LANNES, JEAN (1769-1809), marshal of France, was born at Lectoure, 11th April 1769. He was the son of a livery stables keeper, and was himself in early life apprenticed to a dyer. He had had but little education, but notwithstanding this his great strength and proficiency in all manly sports caused him in 1792 to be elected sergeantmajor of the battalion of volunteers of Gers, which he had joined on the breaking out of the war between Spain and the French republic. He served through the campaigns in the Pyrenees in 1793 and 1794, and in the latter year was elected chef de brigade. However, in 1795, on the reform of the army introduced by the Thermidorians, he was dismissed from his rank. Not discouraged by this check, he re-enlisted as a simple volunteer in the army of Italy. In the famous campaign of 1796 he again fought his way up to high rank, being eventually made once more chef de brigade by Bonaparte. He was distinguished in every battle, and was wounded at Arcola. He was chosen by Bonaparte to accompany him to Egypt as general of one of Kléber's brigades, in which capacity he greatly distinguished himself, especially on the retreat from Syria. He went with Bonaparte to France, assisted at the 18th Brumaire, and was appointed general of division, and commandant of the consular guard. He commanded the advanced guard in the crossing of the Alps in 1800, was instrumental in winning the battle of Montebello, from which he afterwards took his title, and bore the brunt of the battle of Marengo. In 1801 Napoleon tried his favourite general as a diplomatist, and sent him as ambassador to Portugal. Opinions differ as to his merits in this capacity, but it may be presumed that Napoleon did not believe in them, as he never made such use of him again. On the establishment of the empire he was created a marshal of France, and commanded once more the advanced guard of a great French army in the campaign of Austerlitz. At Austerlitz he commanded the left, at Jena the centre, and at Friedland the centre of the French army, showing himself a general of division of the greatest merit, carrying out the orders given him to the letter, and never thinking them impossible. He was now to be tried as a commanderin-chief, for Napoleon took him to Spain in 1808, and gave him a corps d'armée, with which he won a victory over Castaños on November 22. In January 1809 he was sent to attempt the capture of Saragossa, and by February 21 was in possession of the place. Napoleon then created him Duc de Montebello, and once more, for the last time, gave him the command of the advanced guard of an army of invasion. At Aspern he was ordered with two divisions to cut the Austrian army under the archduke Charles in half; he succeeded entirely, though under a heavy fire, but finding himself unsupported by Napoleon, who had been thrown into confusion by the news that his bridges over the Danube had been broken, he had to retreat. During the retreat he exposed himself as usual to the hottest fire, and received a mortal wound. As he was being carried from the field to die at Vienna, he is said to have met and reproached his old general for his ambition; but this, to say the least, is a contested statement. Napoleon said of him that "he had found him a pigmy, and made him a giant"; and there can be no doubt of his marvellous ability on the field, and his extraordinary courage. His eldest son was made a peer of France by Louis XVIII.

A Vie militaire de J. Lannes was published in 1809 by René Perin, but details can be found in all the military histories of the

time.

LA NOUE, FRANÇOIS DE (1531-1591), surnamed Bras-de-Fer, one of the gallant Huguenot captains of the able and ancient Breton family. His first exploit was the 16th century, was born near Nantes in 1531, of an honourcapture of Orleans at the head of only fifteen cavaliers in 1567, during the second Huguenot war. At the battles of Jarnac in March 1569 and of Moncontour in the following October, La Noue was taken prisoner; but he was exchanged on the latter occasion in time to resume the governorship of Poitou, and inflict a signal defeat on the royalist troops before Rochefort. At the siege of Fontenay (1570) his left arm was shattered by a bullet; and the iron limb that replaced it won him from his soldiers the sobriquet of IronArm. When peace was made in France in the same year, La Noue carried his sword against the Spaniards in the Netherlands, but was taken at the recapture of Mons by the Spanish in 1572. Permitted to return to France, he was commissioned by Charles IX. to attempt to reconcile the inhabitants of La Rochelle, the great stronghold of the Huguenots, to the king. But the Rochellois were too much alarmed by the recent massacre of St Bartholomew to come to any terms; and La Noue, perceiving that war was imminent, and knowing that his post was on the Huguenot side, gave up his royal commission, and from 1574 till 1578 acted as general of La Rochelle. When peace was again concluded, La Noue once more went to aid the Protestant estates of the Netherlands. Holding a high rank in their army, he took several towns and captured Count Egmont in 1580; but a few weeks afterwards he himself fell into the hands of the Spaniards. Thrust into a loathsome prison at Limburg, La Noue, the admiration of all, of whatever faith, for his gallantry, honour, and purity of character, was kept confined for five years by a powerful nation, whose reluctance to set him free is one of the sincerest tributes to his reputation. At length, in June 1585, La Noue was exchanged for Egmont and other prisoners of consideration, while a heavy ransom and a pledge not to bear arms against his Catholic majesty were Till 1589 La Noue took no part also exacted from him. in public matters, but in that year he joined Henry of Navarre and Henry III. against the Leaguers. He was present at both sieges of Paris, and at several of the chief battles; but at the siege of Lamballe in Brittany he received the wound of which he died some days later at Moncontour, August 4, 1591.

