Oporto (q.v.), with which it is connected by an electric tramway. The harbour, of artificial construction, has an area of over 220 acres, and admits vessels of any size, the depth at the entrance being nearly 50 ft. The transference of cargo to and from ships lying in the Leixões basin is effected entirely by means of lighters from Oporto. In addition to wine, &c., from Oporto, large numbers of emigrants to South America are taken on board here. The trade of the port is mainly in British hands, and large numbers of British ships call at Leixões on the voyage between Lisbon and Liverpool, London or Southampton.
LEJEUNE, LOUIS FRANÇOIS, Baron (1776–1848), French
general, painter, and lithographer, was born at Versailles. As
aide-de-camp to General Berthier he took an active part in many
of the Napoleonic campaigns, which he made the subjects of an
important series of battle-pictures. The vogue he enjoyed is
due to the truth and vigour of his work, which was generally
executed from sketches and studies made on the battlefield.
When his battle-pictures were shown at the Egyptian Hall in
London, a rail had to be put up to protect them from the eager
crowds of sightseers. Among his chief works are “The Entry
of Charles X. into Paris, 6 June 1825” at Versailles; “Episode
of the Prussian War, October 1807” at Douai Museum;
“Marengo” (1801); “Lodi,” “Thabor,” “Aboukir” (1804); “The
Pyramids” (1806); “Passage of the Rhine in 1795” (1824), and
“Moskawa” (1812). The German campaign of 1806 brought
him to Munich, where he visited the workshop of Senefelder,
the inventor of lithography. Lejeune was so fascinated by the
possibilities of the new method that he then and there made the
drawing on stone of his famous “Cossack” (printed by C. and
T. Senefelder, 1806). Whilst he was taking his dinner, and with
his horses harnessed and waiting to take him back to Paris,
one hundred proofs were printed, one of which he subsequently
submitted to Napoleon. The introduction of lithography
into France was greatly due to the efforts of Lejeune.
Many of his battle-pictures were engraved by Coiny and
Bovinet.
See Fournier-Sarlovèze, Le Général Lejeune (Paris, Libraire de l’art).
LEKAIN, the stage name of Henri Louis Cain (1728–1778), French actor, who was born in Paris on the 14th of April 1728, the son of a silversmith. He was educated at the Collège Mazarin, and joined an amateur company of players against which the Comédie Française obtained an injunction. Voltaire supported him for a time and enabled him to act in his private theatre and also before the duchess of Maine. Owing to the hostility of the actors it was only after a struggle of seventeen months that, by the command of Louis XV., he was received at the Comédie Française. His success was immediate. Among his best parts were Herod in Mariamne, Nero in Britannicus and similar tragic rôles, in spite of the fact that he was short and stout, with irregular and rather common features. His name is connected with a number of important scenic reforms. It was he who had the benches removed on which privileged spectators formerly sat encumbering the stage, Count Lauragais paying for him an excessive indemnity demanded. Lekain also protested against the method of sing-song declamation prevalent, and endeavoured to correct the costuming of the plays, although unable to obtain the historic accuracy at which Talma aimed. He died in Paris on the 8th of February 1778.
His eldest son published his Mémoires (1801) with his correspondence with Voltaire, Garrick and others. They were reprinted with a preface by Talma in Mémoires sur l’art dramatique (1825).
