Chapter XXII: Act 1867: every British ship going to other countries where lemon or (13)

LESGHIANS, or LESGHIS (from the Persian _Leksi_, called Leki by the Grusians or Georgians, Armenians and Ossetes), the collective name for a number of tribes of the eastern Caucasus, who, with their kinsfolk the Chechenzes, have inhabited Daghestan from time immemorial. They spread southward into the Transcaucasian circles Kuba, Shemakha, Nukha and Sakataly. They are mentioned as [Greek: Lêchai] by Strabo and Plutarch along with the [Greek: Gêlai] (perhaps the modern Galgai, a Chechenzian tribe), and their name occurs frequently in the chronicles of the Georgians, whose territory was exposed to their raids for centuries, until, on the surrender (1859) to Russia of the Chechenzian chieftain Shamyl, they became Russian subjects. Moses of Chorene mentions a battle in the reign of the Armenian king Baba (A.D. 370-377), in which Shagir, king of the Lekians, was slain. The most important of the Lesghian tribes are the Avars (q.v.), the Kasimukhians or Lakians, the Darghis and the Kurins or Lesghians proper. Komarov[1] gives the total number of the tribes as twenty-seven, all speaking distinct dialects. Despite this, the Lesghian peoples, with the exception of the Udi and Kubatschi, are held to be ethnically identical. The Lesghians are not usually so good-looking as the Circassians or the Chechenzes. They are tall, powerfully built, and their hybrid descent is suggested by the range of colouring, some of the tribes exhibiting quite fair, others quite dark, individuals. Among some there is an obvious mongoloid strain. In disposition they are intelligent, bold and persistent, and capable of reckless bravery, as was proved in their struggle to maintain their independence. They are capable of enduring great physical fatigue. They live a semi-savage life on their mountain slopes, for the most part living by hunting and stock-breeding. Little agriculture is possible. Their industries are mainly restricted to smith-work and cutlery and the making of felt cloaks, and the women weave excellent shawls. They are for the most part fanatical Mahommedans.

See Moritz Wagner, _Schamyl_ (Leipzig, 1854); von Seidlitz,
"Ethnographie des Kaukasus," in _Petermann's Mitteilungen_ (1880);
Ernest Chantre, _Recherches anthropologiques dans le Caucase_ (Lyon,
1885-1887); J. de Morgan, _Recherches sur les origines des peuples du
Caucase_ (Paris, 1889).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _Ethnological Map of Daghestan._

LESINA (Serbo-Croatian, _Hvar_), an island in the Adriatic Sea, forming part of Dalmatia, Austria. Lesina lies between the islands of Brazza on the north and Curzola on the south; and is divided from the peninsula of Sabbioncello by the Narenta channel. Its length is 41 m.; its greatest breadth less than 4 m. It has a steep rocky coast with a chain of thinly wooded limestone hills. The climate is mild, and not only the grape and olive, but dates, figs and the carob or locust-bean flourish. The cultivation of these fruits, boat-building, fishing and the preparation of rosemary essence and liqueurs are the principal resources of the islanders. Lesina (_Hvar_) and Cittavecchia (_Starigrad_) are the principal towns and seaports, having respectively 2138 and 3120 inhabitants. Lesina, the capital, contains an arsenal, an observatory and some interesting old buildings of the 16th century. It is a Roman Catholic bishopric, and the centre of an administrative district, which includes Cittavecchia, Lissa, and some small neighbouring islands. Pop. (1900) of island 18,091, of district 27,928.

To the primitive "Illyrian" race, whose stone cists and bronze implements have been disinterred from barrows near the capital, may perhaps be attributed the "Cyclopean" walls at Cittavecchia. About 385 B.C., a Greek colony from Paros built a city on the site of the present Lesina, naming it _Paros_ or _Pharos_. The forms _Phara_, _Pharia_ (common among Latin writers), and _Pityeia_, also occur. In 229 B.C. the island was betrayed to the Romans by Demetrius, lieutenant of the Illyrian queen Teuta; but in 219, as Demetrius proved false to Rome also, his capital was razed by Lucius Aemilius Paullus. _Neos Pharos_, now Cittavecchia, took its place, and flourished until the 6th century, when the island was laid waste by barbarian invaders. Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentions Lesina as a colony of pagan Slavs, in the 10th century. Throughout the middle ages it remained a purely Slavonic community; and its name, which appears in old documents as _Lisna_, _Lesna_ or _Lyesena_, "wooded" is almost certainly derived from the Slavonic _lyés_, "forest," not from the Italian _lesina_, "an awl." But the old form Pharia persisted, as _Far_ or _Hvar_, with the curious result that the modern Serbo-Croatian name is Greek, and the modern Italian name Slavonic in origin. Lesina became a bishopric in 1145, and received a charter from Venice in 1331. It was sacked by the enemies of Venice in 1354 and 1358; ceded to Hungary in the same year; held by Ragusa from 1413 to 1416; and incorporated in the Venetian dominions in 1420. During the 16th century Lesina city had a considerable maritime trade, and, though sacked and partly burned by the Turks in 1571, it remained the chief naval station of Venice, in these waters, until 1776, when it was superseded by Curzola. Passing to Austria in 1797, and to France in 1805, it withstood a Russian attack in 1807, but was surrendered by the French in 1813, and finally annexed to Austria in 1815.

LESION (through Fr. from Lat. _laesio_, injury, _laedere_, to hurt), an injury, hurt, damage. In Scots law the term is used of damage suffered by a party in a contract sufficient to enable him to bring an action for setting it aside. In pathology, the chief use, the word is applied to any morbid change in the structure of an organ, whether shown by visible changes or by disturbance of function.