his pen as by his sword. Bentivoglio exaggerates in saying that La Noue was as famous by What writings he has left are of value enough, but it is not by them that he is remembered. He was the author of Discours Politiques et Militaires, 1587; Déclaration pour prise d'armes et la défense de Sedan et Jamets, 1588; Observations sur l'Histoire de Guicciardini, 2 vols., 1592; and notes on Plutarch's Lives, which have not been published. His Correspondance was published in 1854. See La Vie de François, seigneur de La Noue, by Moyse Amirault, Leyden, 1661; Brantôme's lies des Capitaines Français; C. Vincen's Les Héros de la Riforme: Fr. de La Noue (1875); and Haag, La France Protestante.

LANSDOWNE, WILLIAM PETTY FITZMAURICE, FIRST MARQUIS OF (1737-1805), better known as a statesman while earl of Shelburne, was born at Dublin, May 20, 1737. He was a descendant of the lords of Kerry, and his grandfather, who was created earl of Kerry, married a daughter of Sir William Petty. On the death without issue of Sir William Petty's son, the first earl of Shelburne, the estates passed to his nephew John Fitzmaurice (afterwards advanced to the earldom of Shelburne), the father of the subject of the present notice. The latter spent his childhood "in the remotest parts of the south of Ireland," and, according to his own account, when at the age of sixteen he entered Christ Church, Oxford, he had both "everything to learn and everything to unlearn." From a tutor whom he describes as "narrow-minded" he received advantageous guidance in his studies, but he attributes XIV. 37

but which subsequently passed through many editions with varying titles and in several languages. Madame Merian stated that the common South American species, now known as Fulgora laternaria, L., was highly luminous at night, so much so that she was enabled to read by the light of one only, and that when several were confined together the interior of the box appeared all ablaze. No one doubted these statements, and the illustrious Linnæus used the words "Prominente froute noctu lucem vivacissimam spargit" in diagnosing the insect in his Systema Naturæ. Moreover, it was believed that, because one species had been asserted to be luminous, others allied thereto must possess the same power; the specific names used by Linnæus, such as candelaria, phosphorea, noctivida, lucernaria, and flammea, may be adduced as instances. Of these one only, the F. candelaria of China, has become (with the original laternaria) a subject of controversy, for it also was asserted to be luminous. As time wore on many intelligent naturalists and other travellers visited both South America and China, and they concluded that the light must be produced only under very exceptional conditions, or that the original statement was an error, for they could not detect any luminosity, nor, as a rule, was such a property believed in by the natives of the regions. Quite recently many naturalists of undoubted authority have resided for years in the districts where these insects occur without having personally detected luminosity (though directly in search of it), and without obtaining any indications of the existence of such a belief in the minds of the natives. On the other hand, there have been a few travellers who have professed to be able to confirm Madame Merian's statements, both from personal observation and from information derived from native sources. Possibly the last of these was within the last twenty years, and his assertion concerned F. candelaria, and upon his statement an entomologist of repute, lately deceased, maintained to the last his belief in the luminous powers. With him all faith in this direction has probably passed away. It is not for us to attempt to define the reasons for Madame Merian's positive and circumstantial statements. The preponderance of negative testimony is so crushingly great that Fulgora may be regarded as eliminated from the category of luminous insects.

LANTHANUM. It will be convenient to notice under this heading the group of closely allied metals-LANTHANUM, CERIUM, and DIDYMIUM.

