Chapter 22

See Strabo xiii. pp. 617-619; Herodotus ii. 178, iii. 39, vi. 8, 14; Thucydides iii. 2-50; Xenophon,Hellenica, i., ii.; S. Plehn,Lesbiacorum Liber(Berlin, 1828); C. T. Newton,Travels and Discoveries in the Levant(London, 1865); B. V. Head,Historia Numorum(Oxford, 1887), pp. 487-488; E. L. Hicks and G. F. Hill,Greek Historical Inscriptions(Oxford, 1901), Nos. 61, 94, 101, 139, 164; Conze,Reise auf der Insel Lesbos(1865); Koldewey,Antike Baureste auf Lesbos(Berlin, 1890).

(M. O. B. C.)

LESCHES(Lescheos in Pausanias x. 25. 5), the reputed author of theLittle Iliad(Ἰλιὰς μικρά), one of the “cyclic” poems. According to the usually accepted tradition, he was a native of Pyrrha in Lesbos, and flourished about 660B.C.(others place him about 50 years earlier). TheLittle Iliadtook up the story of the HomericIliad, and, beginning with the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles, carried it down to the fall of Troy (Aristotle,Poetics, 23). According to the epitome in theChrestomathyof Proclus, it ended with the admission of the wooden horse within the walls of the city. Some ancient authorities ascribe the work to a Lacedaemonian named Cinaethon, and even to Homer.

See F. G. Welcker,Der epische Cyclus(1865-1882); Müller and Donaldson,Hist. of Greek Literature, i. ch. 6; G. H. Bode,Geschichte der hellenischen Dichtkunst, i.

LESCURE, LOUIS MARIE JOSEPH,Marquis de(1766-1793), French soldier and anti-revolutionary, was born near Bressuire. He was educated at the École Militaire, which he left at the age of sixteen. He was in command of a company of cavalry in the Régiment de Royal-Piémont, but being opposed to the ideas of the Revolution he emigrated in 1791; he soon, however, returned to France, and on the 10th of August 1792 took part in the defence of the Tuileries against the mob of Paris. The day after, he was forced to leave Paris, and took refuge in the château of Clisson near Bressuire. On the outbreak of the revolt of Vendée against the Republic, he was arrested and imprisoned with all his family, as one of the promoters of the rising. He was set at liberty by the Royalists, and became one of their leaders, fighting at Thouars, taking Fontenay and Saumur (May-June 1793), and, after an unsuccessful attack on Nantes, joining H. du Verger de la Rochejaquelein, another famous Vendean leader. Their peasant troops, opposed to the republican general F. J. Westermann, sustained various defeats, but finally gained a victory between Tiffauges and Cholet on the 19th of September 1793. The struggle was then concentrated round Chatillon, which was time after time taken and lost by the Republicans. Lescure was killed on the 15th of October 1793 near the château of La Tremblaye between Einée and Fougères.

See Marquise de la Rochejaquelein (Lescure’s widow, who afterwards married La Rochejaquelein),Mémoires(Paris, 1817); Jullien de Courcelles,Dictionnaire des généraux français, tome vii. (1823); T. Muret,Histoire des guerres de l’ouest(Paris, 1848); and J. A. M. Crétineau-Joly,Guerres de Vendée(1834).

LESDIGUIÈRES, FRANÇOIS DE BONNE,Duc de(1543-1626), constable of France, was born at Saint-Bonnet de Champsaur on the 1st of April 1543, of a family of notaries with pretensions to nobility. He was educated at Avignon under a Protestant tutor, and had begun the study of law in Paris when he enlisted as an archer. He served under the lieutenant-general of his native province of Dauphiné, Bertrand de Simiane, baron de Gordes, but when the Huguenots raised troops in Dauphiné Lesdiguières threw in his lot with them, and under his kinsman Antoine Rambaud de Furmeyer, whom he succeeded in 1570, distinguished himself in the mountain warfare that followed by his bold yet prudent handling of troops. He fought at Jarnac and Moncontour, and was a guest at the wedding of Henry IV. of Navarre. Warned of the impending massacre he retired hastily to Dauphiné, where he secretly equipped and drilled a determined body of Huguenots, and in 1575, after the execution of Montbrun, became the acknowledged leader of the Huguenot resistance in the district with the title of commandant general, confirmed in 1577 by Marshal Damville, by Condé in 1580, and by Henry of Navarre in 1582. He seized Gap by a lucky night attack on the 3rd of January 1577, re-established the reformed religion there, and fortified the town. He refused to acquiesce in the treaty of Poitiers (1578) which involved the surrender of Gap, and after two years of fighting secured better terms for the province. Nevertheless in 1580 he was compelled to hand the place over to Mayenne and to see the fortifications dismantled. He took up arms for Henry IV. in 1585, capturing Chorges, Embrun, Châteauroux and other places, and after the truce of 1588-1589 secured the complete submission of Dauphiné. In 1590 he beat down the resistance of Grenoble, and was now able to threaten the leaguers and to support the governor of Provence against the raids of Charles Emmanuel I. of Savoy. He defeated the Savoyards at Esparron in April 1591, and in 1592 began the reconquest of the marquessate of Saluzzo which had been seized by Charles Emmanuel. After his defeat of the Spanish allies of Savoy at Salebertrano in June 1593 there was a truce, during which Lesdiguières was occupied in maintaining the royal authority against Éperon in Provence. The war with Savoy proceeded intermittently until 1601, when Henry IV. concluded peace, much to the dissatisfaction of Lesdiguières. The king regarded his lieutenant’s domination in Dauphiné with some distrust, although he was counted among the best of his captains. Nevertheless he made him a marshal of France in 1609, and ensured the succession to the lieutenant-generalship of Dauphiné, vested in Lesdiguières since 1597, to his son-in-law Charles de Créquy. Sincerely devoted to the throne, Lesdiguières took no part in the intrigues which disturbed the minority of Louis XIII., and he moderated the political claims made by his co-religionists under the terms of the Edict of Nantes. After the death of his first wife, Claudine de Bérenger, he married the widow of Ennemond Matel, a Grenoble shopkeeper, who was murdered in 1617. Lesdiguières was then 73, and this lady, Marie Vignon, had long been his mistress. He had two daughters, one of whom, Françoise, married Charles de Créquy. In 1622 he formally abjured the Protestant faith, his conversion being partly due to the influence of Marie Vignon. He was already a duke and peer of France; he now became constable of France, and received the order of the Saint Esprit. He had long since lost the confidence of the Huguenots, but he nevertheless helped the Vaudois against the duke of Savoy. Lesdiguières had the qualities of a great general, but circumstances limited him to the mountain warfare of Dauphiné, Provence and Savoy. He had almost unvarying success through sixty years of fighting. His last campaign, fought in alliance with Savoy to drive the Spaniards from the Valtelline, was the least successful of his enterprises. He died of fever at Valence on the 21st of September 1626.

