Chapter VI: The Language as Recorded (8)

LAVATER, JOHANN KASPAR (1741-1801), German poet and physiognomist, was born at Zürich on the 15th of November 1741. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native town, where J. J. Bodmer and J. J. Breitinger were among his teachers. When barely one-and-twenty he greatly distinguished himself by denouncing, in conjunction with his friend, the painter H. Fuseli, an iniquitous magistrate, who was compelled to make restitution of his ill-gotten gains. In 1769 Lavater took orders, and officiated till his death as deacon or pastor in various churches in his native city. His oratorical fervour and genuine depth of conviction gave him great personal influence; he was extensively consulted as a casuist, and was welcomed with demonstrative enthusiasm in his numerous journeys through Germany. His mystical writings were also widely popular. Scarcely a trace of this influence has remained, and Lavater's name would be forgotten but for his work on physiognomy, _Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe_ (1775-1778). The fame even of this book, which found enthusiastic admirers in France and England, as well as in Germany, rests to a great extent upon the handsome style of publication and the accompanying illustrations. It left, however, the study of physiognomy (q.v.), as desultory and unscientific as it found it. As a poet, Lavater published _Christliche Lieder_ (1776-1780) and two epics, _Jesus Messias_ (1780) and _Joseph von Arimathia_ (1794), in the style of Klopstock. More important and characteristic of the religious temperament of Lavater's age are his introspective _Aussichten in die Ewigkeit_ (4 vols., 1768-1778); _Geheimes Tagebuch von einem Beobachter seiner selbst_ (2 vols., 1772-1773) and _Pontius Pilatus, oder der Mensch in allen Gestalten_ (4 vols., 1782-1785). From 1774 on, Goethe was intimately acquainted with Lavater, but at a later period he became estranged from him, somewhat abruptly accusing him of superstition and hypocrisy. Lavater had a mystic's indifference to historical Christianity, and, although esteemed by himself and others a champion of orthodoxy, was in fact only an antagonist of rationalism. During the later years of his life his influence waned, and he incurred ridicule by some exhibitions of vanity. He redeemed himself by his patriotic conduct during the French occupation of Switzerland, which brought about his tragical death. On the taking of Zürich by the French in 1799, Lavater, while endeavouring to appease the soldiery, was shot through the body by an infuriated grenadier; he died after long sufferings borne with great fortitude, on the 2nd of January 1801.

Lavater himself published two collections of his writings, _Vermischte
Schriften_ (2 vols., 1774-1781), and _Kleinere prosaische Schriften_
(3 vols., 1784-1785). His _Nachgelassene Schriften_ were edited by G.
Gessner (5 vols., 1801-1802); _Sämtliche Werke_ (but only poems) (6
vols., 1836-1838); _Ausgewählte Schriften_ (8 vols., 1841-1844). See
G. Gessner, _Lavaters Lebensbeschreibung_ (3 vols., 1802-1803); U.
Hegner, _Beiträge zur Kenntnis Lavaters_ (1836); F. W. Bodemann,
_Lavater nach seinem Leben, Lehren und Wirken_ (1856; 2nd ed., 1877);
F. Muncker, _J. K. Lavater_ (1883); H. Waser, _J. K. Lavater nach
Hegners Aufzeichnungen_ (1894); _J. K. Lavater, Denkschrift zum 100.
Todestag_ (1902).

LAVAUR, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Tarn, 37 m. S.E. of Montauban by rail. Pop. (1906), town 4069; commune 6388. Lavaur stands on the left bank of the Agout, which is here crossed by a railway-bridge and a fine stone bridge of the late 18th century. From 1317 till the Revolution Lavaur was the seat of a bishopric, and there is a cathedral dating from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, with an octagonal bell-tower; a second smaller square tower contains a _jaquemart_ (a statue which strikes the hours with a hammer) of the 16th century. In the bishop's garden is the statue of Emmanuel Augustin, marquis de Las Cases, one of the companions of Napoleon at St Helena. The town carries on distilling and flour-milling and the manufacture of brushes, plaster and wooden shoes. There are a subprefecture and tribunal of first instance. Lavaur was taken in 1211 by Simon de Montfort during the wars of the Albigenses, and several times during the religious wars of the 16th century.

LAVEDAN, HENRI LÉON ÉMILE (1859- ), French dramatist and man of letters, was born at Orleans, the son of Hubert Léon Lavedan, a well-known Catholic and liberal journalist. He contributed to various Parisian papers a series of witty tales and dialogues of Parisian life, many of which were collected in volume form. In 1891 he produced at the Théâtre Français _Une Famille_, followed at the Vaudeville in 1894 by _Le Prince d'Aurec_, a satire on the nobility, afterwards re-named _Les Descendants_. Later brilliant and witty pieces were _Les Deux noblesses_ (1897), _Catherine_ (1897), _Le Nouveau jeu_ (1898), _Le Vieux marcheur_ (1899), _Le Marquis de Priola_ (1902), and _Varennes_ (1904), written in collaboration with G. Lenôtre. He had a great success with _Le Duel_ (Comédie Française, 1905), a powerful psychological study of the relations of two brothers. Lavedan was admitted to the French Academy in 1898.