In an abandoned copper mine at Riddarhyttan, Westmanland, in Sweden, there occurs a heavy compact mineral, which, though pretty abundant there, is hardly met with anywhere else. This mineral was long mistaken for -tungsten (syn. scheelite), until Klaproth of Berlin in 1803 found in it a peculiar earth, which he called ochroite earth, as it becomes yellow when heated in air. About the same time Berzelius and Hisinger made the same discovery; and, (rightly) presuming the new earth to be an oxide of a new metal, they called the latter cerium (after the planet Ceres, the then latest discovery in astronomy) and the mineral cerite, which names have been retained to this day. Only the name "cerium" now has a more specific meaning, it having been shown by Mosander (in 1839-41) that Berzelius's cerium is a mixture of three metallic radicles, namely, cerium proper, lanthanum (from Xav@ávew, "to be concealed"), and didymium (from Sidupos, "twin "). These metals are very closely related to one another in their chemical character, and may be conveniently treated together. The extraction from cerite, of the oxide group, offers no difficulty. According to Marignac (Ann. Chim. Phys. [3], vol. xxvii.), the powdered mineral is made into a thick paste with oil of vitriol, and the reaction which sets

in allowed to accomplish itself. The remaining dry white powder is placed in a crucible, and kept there for a long time at a temperature below redness, but sufficient to chase away the bulk of the free sulphuric acid. The residue is added in small instalments to a quantity of cold water, and the gangue (ferruginous silica) filtered off. The solution is boiled, when the greater part of the cerite-oxides comes down in the form of sulphate almost free from foreign oxides. The sulphates can be purified by redissolving them in the least quantity of water at 5° to 6° C., filtering, and reprecipitating by boiling. What remains in the mother-liquors is recovered by precipitation with sulphate of potash (which must be added as a solid and in sufficient quantity to saturate the solution) as an alum-like double sulphate. The purified sulphates are dissolved in cold water, precipitated as oxalates by means of oxalate of ammonia, and the washed oxalates ignited, when the pure cerite-oxide mixture remains. The separation of the three oxides from one another offers very great difficulties. Comparatively easy is the extraction of approximately pure oxide of cerium-by Berzelius's method. Dissolve the mixed oxide (which must be free of sulphate if the method is to succeed) in nitric acid, evaporate to dryness, ignite the residue, and treat it with nitric acid diluted with one hundred times its weight of water. Only lanthanum and didymium dissolve, impure binoxide of cerium (CeO2) remaining, which can be further purified by treatment with more concentrated nitric acid, which, however, besides the lanthanum and didymium, dissolves a good deal of the cerium itself. This method (like any of the rest) is founded upon the fact that salts of sesquioxide of cerium (Ce,Og) are readily oxidized into salts of the feebly basic binoxide CeO, under circumstances which effect no higher oxidation in La,Og or Di2O3. For the preparation of the oxides of lanthanum and didymium we may utilize the nitric mother-liquors obtained in the extraction of cerium-oxide. These are evaporated to dryness, the residue is ignited, and treated with very dilute nitric acid, which dissolves the lanthanum and didymium with only little cerium (Mosander, Marignac). A more complete elimination of the cerium is effected (Bunsen) by converting the nitrates into sulphates (by evaporation with sulphuric acid to dryness, and igniting the residue), dissolving these in sulphuric acid water, and boiling with powdered magnesite (MgCO3). From the filtrate the lanthanum and didymium are precipitated (after acidulation by muriatic) with oxalic acid, and the oxalates filtered off, washed, and ignited. By repeating the magnesia and oxalic acid process two or three times, the oxides are obtained cerium-free. They are then made into anhydrous, neutral sulphates; these are dissolved in a minimum of water at 0° to 5° C., and the solution is heated to 30° to 35° C., when lanthanum sulphate chiefly separates out in small crystals, which are filtered off with the help of a filter-pump. A relatively lanthanum-free didymium sulphate remains dissolved (Mosander).

The metals were known only in a powdery form up to 1876, when Hillebrand and Norton succeeded in preparing them in a compact form by the electrolysis of the fused chlorides. The three metals are very similar to one another; they are steel-grey ductile true metals, melting at a somewhat lower temperature than silver. Specific gravities range from 61 to 6.6. They are more readily inflammable than magnesium.

