the chamber of peers, after Napoleon's final abdication, he supported vehemently the right of the young king of Rome to the imperial throne. After the capitulation of Paris, exempted from the amnesty. La Bedoyère was on the point of making his escape from France, when, perhaps to bid farewell to his wife, he rashly ventured to Paris, was apprehended, tried by a council of war, and condemned to death. Great efforts were made, by Benjamin Constant amongst others, to obtain a commutation of his sentence, but in vain. He was shot at the age of twenty-nine on the 17th August, 1815, meeting death with gallantry, and men of all parties deplored his fate.—F. E.
LABIENUS, Titus, a distinguished Roman general, born 98 b.c., of an equestrian family. He made his first campaigns in Asia Minor, distinguished himself as tribune during Cicero's consulship, and afterwards filled successively the offices of ædile and prætor. In 61 b.c. he was appointed Cæsar's chief lieutenant in the Gallic wars, in which capacity he rendered most important services. When Cæsar crossed the Rubicon, Labienus attached himself to the party of Pompey, and shared his disasters and his fate. After the battle of Pharsalia he assumed the chief command of the troops opposed to Cæsar in Africa, and then retired to Spain, where he perished along with the remainder of Pompey's party, at the battle of Munda in 45 b.c.—G. BL.
LABILLARDIÈRE, Jacques Julien de, was born at Alençon in 1755. An enthusiastic botanist, he visited the Lebanon, and published a valuable work on the plants of Syria. In 1791 he took part in an expedition that was sent to ascertain the fate of La Perouse. Taken prisoner by the Dutch at Java, he was detained in captivity until 1795. In 1800 he was made a member of the Institute. After publishing many valuable scientific works, he died at Paris in 1834.—W. J. P.
LABITTE, Charles, a French critic, was born at Chateau Thierry, 2d December, 1816; died at Paris, 19th September, 1845. He wrote in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and gave promise of achieving a brilliant reputation. His writings are published in the form of "Etudes littéraires," Paris, 1846.
LABLACHE, Luigi, the celebrated bass singer, was born at Naples, December 6th, 1795, where he died January 23, 1858. His father, a French merchant, and his mother, an Irish lady, fled to Naples from the horrors of the Revolution in Paris in 1792. There, in the counter-revolution of 1799, the elder Lablache, with many other political prisoners, was publicly shot, his property was confiscated, and his wife was imprisoned. When Joseph Bonaparte came to the throne of Naples, he made restitution to all the sufferers of this occasion; and he further befriended the widow Lablache by giving an order for the admission of her son as a student to the conservatorio, which he entered in 1806. Lablache was soon distinguished for his fine contralto voice. He had not the indolence which is generally characteristic of singers; for example, one of the pupils, a double bass player, was so ill, as to be prevented taking his part at a performance which was to be given in three days; it was proposed to Lablache to learn the instrument and to supply the place of the invalid, which he both undertook and accomplished, though he was long laid up with an abscess on his arm brought on by his severe practice. Impatient of school discipline, he ran away from the conservatorio and obtained an engagement to play his quickly acquired instrument at the theatre of a small town, whither he was traced; and he was forcibly brought back to complete the term of his articles to the institution. His first engagement as a singer was at the little theatre of S. Carlino in Naples, where he appeared in 1812. He married in 1814 the daughter of Pinotti the celebrated comedian; soon after which he went to Sicily, where he spent five years, singing with great success in the different cities. He was engaged at La Scala in Milan from 1820 till 1823, and then went to Vienna, where he was a great attraction to the Italian opera until 1828, and he sang at the S. Carlo in Naples during the recesses of the Vienna season. It was at the Austrian capital that he first appeared as Geronimo in Camrose's Matrimonio Segreto, and as Figaro and Leporello in Mozart's two dramatic masterpieces, characters with which his fame is especially associated. He spent then two years in Italy, and was singing at Milan when Laporte went in 1830 to engage him for London, where he appeared with extraordinary success. At the close of the year he went to Paris, and there, as here, his first character was Geronimo. For many years he migrated between these two cities, increasing the great esteem in which he was held by every fresh character he personated. Too impatient for a teacher, he refused to take pupils; Queen Victoria, however, was excepted from this his general practice, and he was for a long time her instructor. His valuable treatise on singing was published in 1843. He went in 1852 to St. Petersburg, and annually revisited that city until the year before his death. The singular power and the rich quality of his voice made him to the last the wonder of all who heard him. His compass was not remarkable, but the immense volume of his tone gave to his notes the character of depth much greater than their real pitch, and his perfect command of his resources enabled him to give every variety of effect in his singing. He was not less eminent as an actor than as a vocalist, and he was equally admirable in the representation of tragedy and comedy. When a youth he was ridiculed for his tall skeleton figure; but in later life his corpulency seemed to be in proportion to the magnitude of his voice. One of his daughters is married to Thalberg the pianist; one of his sons is an officer in the French artillery; and another, Frederico, for some years a singer on the Italian stage, married Miss Fanny Wyndham, a vocalist of merit, and is now resident in London as an esteemed teacher.—G. A. M.