LAVELEYE, ÉMILE LOUIS VICTOR DE (1822-1892), Belgian economist, was born at Bruges on the 5th of April 1822, and educated there and at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, a celebrated establishment in the hands of the Oratorians. He continued his studies at the Catholic university of Louvain and afterwards at Ghent, where he came under the influence of François Huet, the philosopher and Christian Socialist. In 1844 he won a prize with an essay on the language and literature of Provence. In 1847 he published _L'Histoire des rois francs_, and in 1861 a French version of the _Nibelungen_, but though he never lost his interest in literature and history, his most important work was in the domain of economics. He was one of a group of young lawyers, doctors and critics, all old pupils of Huet, who met once a week to discuss social and economic questions, and was thus led to publish his views on these subjects. In 1859 some articles by him in the _Revue des deux mondes_ laid the foundation of his reputation as an economist. In 1864 he was elected to the chair of political economy at the state university of Liége. Here he wrote his most important works: _La Russie et l'Autriche depuis Sadowa_ (1870), _Essai sur les formes de gouvernement dans les sociétés modernes_ (1872), _Des Causes actuelles de guerre en Europe et de l'arbitrage_ and _De la propriété et de ses formes primitives_ (1874), dedicated to the memory of John Stuart Mill and François Huet. He died at Doyon, near Liége, on the 3rd of January 1892. Laveleye's name is particularly connected with bimetallism and primitive property, and he took a special interest in the revival and preservation of small nationalities. But his activity included the whole realm of political science, political economy, monetary questions, international law, foreign and Belgian politics, questions of education, religion and morality, travel and literature. He had the art of popularizing even the most technical subjects, owing to the clearness of his view and his firm grasp of the matter in hand. He was especially attracted to England, where he thought he saw many of his ideals of social, political and religious progress realized. He was a frequent contributor to the English newspapers and leading reviews. The most widely circulated of his works was a pamphlet on _Le Parti clérical en Belgique_, of which 2,000,000 copies were circulated in ten languages.

LAVENDER, botanically _Lavandula_, a genus of the natural order Labiatae distinguished by an ovate tubular calyx, a two-lipped corolla, of which the upper lip has two and the lower three lobes, and four stamens bent downwards.

The plant to which the name of lavender is commonly applied, _Lavandula vera_, is a native of the mountainous districts of the countries bordering on the western half of the Mediterranean, extending from the eastern coast of Spain to Calabria and northern Africa, growing in some places at a height of 4500 ft. above the sea-level, and preferring stony declivities in open sunny situations. It is cultivated in the open air as far north as Norway and Livonia. Lavender forms an evergreen under-shrub about 2 ft. high, with greyish-green hoary linear leaves, rolled under at the edges when young; the branches are erect and give a bushy appearance to the plant. The flowers are borne on a terminal spike at the summit of a long naked stalk, the spike being composed of 6-10 dense clusters in the axils of small, brownish, rhomboidal, tapering, opposite bracts, the clusters being more widely separated towards the base of the spike. The calyx is tubular, contracted towards the mouth, marked with 13 ribs and 5-toothed, the posterior tooth being the largest. The corolla is of a pale violet colour, but darker on its inner surface, tubular, two-lipped, the upper lip with two and the lower with three lobes. Both corolla and calyx are covered with stellate hairs, amongst which are imbedded shining oil glands to which the fragrance of the plant is due. The leaves and flowers of lavender are said to have been used by the ancients to perfume their baths; hence the Med. Lat. name _Lavandula_ or _Lavendula_ is supposed to have been derived from _lavare_, to wash. This derivation is considered doubtful and a connexion has been suggested with Lat. _livere_, to be of a bluish, pale or livid colour.

Although _L. Stoechas_ was well known to the ancients, no allusion unquestionably referring to _L. vera_ has been found in the writings of classical authors, the earliest mention of the latter plant being in the 12th century by the abbess Hildegard, who lived near Bingen on the Rhine. Under the name of _llafant_ or _llafantly_ it was known to the Welsh physicians as a medicine in the 13th century. The dried flowers have long been used in England, the United States and other countries for perfuming linen, and the characteristic cry of "Lavender! sweet lavender!" was still to be heard in London streets at the beginning of the 20th century. In England lavender is cultivated chiefly for the distillation of its essential oil, of which it yields on an average 1½% when freed from the stalks, but in the south of Europe the flowers form an object of trade, being exported to the Barbary states, Turkey and America.

In Great Britain lavender is grown in the parishes of Mitcham,
Carshalton and Beddington in Surrey, and in Hertfordshire in the
parish of Hitchin. The most suitable soil seems to be a sandy loam
with a calcareous substratum, and the most favourable position a sunny
slope in localities elevated above the level of fogs, where the plant
is not in danger of early frost and is freely exposed to air and
light. At Hitchin lavender is said to have been grown as early as
1568, but as a commercial speculation its cultivation dates back only
to 1823. The plants at present in cultivation do not produce seed, and
the propagation is always made by slips or by dividing the roots. The
latter plan has only been followed since 1860, when a large number of
lavender plants were killed by a severe frost. Since that date the
plants have been subject to the attack of a fungus, in consequence of
which the price of the oil has been considerably enhanced.

The flowers are collected in the beginning of August, and taken direct
to the still. The yield of oil depends in great measure upon the
weather. After a wet and dull June and July the yield is sometimes
only half as much as when the weather has been bright and sunshiny.
From 12 to 30 lb. of oil per acre is the average amount obtained. The
oil contained in the stem has a more rank odour and is less volatile
than that of the flowers; consequently the portion that distils over
after the first hour and a half is collected separately.

1. Flower, side view.
2. Flower, front view.
3. Calyx opened and spread flat.
4. Corolla opened and spread flat.
5. Pistil.]

The finest oil is obtained by the distillation of the flowers, without
the stalks, but the labour spent upon this adds about 10s. per lb. to
the expense of the oil, and the same end is practically attained by
fractional distillation. The oil mellows by keeping three years, after
which it deteriorates unless mixed with alcohol; it is also improved
by redistillation. Oil of lavender is distilled from the wild plants
in Piedmont and the South of France, especially in the villages about
Mont Ventoux near Avignon, and in those some leagues west of
Montpellier. The best French oil realizes scarcely one-sixth of the
price of the English oil. Cheaper varieties are made by distilling the
entire plant.