LESKOVATS (LESKOVATZ or LESKOVAC), a town in Servia, between Nish and Vranya, on the railway line from Nish to Salonica. Pop. (1901) 13,707. It is the headquarters of the Servian hemp industry, the extensive plain in which the town lies growing the best flax and hemp in all the Balkan peninsula. The plain is not only the most fertile portion of Servia, but also the best cultivated. Besides flax and hemp, excellent tobacco is grown. Five valleys converge on the plain from different directions, and the inhabitants of the villages in these valleys are all occupied in growing flax and hemp, which they send to Leskovats to be stored or manufactured into ropes. After Belgrade and Nish, Leskovats is the most prosperous town in Servia.

LESLEY, JOHN (1527-1596), Scottish bishop and historian, was born in 1527. His father was Gavin Lesley, rector of Kingussie. He was educated at the university of Aberdeen, where he took the degree of M.A. In 1538 he obtained a dispensation permitting him to hold a benefice, notwithstanding his being a natural son, and in June 1546 he was made an acolyte in the cathedral church of Aberdeen, of which he was afterwards appointed a canon and prebendary. He also studied at Poitiers, at Toulouse and at Paris, where he was made doctor of laws in 1553. In 1558 he took orders and was appointed Official of Aberdeen, and inducted into the parsonage and prebend of Oyne. At the Reformation Lesley became a champion of Catholicism. He was present at the disputation held in Edinburgh in 1561, when Knox and Willox were his antagonists. He was one of the commissioners sent the same year to bring over the young Queen Mary to take the government of Scotland. He returned in her train, and was appointed a privy councillor and professor of canon law in King's College, Aberdeen, and in 1565 one of the senators of the college of justice. Shortly afterwards he was made abbot of Lindores, and in 1565 bishop of Ross, the election to the see being confirmed in the following year. He was one of the sixteen commissioners appointed to revise the laws of Scotland, and the volume of the _Actis and Constitutionis of the Realme of Scotland_ known as the Black Acts was, chiefly owing to his care, printed in 1566.

The bishop was one of the most steadfast friends of Queen Mary. After the failure of the royal cause, and whilst Mary was a captive in England, Lesley (who had gone to her at Bolton) continued to exert himself on her behalf. He was one of the commissioners at the conference at York in 1568. He appeared as her ambassador at the court of Elizabeth to complain of the injustice done to her, and when he found he was not listened to, he laid plans for her escape. He also projected a marriage for her with the duke of Norfolk, which ended in the execution of that nobleman. For this he was put under the charge of the bishop of London, and then of the bishop of Ely (in Holborn), and afterwards imprisoned in the Tower of London. During his confinement he collected materials for his history of Scotland, by which his name is now chiefly known. In 1571 he presented the latter portion of this work, written in Scots, to Queen Mary to amuse her in her captivity. He also wrote for her use his _Piae Consolationes_, and the queen devoted some of the hours of her captivity to translating a portion of it into French verse.

In 1573 he was liberated from prison, but was banished from England. For two years he attempted unsuccessfully to obtain the assistance of Continental princes in favour of Queen Mary. While at Rome in 1578 he published his Latin history _De Origine, Moribus, et Rebus Gestis Scotorum_. In 1579 he went to France, and was made suffragan and vicar-general of the archbishopric of Rouen. Whilst visiting his diocese, however, he was thrown into prison, and had to pay 3000 pistoles to prevent his being given up to Elizabeth. During the remainder of the reign of Henry III. he lived unmolested, but on the accession of the Protestant Henry IV. he again fell into trouble. In 1590 he was thrown into prison, and had to purchase his freedom at the same expense as before. In 1593 he was made bishop of Coutances in Normandy, and had licence to hold the bishopric of Ross till he should obtain peaceable possession of the former see. He retired to an Augustinian monastery near Brussels, where he died on the 31st of May 1596.

The chief works of Lesley are as follows: _A Defence of the Honour of
... Marie, Queene of Scotland, by Eusebius Dicaeophile_ (London,
1569), reprinted, with alterations, at Liége in 1571, under the title,
_A Treatise concerning the Defence of the Honour of Marie, Queene of
Scotland, made by Morgan Philippes, Bachelar of Divinitie, Piae
afflicti animi consolationes, ad Mariam Scot. Reg._ (Paris, 1574); _De
origine, moribus et rebus gestis Scotorum libri decem_ (Rome, 1578;
re-issued 1675); _De illustrium feminarum in republica administranda
authoritate libellus_ (Reims, 1580; a Latin version of a tract on "The
Lawfulness of the Regiment of Women": cf. Knox's pamphlet); _De titulo
et jure Mariae Scot. Reg., quo regni Angliae successionem sibi juste
vindicat_ (Reims, 1580; translated in 1584). The history of Scotland
from 1436 to 1561 owes much, in its earlier chapters, to the accounts
of Hector Boece (q.v.) and John Major (q.v.), though no small portion
of the topographical matter is first-hand. In the later sections he
gives an independent account (from the Catholic point of view) which
is a valuable supplement and a corrective in many details, to the
works of Buchanan and Knox. A Scots version of the history was written
in 1596 by James Dalrymple of the Scottish Cloister at Regensburg. It
has been printed for the Scottish Text Society (2 vols., 1888-1895)
under the editorship of the Rev. E. G. Cody, O.S.B. A slight sketch by
Lesley of Scottish history from 1562 to 1571 has been translated by
Forbes-Leith in his _Narrative of Scottish Catholics_ (1885), from the
original MS. now in the Vatican.

