Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/151

Lardner any of the great contending forms of Christianity, and he strenuously promoted the development of the 'Queen's Colleges' for the upper classes.

In spite of the momentary check to the prosperity of Ireland given by the Phœnix conspiracy of 1859, Larcom was able to point to a great and steady increase of prosperity during his tenure of office. Year after year he drew up memoranda, which were read on public occasions by successive lords-lieutenant, showing by official returns the progress of agriculture, the evidences of improved conditions of life, and the diminution of crime. In the decade which ended in 1860 offences specially reported fell from 10,639 to 3,531, agrarian offences from 162 to 60, and robbery of arms from 1,006 to 377. But the great Fenian movement initiated in the United States was seething in Ireland from 1861 onwards. In 1866 the storm broke and taxed all the energies of government. On Larcom fell the main duty of meeting the emergency. He acted decisively, and when he retired in 1868 Ireland was tranquil.

Larcom had been made K.C.B. in 1860, and grateful addresses and presentations from all classes in Ireland commemorated his departure. He died at Heathfield, near Fareham, on 15 June 1879. His later years were devoted to the collection of information concerning his own period of rule in Ireland, which he arranged and bound in hundreds of volumes. These he left to different learned societies, chiefly Irish, with many of which he had long been closely associated. Some professional literature of his composition will be found in volumes of the ordnance survey, including the 'Memoir of Templemore,' and in memoirs of his friends Drummond and Portlock, besides articles in the 'Aide Mémoire' of the royal engineers, and a valuable edition of Sir William Petty's famous 'Down Survey,' published by the Irish Archæological Society in 1851.

Larcom married in 1840 Georgina, daughter of General Sir [q.v.]. He was succeeded by his third son, Colonel Charles Larcom, R.A. In person Sir Thomas was of middle height and strongly built, with a remarkably fine head. There is a bust of him at Mountjoy, Phœnix Park. 

LARDNER, DIONYSIUS (1793–1859), scientific writer, son of a Dublin solicitor, was born in Dublin on 3 April 1793. He was educated for the law, but, finding the work distasteful, entered Trinity College, where he graduated B.A. in 1817, M.A. in 1819, and LL.B. and LL.D. in 1827, taking prizes in logic, metaphysics, ethics, mathematics, and physics, and a gold medal for a course of lectures on the steam engine, delivered before the Dublin Royal Society, and afterwards published. He took holy orders, but devoted himself to literary and scientific work, contributing during his residence in Dublin to the 'Edinburgh Review,' the 'Encyclopædia Edinensis,' and the 'Encyclopædia Metropolitana' (for which he wrote the treatise on algebra), besides publishing some independent works. Elected in 1827 to the chair of natural philosophy and astronomy in the recently founded London University, now University College, he removed to London, and initiated in 1829 the work by which he is principally remembered, the 'Cabinet Cyclopædia.' He was fortunate in securing as contributors some of the most eminent writers of the day. Mackintosh wrote on England, Scott on Scotland, Moore on Ireland, Thirlwall on Ancient Greece, Sismondi on the fall of the Roman empire and the rise and fall of the Italian republics, Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas on the chronology of history, Southey and Gleig on British naval and military heroes, John Forster on British statesmen, Baden Powell and Herschell on the history and study of natural philosophy and astronomy, De Morgan on probabilities, Phillips on geology, Swainson on natural history and zoology, and Henslow on botany. Lardner himself contributed the treatises on hydrostatics and pneumatics, arithmetic and geometry, and collaborated with [q.v.] in the treatise on mechanics, and with  [q.v.] in those on electricity, magnetism, and meteorology. The work was completed in 1849, in 133 vols. 8vo. Another serial, started in 1830, under the title of 'Dr. Lardner's Cabinet Library,' was discontinued, after nine volumes had appeared, in 1832. It comprised Moyle Scherer's 'Military Memoirs of the Duke of Wellington,' 'A Retrospect of Public Affairs for 1831,' 'Historical Memoirs of the House of Bourbon,' and the 'History of the Life and Reign of George IV,' all except the first-mentioned work being anonymous. Lardner also edited the 'Edinburgh Cabinet Library,' of which thirty-eight volumes, 8vo, chiefly devoted to history, travels, and biography, were published at Edinburgh between 1830 and 1844. In a letter to Lord Melbourne, published in 1837, Lardner urged upon government the importance of establishing direct steam communication with India by way of the Red VOL. XXXII.