Oil of lavender is a mobile liquid having a specific gravity from 0.85
to 0.89. Its chief constituents are linalool acetate, which also
occurs in oil of bergamot, and linalool, C10H17OH, an alcohol derived
by oxidation from myrcene, C10H16, which is one of the terpenes. The
dose is ½-3 minims. The British pharmacopeia contains a spiritus
lavandulae, dose 5-20 minims: and a compound tincture, dose ½-1
drachm. This is contained in liquor arsenicalis, and its
characteristic odour may thus be of great practical importance,
medico-legally and otherwise. The pharmacology of oil of lavender is
simply that of an exceptionally pleasant and mild volatile oil. It is
largely used as a carminative and as a colouring and flavouring agent.
Its adulteration with alcohol may be detected by chloride of calcium
dissolving in it and forming a separate layer of liquid at the bottom
of the vessel. Glycerine acts in the same way. If it contain
turpentine it will not dissolve in three volumes of alcohol, in which
quantity the pure oil is perfectly soluble.

Lavender flowers were formerly considered good for "all disorders of
the head and nerves"; a spirit prepared with them was known under the
name of palsy drops.

Lavender water consists of a solution of the volatile oil in spirit
of wine with the addition of the essences of musk, rose, bergamot and
ambergris, but is very rarely prepared by distillation of the flowers
with spirit.

In the climate of New York lavender is scarcely hardy, but in the
vicinity of Philadelphia considerable quantities are grown for the
market. In American gardens sweet basil (_Ocimum basilicum_) is
frequently called lavender.

_Lavandula Spica_, a species which differs from _L. vera_ chiefly in
its smaller size, more crowded leaves and linear bracts, is also used
for the distillation of an essential oil, which is known in England as
oil of spike and in France under the name of _essence d'aspic_. It is
used in painting on porcelain and in veterinary medicine. The oil as
met with in commerce is less fragrant than that of _L. vera_--probably
because the whole plant is distilled, for the flowers of the two
species are scarcely distinguishable in fragrance. _L. Spica_ does not
extend so far north, nor ascend the mountains beyond 2000 ft. It
cannot be cultivated in Britain except in sheltered situations. A
nearly allied species, _L. lanata_, a native of Spain, with broader
leaves, is also very fragrant, but does not appear to be distilled for
oil.

_Lavandula Stoechas_, a species extending from the Canaries to Asia
Minor, is distinguished from the above plants by its blackish purple
flowers, and shortly stalked spikes crowned by conspicuous purplish
sterile bracts. The flowers were official in the London pharmacopoeia
as late as 1746. They are still used by the Arabs as an expectorant
and antispasmodic. The Stoechades (now called the isles of Hyères near
Toulon) owed their name to the abundance of the plant growing there.

Other species of lavender are known, some of which extend as far east
as to India. A few which differ from the above in having divided
leaves, as _L. dentata_, _L. abrotanoides_, _L. multifolia_, _L.
pinnata_ and _L. viridis_, have been cultivated in greenhouses, &c.,
in England.

Sea lavender is a name applied in England to several species of
_Statice_, a genus of littoral plants belonging to the order _Plumba
gineae_. Lavender cotton is a species of the genus _Santolina_, small,
yellow-flowered, evergreen undershrubs of the Composite order.

LAVERDY, CLÉMENT CHARLES FRANÇOIS DE (1723-1793), French statesman, was a member of the parlement of Paris when the case against the Jesuits came before that body in August 1761. He demanded the suppression of the order and thus acquired popularity. Louis XV. named him controller-general of the finances in December 1763, but the burden was great and Laverdy knew nothing of finance. Three months after his nomination he forbade anything of any kind whatever to be printed concerning his administration, thus refusing advice as well as censure. He used all sorts of expedients, sometimes dishonest, to replenish the treasury, and was even accused of having himself profited from the commerce in wheat. A court intrigue led to his sudden dismissal on the 1st of October 1768. Henceforward he lived in retirement until, during the Revolution, he was involved in the charges against the financiers of the old régime. The Revolutionary tribunal condemned him to death, and he was guillotined on the 24th of November 1793.

See A. Jobez, _La France sous Louis XV_ (1869).

LAVERNA, an old Italian divinity, originally one of the spirits of the underworld. A cup found in an Etruscan tomb bears the inscription "Lavernai Pocolom," and in a fragment of Septimius Serenus Laverna is expressly mentioned in connexion with the _di inferi_. By an easy transition, she came to be regarded as the protectress of thieves, whose operations were associated with darkness. She had an altar on the Aventine hill, near the gate called after her Lavernalis, and a grove on the Via Salaria. Her aid was invoked by thieves to enable them to carry out their plans successfully without forfeiting their reputation for piety and honesty (Horace, _Ep._ i. 16, 60). Many explanations have been given of the name: (1) from _latere_ (Schol. on Horace, who gives _laternio_ as another form of _lavernio_ or robber); (2) from _lavare_ (Acron on Horace, according to whom thieves were called _lavatores_, perhaps referring to bath thieves); (3) from _levare_ (cf. shop-lifters). Modern etymologists connect it with _lu-crum_, and explain it as meaning the goddess of gain.

LAVERY, JOHN (1857- ), British painter, was born in Belfast, and received his art training in Glasgow, London and Paris. He was elected associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1892 and academician in 1896, having won a considerable reputation as a painter of portraits and figure subjects, and as a facile and vigorous executant. He became also vice-president of the International Society of sculptors, painters and gravers. Many of his paintings have been acquired for public collections, and he is represented in the National Galleries at Brussels, Berlin and Edinburgh, in the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburg, the Philadelphia Gallery, the New South Wales Gallery, the Modern Gallery, Venice, the Pinakothek, Munich, the Glasgow Corporation Gallery, and the Luxembourg.