LESLEY, J. PETER (1819-1903), American geologist, was born in Philadelphia on the 17th of September 1819. It is recorded by Sir A. Geikie that "He was christened Peter after his father and grandfather, and at first wrote his name 'Peter Lesley, Jr.,' but disliking the Christian appellation that had been given to him, he eventually transformed his signature by putting the J. of 'Junior' at the beginning." He was educated for the ministry at the university of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1838; but the effects of close study having told upon his health, he served for a time as sub-assistant on the first geological survey of Pennsylvania under Professor H. D. Rogers, and was afterwards engaged in a special examination of the coal regions. On the termination of the survey in 1841 he entered Princeton seminary and renewed his theological studies, at the same time giving his leisure time to assist Professor Rogers in preparing the final report and map of Pennsylvania. He was licensed to preach in 1844; he then paid a visit to Europe and entered on a short course of study at the university of Halle. Returning to America he worked during two years for the American Tract Society, and at the close of 1847 he joined Professor Rogers again in preparing geological maps and sections at Boston. He then accepted the pastorate of the Congregational church at Milton, a suburb of Boston, where he remained until 1851, when, his views having become Unitarian, he abandoned the ministry and entered into practice as a consulting geologist. In the course of his work he made elaborate surveys of the Cape Breton coalfield, and of other coal and iron regions. From 1855 to 1859 he was secretary of the American Iron Association; for twenty-seven years (1858-1885) he was secretary and librarian of the American Philosophical Society; from 1872 to 1878 he was professor of geology and dean of the faculty of science in the university of Pennsylvania, and from 1874-1893 he was in charge of the second geological survey of the state. He then retired to Milton, Mass., where he died on the 1st of June 1903. He published _Manual of Coal and its Topography_ (1856); _The Iron Manufacturer's Guide to the Furnaces, Forges and Rolling Mills of the United States_ (1859).

See Memoir by Sir A. Geikie in _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._ (May 1904);
and Memoir (with portrait) by B. S. Lyman, printed in advance with
portrait, and afterwards in abstract only in _Trans. Amer. Inst.
Mining Engineers_, xxxiv. (1904) p. 726.

LESLIE, CHARLES (1650-1722), Anglican nonjuring divine, son of John Leslie (1571-1671), bishop of Raphoe and afterwards of Clogher, was born in July 1650 in Dublin, and was educated at Enniskillen school and Trinity College, Dublin. Going to England he read law for a time, but soon turned his attention to theology, and took orders in 1680. In 1687 he became chancellor of the cathedral of Connor and a justice of the peace, and began a long career of public controversy by responding in public disputation at Monaghan to the challenge of the Roman Catholic bishop of Clogher. Although a vigorous opponent of Roman Catholicism, Leslie was a firm supporter of the Stuart dynasty, and, having declined at the Revolution to take the oath to William and Mary, he was on this account deprived of his benefice. In 1689 the growing troubles in Ireland induced him to withdraw to England, where he employed himself for the next twenty years in writing various controversial pamphlets in favour of the nonjuring cause, and in numerous polemics against the Quakers, Jews, Socinians and Roman Catholics, and especially in that against the Deists with which his name is now most commonly associated. He had the keenest scent for every form of heresy and was especially zealous in his defence of the sacraments. A warrant having been issued against him in 1710 for his pamphlet _The Good Old Cause, or Lying in Truth_, he resolved to quit England and to accept an offer made by the Pretender (with whom he had previously been in frequent correspondence) that he should reside with him at Bar-le-Duc. After the failure of the Stuart cause in 1715, Leslie accompanied his patron into Italy, where he remained until 1721, in which year, having found his sojourn amongst Roman Catholics extremely unpleasant, he sought and obtained permission to return to his native country. He died at Glaslough, Monaghan, on the 13th of April 1722.

The _Theological Works_ of Leslie were collected and published by
himself in 2 vols. folio in 1721; a later edition, slightly enlarged,
appeared at Oxford in 1832 (7 vols. 8vo). Though marred by persistent
arguing in a circle they are written in lively style and show
considerable erudition. He had the somewhat rare distinction of making
several converts by his reasonings, and Johnson declared that "Leslie
was a reasoner, and a reasoner who was not to be reasoned against." An
historical interest in all that now attaches to his subjects and his
methods, as may be seen when the promise given in the title of his
best-known work is contrasted with the actual performance. The book
professes to be _A Short and Easy Method with the Deists, wherein the
certainty of the Christian Religion is Demonstrated by Infallible
Proof from Four Rules, which are incompatible to any imposture that
ever yet has been, or that can possibly be_ (1697). The four rules
which, according to Leslie, have only to be rigorously applied in
order to establish not the probability merely but the absolute
certainty of the truth of Christianity are simply these: (1) that the
matter of fact be such as that men's outward senses, their eyes and
ears, may be judges of it; (2) that it be done publicly, in the face
of the world; (3) that not only public monuments be kept up in memory
of it, but some outward actions be performed; (4) that such monuments
and such actions or observances be instituted and do commence from the
time that the matter of fact was done. Other publications of Leslie
are _The Snake in the Grass_ (1696), against the Quakers; _A Short
Method with the Jews_ (1689); _Gallienus Redivivus_ (an attack on
William III., 1695); _The Socinian Controversy Discussed_ (1697); _The
True Notion of the Catholic Church_ (1703); and _The Case Stated
between the Church of Rome and the Church of England_ (1713).

LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT (1794-1859), English genre-painter, was born in London on the 19th of October 1794. His parents were American, and when he was five years of age he returned with them to their native country. They settled in Philadelphia, where their son was educated and afterwards apprenticed to a bookseller. He was, however, mainly interested in painting and the drama, and when George Frederick Cooke visited the city he executed a portrait of the actor, from recollection of him on the stage, which was considered a work of such promise that a fund was raised to enable the young artist to study in Europe. He left for London in 1811, bearing introductions which procured for him the friendship of West, Beechey, Allston, Coleridge and Washington Irving, and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, where he carried off two silver medals. At first, influenced by West and Fuseli, he essayed "high art," and his earliest important subject depicted Saul and the Witch of Endor; but he soon discovered his true aptitude and became a painter of cabinet-pictures, dealing, not like those of Wilkie, with the contemporary life that surrounded him, but with scenes from the great masters of fiction, from Shakespeare and Cervantes, Addison and Molière, Swift, Sterne, Fielding and Smollett. Of individual paintings we may specify "Sir Roger de Coverley going to Church" (1819); "May-day in the Time of Queen Elizabeth" (1821); "Sancho Panza and the Duchess" (1824); "Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman" (1831); _La Malade Imaginaire_, act iii. sc. 6 (1843); and the "Duke's Chaplain Enraged leaving the Table," from _Don Quixote_ (1849). Many of his more important subjects exist in varying replicas. He possessed a sympathetic imagination, which enabled him to enter freely into the spirit of the author whom he illustrated, a delicate perception for female beauty, an unfailing eye for character and its outward manifestation in face and figure, and a genial and sunny sense of humour, guided by an instinctive refinement which prevented it from overstepping the bounds of good taste. In 1821 Leslie was elected A.R.A., and five years later full academician. In 1833 he left for America to become teacher of drawing in the military academy at West Point, but the post proved an irksome one, and in some six months he returned to England. He died on the 5th of May 1859.

In addition to his skill as an artist, Leslie was a ready and pleasant
writer. His _Life_ of his friend Constable, the landscape painter,
appeared in 1843, and his _Handbook for Young Painters_, a volume
embodying the substance of his lectures as professor of painting to
the Royal Academy, in 1855. In 1860 Tom Taylor edited his
_Autobiography and Letters_, which contain interesting reminiscences
of his distinguished friends and contemporaries.

LESLIE, FRED [FREDERICK HOBSON] (1855-1892), English actor, was born at Woolwich on the 1st of April 1855. He made his first stage appearance in London as Colonel Hardy in _Paul Pry_ in 1878. He had a good voice, and in 1882 made a great hit as Rip Van Winkle in Planquette's opera of that name at the Comedy. In 1885 he appeared at the Gaiety as Jonathan Wild in H. P. Stephens and W. Yardley's burlesque _Little Jack Sheppard_. His extraordinary success in this part determined his subsequent career, and for some years he and Nelly Farren, with whom he played in perfect association, were the pillars of Gaiety burlesque. Leslie's "Don Caesar de Bazan" in _Ruy Blas, or the Blasé Roué_, was perhaps the most popular of his later parts. In all of them it was his own versatility and entertaining personality which formed the attraction; whether he sang, danced, whistled or "gagged," his performance was an unending flow of high spirits and ludicrous charm. Under the pseudonym of "A. C. Torr" he was acknowledged on the programmes as part-author of these burlesques, and while on occasion he acted in more serious comedy, for which he had undoubted capacity, his fame rests on his connexion with them. In 1881 and 1883 he played in America. He died on the 7th of December 1892.

See W. T. Vincent, _Recollections of Fred Leslie_ (1894).

LESLIE, SIR JOHN (1766-1832), Scottish mathematician and physicist, was born of humble parentage at Largo, Fifeshire, on the 16th of April 1766, and received his early education there and at Leven. In his thirteenth year, encouraged by friends who had even then remarked his aptitude for mathematical and physical science, he entered the university of St Andrews. On the completion of his arts course, he nominally studied divinity at Edinburgh until 1787; in 1788-1789 he spent rather more than a year as private tutor in a Virginian family, and from 1790 till the close of 1792 he held a similar appointment at Etruria in Staffordshire, with the family of Josiah Wedgwood, employing his spare time in experimental research and in preparing a translation of Buffon's _Natural History of Birds_, which was published in nine 8vo vols. in 1793, and brought him some money. For the next twelve years (passed chiefly in London or at Largo, with an occasional visit to the continent of Europe) he continued his physical studies, which resulted in numerous papers contributed by him to Nicholson's _Philosophical Journal_, and in the publication (1804) of the _Experimental Inquiry into the Nature and Properties of Heat_, a work which gained him the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society of London. In 1805 he was elected to succeed John Playfair in the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh, not, however, without violent though unsuccessful opposition on the part of a narrow-minded clerical party who accused him of heresy in something he had said as to the "unsophisticated notions of mankind" about the relation of cause and effect. During his tenure of this chair he published two volumes of a _Course of Mathematics_--the first, entitled _Elements of Geometry, Geometrical Analysis and Plane Trigonometry_, in 1809, and the second, _Geometry of Curve Lines_, in 1813; the third volume, on _Descriptive Geometry and the Theory of Solids_ was never completed. With reference to his invention (in 1810) of a process of artificial congelation, he published in 1813 _A Short Account of Experiments and Instruments depending on the relations of Air to Heat and Moisture_; and in 1818 a paper by him "On certain impressions of cold transmitted from the higher atmosphere, with an instrument (the aethrioscope) adapted to measure them," appeared in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_. In 1819, on the death of Playfair, he was promoted to the more congenial chair of natural philosophy, which he continued to hold until his death, and in 1823 he published, chiefly for the use of his class, the first volume of his never-completed _Elements of Natural Philosophy_. Leslie's main contributions to physics were made by the help of the "differential thermometer," an instrument whose invention was contested with him by Count Rumford. By adapting to this instrument various ingenious devices he was enabled to employ it in a great variety of investigations, connected especially with photometry, hygroscopy and the temperature of space. In 1820 he was elected a corresponding member of the Institute of France, the only distinction of the kind which he valued, and early in 1832 he was created a knight. He died at Coates, a small property which he had acquired near Largo, on the 3rd of November 1832.

