L'ECLUSE, Charles de. See Clusius
LECOAT, Yves Marie Gabriel Pierre, Baron of St. Haouen, a French admiral, inventor of a system of telegraphic signals, was born in Brittany in 1756; died at Calais, 5th September, 1826. He entered the navy young, went to India and America, returned, and was arrested on the breaking out of the Revolution. Released, he was made admiral; and when the invasion of England was projected, he was military chief of the port of Boulogne. In 1800 he first began his system of telegraphic signals, but the first line was not completed till 1821—between Paris and Bordeaux.—P. E. D.
LE COINTE, Charles, a French historian, born at Troyes, 4th November, 1611; died at Paris, 18th January, 1681. He accompanied the ambassador Servien to Germany, and was useful in arranging the treaty of Munster. He published some orations and "Annales Ecclesiastici Francorum," a work of great research.
LECOMTE, Louis, jesuit and mathematician, was born at Bordeaux about the middle of the seventeenth century. From March, 1685 to 1692, he was in Siam and China as a missionary, during which period he made several important astronomical observations. His "Nouveaux Mémoires sur l'état present de la Chine" occasioned bitter controversy, and was eventually condemned by the parliament of Paris in 1761. He died at Bordeaux in 1729.—W. J. P.
LECONTE, John L., an American naturalist, was born at New York in 1825. He took the degree of M.D. in 1846. He made extensive scientific tours in various parts of America; visiting the Upper Mississippi, the Rocky Mountains, Lake Superior, and California. In one of his trips he was accompanied by Professor Agassiz. He explored also the river Colorado throughout its whole extent. In some of his excursions he underwent considerable risk. He published some natural history papers, chiefly on entomology, in various American periodicals, as in the Transactions of the Academy of Natural Science of Philadelphia; the Annals of the Lyceum, New York: and the Boston Natural History Journal. He also contributed to Agassiz' work on Lake Superior.—J. H. B.
LE COURRAYER, Pierre François, a French Roman catholic writer—who maintained that as the English bishops can show uninterrupted succession from the apostles, their ordinations are valid—was born at Rouen in 1681. His opinions were condemned, and he passed to England, where he obtained preferment in the church, though professing still to adhere to the Roman catholic faith. But in the notes to his translations of Sleidan and Sarpi he denies the infallibility of the pope, the existence of purgatory, &c. Died at London, 1776.—D. W. R.
LECOUVREUR, Adrienne, a celebrated French actress, was born at Damery in 1692. She studied under Legrand, and made her début at the Comédie Français in 1717. Transcendant talent, combined with great personal advantages, made her the queen of the French stage. In the rôles of Jocaste, Athalie, Roxane, Cornélie, and above all in the Phédre of Racine, she was without a rival. Among her numerous worshippers ranks Voltaire; and her liaison with the Maréchal De Saxe has given rise to the story of her death by poison at the hands of a royal rival. She died at Paris, March, 1730, and was interred by night in the Rue Bourgogne, the Abbé Languet having refused her remains consecrated burial.—W. J. P.
LECT, Jacques, better known by the Latinized form of his name, Jacobus Lectins, an eminent Swiss statesman, lawyer, and writer, born at Geneva in 1560; died in 1611. he studied under the celebrated French jurisconsult Cujas, and in 1583 was appointed professor of law in his native city. Some time after he was admitted to a share in the civic government; and when the republic of Geneva was at war with the duke of Savoy, he was commissioned to visit England to seek pecuniary assistance. On a similar errand he went to Holland, and in both his appeals was successful. He was four times syndic of Geneva, and was employed in many affairs, of importance and responsibility. He is now chiefly remembered as an editor and author, for, notwithstanding his multifarious public duties, he pursued a variety of studies with ardour and success. He edited the Epistles of Symmachus, with notes, and wrote annotations on various ancient authors; but is best known by his complete collection of Greek poetical writers in heroic verse, with a Latin translation. He also wrote miscellaneous poems, poetic paraphrases of Ecclesiastes and Jonah, and other works critical, biographical, historical, and legal.—B. H. C.