LAVIGERIE, CHARLES MARTIAL ALLEMAND (1825-1892), French divine, cardinal archbishop of Carthage and Algiers and primate of Africa, was born at Bayonne on the 31st of October 1825, and was educated at St Sulpice, Paris. He was ordained priest in 1849, and was professor of ecclesiastical history at the Sorbonne from 1854 to 1856. In 1856 he accepted the direction of the schools of the East, and was thus for the first time brought into contact with the Mahommedan world. "C'est là," he wrote, "que j'ai connu enfin ma vocation." Activity in missionary work, especially in alleviating the distresses of the victims of the Druses, soon brought him prominently into notice; he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and in October 1861, shortly after his return to Europe, was appointed French auditor at Rome. Two years later he was raised to the see of Nancy, where he remained for four years, during which the diocese became one of the best administered in France. While bishop of Nancy he met Marshal MacMahon, then governor-general of Algeria, who in 1866 offered him the see of Algiers, just raised to an archbishopric. Lavigerie landed in Africa on the 11th of May 1868, when the great famine was already making itself felt, and he began in November to collect the orphans into villages. This action, however, did not meet with the approval of MacMahon, who feared that the Arabs would resent it as an infraction of the religious peace, and thought that the Mahommedan church, being a state institution in Algeria, ought to be protected from proselytism; so it was intimated to the prelate that his sole duty was to minister to the colonists. Lavigerie, however, continued his self-imposed task, refused the archbishopric of Lyons, which was offered to him by the emperor, and won his point. Contact with the natives during the famine caused Lavigerie to entertain exaggerated hopes for their general conversion, and his enthusiasm was such that he offered to resign his archbishopric in order to devote himself entirely to the missions. Pius IX. refused this, but granted him a coadjutor, and placed the whole of equatorial Africa under his charge. In 1870 Lavigerie warmly supported papal infallibility. In 1871 he was twice a candidate for the National Assembly, but was defeated. In 1874 he founded the Sahara and Sudan mission, and sent missionaries to Tunis, Tripoli, East Africa and the Congo. The order of African missionaries thus founded, for which Lavigerie himself drew up the rule, has since become famous as the _Pères Blancs_. From 1881 to 1884 his activity in Tunisia so raised the prestige of France that it drew from Gambetta the celebrated declaration, _L'Anticléricalisme n'est pas un article d'exportation_, and led to the exemption of Algeria from the application of the decrees concerning the religious orders. On the 27th of March 1882 the dignity of cardinal was conferred upon Lavigerie, but the great object of his ambition was to restore the see of St Cyprian; and in that also he was successful, for by a bull of 10th November 1884 the metropolitan see of Carthage was re-erected, and Lavigerie received the pallium on the 25th of January 1885. The later years of his life were spent in ardent anti-slavery propaganda, and his eloquence moved large audiences in London, as well as in Paris, Brussels and other parts of the continent. He hoped, by organizing a fraternity of armed laymen as pioneers, to restore fertility to the Sahara; but this community did not succeed, and was dissolved before his death. In 1890 Lavigerie appeared in the new character of a politician, and arranged with Pope Leo XIII. to make an attempt to reconcile the church with the republic. He invited the officers of the Mediterranean squadron to lunch at Algiers, and, practically renouncing his monarchical sympathies, to which he clung as long as the comte de Chambord was alive, expressed his support of the republic. and emphasized it by having the Marseillaise played by a band of his _Pères Blancs_. The further steps in this evolution emanated from the pope, and Lavigerie, whose health now began to fail, receded comparatively into the background. He died at Algiers on the 26th of November 1892. (G. F. B.)

LA VILLEMARQUÉ, THÉODORE CLAUDE HENRI, VICOMTE HERSART DE (1815-1895), French philologist and man of letters, was born at Keransker, near Quimperlé, on the 6th of July 1815. He was descended from an old Breton family, which counted among its members a Hersart who had followed Saint Louis to the Crusade, and another who was a companion in arms of Du Guesclin. La Villemarqué devoted himself to the elucidation of the monuments of Breton literature. Introduced in 1851 by Jacob Grimm as correspondent to the Academy of Berlin, he became in 1858 a member of the Academy of Inscriptions. His works include: _Contes populaires des anciens Bretons_ (1842), to which was prefixed an essay on the origin of the romances of the Round Table; _Essai sur l'histoire de la langue bretonne_ (1837); _Poèmes des bardes bretons du sixième siècle_ (1850); _La Légende celtique en Irelande, en Cambrie et en Bretagne_ (1859). The popular Breton songs published by him in 1839 as _Barzaz Breiz_ were considerably retouched. La Villemarqué's work has been superseded by the work of later scholars, but he has the merit of having done much to arouse popular interest in his subject. He died at Keransker on the 8th of December 1895.

On the subject of the doubtful authenticity of Barzaz Breiz, see
Luzel's Preface to his _Chansons populaires de la Basse-Bretagne_,
and, for a list of works on the subject, the _Revue Celtique_ (vol.
v.).

LAVINIUM, an ancient town of Latium, on the so-called Via Lavinatis (see LAURENTINA, VIA), 19 m. S. of Rome, the modern PRATICA, situated 300 ft. above sea-level and 2½ m. N.E. from the sea-coast. Its foundation is attributed to Aeneas (whereas Laurentum was the primitive city of King Latinus), who named it after his wife Lavinia. It is rarely mentioned in Roman history and often confused with Lanuvium or Lanivium in the text both of authors and of inscriptions. The custom by which the consuls and praetors or dictators sacrificed on the Alban Mount and at Lavinium to the Penates and to Vesta, before they entered upon office or departed for their province, seems to have been one of great antiquity. There is no trace of its having continued into imperial times, but the cults of Lavinium were kept up, largely by the imperial appointment of honorary non-resident citizens to hold the priesthoods. The citizens of Lavinium were known under the empire as Laurentes Lavinates, and the place itself at a late period as Laurolavinium. It was deserted or forgotten not long after the time of Theodosius.