LESLIE, THOMAS EDWARD CLIFFE (1827-1882), English economist, was born in the county of Wexford in (as is believed) the year 1827. He was the second son of the Rev. Edward Leslie, prebendary of Dromore, and rector of Annahilt, in the county of Down. His family was of Scottish descent, but had been connected with Ireland since the reign of Charles I. Amongst his ancestors were that accomplished prelate, John Leslie (1571-1671), bishop first of Raphoe and afterwards of Clogher, who, when holding the former see, offered so stubborn a resistance to the Cromwellian forces, and the bishop's son Charles (see above), the nonjuror. Cliffe Leslie received his elementary education from his father, who resided in England, though holding church preferment as well as possessing some landed property in Ireland; by him he was taught Latin, Greek and Hebrew, at an unusually early age; he was afterwards for a short time under the care of a clergyman at Clapham, and was then sent to King William's College, in the Isle of Man, where he remained until, in 1842, being then only fifteen years of age, he entered Trinity College, Dublin. He was a distinguished student there, obtaining, besides other honours, a classical scholarship in 1845, and a senior moderatorship (gold medal) in mental and moral philosophy at his degree examination in 1846. He became a law student at Lincoln's Inn, was for two years a pupil in a conveyancer's chambers in London, and was called to the English bar. But his attention was soon turned from the pursuit of legal practice, for which he seems never to have had much inclination, by his appointment, in 1853, to the professorship of jurisprudence and political economy in Queen's College, Belfast. The duties of this chair requiring only short visits to Ireland in certain terms of each year, he continued to reside and prosecute his studies in London, and became a frequent writer on economic and social questions in the principal reviews and other periodicals. In 1870 he collected a number of his essays, adding several new ones, into a volume entitled _Land Systems and Industrial Economy of Ireland, England and Continental Countries_. J. S. Mill gave a full account of the contents of this work in a paper in the _Fortnightly Review_, in which he pronounced Leslie to be "one of the best living writers on applied political economy." Mill had sought his acquaintance on reading his first article in _Macmillan's Magazine_; he admired his talents and took pleasure in his society, and treated him with a respect and kindness which Leslie always gratefully acknowledged.

In the frequent visits which Leslie made to the continent, especially to Belgium and some of the less-known districts of France and Germany, he occupied himself much in economic and social observation, studying the effects of the institutions and system of life which prevailed in each region, on the material and moral condition of its inhabitants. In this way he gained an extensive and accurate acquaintance with continental rural economy, of which he made excellent use in studying parallel phenomena at home. The accounts he gave of the results of his observations were among his happiest efforts; "no one," said Mill, "was able to write narratives of foreign visits at once so instructive and so interesting." In these excursions he made the acquaintance of several distinguished persons, amongst others of M. Léonce de Lavergne and M. Émile de Laveleye. To the memory of the former of these he afterwards paid a graceful tribute in a biographical sketch (_Fortnightly Review_, February 1881); and to the close of his life there existed between him and M. de Laveleye relations of mutual esteem and cordial intimacy.

Two essays of Leslie's appeared in volumes published under the auspices of the Cobden Club, one on the "Land System of France" (2nd ed., 1870), containing an earnest defence of _la petite culture_ and still more of _la petite propriété_; the other on "Financial Reform" (1871), in which he exhibited in detail the impediments to production and commerce arising from indirect taxation. Many other articles were contributed by him to reviews between 1875 and 1879, including several discussions of the history of prices and the movements of wages in Europe, and a sketch of life in Auvergne in his best manner; the most important of them, however, related to the philosophical method of political economy, notably a memorable one which appeared in the Dublin University periodical, _Hermathena_. In 1879 the provost and senior fellows of Trinity College published for him a volume in which a number of these articles were collected under the title of _Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy_. These and some later essays, together with the earlier volume on _Land Systems_, form the essential contribution of Leslie to economic literature. He had long contemplated, and had in part written, a work on English economic and legal history, which would have been his _magnum opus_--a more substantial fruit of his genius and his labours than anything he has left. But the MS. of this treatise, after much pains had already been spent on it, was unaccountably lost at Nancy in 1872; and, though he hoped to be able speedily to reproduce the missing portion and finish the work, no material was left in a state fit for publication. What the nature of it would have been may be gathered from an essay on the "History and Future of Profit" in the _Fortnightly Review_ for November 1881, which is believed to have been in substance an extract from it.

That he was able to do so much may well be a subject of wonder when it is known that his labours had long been impeded by a painful and depressing malady, from which he suffered severely at intervals, whilst he never felt secure from its recurring attacks. To this disease he in the end succumbed at Belfast, on the 27th of January 1882.

Leslie's work may be distributed under two heads, that of applied
political economy and that of discussion on the philosophical method
of the science. The _Land Systems_ belonged principally to the former
division. The author perceived the great and growing importance for
the social welfare of both Ireland and England of what is called "the
land question," and treated it in this volume at once with breadth of
view and with a rich variety of illustrative detail. His general
purpose was to show that the territorial systems of both countries
were so encumbered with elements of feudal origin as to be altogether
unfitted to serve the purposes of a modern industrial society. The
policy he recommended is summed up in the following list of
requirements, "a simple jurisprudence relating to land, a law of equal
intestate succession, a prohibition of entail, a legal security for
tenants' improvements, an open registration of title and transfer and
a considerable number of peasant properties." The volume is full of
practical good sense, and exhibits a thorough knowledge of home and
foreign agricultural economy; and in the handling of the subject is
everywhere shown the special power which its author possessed of
making what he wrote interesting as well as instructive. The way in
which sagacious observation and shrewd comment are constantly
intermingled in the discussion not seldom reminds us of Adam Smith,
whose manner was more congenial to Leslie than the abstract and arid
style of Ricardo.

