service from early boyhood, he was engaged in the Mediterranean under Lord Exmouth, when in 1818 he obtained permission to accompany his countryman Ritchie on a journey into the interior of Northern Africa, by way of Tripoli. Lyon then held the rank of lieutenant. Ritchie fell a victim to the African climate; but Lyon—after eighteen months of African travel, in the course of which he visited Mourzook, and other little-known localities—returned to England in 1820. In the following year he sailed with Captain Parry in command of the Hecla, on occasion of that officer's second voyage of Arctic discovery.—(See Parry, Sir W. E.) In the year following his return home, 1824, Lyon again sailed, in command of the Griper, with the hope of finding a passage through the icy region on the north-western side of Hudson Bay; but insurmountable difficulties compelled his return, after passing up the channel known as Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome to the latitude of 65½°. Lyon was promoted to the rank of captain during his absence on this voyage. In 1825 he married a daughter of Lord Fitzgerald. A journey to Mexico, at the instance of an English mining company, engaged the year 1826. On his return, in January of the following year, the vessel in which he sailed was wrecked off the isle of Anglesea, and Lyon, though escaping with life, lost some of his effects. He made a subsequent tour, in connection with mining adventure, to South America, and died at sea in the course of a return voyage from Buenos Ayres to England in October, 1832. Highly interesting narratives of his adventures proceeded at various periods from his pen.—W. H.
LYONNET, Peter, naturalist, born in 1707. Obtaining an appointment at the Hague, he found leisure to turn his attention to natural history. Entomology was his favourite pursuit; and his beautiful dissections and figures of the structure of insects, &c., are still the admiration of students. Died 1789.—W. B—d.
LYONS, Edmund, first baron. Admiral, a distinguished naval officer and diplomatist, was born at Burton House, near Christchurch, Hampshire, on the 21st of November, 1790. The second son of a Hampshire gentleman, he made his first cruise at the early age of eight; and at nineteen was lieutenant of the Barracouta, long employed in the Indian seas against the Dutch. In the capture of the island of Banda Neira in 1810 he distinguished himself at the escalade of the castle of Belgica, and still more highly the following year by storming, with a handful of men, the strongly garrisoned and defended fortress of Murrack on the coast of Java. A post-captain in 1814, in 1828 commanding the Blonde, he shared in the blockade of Navarino, and co-operated very bravely and energetically with the French in reducing Morea castle, the last stronghold of the Turks in the Peloponnesus. In July, 1835, he was appointed English minister at Athens, his urbanity and hospitality in which position are still remembered; and for his diplomatic services there he was created a Baronet in 1840. In February, 1849, he was transferred to Berne as English minister in Switzerland; and in January, 1851, to Stockholm, where he represented England until October, 1853. With the approach of the Russian war his naval services were called into requisition, none the less readily that a quarter of a century before, when he commanded the Blonde, his had been the first ship of war to enter the Black Sea, and that in her he had visited Odessa and Sebastopol. He was appointed second in command of the Black Sea fleet under Admiral Sir Deans Dundas, and he both planned and decided the arrangements by which the English forces destined for the invasion of the Crimea were transported from Varna and disembarked at Eupatoria in September, 1854. The sinking by the Russians of their ships in the harbour of Sebastopol did not allow him an opportunity of a grand naval engagement, but he displayed the most signal bravery in the sea attack on the great forts. To his advice, it is said, was due the non-abandonment of Balaclava after the battle of that name. He planned the Kertch expedition (August, 1855) which opened the Sea of Azoff; the flying squadron in it being commanded by his son, Captain Lyons, whose death from a wound received at Sebastopol, was a heavy blow to his father. Appointed to the chief command of the fleet on the resignation of Admiral Dundas, June, 1855, he was prevented by a strong gale from co-operating in the final and successful attack on Sebastopol in the September of that year. In June, 1856, he was raised to the peerage—the last of a long series of honours conferred on him by his queen and country. He died at Arundel castle on the 23rd November, 1859.—He was succeeded by his son, Richard Bickerton Pernell Lyons, born in 1817, who was transferred in 1856 from Florence, where he was secretary of legation, to represent England at Washington as envoy to the United States.—F. E.