Lavinium was preceded by a more ancient town, LAURENTUM, the city of Latinus (Verg. _Aen._ viii.); of this the site is uncertain, but it is probably to be sought at the modern Tor Paterno, close to the sea-coast and 5 m. N. by W. of Lavinium. Here the name of Laurentum is preserved by the modern name Pantan di Lauro. Even in ancient times it was famous for its groves of bay-trees (_laurus_) from which its name was perhaps derived, and which in imperial times gave the villas of its territory a name for salubrity, so that both Vitellius and Commodus resorted there. The exact date of the abandonment of the town itself and the incorporation of its territory with that of Lavinium is uncertain, but it may be placed in the latter part of the republic. Under the empire a portion of it must have been imperial domain and forest. We hear of an imperial, procurator in charge of the elephants at Laurentum; and the imperial villa may perhaps be identified with the extensive ruins at Tor Paterno itself. The remains of numerous other villas lie along the ancient coast-line (which was half a mile inland of the modern, being now marked by a row of sand-hills, and was followed by the Via Severiana), both north-west and south-east of Tor Paterno: they extended as a fact in an almost unbroken line along the low sandy coast--now entirely deserted and largely occupied by the low scrub which serves as cover for the wild boars of the king of Italy's preserves--from the mouth of the Tiber to Antium, and thence again to Astura; but there are no traces of any buildings previous to the imperial period. In one of these villas, excavated by the king of Italy in 1906, was found a fine replica of the famous discobolus of Myron. The plan of the building is interesting, as it diverges entirely from the normal type and adapts itself to the site. Some way to the N.W. was situated the village of Vicus Augustanus Laurentium, taking its name probably from Augustus himself, and probably identical with the village mentioned by Pliny the younger as separated by only one villa from his own. This village was brought to light by excavation in 1874, and its forum and curia are still visible. The remains of the villa of Pliny, too, were excavated in 1713 and in 1802-1819, and it is noteworthy that the place bears the name Villa di Pino (sic) on the staff map; how old the name is, is uncertain. It is impossible without further excavation to reconcile the remains--mainly of substructions--with the elaborate description of his villa given by Pliny (cf. H. Winnefeld in _Jahrbuch des Instituts_, 1891, 200 seq.).

The site of the ancient Lavinium, no less than 300 ft. above sea-level and 2½ m. inland, is far healthier than the low-lying Laurentum, where, except in the immediate vicinity of the coast, malaria must have been a dreadful scourge. It possesses considerable natural strength, and consists of a small hill, the original acropolis, occupied by the modern castle and the village surrounding it, and a larger one, now given over to cultivation, where the city stood. On the former there are now no traces of antiquity, but on the latter are scanty remains of the city walls, in small blocks of the grey-green tufa (_cappellaccio_) which is used in the earliest buildings of Rome, and traces of the streets. The necropolis, too, has been discovered, but not systematically excavated; but objects of the first Iron age, including a sword of Aegean type (thus confirming the tradition), have been found; also remains of a building with Doric columns of an archaistic type, remains of later buildings in brick, and inscriptions, some of them of considerable interest.

See R. Lanciani in _Monumenti dei Lincei_, xiii. (1903), 133 seq.;
xvi. (1906), 241 seq. (T. As.)

LAVISSE, ERNEST (1842- ), French historian, was born at Nouvion-en-Thiérache, Aisne, on the 17th of December 1842. In 1865 he obtained a fellowship in history, and in 1875 became a doctor of letters; he was appointed _maître de conférence_ (1876) at the école normale supérieure, succeeding Fustel de Coulanges, and then professor of modern history at the Sorbonne (1888), in the place of Henri Wallon. He was an eloquent professor and very fond of young people, and played an important part in the revival of higher studies in France after 1871. His knowledge of pedagogy was displayed in his public lectures and his addresses, in his private lessons, where he taught a small number of pupils the historical method, and in his books, where he wrote _ad probandum_ at least as much as _ad narrandum_: class-books, collections of articles, intermingled with personal reminiscences (_Questions d'enseignement national_, 1885; _Études et étudiants_, 1890; _À propos de nos écoles_, 1895), rough historical sketches (_Vue générale de l'histoire politique de l'Europe_, 1890), &c. Even his works of learning, written without a trace of pedantry, are remarkable for their lucidity and vividness.

After the Franco-Prussian War Lavisse studied the development of Prussia and wrote _Étude sur l'une des origines de la monarchie prussienne, ou la Marche de Brandebourg sous la dynastie ascanienne_, which was his thesis for his doctor's degree in 1875, and _Études sur l'histoire de la Prusse_ (1879). In connexion with his study of the Holy Roman Empire, and the cause of its decline, he wrote a number of articles which were published in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_; and he wrote _Trois empereurs d'Allemagne_ (1888), _La Jeunesse du grand Frédéric_ (1891) and _Frédéric II. avant son avènement_ (1893) when studying the modern German empire and the grounds for its strength. With his friend Alfred Rambaud he conceived the plan of _L'Histoire générale du IV^e siècle jusqu'à nos jours_, to which, however, he contributed nothing. He edited the _Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu'à la Révolution_ (1901- ), in which he carefully revised the work of his numerous assistants, reserving the greatest part of the reign of Louis XIV. for himself. This section occupies the whole of volume vii. It is a remarkable piece of work, and the sketch of absolute government in France during this period has never before been traced with an equal amount of insight and brilliance. Lavisse was admitted to the Académie Française on the death of Admiral Jurien de la Gravière in 1892, and after the death of James Darmesteter became editor of the _Revue de Paris_. He is, however, chiefly a master of pedagogy. When the école normale was joined to the university of Paris, Lavisse was appointed director of the new organization, which he had helped more than any one to bring about.