But what, more than anything else, marks him as an original thinker
and gives him a place apart among contemporary economists, is his
exposition and defence of the historical method in political economy.
Both at home and abroad there has for some time existed a profound and
growing dissatisfaction with the method and many of the doctrines of
the hitherto dominant school, which, it is alleged, under a
"fictitious completeness, symmetry and exactness" disguises a real
hollowness and discordance with fact. It is urged that the attempt to
deduce the economic phenomena of a society from the so-called
universal principle of "the desire of wealth" is illusory, and that
they cannot be fruitfully studied apart from the general social
conditions and historic development of which they are the outcome. Of
this movement of thought Leslie was the principal representative, if
not the originator, in England. There is no doubt, for he has himself
placed it on record, that the first influence which impelled him in
the direction of the historical method was that of Sir Henry Maine, by
whose personal teaching of jurisprudence, as well as by the example of
his writings, he was led "to look at the present economic structure
and state of society as the result of a long evolution." The study of
those German economists who represent similar tendencies doubtless
confirmed him in the new line of thought on which he had entered,
though he does not seem to have been further indebted to any of them
except, perhaps, in some small degree to Roscher. And the writings of
Comte, whose "prodigious genius," as exhibited in the _Philosophie
Positive_, he admired and proclaimed, though he did not accept his
system as a whole, must have powerfully co-operated to form in him the
habit of regarding economic science as only a single branch of
sociology, which should always be kept in close relation to the
others. The earliest writing in which Leslie's revolt against the
so-called "orthodox school" distinctly appears is his _Essay on
Wages_, which was first published in 1868 and was reproduced as an
appendix to the volume on _Land Tenures_. In this, after exposing the
inanity of the theory of the wage-fund, and showing the utter want of
agreement between its results and the observed phenomena, he concludes
by declaring that "political economy must be content to take rank as
an inductive, instead of a purely deductive science," and that, by
this change of character, "it will gain in utility, interest and real
truth far more than a full compensation for the forfeiture of a
fictitious title to mathematical exactness and certainty." But it is
in the essays collected in the volume of 1879 that his attitude in
relation to the question of method is most decisively marked. In one
of these, on "the political economy of Adam Smith," he exhibits in a
very interesting way the co-existence in the _Wealth of Nations_ of
historical-inductive investigation in the manner of Montesquieu with a
priori speculation founded on theologico-metaphysical bases, and
points out the error of ignoring the former element, which is the
really characteristic feature of Smith's social philosophy, and places
him in strong contrast with his _soi-disant_ followers of the school
of Ricardo. The essay, however, which contains the most brilliant
polemic against the "orthodox school," as well as the most luminous
account and the most powerful vindication of the new direction, was
that of which we have above spoken as having first appeared in
_Hermathena_. It may be recommended as supplying the best extant
presentation of one of the two contending views of economic method. On
this essay mainly rests the claim of Leslie to be regarded as the
founder and first head of the English historical school of political
economy. Those who share his views on the philosophical constitution
of the science regard the work he did, notwithstanding its
unsystematic character, as in reality the most important done by any
English economists in the latter half of the 19th century. But even
the warmest partisans of the older school acknowledge that he did
excellent service by insisting on a kind of inquiry, previously too
much neglected, which was of the highest interest and value, in
whatever relation it might be supposed to stand to the establishment
of economic truth. The members of both groups alike recognized his
great learning, his patient and conscientious habits of investigation
and the large social spirit in which he treated the problems of his
science. (J. K. I.)

LESLIE, a police burgh of Fifeshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 3587. It lies on the Leven, the vale of which is overlooked by the town, 4 m. W. of Markinch by the North British railway. The industries include paper-making, flax-spinning, bleaching and linen-weaving. The old church claims to be the "Christ's Kirk on the Green" of the ancient ballads of that name. A stone on the Green, called the Bull Stone, is said to have been used when bull-baiting was a popular pastime. Leslie House, the seat of the earl of Rothes, designed by Sir William Bruce, rivalled Holyrood in magnificence. It was noted for its tapestry and its gallery of family portraits and other pictures, including a portrait of Rembrandt by himself. Daniel Defoe considered its park the glory of the kingdom. The mansion sustained serious damage from fire in 1763. Norman Leslie, master of Rothes, was concerned in the killing of Cardinal Beaton (1546), and the dagger with which John Leslie, Norman's uncle, struck the fatal blow is preserved in Leslie House.

MARKINCH (pop. 1499), a police burgh situated between Conland Burn and the Leven, 7¼ m. N. by E. of Kirkcaldy by the North British railway, is a place of great antiquity. A cell of the Culdees was established here by one of the last of the Celtic bishops, the site of which may possibly be marked by the ancient cross of Balgonie. Markinch is also believed to have been a residence of the earlier kings, where prior to the 11th century they occasionally administered justice; and in the reign of William the Lion (d. 1214) the warrantors of goods alleged to have been stolen were required to appear here. Its industries comprise bleaching, flax-spinning, paper-making, distilling and coal-mining. Balgonie Castle, close by, the keep of which is 80 ft. high, was a residence of Alexander Leslie, the first earl of Leven, and at Balfour Castle were born Cardinal Beaton and his uncle and nephew the archbishops of Glasgow.