LYONS, Israel, a skilful mathematician and botanist, son of a goldsmith and Hebraist of the same name, was born at Cambridge in 1739, and died in London on the 1st of May, 1775. About 1762 or 1763 he went to Oxford, and for a time lectured on botany. For many years he was employed by the board of longitude in making calculations for the Nautical Almanac. In 1773 he accompanied, in the capacity of astronomer, the expedition to the arctic regions under the command of Captain Phipps, afterwards Baron Mulgrave. Besides some mathematical writings, he published a flora of the neighbourhood of Cambridge.—W. J. M. R.
LYRA, Nicholas de, was born in the village of Lyre in the diocese of Evreux in Normandy. The year of his birth is unknown, but in 1291, when he entered the convent of the Franciscans at Verneuil, he was still young. From Verneuil he removed to Paris to complete his studies; and there he took the degree of doctor of theology and became a distinguished teacher of the science. In 1325 he was made provincial of his order in Burgundy, and as such his name appears in the last testament of Queen Johanna, the consort of Philip the Tall. He died at Paris, 23rd October, 1340. He wrote a commentary on the "Sentences," a treatise on the Mass, and a treatise on the Messiah, containing a reply to the arguments of the Jews against the truth of the gospel. But his fame chiefly rests on his exegetical writings, which took the form of "Postillæ perpetuæ in V. et N. Testamentum." They were first printed at Rome in five volumes folio in 1471-72, and afterwards at Venice in 1480, under the title of "Biblia Sacra Latina cum Postillis." A French translation of the Postils upon the New Testament appeared at Paris in 1511. By this work Lyra. acquired the honourable title of "Doctor planus et utilis." It is the only important monument of mediæval exegesis previous to the revival of letters; it departed from the scholastic method of interpretation which had long prevailed, and entered upon paths altogether new. Very few of the scholastic divines knew Greek; still rarer among them was a knowledge of Hebrew; but Lyra was well acquainted with both, and was thus able to bring out the literal and grammatical sense of the scriptures. He was the first christian expositor who was bold enough to make use of the commentaries of Jewish scholars side by side with those of the Fathers; and he was specially an admirer of Rabbi Salomon Jarchi. He did not reject the fourfold sense of scripture taught by the divines of the Church of Rome; but he laid down the sensible principle, "omnes expositiones mysticæ præsupponunt sensum literalem tanquam fundamentum; ideo necessarium est incipere ah intellectu sensus literalis, maxime cum ex solo sensu literali et non ex mysticis possit argumentum fieri ad probationem vel declarationem alicujus dubii." Lyra, however, appears to have had little influence upon his contemporaries or upon the immediately succeeding age. But in Luther he found a congenial spirit in the matter of Bible interpretation. The reformer was a diligent student of Lyra's Postils, although the well-known saying goes much beyond the truth of the case—"Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset."—P. L.
LYSANDER, a celebrated Spartan general, was born of poor parents, but belonging to the gens of the Heracleidæ. In the year 407 b.c. he was appointed to the command of the Peloponnesian fleet, stationed on the coast of Asia Minor. He prosecuted with great energy the war with Athens, and brought it to a termination in September, 405 b.c., by the overwhelming victory which he gained over the Athenian fleet at Ægospotami, not without strong suspicion of treason on the part of some of its commanders. This defeat annihilated the supremacy of Athens; and in the spring of the following year the city was compelled to surrender to Lysander on most humiliating terms. The long walls and the fortifications of the Piræus were destroyed, and the domination of the Thirty Tyrants established. Lysander on returning to Sparta received the most imposing triumph that ever fell to the lot of any Grecian commander, and now wielded an amount of power such as had never been possessed by any individual Greek Altars were erected, and sacrifices offered to him as a god. His pride and arrogance became insupportable, and the ephors, dreading his ambition, recalled him from his command. He subsequently engaged in an intrigue to change the constitution and make himself king, but the