LAVOISIER, ANTOINE LAURENT (1743-1794), French chemist, was born in Paris on the 26th of August 1743. His father, an _avocat au parlement_, gave him an excellent education at the collège Mazarin, and encouraged his taste for natural science; and he studied mathematics and astronomy with N. L. de Lacaille, chemistry with the elder Rouelle and botany with Bernard de Jussieu. In 1766 he received a gold medal from the Academy of Sciences for an essay on the best means of lighting a large town; and among his early work were papers on the analysis of gypsum, on thunder, on the aurora and on congelation, and a refutation of the prevalent belief that water by repeated distillation is converted into earth. He also assisted J. E. Guettard (1715-1786) in preparing his mineralogical atlas of France. In 1768, recognized as a man who had both the ability and the means for a scientific career, he was nominated _adjoint chimiste_ to the Academy, and in that capacity made numerous reports on the most diverse subjects, from the theory of colours to water-supply and from invalid chairs to mesmerism and the divining rod. The same year he obtained the position of _adjoint_ to Baudon, one of the farmers-general of the revenue, subsequently becoming a full titular member of the body. This was the first of a series of posts in which his administrative abilities found full scope. Appointed _régisseur des poudres_ in 1775, he not only abolished the vexatious search for saltpetre in the cellars of private houses, but increased the production of the salt and improved the manufacture of gunpowder. In 1785 he was nominated to the committee on agriculture, and as its secretary drew up reports and instructions on the cultivation of various crops, and promulgated schemes for the establishment of experimental agricultural stations, the distribution of agricultural implements and the adjustment of rights of pasturage. Seven years before he had started a model farm at Fréchine, where he demonstrated the advantages of scientific methods of cultivation and of the introduction of good breeds of cattle and sheep. Chosen a member of the provincial assembly of Orleans in 1787, he busied himself with plans for the improvement of the social and economic conditions of the community by means of savings banks, insurance societies, canals, workhouses, &c.; and he showed the sincerity of his philanthropical work by advancing money out of his own pocket, without interest, to the towns of Blois and Romorantin, for the purchase of barley during the famine of 1788. Attached in this same year to the _caisse d'escompte_, he presented the report of its operations to the national assembly in 1789, and as commissary of the treasury in 1791 he established a system of accounts of unexampled punctuality. He was also asked by the national assembly to draw up a new scheme of taxation in connexion with which he produced a report _De la richesse territoriale de la France_, and he was further associated with committees on hygiene, coinage, the casting of cannon, &c., and was secretary and treasurer of the commission appointed in 1790 to secure uniformity of weights and measures.

In 1791, when Lavoisier was in the middle of all this official activity, the suppression of the farmers-general marked the beginning of troubles which brought about his death. His membership of that body was alone sufficient to make him an object of suspicion; his administration at the _régie des poudres_ was attacked; and Marat accused him in the _Ami du Peuple_ of putting Paris in prison and of stopping the circulation of air in the city by the _mur d'octroi_ erected at his suggestion in 1787. The Academy, of which as treasurer at the time he was a conspicuous member, was regarded by the convention with no friendly eyes as being tainted with "incivism," and in the spring of 1792 A. F. Fourcroy endeavoured to persuade it to purge itself of suspected members. The attempt was unsuccessful, but in August of the same year Lavoisier had to leave his house and laboratory at the Arsenal, and in November the Academy was forbidden until further orders to fill up the vacancies in its numbers. Next year, on the 1st of August, the convention passed a decree for the uniformity of weights and measures, and requested the Academy to take measures for carrying it out, but a week later Fourcroy persuaded the same convention to suppress the Academy together with other literary societies _patentées et dotées_ by the nation. In November it ordered the arrest of the ex-farmers-general, and on the advice of the committee of public instruction, of which Guyton de Morveau and Fourcroy were members, the names of Lavoisier and others were struck off from the commission of weights and measures. The fate of the ex-farmers-general was sealed on the 2nd of May 1794, when, on the proposal of Antoine Dupin, one of their former officials, the convention sent them for trial by the Revolutionary tribunal. Within a week Lavoisier and 27 others were condemned to death. A petition in his favour addressed to Coffinhal, the president of the tribunal, is said to have been met with the reply _La République n'a pas besoin de savants_, and on the 8th of the month Lavoisier and his companions were guillotined at the Place de la Révolution. He died fourth, and was preceded by his colleague Jacques Paulze, whose daughter he had married in 1771. "_Il ne leur a fallu_," Lagrange remarked, "_qu'un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années peut-être ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable_."