LESPINASSE, JEANNE JULIE ÉLÉONORE DE (1732-1776), French author, was born at Lyons on the 9th of November 1732. A natural child of the comtesse d'Albon, she was brought up as the daughter of Claude Lespinasse of Lyons. On leaving her convent school she became governess in the house of her mother's legitimate daughter, Mme de Vichy, who had married the brother of the marquise du Deffand. Here Mme du Deffand made her acquaintance, and, recognizing her extraordinary gifts, persuaded her to come to Paris as her companion. The alliance lasted ten years (1754-1764) until Mme du Deffand became jealous of the younger woman's increasing influence, when a violent quarrel ensued. Mlle de Lespinasse set up a salon of her own which was joined by many of the most brilliant members of Mme du Deffand's circle. D'Alembert was one of the most assiduous of her friends and eventually came to live under the same roof. There was no scandal attached to this arrangement, which ensured d'Alembert's comfort and lent influence to Mlle de Lespinasse's salon. Although she had neither beauty nor rank, her ability as a hostess made her reunions the most popular in Paris. She owes her distinction, however, not to her social success, but to circumstances which remained a secret during her lifetime from her closest friends. Two volumes of _Lettres_ published in 1809 displayed her as the victim of a passion of a rare intensity. In virtue of this ardent, intense quality Sainte Beuve and other of her critics place her letters in the limited category to which belong the Latin letters of Héloïse and those of the Portuguese Nun. Her first passion, a reasonable and serious one, was for the marquis de Mora, son of the Spanish ambassador in Paris. De Mora had come to Paris in 1765, and with some intervals remained there until 1772 when he was ordered to Spain for his health. On the way to Paris in 1774 to fulfil promises exchanged with Mlle de Lespinasse, he died at Bordeaux. But her letters to the comte de Guibert, the worthless object of her fatal infatuation, begin from 1773. From the struggle between her affection for de Mora and her blind passion for her new lover they go on to describe her partial disenchantment on Guibert's marriage and her final despair. Mlle de Lespinasse died on the 23rd of May 1776, her death being apparently hastened by the agitation and misery to which she had been for the last three years of her life a prey. In addition to the _Lettres_ she was the author of two chapters intended as a kind of sequel to Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_.

Her _Lettres_ ... were published by Mme de Guibert in 1809 and a
spurious additional collection appeared in 1820. Among modern editions
may be mentioned that of Eugène Asse (1876-1877). _Lettres inédites de
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse à Condorcet, à D'Alembert, à Guibert, au
comte de Crillon_, edited by M. Charles Henry (1887), contains copies
of the documents available for her biography. Mrs Humphry Ward's
novel, _Lady Rose's Daughter_, owes something to the character of Mlle
de Lespinasse.

LES SABLES D'OLONNE, a seaport of western France, capital of an arrondissement of the department of Vendée, on an inlet of the Atlantic seaboard, 23 m. S.W. of La Roche-sur-Yon by rail. Pop. (1906) 11,847. The town stands between the sea on the south and the port on the north, while on the west it is separated by a channel from the suburb of La Chaume, built at the foot of a range of dunes 65 ft. high, which terminates southwards in the rocky peninsula of L'Aiguille. The beautiful smoothly sloping beach, 1 m. in length, is much frequented by bathers. To the north of Sables extend salt-marshes and oyster-parks, yielding 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 oysters per annum. Sables has a church built in the Late Gothic style towards the middle of the 17th century. The port, consisting of a tidal basin and a wet-dock, is accessible to vessels of 2000 tons, but is dangerous when the winds are from the south-west. The lighthouse of Barges, a mile out at sea to the west, is visible for 17 to 18 nautical miles. The inhabitants are employed largely in sardine and tunny fishing; there are imports of coal, wood, petroleum and phosphates. Boat-building and sardine-preserving are carried on. The town has a sub-prefecture and a tribunal of first instance.

Founded by Basque or Spanish sailors, Sables was the first place in Poitou invaded by the Normans in 817. Louis XI., who went there in 1472, granted the inhabitants various privileges, improved the harbour, and fortified the entrance. Captured and recaptured during the Wars of Religion, the town afterwards became a nursery of hardy sailors and privateers, who harassed the Spaniards and afterwards the English. In 1696 Sables was bombarded by the combined fleets of England and Holland. In the middle of the 18th century hurricanes caused grievous damage to town and harbour.

LES SAINTES-MARIES, a coast village of south-eastern France in the department of Boûches-du-Rhône, 24 m. S.S.W. of Arles by rail. Pop. (1906) 544. Saintes-Maries is situated in the plain of the Camargue, 1½ m. E. of the mouth of the Petit-Rhône. It is the object of an ancient and famous pilgrimage due to the tradition that Mary, sister of the Virgin, and Mary, mother of James and John, together with their black servant Sara, Lazarus, Martha, Mary Magdalen and St Maximin fled thither to escape persecution in Judaea. The relics of the two Maries, who are said to have been buried at Saintes-Maries, are bestowed in the upper storey of the apse of the fortress-church, a remarkable building of the 12th century with crenelated and machicolated walls. Two festivals are held in the town, a less important one in October, the other, on the 24th and 25th of May, unique for its gathering of gipsies who come in large numbers to do honour to the tomb of their patroness Sara, contained in the crypt below the apse.

LESSE, one of the most romantic of the smaller rivers of Belgium. It rises at Ochamps in the Ardennes, and flowing in a north-westerly course reaches the Meuse at Anseremme, a few miles above Dinant. The river is only 49 m. long, but its meandering course may be judged by the fact that it is no more than 29 m. from Ochamps to Anseremme in a straight line. There is a good deal of pretty scenery along this river, as, for instance, at Ciergnon, but the most striking part of the valley is contained in the last 12 m. from Houyet to Anseremme. In this section the river is confined between opposing walls of cliff ranging from 300 to 500 ft. above the river. Here were discovered in the caves near Walzin the bones of prehistoric men, and other evidence of the primitive occupants of this globe at a period practically beyond computation. Another curious natural feature of the Lesse is that on reaching the hill of Han it disappears underground, reappearing about 1 m. farther on at the village of that name. Here are the curious and interesting Han grottoes. The Lesse receives altogether in its short course the water of thirteen tributaries.