The atomic weights of the three elements are now (1882) quoted as Ce = 141, La = 139, Di = 147.

Oxides and Salts.-Cerium has long been known to form two oxides, namely, a lower (cerous") oxide, which is a pretty strong, and a higher ("ceric ") oxide, which is a feeble base. 16 (=O) parts of oxygen are combined, in the former with 92 (="F") parts, in the latter with F parts of metal. Formerly F was looked upon as the atomic weight, and the oxides formulated as FO and F2O, respec

tively. But Mendelejeff on theoretical grounds insisted that the lower oxide must be looked upon as a sesquioxide Ce,O, where Cc,-3F or Ce-F, and the higher (accordingly) as a binoxide, Ceo or rather CeO2. And he asserted the same in regard to the reputed monoxides of lanthanum and didymium. These remarks were little heeded even by the specialists until Hillebrand (partly in conjunction with Norton) succeeded in obtaining the three metals as such, and in a truly metallic condition, which admitted of an exact determination of the specific heats. The specific heats were found to befor Ce 04479, for La 04485, for Di 04563; and these numbers must be multiplied with Mendelejeff's atomic weight to produce "atomic heats" (66; 6 23; 6'6), approximating to values obtaining for other metals of established atomic weight. Hence Mendelejeff was right. Cerous oxide, Ce,O,, is obtained by heating the oxalate in an atmosphere of hydrogen, as a bluish-grey powder. The higher oxide Ceo, is obtained when any certain salt of a volatile acid (e.g., nitric) is ignited in air; it is a white powder, which when cold has only a slight touch of yellow in it, but at high temperatures assumes a deep orange-red colour. Cerous chloride, CeCl3, is obtained by heating the metal, or a mixture of either oxide and charcoal, in dry chlorine gas, as a yellowish-white sublimate, uniting with water into indistinct crystals Ce,Cl+5H,O. The cerous sulphate, Ce,(SO4)3, separates out when its solution is heated. It is soluble in 6 parts of cold, and in about 60 of hot water, and forms a difficultly soluble double salt with sulphate of potash. To obtain the ceric sulphate, when the dioxide is treated with cold concentrated sulphuric acid, and the solution formed by addition of water allowed to evaporate, the salt Ce(SO4)3(ous) + 2Ce(SO4)2(ic) +25H2O separates out in red crystals looking like bichromate of potash. The mother-liquor yields yellow crystals of Ce(SO4),+4H2O.

The most characteristic test for cerium salts is that the colourless cerous solutions, on addition of hypochlorite of soda, give a red precipitate of a ceric hydrate.

Didymium (Di, 03) solutions have an astringent sweetish taste and a rose-red or violet colour. But their most characteristic property is their beautiful absorption-spectrum, which comes out distinctly with as little as half an inch deep of a solution containing rath of a per cent. of the oxide (Gladstone).

Lanthanum (La,03) solutions have a similar taste to those of didymium salts. They are colourless. The chloride when volatilized between the poles of an induction coil yields a highly characteristic rich line-spectrum, by means of which the least traces of the metal can be detected (Bunsen).

Of higher oxides of lanthanum or didymium we had hitherto only indications; but quite lately Dr Brauner (Chem. News for 1881, December 23), in Roscoe's laboratory, succeeded in preparing a definite pentoxide, Di,O,, of didymium, and also a hydrate of it, Di, 05.3.0.

Sources. Cerite, though the most abundant, is not the only native source of cerium, lanthanum, and didymium. A. Cossa has found traces of the metals in the ashes of numerous plants, and even in the human body. But it is more important to state that

there are a number of rare minerals, of which the chief are known

by the names of gadolinite, euxenite, samarskite, which, along with more or less of cerite-metals, contain other rarer earth-metals similar to these. Until lately the handbooks of chemistry quoted only three such rarer members of the family under the names of yttrium, erbium, and terbium; but these reputed individual elements have, during the last few years, been searchingly analysed by Marignac, M. Delafontaine, L. F. Nilson, P. T. Clève, J. L. Sinith, and others, and under their hands resolved themselves into about a dozen separate elements. The rare earth-metals in fact bid fair to multiply like the little planets in astronomy; and, although in chemistry no firmly established fact can justly be called unimportant, the minor rare earths, in the meantime, are of no general interest, even to the general chemist.