Lavoisier's name is indissolubly associated with the overthrow of the phlogistic doctrine that had dominated the development of chemistry for over a century, and with the establishment of the foundations upon which the modern science reposes. "He discovered," says Justus von Liebig (_Letters on Chemistry_, No. 3), "no new body, no new property, no natural phenomenon previously unknown; but all the facts established by him were the necessary consequences of the labours of those who preceded him. His merit, his immortal glory, consists in this--that he infused into the body of the science a new spirit; but all the members of that body were already in existence, and rightly joined together." Realizing that the total weight of all the products of a chemical reaction must be exactly equal to the total weight of the reacting substances, he made the balance the _ultima ratio_ of the laboratory, and he was able to draw correct inferences from his weighings because, unlike many of the phlogistonists, he looked upon heat as imponderable. It was by weighing that in 1770 he proved that water is not converted into earth by distillation, for he showed that the total weight of a sealed glass vessel and the water it contained remained constant, however long the water was boiled, but that the glass vessel lost weight to an extent equal to the weight of earth produced, his inference being that the earth came from the glass, not from the water. On the 1st of November 1772 he deposited with the Academy a sealed note which stated that sulphur and phosphorus when burnt increased in weight because they absorbed "air," while the metallic lead formed from litharge by reduction with charcoal weighed less than the original litharge because it had lost "air." The exact nature of the airs concerned in the processes he did not explain until after the preparation of "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen) by Priestley in 1774. Then, perceiving that in combustion and the calcination of metals only a portion of a given volume of common air was used up, he concluded that Priestley's new air, _air éminemment pur_, was what was absorbed by burning phosphorus, &c., "non-vital air," azote, or nitrogen remaining behind. The gas given off in the reduction of metallic calces by charcoal he at first supposed to be merely that contained in the calx, but he soon came to understand that it was a product formed by the union of the charcoal with the "dephlogisticated air" in the calx. In a memoir presented to the Academy in 1777, but not published till 1782, he assigned to dephlogisticated air the name oxygen, or "acid-producer," on the supposition that all acids were formed by its union with a simple, usually non-metallic, body; and having verified this notion for phosphorus, sulphur, charcoal, &c., and even extended it to the vegetable acids, he naturally asked himself what was formed by the combustion of "inflammable air" (hydrogen). This problem he had attacked in 1774, and in subsequent years he made various attempts to discover the acid which, under the influence of his oxygen theory, he expected would be formed. It was not till the 25th of June 1783 that in conjunction with Laplace he announced to the Academy that water was the product formed by the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, but by that time he had been anticipated by Cavendish, to whose prior work, however, as to that of several other investigators in other matters, it is to be regretted that he did not render due acknowledgment. But a knowledge of the composition of water enabled him to storm the last defences of the phlogistonists. Hydrogen they held to be the phlogiston of metals, and they supported this view by pointing out that it was liberated when metals were dissolved in acids. Considerations of weight had long prevented Lavoisier from accepting this doctrine, but he was now able to explain the process fully, showing that the hydrogen evolved did not come from the metal itself, but was one product of the decomposition of the water of the dilute acid, the other product, oxygen, combining with the metal to form an oxide which in turn united with the acid. A little later this same knowledge led him to the beginnings of quantitative organic analysis. Knowing that the water produced by the combustion of alcohol was not pre-existent in that substance but was formed by the combination of its hydrogen with the oxygen of the air, he burnt alcohol and other combustible organic substances, such as wax and oil, in a known volume of oxygen, and, from the weight of the water and carbon dioxide produced and his knowledge of their composition, was able to calculate the amounts of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen present in the substance.

Up to about this time Lavoisier's work, mainly quantitative in character, had appealed most strongly to physicists, but it now began to win conviction from chemists also. C. L. Berthollet, L. B. Guyton de Morveau and A. F. Fourcroy, his collaborators in the reformed system of chemical terminology set forth in 1787 in the _Méthode de nomenclature chimique_, were among the earliest French converts, and they were followed by M. H. Klaproth and the German Academy, and by most English chemists except Cavendish, who rather suspended his judgment, and Priestley, who stubbornly clung to the opposite view. Indeed, though the partisans of phlogiston did not surrender without a struggle, the history of science scarcely presents a second instance of a change so fundamental accomplished with such ease. The spread of Lavoisier's doctrines was greatly facilitated by the defined and logical form in which he presented them in his _Traité élémentaire de chimie_ (_présenté dans un ordre nouveau et d'après les découvertes modernes_) (1789). The list of simple substances contained in the first volume of this work includes light and caloric with oxygen, azote and hydrogen. Under the head of "oxidable or acidifiable" substances, the combination of which with oxygen yielded acids, were placed sulphur, phosphorus, carbon, and the muriatic, fluoric and boracic radicals. The metals, which by combination with oxygen became oxides, were antimony, silver, arsenic, bismuth, cobalt, copper, tin, iron, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, gold, platinum, lead, tungsten and zinc; and the "simple earthy salifiable substances" were lime, baryta, magnesia, alumina and silica. The simple nature of the alkalies Lavoisier considered so doubtful that he did not class them as elements, which he conceived as substances which could not be further decomposed by any known process of analysis--_les molécules simples et indivisibles qui composent les corps_. The union of any two of the elements gave rise to binary compounds, such as oxides, acids, sulphides, &c. A substance containing three elements was a binary compound of the second order; thus salts, the most important compounds of this class, were formed by the union of acids and oxides, iron sulphate, for instance, being a compound of iron oxide with sulphuric acid.

In addition to his purely chemical work, Lavoisier, mostly in conjunction with Laplace, devoted considerable attention to physical problems, especially those connected with heat. The two carried out some of the earliest thermochemical investigations, devised apparatus for measuring linear and cubical expansions, and employed a modification of Joseph Black's ice calorimeter in a series of determinations of specific heats. Regarding heat (_matière de feu_ or _fluide igné_) as a peculiar kind of imponderable matter, Lavoisier held that the three states of aggregation--solid, liquid and gas--were modes of matter, each depending on the amount of _matière de feu_ with which the ponderable substances concerned were interpenetrated and combined; and this view enabled him correctly to anticipate that gases would be reduced to liquids and solids by the influence of cold and pressure. He also worked at fermentation, respiration and animal heat, looking upon the processes concerned as essentially chemical in nature. A paper discovered many years after his death showed that he had anticipated later thinkers in explaining the cyclical process of animal and vegetable life, for he pointed out that plants derive their food from the air, from water, and in general from the mineral kingdom, and animals in turn feed on plants or on other animals fed by plants, while the materials thus taken up by plants and animals are restored to the mineral kingdom by the breaking-down processes of fermentation, putrefaction and combustion.

