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 entries of that year numbered 217, of which 203 entered with general cargo and 14 with coal exclusively. The exports included 152,625 bags coffee, 114,947 bags cacao and 152,891 hides. For 1905–1906 the imports at La Guaira were valued officially at £767,365 and the exports at £663,708. The city stands on sloping ground stretching along the circular coast line with a varying width of 130 to 330 ft. and having the appearance of an amphitheatre. The port improvements added 18 acres of reclaimed land to La Guaira’s area, and the removal of old shore batteries likewise increased its available breadth. In this narrow space is built the town, composed in great part of small, roughly-made cabins, and narrow, badly-paved streets, but with good business houses on its principal street. From the mountain side, reddish-brown in colour and bare of vegetation, the solar heat is reflected with tremendous force, the mean annual temperature being 84° F. The seaside towns of Maiquetia, 2 m. W. and Macuto, 3 m. E., which have better climatic and sanitary conditions and are connected by a narrow-gauge railway, are the residences of many of the wealthier merchants of La Guaira.

La Guaira was founded in 1588, was sacked by filibusters under Amias Preston in 1595, and by the French under Grammont in 1680, was destroyed by the great earthquake of the 26th of March 1812, and suffered severely in the war for independence. In 1903, pending the settlement of claims of Great Britain, Germany and Italy against Venezuela, La Guaira was blockaded by a British-German-Italian fleet.

LA GUÉRONNIÈRE, LOUIS ÉTIENNE ARTHUR DUBREUIL HÉLION, (1816–1875), French politician, was the scion of a noble Poitevin family. Although by birth and education attached to Legitimist principles, he became closely associated with Lamartine, to whose organ, Le Bien Public, he was a principal contributor. After the stoppage of this paper he wrote for La Presse, and in 1850 edited Le Pays. A character sketch of Louis Napoleon in this journal caused differences with Lamartine, and La Guéronnière became more and more closely identified with the policy of the prince president. Under the Empire he was a member of the council of state (1853), senator (1861), ambassador at Brussels (1868), and at Constantinople (1870), and grand officer of the legion of honour (1866). He died in Paris on the 23rd of December 1875. Besides his Études et portraits politiques contemporains (1856) his most important works are those on the foreign policy of the Empire: La France, Rome et Italie (1851), L’Abandon de Rome (1862), De la politique intérieure et extérieure de la France (1862).

His elder brother,, Comte de La Guéronnière (1810–1884), who remained faithful to the Legitimist party, was also a well-known writer and journalist. He was consistent in his opposition to the July Monarchy and the Empire, but in a series of books on the crisis of 1870–1871 showed a more favourable attitude to the Republic.

LAGUERRE, JEAN HENRI GEORGES (1858–), French lawyer and politician, was born in Paris on the 24th of June 1858. Called to the bar in 1879, he distinguished himself by brilliant pleadings in favour of socialist and anarchist leaders, defending Prince Kropotkine at Lyons in 1883, Louise Michel in the same year; and in 1886, with A. Millerand as colleague he defended Ernest Roche and Duc Quercy, the instigators of the Decazeville strike. His strictures on the procureur de la République on this occasion being declared libellous he was suspended for six months and in 1890 he again incurred suspension for an attack on the attorney-general, Quesnay de Beaurepaire. He also pleaded in the greatest criminal cases of his time, though from 1893 onwards exclusively in the provinces, his exclusion from the Parisian bar having been secured on the pretext of his connexion with La Presse. He entered the Chamber of Deputies for Apt in 1883 as a representative of the extreme revisionist programme, and was one of the leaders of the Boulangist agitation. He had formerly written for Georges Clemenceau’s organ La Justice, but when Clemenceau refused to impose any shibboleth on the radical party he became director of La Presse. He rallied to the republican party in May 1891, some months before General Boulanger’s suicide. He was not re-elected to the Chamber in 1893. Laguerre was an excellent lecturer on the revolutionary period of French history, concerning which he had collected many valuable and rare documents. He interested himself in the fate of the “Little Dauphin” (Louis XVII.), whose supposed remains, buried at Ste Marguerite, he proved to be those of a boy of fourteen.

LAGUNA, or, an episcopal city and formerly the capital of the island of Teneriffe, in the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands. Pop. (1900) 13,074. Laguna is 4 m. N. by W. of Santa Cruz, in a plain 1800 ft. above sea-level, surrounded by mountains. Snow is unknown here, and the mean annual temperature exceeds 63° F.; but the rainfall is very heavy, and in winter the plain is sometimes flooded. The humidity of the atmosphere, combined with the warm climate and rich volcanic soil, renders the district exceptionally fertile; wheat, wine and tobacco, oranges and other fruits, are produced in abundance. Laguna is the favourite summer residence of the wealthier inhabitants of Santa Cruz. Besides the cathedral, the city contains several picturesque convents, now secularized, a fine modern town hall, hospitals, a large public library and some ancient palaces of the Spanish nobility. Even the modern buildings have often an appearance of antiquity, owing to the decay caused by damp, and the luxuriant growth of climbing plants.

LA HARPE, JEAN FRANÇOIS DE (1739–1803), French critic, was born in Paris of poor parents on the 20th of November 1739. His father, who signed himself Delharpe, was a descendant of a noble family originally of Vaud. Left an orphan at the age of nine, La Harpe was taken care of for six months by the sisters of charity, and his education was provided for by a scholarship at the Collège d’Harcourt. When nineteen he was imprisoned for some months on the charge of having written a satire against his protectors at the college. La Harpe always denied his guilt, but this culminating misfortune of an early life spent entirely in the position of a dependent had possibly something to do with the bitterness he evinced in later life. In 1763 his tragedy of Warwick was played before the court. This, his first play, was perhaps the best he ever wrote. The many authors whom he afterwards offended were always able to observe that the critic’s own plays did not reach the standard of excellence he set up. Timoléon (1764), Pharamond (1765) and Gustave Wasa (1766) were failures. Mélanie was a better play, but was never represented. The success of Warwick led to a correspondence with Voltaire, who conceived a high opinion of La Harpe, even allowing him to correct his verses. In 1764 La Harpe married the daughter of a coffee house keeper. This marriage, which proved very unhappy and was dissolved, did not improve his position. They were very poor, and for some time were guests of Voltaire at Ferney. When, after Voltaire’s death, La Harpe in his praise of the philosopher ventured on some reasonable, but rather ill-timed, criticism of individual works, he was accused of treachery to one who had been his constant friend. In 1768 he returned from Ferney to Paris, where he began to write for the Mercure. He was a born fighter and had small mercy on the authors whose work he handled. But he was himself violently attacked, and suffered under many epigrams, especially those of Lebrun-Pindare. No more striking proof of the general hostility can be given than his reception (1776) at the Academy, which Sainte-Beuve calls his “execution.” Marmontel, who received him, used the occasion to eulogize La Harpe’s predecessor, Charles Pierre Colardeau, especially for his pacific, modest and indulgent disposition. The speech was punctuated by the applause of the audience, who chose to regard it as a series of sarcasms on the new member. Eventually La Harpe was compelled to resign from the Mercure, which he had edited from 1770. On the stage he produced Les Barmécides (1778), Philoctète, Jeanne de Naples (1781), Les Brames (1783), Coriolan (1784), Virginie (1786). In 1786 he began a course of literature at the newly-established Lycée. In these lectures, published as the Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne, La Harpe is at his best, for he found a standpoint more or less independent of contemporary polemics. He is said to be inexact in dealing with the ancients,