LE DAIN, Olivier, a favourite of Louis XI. of France, born at Thielt, near Courtrai. Nothing is known of him previous to his arrival at the French court, save that he was of peasant birth. He was barber and valet to Louis XI., but soon gained favour and changed his name, by royal authority, from Oliver the Bad, or Oliver the Devil, to Oliver le Dain. He was made a noble and had a gift of lands; went as ambassador to Ghent, and on his return was the king's chief favourite. When Louis XI. died, Charles VIII. took a different course, and brought Oliver to trial for the cruelties of the late king. On the 20th May, 1484, he was condemned to be hanged, and next day the sentence was executed.—P. E. D.
LEDERMÜLLER, Martin Froben, a German physiologist, was born at Nuremberg in 1719. After having studied law at Jena, he successively took service in the Austrian and French armies. Afterwards he was appointed to some civic employment in his native town and at Baireuth. He died at Nuremberg in 1769. He is famous for his microscopic observations, the results of which he published in several works.—K. E.
LEDEBOUR, Karl Friedrich von, a Pomeranian botanist, was born at Stralsund on the 8th July, 1785, and died at Munich on the 4th of July, 1851. His father, who was Swedish judge-advocate at Stralsund, died a few weeks before his birth. At the age of fifteen he entered the university of Greifswald, and was patronized by the celebrated physiologist Rudolphi. At the conclusion of his studies he went to Stockholm, and passed as an engineer officer. He was induced, however, soon after to relinquish a military life, and on his return to Greifswald he passed his examination as M.D., and at the early age of twenty was appointed demonstrator of botany, and director of the botanic garden of that city. In 1811 he was chosen professor of botany in the university of Dorpat, and immediately set himself to examine the flora of Russia. He improved the garden at Dorpat by the introduction of many new plants. In 1826 he visited the Altai mountains, and extended his journey to the frontiers of China. He published the botanical results of his travels along with Meyer and Bunge, under the title of "Flora Altaica," 4 vols. 8vo, Berlin, 1829-33; and "Icones Plantarum, illustrantes Floram Rossicam," &c., 5 vols. folio, with five hundred coloured plates, Riga, 1829-34. He also published a general account of his journey. In 1836 he became emeritus-professor (being succeeded by Von Bunge), and retired first to Odessa, then to Heidelberg, and finally to Munich, where he died of long-continued disease of the heart. Before his death he completed the last and greatest of his works, "Flora Rossica," Stuttgart, 1842-51.—J. H. B.
* LEDEBUR, Leopold Karl Vilhelm August von, a German antiquary, was born at Berlin on the 2nd July, 1799, and after a careful education, entered the army. In 1828 he was appointed director of the German antiquities office and the ethnological collections at Berlin, the duties of which he still most ably discharges. He has published a number of works and essays on subjects of German history and antiquities.—K. E.
LEDIEU, François, a French author, born at Peronne; died at Paris, 7th October, 1713. He took orders and was private secretary to Bossuet, with whom he remained twenty years. He was afterwards canon of Meaux. Four years before Bossuet's death Ledieu began a diary, in which he entered the sayings of the bishop. He left the "Memoires et Journal," which were afterwards published in four volumes.—P. E. D.
* LEDRU-ROLLIN, Alexandre Auguste, minister of the interior in the French provisional government of 1848, one of the leaders of the ultra-democratic movement in Europe, was born of good parentage at Paris, the 2nd February, 1808. He was educated carefully, and with a view to the bar, becoming an avocat in 1830. His family name was Ledru; but for distinction's sake, another member of the Paris bar bearing the same surname, he added to Ledru the adjunct of Rollin, the name of his maternal great-grandmother. An ardent liberal from early youth, after the emeutes of 1832, which made the government declare a state of siege in Paris, Ledru-Rollin published a spirited "consultation" against the supersession of the ordinary legal by military tribunals, and the protest which it made was confirmed by the cour de cassation. A still bolder pamphlet, which he published after the insurrections of April, 1834, secured him popularity with the advanced-liberal party. For many years afterwards he was constantly retained as counsel for the defence of newspaper editors and agitators compromised