See Wurtz, Dictionnaire de Chimie, 1876; Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Handbook of Chemistry, 1879; Marignac's and Delafontaine's Memoirs in the Archives des Sciences physiques et naturelles; Liebig's Annalen der Chemie, 1858-64: Poggendorff's Annalen, 1875; Journal f. prakt. Chemie, 1858-62; Zeitschrift f.

Chemie, 1862. The Jahresbericht der Chemie is the surest guide to all the

literature.

(W. D.)

LANZI, LUIGI (1732-1810), a writer on Etruscan antiquities and on the history of Italian painting, was born in 1732, and educated as a priest. In 1773 he was appointed keeper of the galleries of Florence, from which time his attention seems to have been divided between the study of Italian painting and the study of Etruscan antiquities and language. In the one field his labours are represented by his Storia Pittorica della Italia, the first portion of which, containing the Florentine, Sienese, Roman, and Neapolitan schools, appeared in 1792, the rest in 1796. The work is translated by Roscoe. In archæology his great achieve ment was the work entitled Saggio di lingua Etrusca, 1789,

followed by Saggio delle lingue Ital. Antiche, 1806. In his memoir on the so-called Etruscan vases (Dei vasi antichi dipinti volgarmente chiamati Etruschi, 1806) Lanzi rightly perceived their Greek origin and characters. What was true of the antiquities would be true also, he argued, of the Etruscan language, and the object of the Saggio di lingua Etrusca was to prove that this language must be related to that of the neighbouring peoples-Romans, Umbrians, Oscans, and Greeks. It is admitted that he was wanting in critical method after a certain point, though at the same time much of the impulse he gave to study arose from his general method of inquiry. It is a sign of the recognition he received that he was allied with E. Q. Visconti in his great but never accomplished plan of illustrating antiquity altonotices of ancient sculpture and its various styles appeared gether from existing literature and monuments. His as an appendix to the Saggio di lingua Etrusca, and arose out of his careful and minute study of the treasures then added to the Florentine collection from the Villa Medici. The abuse he has often met with from modern writers in the Etruscan language led Corssen (Sprache der Etrusker, i. p. vi.) to protest in the name of his real services to philology and archæology. Among his latest productions may be mentioned his edition of Hesiod's Works and Days, with valuable notes, and a translation in terza rima. It had been begun as far back as 1785, but was recast and completed in 1808. The list of his works closes with his Opere Sacre, a series of treatises on spiritual subjects. Lanzi died of apoplexy, March 30, 1810, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He was buried in the church of the Santa Croce at Florence, by the side of Michelangelo.

LAOCOON, in Greek legend, was a brother of Anchises, and had been a priest of Apollo, but having married against the will of the god he and the two sons of this marriage bull at the altar of Poseidon, in whose service Laocoon was were attacked by serpents while preparing to sacrifice a then acting as priest. An additional motive for his punishment consisted in his having warned the Trojans against the wooden horse left by the Greeks. But, whatever his crime may have been, the punishment stands out even among the tragedies of Greek legend as marked by its horror-particularly so as it comes to us in Virgil (Eneid, the Vatican (see Plate V.). In the oldest existing version ii. 199 82.), and as it is represented in the marble group in of the legend that of Arctinus of Miletus, which has so far been preserved in the excerpts of Proclus-the calamity is lessened by the fact that only one of the two sons is killed; and this, as has been pointed out (Arch. Zeitung, 1879, P. 167), agrees with the interpretation which Goethe in his Propylaa had put on the marble group without reference to the literary tradition. He says: "The younger son. struggles and is powerless, and is alarmed; the father struggles ineffectively, indeed his efforts only increase the opposition; the elder son is least of all injured, he feels neither anguish nor pain, but he is horrified at what he sees happening to his father, and he screams while he pushes the coils of the serpent off from his legs. He is thus an observer, witness, and participant in the incident, and the work is then complete." Again, "the gradation of the incident is this: the father has become powerless among the coils of the serpent; the younger son has still strength for resistance but is wounded; the elder has a prospect of escape." Lessing, on the other hand, maintained the view that the marble group illustrated the version of the legend given by Virgil, with such differences as were necessary from the different limits of representation imposed on the arts of sculpture and of poetry. These limits required a new definition, and this he undertook in his still famous work, Laokoon (see the edition of Hugo Blümner, Berlin,