LELAND, CHARLES GODFREY (1824–1903), American author, son of a merchant, was born at Philadelphia on the 15th of August 1824, and graduated at Princeton in 1845. He afterwards studied at Heidelberg, Munich and Paris. He was in Paris during the revolution of 1848, and took an active part in it. He then returned to Philadelphia, and after being admitted to the bar in 1851, devoted himself to contributing to periodicals, editing various magazines and writing books. At the opening of the Civil War he started at Boston the Continental Magazine, which advocated emancipation. In 1868 he became known as the humorous author of Hans Breitmann’s Party and Ballads, which was followed by other volumes of the same kind, collected in 1871 with the title of Hans Breitmann’s Ballads. These dialect poems, burlesquing the German American, at once became popular. In 1869 he went to Europe, and till 1880 was occupied, chiefly in London, with literary work; after returning to Philadelphia for six years, he again made his home in Europe, generally at Florence, where he died on the 20th of March 1903. Though his humorous verses were most attractive to the public, Leland was a serious student of folk-lore, particularly of the gipsies, his writings on the latter (The English Gypsies and their Language, 1872; The Gypsies, 1882; Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune-telling . . . , 1891, &c.) being recognized as valuable contributions to the literature of the subject. He was president of the first European folk-lore congress, held in Paris in 1889.
His other publications include Poetry and Mystery of Dreams (1855), Meister Karl’s Sketch-book (1855), Pictures of Travel (1856), Sunshine in Thought (1862), Heine’s Book of Songs (1862), The Music Lesson of Confucius (1870), Egyptian Sketch-book (1873), Abraham Lincoln (1879), The Minor Arts (1880), Algonquin Legends of New England (1884), Songs of the Sea and Lays of the Land (1895), Hans Breitmann in Tyrol (1895), One Hundred Profitable Acts (1897), Unpublished Legends of Vergil (1899), Kuloskap the Master, and other Algonquin Poems (1903, with J. Dyneley Prince).
See his Memoirs (2 vols., 1893), and E. R. Pennell, C. G. Leland (1906).
LELAND (Leyland or Laylonde), JOHN (c. 1506–1552), English antiquary, was born in London on the 13th of September, probably in 1506. He owed his education at St Paul’s school under William Lilly, and at Christ’s College, Cambridge, to the kindness of a patron, Thomas Myles. He graduated at Cambridge in 1521, and subsequently studied at All Souls College, Oxford, and in Paris under François Dubois (Sylvius). On his return to England he took holy orders. He had been tutor to Lord Thomas Howard, son of the 3rd duke of Norfolk, and to Francis Hastings, afterwards earl of Huntingdon. Meanwhile his learning had recommended him to Henry VIII., who presented him to the rectory of Peuplingues in the marches of Calais in 1530. He was already librarian and chaplain to the king, and in 1533 he received a novel commission under the great seal as king’s antiquary, with power to search for records, manuscripts and relics of antiquity in all the cathedrals, colleges and religious houses of England. Probably from 1534, and definitely from 1536 onwards to 1542, he was engaged on an antiquarian tour through England and Wales. He sought to preserve the MSS. scattered at the dissolution of the monasteries, but his powers did not extend to the actual collection of MSS. Some valuable additions, however, he did procure for the king’s library, chiefly from the abbey of St Augustine at Canterbury. He had received a special dispensation permitting him to absent himself from his rectory of Peuplingues in 1536, and on his return from his itinerary he received the rectory of Haseley in Oxfordshire; his support of the church policy of Henry and Cranmer being further rewarded by a canonry and prebend of King’s College (now Christ Church), Oxford, and a prebend of Salisbury. In a Strena Henrico[1] (pr. 1546), addressed to Henry VIII. in 1545, he proposed to execute from the materials which he had collected in his journeys a topography of England, an account of the adjacent islands, an account of the British nobility, and a great history of the antiquities of the British Isles. He toiled over his papers at his house in the parish of St Michael le Querne, Cheapside, London, but he was not destined to complete these great undertakings, for he was certified insane in March 1550, and died on the 18th of April 1552.
Leland was an exact observer, and a diligent student of local chronicles. The bulk of his work remained in MS. at the time of his death, and various copies were made, one by John Stowe in 1576. After passing through various hands the greater part of
- ↑ Re-edited in 1549 by John Bale as The laboryeuse Journey and Serche of J. Leylande for Englandes Antiquitees geven of him for a Neu Yeares Gifte, &c., modern edition by W. A. Copinger (Manchester, 1895).
