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518 LIPPINCOTT LIQUID AMBAR According to Vasari, lie was the pupil of Masac- cio. Impelled partly by a passion for his art, partly by a love of pleasure, he escaped to Ancona when about 18 years old, renounced his sacred profession, and established himself as a painter. While on a sea excursion near Ancona, he was captured by a Barbary corsair and carried into captivity in Africa. Drawing one day a sketch of his master in charcoal, the latter was so much pleased with the perform- ance that he released him and sent him home. Fra Filippo visited Naples and Rome, gaining, in spite of his profligate life, so much celebrity that the Medici family recalled him to Flor- ence. In 1459, while engaged in painting the walls of the convent of Santa Margherita in Prato, he seduced a young novice named Lu- crezia Buti, who had sat for one of the figures in his pictures, and carried her away from the convent ; a crime which it needed all the influ- ence of the Medici to prevent the community from punishing summarily. A dispensation was finally procured from the pope to enable Fra Filippo to marry Lucrezia ; but as he neglected to do so, her family contrived, it is said, to have him poisoned. He is generally considered one of the greatest of the painters before Ra- phael, and was one of the first to design the human figure of the size of life, and to paint landscape backgrounds with some feeling for nature. II. Filippino, the natural son of the preceding by the novice Lucrezia Buti, born in Florence in 1460, died in 1505. He follow- ed the profession of his father, though free from his libertine tastes, and was among the first to introduce ornamental accessories from the antique into pictures. Many of his frescoes remain in Rome and Florence, some of which were long supposed to be by Masaccio. LIPPINCOTT, Sara Jane (OLAEKE), an Ameri- can authoress, known by her nom de plume of " Grace Greenwood," born at Pompey, Onon- daga co., N. Y., Sept. 23, 1823. Much of her childhood was passed at Rochester. About 1842 she removed with her father to New Brighton, Pa., and in 1853 was married to Leander K. Lippincott of Philadelphia. She published occasional verses at an early age un- der her own name, but her first prose publica- tions appeared in the " New York Mirror " in 1844, under the signature which she has since retained. She has published " Greenwood Leaves" (1850-'52), "History of my Pets" (1850), " Poems " (1851), " Recollections of my Childhood" (1851), "Haps arid Mishaps of a Tour in Europe " (1854), " Merrie England " (1855), "Forest Tragedy and other Tales" (1856), "Stories and Legends of Travel" (1858), " History for Children " (1858), " Stories from Famous Ballads" (1860), "Stories of Many Lands," " Stories and Sights in France and Italy," " Records of Five Years " (1867), and " New Life in New Lands " (1873). She is also the author of several addresses and lec- tures, and has been largely connected, as editor or contributor, with periodical literature. LIPT6 (Ger. Liptau), a county of N. Hun- gary, watered by the Waag, an affluent of the Danube; area, 872 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 79,273, mostly Slavs. The N. E. portions belong to the highest division of the northern Carpathi- ans, known as the Tatra range. The inhabi- tants are engaged in agriculture and raising of cattle. There are mines of gold, silver, copper, and iron. Capital, Szent-Mikl6s. LIQIIUAMBAR (L. styraciflua), the sweet gum tree or bilsted, a large deciduous tree, placed by some botanists in a family by itself, while others unite it with the witch hazel and a few other genera to form the witch-hazel family, the hamamelacem. The tree grows 60 to 70 ft. high and 2 ft. or more in diameter, with a grayish bark ; the small branches and twigs have the corky layer of the bark devel- oped as prominent longitudinal ridges ; the rounded leaves are five- to seven-lobed, giving them a star shape, unlike those of any others Liquidambar. of our forest trees ; the lobes are pointed and flandular serrate ; the leaves are 3 to 6 in. in iameter, smooth and shining, and fragrant when bruised. The flowers are usually monoe- cious, in globular heads or catkins ; the stami- nate clusters consist of numerous stamens in- termixed with scales ; the fertile flowers con- sist of two-celled, two-beaked ovaries, with scales in place of a calyx, and cohering in a globular head. The fruit is a spherical woody mass an inch or more in diameter, prickly with the hardened beaks of the ovaries ; the seeds are small, winged, escaping from the head by openings between the beaks. But a very small proportion of the seeds perfect themselves, and the pods are filled with the abortive ones, which appear like sawdust. The tree is found from southern New England to Illinois and southward to the gulf. The wood is soft, fine- grained, and can be readily stained or polished,