut up in the Temple,
was, after the execution of his mother, proclaimed king by the Emigrants,
and handed over in his prison to the care of one Simon, a shoemaker, in
service about the prison, to bring him up in the principles of
Sansculottism; Simon taught him to drink, dance, and sing the
_carmagnole_; he died in prison "amid squalor and darkness," his shirt
not changed for six months (1785-1796).
LOUIS XVIII., brother of Louis XVI., and called Monsieur during his
brother's reign, flew from Paris and joined the Emigrants along with his
brother, Count d'Artois, and took up arms, which he was compelled to
forego, to wander from one foreign Court to another and find refuge at
last in England; on Napoleon's departure for Elba he returned to France
and was installed on the throne as _Louis le Desiré_, but by the
reappearance of the former on the scene he was obliged to seek refuge in
Belgium, to return for good after the battle of Waterloo, July 9, 1815,
with Talleyrand for minister and Fouché as minister of police; he reigned
but a few years, his constitution being much enfeebled by a disease
(1755-1824).
LOUIS NAPOLEON (Napoleon III.), nephew of the first emperor, born at
Paris, brought up at Augsburg and in Switzerland; became head of the
family in 1832; he began a Bonapartist propaganda, and set himself to
recover the throne of France; an abortive attempt in 1836 ended in a
short exile in America and London, and a second at Boulogne in 1840
landed him in the fortress of Ham under sentence of perpetual
imprisonment; escaping in 1846 he spent two years in England, returning
to France after the Revolution of 1848; elected to the Constituent
Assembly and the same year to the Presidency he assumed the headship of
the Republic, and posed as the protector of popular liberties and
national prosperity; struggles with the Assembly followed; he won the
favour of the army, filled the most important posts with his friends,
dissolved the Constitution in 1851 (Dec. 2), was immediately re-elected
President for ten years, and a year later assumed the title of Emperor;
he married the Spanish Countess Eugénie in 1853, and exerted himself by
public works, exhibitions, courting of the clergy, gagging of the press,
and so on to strengthen his hold on the populace; in the Crimean War
(1854-56) and the Lombardy campaign (1859) he was supported by Britain;
in 1860 he annexed Savoy and Nice; ten years later suspecting the
enthusiasm of the army, he plunged into war with Germany to rekindle its
ardour, on a protest arising from the scheme to put Leopold of
Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne; France was unprepared, disaster
followed disaster; the Emperor surrendered to the Germans at Sedan, Sept.
2, 1870; a prisoner till the close of the war, he came to England in 1871
and resided with the Empress at Chislehurst till his death (1808-1873).
LOUIS PHILIPPE, king of the French from 1830 till 1848, born at
Paris, eldest son of the Duke of Orleans, renounced his titles along with
his father, and joined the National Guard and the Jacobins at the
Revolution as M. Egalité; after the defeat of Neerwinden 1793, where he
commanded the centre, he fled to Austria and Switzerland and supported
himself by teaching; after three years in the United States he came to
London in 1800, and on the fall of Napoleon repaired to Paris and
recovered his estates; he gained popularity with the _bourgeoisie_, and
when the Revolution of July 1830 overthrew Charles X. he succeeded to the
throne as the elected sovereign of the people; under the "citizen king"
France prospered; but his government gradually became reactionary and
violent; he used his great wealth in giving bribes, tampered with trial
by jury and the freedom of the press, and so raised against him both the
old aristocracy and the working-classes; political agitation culminated
in the Revolution of February 1848; he was forced to abdicate and escaped
with his queen to England, where he died (1773-1850).
LOUIS-D'OR, an old French gold coin which ranged in value from 16s.
7d. to 18s. 9¾d., and ceased to be issued in 1795.
LOUISIANA (1,119), an American State on the Gulf of Mexico, between
the Mississippi and Sabine Rivers, with Arkansas on the N. and traversed
diagonally by the Red River, is half upland and half alluvial; much of
the lower level in the S. is marshy, subject to tidal flow or river
inundation, and is covered by swampy woods, but is being reclaimed and
planted with rice; on the uplands cattle are grazed, there are pine and
oak forests, while the arable land is under cotton, sugar, oranges, and
figs; the principal manufactures are shingles and tanks, cotton-seed oil,
tobacco, and clothing; there is a State University and agricultural and
mechanical college at Baton Rouge; the Southern and Tulane Universities
are in New Orleans; free schools are throughout the State. Founded by
France, but held by Spain from 1762 till 1800, ceded again to France and
sold to the United States by Napoleon, it was admitted to the Union in
Reading Tips
Use arrow keys to navigate
Press 'N' for next chapter
Press 'P' for previous chapter