LABORDE, Alexandre Louis Joseph, Comte de, the son of a peasant of Beam who came to Paris and amassed some property, was born 17th September, 1773. His father, who was subsequently guillotined, sent him to Vienna, where he entered the Austrian army. He served in the campaigns against his native country, but returned to France after the treaty of Campo Formio, in 1797. He was employed by Napoleon in the civil service, but devoted his leisure to literature He was elected a member of the Institute in 1813. In 1815 and the following year he published works advocating the educational system of Bell and Lancaster. He took an active part, and risked his life on the popular side, in the revolution of July. After publishing many splendid geographical works, he died in 1842.—W. J. P.
LA BORDE, Jean Benjamin le. See Borde.
LABOUCHERE, Henry, Baron Taunton, was descended from a French Protestant family, which removed to Holland at the period of the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The first member of the family who settled in England was Lord Taunton's father, Mr. Peter Cæsar Labouchere (born in 1772; died in 1839), a partner in the great mercantile house of Hope, who purchased the estates of Highlands in Essex, and of Over Stowey, Somersetshire, and married the third daughter of Mr. Francis Baring, sister of the first Baring, Lord Ashburton. Lord Taunton was born in London in 1798, and received his later education at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a first-class in classics in 1820. He entered the house of commons in 1826 as member for the now extinct borough of St. Michael's, Cornwall. In 1830 he became member for Taunton, which he represented until his elevation to the peerage. Liberal in his political principles, he was appointed in 1832 a lord of the admiralty, a post which he retained up to the accession of Sir Robert Peel to the premiership in 1834. On the return of the whigs to power he became vice-president of the board of trade and master of the mint, retaining those offices until Sir Robert Peel's second premiership, except for a few months, from March to August, 1839, during which he was under-secretary of state for the colonies. In Earl Russell's first ministry he was appointed chief-secretary for Ireland. At the expiration of a year he became once more president of the board of trade, and in that capacity conducted through the house of commons the measures abolishing the navigation laws. He remained president of the board of trade to the close of Earl Russell's administration. He held no office in the coalition ministry of Lord Aberdeen, but on its fall was appointed secretary of state for the colonies, an office which he retained until February, 1858. On the formation of the Palmerston-Russell administration he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Taunton. Lord Taunton was twice married—in 1840 to his cousin, the youngest daughter of Sir Thomas Baring, Bart., who died in 1850; and in 1852 to Lady Mary Matilda Georgina Howard, daughter of the sixth earl of Carlisle. He died 13th July, 1869.—F. E.
LABOUREUR, Jean le, a French historian, born at Montmorency in 1623; died June, 1675. He was at first attached to the court, and went to Poland on the occasion of the marriage of Maria de Gonzaga, but entered the church on his return, and published several interesting works on the history of France.
LA BRUYÈRE, Jean de, was born at Dourdun, Normandy, in 1646; his life was singularly uneventful. After holding a