LESSEPS, FERDINAND DE (1805-1894). French diplomatist and maker of the Suez Canal, was born at Versailles on the 19th of November 1805. The origin of his family has been traced back as far as the end of the 14th century. His ancestors, it is believed, came from Scotland, and settled at Bayonne when that region was occupied by the English. One of his great-grandfathers was town clerk and at the same time secretary to Queen Anne of Neuberg, widow of Charles II. of Spain, exiled to Bayonne after the accession of Philip V. From the middle of the 18th century the ancestors of Ferdinand de Lesseps followed the diplomatic career, and he himself occupied with real distinction several posts in the same calling from 1825 to 1849. His uncle was ennobled by King Louis XVI., and his father was made a count by Napoleon I. His father, Mathieu de Lesseps (1774-1832), was in the consular service; his mother, Catherine de Grivégnée, was Spanish, and aunt of the countess of Montijo, mother of the empress Eugénie. His first years were spent in Italy, where his father was occupied with his consular duties. He was educated at the College of Henry IV. in Paris. From the age of 18 years to 20 he was employed in the commissary department of the army. From 1825 to 1827 he acted as assistant vice-consul at Lisbon, where his uncle, Barthélemy de Lesseps, was the French chargé d'affaires. This uncle was an old companion of La Pérouse and a survivor of the expedition in which that navigator perished. In 1828 Ferdinand was sent as an assistant vice-consul to Tunis, where his father was consul-general. He courageously aided the escape of Youssouff, pursued by the soldiers of the bey, of whom he was one of the officers, for violation of the seraglio law. Youssouff acknowledged this protection given by a Frenchman by distinguishing himself in the ranks of the French army at the time of the conquest of Algeria. Ferdinand de Lesseps was also entrusted by his father with missions to Marshal Count Clausel, general-in-chief of the army of occupation in Algeria. The marshal wrote to Mathieu de Lesseps on the 18th of December 1830: "I have had the pleasure of meeting your son, who gives promise of sustaining with great credit the name he bears." In 1832 Ferdinand de Lesseps was appointed vice-consul at Alexandria. To the placing in quarantine of the vessel which took him to Egypt is due the origin of his great conception of a canal across the isthmus of Suez. In order to help him to while away the time at the lazaretto, M. Mimaut, consul-general of France at Alexandria, sent him several books, among which was the memoir written upon the Suez Canal, according to Bonaparte's instructions, by the civil engineer Lapère, one of the scientific members of the French expedition. This work struck de Lesseps's imagination, and gave him the idea of piercing the African isthmus. This idea, moreover, was conceived in circumstances that were to prepare the way for its realization. Mehemet Ali, who was the viceroy of Egypt, owed his position, to a certain extent, to the recommendations made in his behalf to the French government by Mathieu de Lesseps, who was consul-general in Egypt when Mehemet Ali was a simple colonel. The viceroy therefore welcomed Ferdinand affectionately, while Said Pacha, Mehemet's son, began those friendly relations that he did not forget later, when he gave him the concession for making the Suez Canal. In 1833 Ferdinand de Lesseps was sent as consul to Cairo, and soon afterwards given the management of the consulate-general at Alexandria, a post that he held until 1837. While he was there a terrible epidemic of the plague broke out and lasted for two years, carrying off more than a third of the inhabitants of Cairo and Alexandria. During this time he went from one city to the other, according as the danger was more pressing, and constantly displayed an admirable zeal and an imperturbable energy. Towards the close of the year 1837 he returned to France, and on the 21st of December married Mlle Agathe Delamalle, daughter of the government prosecuting attorney at the court of Angers. By this marriage M. de Lesseps became the father of five sons. In 1839 he was appointed consul at Rotterdam, and in the following year transferred to Malaga, the place of origin of his mother's family. In 1842 he was sent to Barcelona, and soon afterwards promoted to the grade of consul-general. In the course of a bloody insurrection in Catalonia, which ended in the bombardment of Barcelona, Ferdinand de Lesseps showed the most persistent bravery, rescuing from death, without distinction, the men belonging to the rival factions, and protecting and sending away not only the Frenchmen who were in danger, but foreigners of all nationalities. From 1848 to 1849 he was minister of France at Madrid. In the latter year the government of the French Republic confided to him a mission to Rome at the moment when it was a question whether the expelled pope would return to the Vatican with or without bloodshed. Following his interpretation of the instructions he had received, de Lesseps began negotiations with the existing government at Rome, according to which Pius IX. should peacefully re-enter the Vatican and the independence of the Romans be assured at the same time. But while he was negotiating, the elections in France had caused a change in the foreign policy of the government. His course was disapproved; he was recalled and brought before the council of state, which blamed his conduct without giving him a chance to justify himself. Rome, attacked by the French army, was taken by assault after a month's sanguinary siege. M. de Lesseps then retired from the diplomatic service, and never afterwards occupied any public office. In 1853 he lost his wife and daughter at a few days' interval. Perhaps his energy would not have been sufficient to sustain him against these repeated blows of destiny if, in 1854, the accession to the viceroyalty of Egypt of his old friend, Said Pacha, had not given a new impulse to the ideas that had haunted him for the last twenty-two years concerning the Suez Canal. Said Pacha invited M. de Lesseps to pay him a visit, and on the 7th of November 1854 he landed at Alexandria; on the 30th of the same month Said Pacha signed the concession authorizing M. de Lesseps to pierce the isthmus of Suez.