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386 LEWIS and plantations in Jamaica, which he twice visited. Besides the works above named, he wrote a number of plays, among them "Ti- mour the Tartar" (1812), which had great in- fluence in creating the taste for gorgeous pa- geants, and many poems, of which " Alonzo the Brave," "Durandarte," and "The Fair Imo- e " are the best known. In 1834 appeared " s "Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, and in 1839 his " Life and Correspondence " (2 vols. 8vo). LEWIS, Meriwether, an American explorer, born near Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 18, 1774, died near Nashville, Tenn., Oct. 11, 1809. He inherited a moderate fortune from his father, who died when he was a child. In 1794 he enrolled himself as a volunteer in the troops called out to quell the " whiskey insurrection " in western Pennsylvania, entered the regular service in 1795, became a captain in 1800, and between 1801 and 1803 was private secretary to President Jefferson. In the latter year he was recommended to congress by Jefferson to command the exploring expedition across the continent to the Pacific. In company with Oapt. William Clarke, his associate in* the con- duct of the expedition, he set out in the sum- mer of 1803, and encamped for the winter on the bank of the Mississippi, opposite the mouth of the Missouri. Their company was composed of nine young men from Kentucky, 14 soldiers, two Canadian boatmen, an interpreter, a hunt- er, and a negro servant of Capt. Clarke. In the spring of 1804 they began to ascend the Missouri. A second winter was passed among the Mandans, lat. 47 21' N. On April 7, 1805, they again moved forward, still ascending the Missouri, and reached the great falls by the middle of June. Above these, near the close of July, they attained the point where three near- ly equal streams concur ; to these were given the names of Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin, then president, secretary of state, and secreta- ry of the treasury of the United States. They ascended the Jefferson, the northernmost of the three, to its source. Having in August pro- cured horses and a guide from the Shoshone Indians, they travelled through the mountains until Sept. 22, when they entered the plains of the western slope. On Oct. 7 they embarked in canoes on the Kooskoosky, a left branch of the Columbia, and on Nov. 15 reached the mouth of that river, having travelled more than 4,000 m. from the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri. They passed their third winter in an intrenched camp on the S. bank of the Co- lumbia. On March 23, 1806, they began to re- ascend the Columbia on their homeward jour- ney ; and leaving their boats on May 2, they made a difficult journey on horseback across the mountains to the Missouri, upon which they reembarked Aug. 12, and reached St. Louis Sept. 23, after an absence of two years and four months. Congress made grants of land to the men of the expedition and to their chiefs ; Lewis was made governor of Missouri territory, and Clarke general of its militia and Indian agent. In the comparative quiet of his new mode of life Lewis began to suffer from hypochondria, to which he had been subject from his youth. During one of these seasons of depression duty called him to Washington, and at a lodging place in Tennessee he put an end to his life. A narrative of the expedition of Lewis and Clarke, from materials furnished by each of the explorers, was prepared by Nicholas Biddle and Paul Allen, with a memoir of Lewis by Jefferson (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1814; new ed., with additions by Archibald McVickar, 2 vols., New York, 1843). LEWIS, Morgan, an American soldier, son of Francis Lewis, signer of the Declaration of In- dependence, born in New York, Oct. 16, 1754, died there, April 7, 1844. He graduated at Princeton college in 1773, and studied law in the office of John Jay. At the breaking out of the revolution he obtained a commission in the American service, and until the close of the war was actively employed, distinguishing himself at Saratoga, and in the operations undertaken by Gen. Clinton against Sir John Johnson in northern New York. He retired from the service with the rank of colonel, re- sumed the study of the law, became attorney general of the state of New York in 1791, judge of the supreme court in 1792, and in 1801 was appointed chief justice of the su- preme court of New York, an office which he resigned in 1804 upon being elected governor of the state. In 1807 he resumed his practice, and upon the breaking out of the war with England in 1812 he was appointed quarter- master general in the United States army. In 1813 he was promoted to major general, and on April 27 of that year made a successful descent on the British side of the Niagara river. In 1814 he commanded the forces con- centrated in New York for the defence of that city, then in daily expectation of attack. In 1835 he became president of the New York historical society. LEWIS, Tayler, an American scholar, born in Northumberland, Saratoga co., N. Y., in 1802. He graduated at Union college in 1820, studied law in Albany, and began to practise at Fort Miller. Occupying his leisure in the study of the Hebrew Bible, he was led to give to Bibli- cal and classical studies a large part of his time for nearly ten years. At length he abandoned the practice of law altogether, and in 1833 opened a classical school in Waterford, whence he removed in 1835 to a school in Ogdensburgh. In 1838 he became professor of Greek in the university of New York, in which post he con- tinued 11 years. He acquired an unusually wide acquaintance with the Greek and Latin classics, and a knowledge of the Arabic and Syriac, and read the Koran and other Arabic writings and the writings of the Hebrew rabbis. His special interest in the system of Plato led him to publish a translation of the "Thea3- tetus," with notes; and in 1845 he published