A complete edition of the writings of Lavoisier, _Oeuvres de
Lavoisier, publiées par les soins du ministre de l'instruction
publique_, was issued at Paris in six volumes from 1864-1893. This
publication comprises his _Opuscules physiques et chimiques_ (1774),
many memoirs from the Academy volumes, and numerous letters, notes and
reports relating to the various matters on which he was engaged. At
the time of his death he was preparing an edition of his collected
works, and the portions ready for the press were published in two
volumes as _Mémoires de chimie_ in 1805 by his widow (in that year
married to Count Rumford), who had drawn and engraved the plates in
his _Traité élémentaire de chimie_ (1789).

Sec E. Grimaux, _Lavoisier 1743-1794, d'après sa correspondance, ses
manuscripts_, &c. (1888), which gives a list of his works; P. E. M.
Berthelot, _La Révolution chimique: Lavoisier_ (1890), which contains
an analysis of and extracts from his laboratory notebooks.

LA VOISIN. CATHERINE MONVOISIN, known as "La Voisin" (d. 1680), French sorceress, whose maiden name was Catherine Deshayes, was one of the chief personages in the famous _affaire des poisons_, which disgraced the reign of Louis XIV. Her husband, Monvoisin, was an unsuccessful jeweller, and she practised chiromancy and face-reading to retrieve their fortunes. She gradually added the practice of witchcraft, in which she had the help of a renegade priest, Étienne Guibourg, whose part was the celebration of the "black mass," an abominable parody in which the host was compounded of the blood of a little child mixed with horrible ingredients. She practised medicine, especially midwifery, procured abortion and provided love powders and poisons. Her chief accomplice was one of her lovers, the magician Lesage, whose real name was Adam Coeuret. The great ladies of Paris flocked to La Voisin, who accumulated enormous wealth. Among her clients were Olympe Mancini, comtesse de Soissons, who sought the death of the king's mistress, Louise de la Vallière; Mme de Montespan, Mme de Gramont (_la belle_ Hamilton) and others. The bones of toads, the teeth of moles, cantharides, iron filings, human blood and human dust were among the ingredients of the love powders concocted by La Voisin. Her knowledge of poisons was not apparently so thorough as that of less well-known sorcerers, or it would be difficult to account for La Vallière's immunity. The art of poisoning had become a regular science. The death of Henrietta, duchess of Orleans, was attributed, falsely it is true, to poison, and the crimes of Marie Madeleine de Brinvilliers (executed in 1676) and her accomplices were still fresh in the public mind. In April 1679 a commission appointed to inquire into the subject and to prosecute the offenders met for the first time. Its proceedings, including some suppressed in the official records, are preserved in the notes of one of the official _rapporteurs_, Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie. The revelation of the treacherous intention of Mme de Montespan to poison Louis XIV. and of other crimes, planned by personages who could not be attacked without scandal which touched the throne, caused Louis XIV. to close the _chambre ardente_, as the court was called, on the 1st of October 1680. It was reopened on the 19th of May 1681 and sat until the 21st of July 1682. Many of the culprits escaped through private influence. Among these were Marie Anne Mancini, duchesse de Bouillon, who had sought to get rid of her husband in order to marry the duke of Vendôme, though Louis XIV. banished her to Nérac. Mme de Montespan was not openly disgraced, because the preservation of Louis's own dignity was essential, and some hundred prisoners, among them the infamous Guibourg and Lesage, escaped the scaffold through the suppression of evidence insisted on by Louis XIV. and Louvois. Some of these were imprisoned in various fortresses, with instructions from Louvois to the respective commandants to flog them if they sought to impart what they knew. Some innocent persons were imprisoned for life because they had knowledge of the facts. La Voisin herself was executed at an early stage of the proceedings, on the 20th of February 1680, after a perfunctory application of torture. The authorities had every reason to avoid further revelations. Thirty-five other prisoners were executed; five were sent to the galleys and twenty-three were banished. Their crimes had furnished one of the most extraordinary trials known to history.

See F. Ravaisson, _Archives de la Bastille_, vols. iv.-vii.
(1870-1874); the notes of La Reynie, preserved in the Bibliothèque
Nationale; F. Funck-Brentano, _Le Drame des poisons_ (1899); A.
Masson, _La Sorcellerie et la science des poisons au XVII^e siècle_
(1904). Sardou made the affair a background for his _Affaire des
poisons_ (1907). There is a portrait of La Voisin by Antoine Coypel,
which has been often reproduced.

LAW, JOHN (1671-1729), Scots economist, best known as the originator of the "Mississippi scheme," was born at Edinburgh in April 1671. His father, a goldsmith and banker, bought shortly before his death, which took place in his son's youth, the lands of Lauriston near Edinburgh. John lived at home till he was twenty, and then went to London. He had already studied mathematics, and the theory of commerce and political economy, with much interest; but he was known rather as fop than scholar. In London he gambled, drank and flirted till in April 1694 a love intrigue resulted in a duel with Beau Wilson in Bloomsbury Square. Law killed his antagonist, and was condemned to death. His life was spared, but he was detained in prison. He found means to escape to Holland, then the greatest commercial country in Europe. Here he observed with close attention the practical working of banking and financial business, and conceived the first ideas of his celebrated "system." After a few years spent in foreign travel, he returned to Scotland, then exhausted and enraged by the failure of the Darien expedition (1695-1701). He propounded plans for the relief of his country in a work[1] entitled _Money and Trade Considered, with a Proposal for supplying the Nation with Money_ (1705). This attracted some notice, but had no practical effect, and Law again betook himself to travel. He visited Brussels, Paris, Vienna, Genoa, Rome, making large sums by gambling and speculation, and spending them lavishly. He was in Paris in 1708, and made some proposals to the government as to their financial difficulties, but Louis XIV. declined to treat with a "Huguenot," and d'Argenson, chief of the police, had Law expelled as a suspicious character. He had, however, become intimately acquainted with the duke of Orleans, and when in 1715 that prince became regent, Law at once returned to Paris.