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268 LEASE The chief productions in 1870 were 157,648 bushels of Indian corn, 21,259 of sweet pota- toes, 39,855 Ibs. of butter, and 4,181 bales of cotton. There were 1,017 horses, 702 mules and asses, 2,317 milch cows, 1,062 working oxen, 3,483 other cattle, 3,473 sheep, and 11,535 swine. Capital, Carthage. LEAKE, Sir John, an English admiral, born at Rotherhithe, Surrey, in 1656, died in Green- wich, Aug. 1, 1720. He distinguished himself in the fight with Van Tromp in 1673, when he served on board the Royal Prince, commanded by his father, by conveying relief to the starv- ing garrison of Londonderry, and thus com- pelling the enemy to raise the siege. In 1702, during the war of the Spanish succession, he was made commodore, and appointed to the command of a squadron, with which he rescued Newfoundland from the French. For these services he was made rear admiral, and soon after vice admiral of the blue and knighted. In 1705 he constrained the French and Spanish to abandon the siege of Gibraltar; in 1706 re- lieved Barcelona, and captured Cartagena ; and subsequently reduced the Balearic isles and Sardinia. After the relief of Gibraltar and the reduction of Cartagena, he was made vice admiral of the white, and presented with 1,000 by the queen ; in 1707 he was appoint- ed commander-in-chief of the fleet, and in 1709 rear admiral of Great Britain and a lord of the admiralty ; and on retiring from active service, in the reign of George I., a pension of 600 was settled on him by parliament. He represented Eochester in parliament sev- eral years. LEAKE, William Martin, an English author, born in 1777, died in Brighton, Jan. 6, 1860. Having entered the army, he was employed on special missions to Asia Minor and other parts of the East, and devoted himself to the exploration of Greece. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, but retired from the service in 1823. He was a zealous champion of the national independence of the Greeks, and endeavored to procure help for them from the English government during the conflict with Turkey. In 1814 he published "Re- searches in Greece;" in 1821, "Topography of Athens" (2d ed., 1842); in 1824, "Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor;" in 1827, in concert with the Hon. Charles Yorke, " Notices of the Chief Egyptian Monuments in the British Museum;" in 1830, "Travels in the Morea;" in 1835 and 1841, "Travels in Northern Greece;" in 1846, " Peloponnesiaca, a Supple- ment to the Travels in the Morea;" and in 1854, " Numismatica Hellenica," the appendix to which was published in 1859, shortly before his death. He was assisted in many of his labors by his wife, a daughter of Sir Charles Wilkins. He also wrote several political works on Greece, including a " Historical Outline of the Greek Revolution" (1826). LEAMINGTON, or Leamington-Priors, a town and watering place of Warwickshire, England, LEASE on the river Learn, 20 m. S. E. of Birmingham ; pop. in 1871, 22,730. It is one of the hand- somest towns in England, and has a college, a Latin school, an institution for the blind, a museum, a music hall, and a theatre. Its only manufacture is that of gloves. Its pros- perity and importance have mostly arisen from its mineral springs, which were discovered in 1797, and are of three kinds, sulphurous, sa- line, and chalybeate. The surrounding coun- try is picturesque and beautiful, and the cas- tles of Warwick and Kenilworth, as well as Stratford-upon-Avon, are not far distant. LEANDER. See HERO. LEAP YEAR. See CALENDAR. LEAR, Tobias, an American diplomatist, born in Portsmouth, N. H., Sept. 19, 1762, died in Washington, D. 0., Oct. 11, 1816. He gradu- ated at Harvard college in 1783, and in 1785 became private secretary to Gen. Washington, by whom he was always treated with great courtesy and regard. For several years he attended to the details of Washington's domes- tic affairs, and was most liberally remembered by him in his will. In 1802 he was consul general at Santo Domingo, and afterward con- sul general at Algiers and commissioner to conclude a peace with Tripoli. He discharged this latter duty in 1805 in a manner which gave umbrage to Gen. Eaton, who in concert with Hamet Caramelli, the deposed bey, had gained important advantages over the reign- ing bey. It was thought that to accept terms of peace at this juncture was to throw away the fruits of hardly earned success; but Mr. Lear's conduct was approved by his govern- ment, though much blamed by a portion of the public. He returned shortly after to the United States, and at the time of his death was employed in Washington as accountant of the war department. LEARCHUS, a Greek sculptor of Rhegium, in southern Italy, who flourished probably be- tween 700 and 650 B. C. He belongs to the semi-mythical Daedalian period, and the ac- counts of him are vague and confused. Pau- sanias mentions a statue of Jupiter attributed to him in the brazen house at Sparta, which was considered the most ancient work of the kind. It was made of hammered pieces of brass riveted together. LEASE, in law, the contract whereby one party (the lessor or landlord) transfers to an- other party (the lessee or tenant) the use and possession of real estate. The word is some- times used also to designate a contract for the letting and hiring of personal property. No certain words or forms are necessary for this purpose ; but a lease must describe the prem- ises to be demised with an accuracy that is sufficient for certain identification; though any inaccuracies or uncertainties as to names, dimensions, locations, amounts, or terms may be explained if the other parts of the instru- ment suffice to make them certain. As a gen- eral rule, they may be explained by evidence