Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/475

 L E O L E O 455 stockings, but the trade is insignificant. The population in 1877 was 11,515. Leon (Arab., Liyun) owes its name to the Legio Septima Gemina of Galba, which, under the later emperors at least, had its head quarters there. The place is mentioned under this name in the Itin. Ant. About 540 it fell into the hands of the Gothic king Leovigildo, and in 717 it capitulated to the Saracens. Retaken about 742, it ultimately, in the beginning of the 10th century, became the capital of the kingdom of Leon. About 996 it was taken by Almansur, but on his death, which occurred soon afterwards, it reverted to the Spaniards. It was the seat of several ecclesiastical councils, one of which was held under Alphonso V., a second in 1090, and others in 1106, 1114, 1134, 1228, and 1288. LEON, a city of Mexico, in the state of Guanajuato, the chief town of a department, and in population second only to the capital of the republic, from which it is distant about 100 miles. It is situated on the right bank of the Rio Torbio, in the midst of a fertile and flourishing region, and is altogether one of the best built and most prosperous places in the country, with a large trade in grain and other agricultural produce, and a number of considerable industries cotton and woollen weaving, tanning, and saddlery. For some time Leon has aspired to become the chief town of a new state, and even to take the place of Mexico as the national capital. The opening of the railways south-east to Mexico and north-east to the Rio Grande will further stimulate its development. The foundation of Leon dates from 1576, and it has ranked as a city since 1836, but the beginning of its present pro sperity belongs only to the middle of the century. LEON, the chief city of a department of the same name in the republic of Nicaragua, situated in an extensive plain about midway between the great inland lake of Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean. It is connected by rail (1881) with Corinto on the coast (which has taken the place of Realejo, its former port) ; and the line is being extended to Leon Viejo on Lake Managua and thence to Granada. The city is spread over so wide an area that Squier, after a three months residence, found himself discovering new and secluded portions. Its public buildings are among the finest of Central America. The cathedral (1746-1774) is a strong piece of masonry, with a roof of massive arches, which has several times been used as a fortress during the civil wars. The old episcopal palace (1678), the new episcopal palace (1873), and the college of St Ramon (1678) also deserve to be mentioned. The population is esti mated at from 20,000 to 30,000. Contiguous to Leon, and practically one with it, is the Indian pueblo of Subtiaba, which has its own public buildings, and among the rest a church which almost rivals the cathedral. At the time of the Spanish conquest Subtiaba was the residence of the great cacique of Xagrando, and the seat of an important temple. The city of Leon, founded by Hernandez de Cordova in 1523, was originally situated at the head of the western bay of Lake Managua, and was not removed to its present position till 1610. Thomas Gage, who visited it in 1665, describes it as a splendid city; and in 1685 it yielded rich booty to Dampier and his company. See Squier, Central America, vol. i. ; and Scherzer, Free States of Central America. LEON, Luis PONCE DE (1528-1591), usually known as Fray Luis de Leon, Spanish religious writer, was born about 1528, most probably at Granada, entered the university of Salamanca, where Melchior Cano was a few years his senior, at the age of fourteen, and in 1544 became a member of the Augustinian community there. His academical promotion was comparatively rapid ; in 1561 he obtained by public competition a theological chair at Salamanca, to which in 1571 was added that of sacred literature. His views in exegesis and Biblical criticism were so far in advance of those of the majority of his immediate contemporaries that he was denounced to the Inquisition for having written a too secular translation of the book of Canticles, and for maintaining the possibility of correcting the text of the Vulgate. In March 1572 he was consequently thrown into prison at Valladolid, where his confinement lasted until December 1576; the charges against him were then abandoned, and he was released with an exhortation to circumspection, moderation, and prudence. He at once resumed his former posts at Salamanca, and the remainder of his days were passed in comparative peace. In 1580 a Latin commentary on Canticles was published, and in 1583-85 he gave to the world three books of a treatise on the names of Christ, which he had written in prison. In 1583 also appeared the most popular of his prose works, a treatise entitled La Perfecta Casada (&quot;The Perfect Wife&quot;) for the use of a lady newly married. Shortly before his death, which occurred at Madrigal on August 23, 1591, his appointment to be vicar-general of the Augustinian order was sanctioned by the pope. It is chiefly as a poet that Fray Luis de Leon is now remembered and admitted to a high place among the classic authors of Spain. His poetical works include historical translations of all the Eclogues and two of the Georgics of Virgil, some thirty odes of Horace, forty psalms, and passages from the Greek and Italian, all characterized by much spirit and grace of style. The original pieces, which are chiefly religious, not merely possess the technical merits of idiom and versification which perhaps only Castilian ears can appreciate, but iu many cases give beautiful expression to feelings which are shared by the whole of the Christian world. Of one iu particular, the ode &quot; De la Yida del Cielo,&quot; Hallam has justly remarked that it is &quot;an exquisite piece of lyric poetry, which in its peculiar line of devout aspiration has perhaps never been excelled.&quot; The works of Luis de Leon include a Spanish commentary on Canticles, which was not published until 1798 ; a translation, in Spanish octaves, of the same book, first printed in 1806 ; and an exposition of Job, which first appeared in 1779. The first collective edition of Obras proprias y traducciones was published by Quevedo at Madrid in 1631 ; another, fuller and more carefully edited, appeared at Valencia in 1761 ; the latest and best is that of Merino (Obras reconocidas y cotejadas con varies manu- scritos, 6 vols., Madrid, 1804-16). His original poems, with a German translation, by Schliiter and Storck, appeared at Miinster in 1853. There are two recent German monographs on Luis de Leon (Wilkens, Fray Luis de Leon, Halle, 1866 ; and Reusch, Luis de Leon u. die Spanische Inquisition, 1873), and one in Spanish (Jose Gonzales de Tejada, Vida de Fray Luisde Leon, Madrid, 1863). LEONARDO (or LIONARDO) DA VINCI was born in 1452 and died in 1519, having during his life excelled in almost every honourable human attainment and pursuit, the commercial and political excepted. Considering the range of his speculative as well as that of his practical powers, he seems certainly the man whose genius has the best right to be called universal of any that have ever lived. In the fine arts, he was the most accomplished painter of his generation and one of the most accomplished of the world, a distinguished sculptor, architect, and musician, and a luminous and pregnant critic. In inventions and experimental philosophy, he was a great mechanician and engineer, an anatomist, a botanist, a physiologist, an astronomer, a chemist, a geologist and geographer, an insatiable and successful explorer, in a word, along the whole range of the physical and mathematical sciences when most of those sciences were new. Unfortunately he paid the penalty of his universality. The multifariousness and the equal balance of his faculties caused him to labour promiscuously in all fields of effort. He set himself to perform tasks and to solve problems too arduous and too manifold for the strength of any single life. The con sequence was that in art he was able to carry few undertak ings to completion, and in science to bring no fully matured researches to the light. But the works of art which he did produce were of an excellence unapproached by his contemporaries, and only rivalled by men who came a generation after him, and profited by his example ; while, in science both theoretical and applied, his unpublished writings and the records of his inventions prove him to have anticipated at a hundred points the great masters of