The life of the Huguenot captain has been written in detail by Ch. Dufuyard,Le Connétable de Lesdiguières(Paris, 1892). His first biographer was his secretary Louis Videl,Histoire de la vie du connestable de Lesdiguières(Paris, 1638). Much of his official correspondence, with an admirable sketch of his life, is contained inActes et correspondance du connétable de Lesdiguières, edited by Comte Douglas and J. Roman inDocuments historiques inédits pour servir à l’histoire de Dauphiné(Grenoble, 1878). Other letters are in theLettres et mémoires(Paris, 1647) of Duplessis-Mornay.

LESGHIANS,orLesghis(from the PersianLeksi, 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 asΛῆχαιby Strabo and Plutarch along with theΓῆλαι(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 theKurins or Lesghians proper. Komarov1gives 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,” inPetermann’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).

1Ethnological 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 385B.C., a Greek colony from Paros built a city on the site of the present Lesina, naming itParosorPharos. The formsPhara,Pharia(common among Latin writers), andPityeia, also occur. In 229B.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 asLisna,LesnaorLyesena, “wooded” is almost certainly derived from the Slavoniclyés, “forest,” not from the Italianlesina, “an awl.” But the old form Pharia persisted, asFarorHvar, 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(LeskovatzorLeskovac), 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 theActis and Constitutionis of the Realme of Scotlandknown 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 hisPiae 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 historyDe Origine, Moribus, et Rebus Gestis Scotorum. In 1579 he went to France, and was made suffragan and vicar-general of the archbishopricof 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 hisNarrative 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 publishedManual 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 inQuart. Journ. Geol. Soc.(May 1904); and Memoir (with portrait) by B. S. Lyman, printed in advance with portrait, and afterwards in abstract only inTrans. 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 pamphletThe 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.

TheTheological Worksof 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 beA 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 areThe 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); andThe 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 trueaptitude 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,” fromDon 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. HisLifeof his friend Constable, the landscape painter, appeared in 1843, and hisHandbook 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 hisAutobiography 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 inPaul Pryin 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 burlesqueLittle 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” inRuy 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’sNatural 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’sPhilosophical Journal, and in the publication (1804) of theExperimental 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 aCourse of Mathematics—the first, entitledElements of Geometry, Geometrical Analysis and Plane Trigonometry, in 1809, and the second,Geometry of Curve Lines, in 1813; the third volume, onDescriptive Geometry and the Theory of Solidswas never completed. With reference to his invention (in 1810) of a process of artificial congelation, he published in 1813A 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 theTransactions 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-completedElements 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 entitledLand 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 theFortnightly Review, in which he pronounced Leslie to be “one of the best living writers on applied political economy.” Mill had sought his acquaintance on readinghis first article inMacmillan’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 ofla petite cultureand still more ofla 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 ofEssays in Political and Moral Philosophy. These and some later essays, together with the earlier volume onLand 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 hismagnum 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 theFortnightly Reviewfor 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. TheLand Systemsbelonged 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 thePhilosophie 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 hisEssay on Wages, which was first published in 1868 and was reproduced as an appendix to the volume onLand 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 theWealth of Nationsof 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 hissoi-disantfollowers 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 inHermathena. 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.

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 thePhilosophie 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 hisEssay on Wages, which was first published in 1868 and was reproduced as an appendix to the volume onLand 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 theWealth of Nationsof 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 hissoi-disantfollowers 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 inHermathena. 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.

Back to Index Next