Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/491

 L E R L E R 471 taken by the French in November 1707 during the war of succes sion, and again in 1810. In 1300 Jaime II. of Aragon founded a university at Lerida, which achieved some repute in its day, but is now extinct. Pope Calixtus III. at one time taught within its walls, and Vicente Ferrer was one of its alumni. LERMONTOFF, MIKHAIL YUREVITCH (1814-1841), often styled the poet of the Caucasus, was born in Moscow, but belonged to a respectable family of the Tula govern ment, and was brought up in the village of Tarkhanui (in the Penzensk government), which now preserves his dust. By his grandmother on whom the whole care of his childhood was devolved by his mother s early death and his father s military service no cost nor paius was spared to give him the best education she could think of. The intellectual atmosphere which lie breathed in his youth differed little from that in which Pushkin had grown up, though the domination of French had begun to give way before the fancy for English, and Lamartine shared his popularity with Byron. From the academic gymnasium in Moscow Lermontoff passed in 1830 to the university, but there his career came to an untimely close through the part he took in some acts of insubordination to an obnoxious teacher. From 1830 to 1834 he attended the school of cadets at St Petersburg, and in due course he became an officer in the guards. To his own and the nation s auger at the loss of Pushkin (1837) the young soldier gave vent in a passionate poem addressed to the czar, and the very voice which proclaimed that, if Russia took no vengeance on the assassin of her poet, no second poet would be given her was itself an intimation that a poet had come already. The czar, however, seems to have found more impertinence than inspiration in the address, for Lermontoff was forth with sent off to the Caucasus as an officer of dragoons. He had been in the Caucasus with his grandmother as a boy of ten, and he found himself at home by yet deeper sympathies than those of childish recollection. The stern and rocky virtues of the mountaineers against whom he had to fight, no less than the scenery of the rocks and mountains themselves, proved akin to his heart ; the emperor had exiled him to his native land. He was in St Petersburg in 1838 and 1839, and in the latter year wrote the novel A Hero of Our Time, which is said to have been the occasion of the duel in which he lost his life in July 1841. In this contest he had purposely selected the edge of a precipice, so that if either combatant was wounded so as to fall his fate should be sealed. LermontofT published only one small collection of poems in 1840. Three volumes, much mutilated by the censorship, were issued in 1842 by Glasunoff; and there have been full editions of his works in 1860 and 1863. To Bodenstedt s German translation of his poems (Michail Lermontoff s poetischer Nachlass, Berlin, 1842, 2 vols. ), which indeed was the first satisfactory collection, he is indebted for a wide reputation outside of Russia. His novel has found several translators (August Boltz, Berlin, 1852, &c. ). Among his best-known pieces are &quot;Ismail-Bey,&quot; &quot;Hadji Abrek,&quot; &quot;Walerik,&quot; &quot;The Xovice,&quot; and, remarkable as an imitation of the old Russian ballad, &quot;The song of the Czar Ivan Vasilivitch, his young bodyguard, and the bold merchant Kalashnikoff. &quot; See Taillandier. &quot; Le Poete du Caucasc.&quot; in Kfrue ilss Dtux Mondes (February !S5-&amp;gt;), reprinted in Allemaijne. et Rustic, Paris, 1856 ; and Duduishkin s Material* for the Biography of Ler r.ontoff,&quot; prefixed to the 18G3 edition of his works. LEROUX, PIERRE (1798-1871), a French writer on philosophy and politics, commonly recognized as the chief of the (so-called) Humanitarian school, was born at Paris in 1798. He was the son of an artisan. He received his early education at the Lycee Charlemagne, and continued his studies at Rennes. Having obtained an admission to the Polytechnic school, he renounced it in order to support by the labour of his hands his mother and family, who had been left destitute by the death of his father. He first worked as a mason, but soon became a compositor in the printing establishment of his cousin, and afterwards over seer in that of M. Panckoucke. In 1824 P. Dubois, a former schoolfellow, associated him with himself in the foundation of the Globe newspaper, in which he became a co-worker with De Broglie, Guizot, Duvergier cle Hanranne, Jouffroy, and other distinguished persons. For some time he occupied the position of an advanced Liberal of the ordinary type ; but in January 1831 he gave his adhesion to the Saint-Simonian community, of which he became a prominent member ; and under his influence the Globe became the organ of its doctrines. In November of the same year, when Enfantin preached the enfranchisement of women and the functions of the couple-pretre, Leroux took the part of Bazard, and, protesting in the name of morality, separated himself from the sect. In 1838, in conjunction with J. Reynaud, who had seceded with him, lie founded the Encyclopedia Nouvdle, in which he ex pounded his philosophical and social views. Amongst the articles which he inserted in it were one entitled De Vfigalite, and a Refutation de riZdectisme, which afterwards appeared as separate works. In 1840 he published his treatise De VHumanite, which contains the fullest exposi tion of his system, and was regarded as the philosophical manifesto of the Humanitarians. In 1841, disgusted with the Revue des Deux Mondes on account of its desertion of the democratic cause, he established, with the aid of M. Viardot and Mine. George Sand, the Revue Independante. By his philosophic association with the latter eminent writer he obtained the advantage of an eloquent interpreter, capable of charming and impressing the masses. Mme. Sand s Spiridion, which was dedicated to him, her Sept Conies de la Lyre, her Consuelo, and its continuation La Comiesse de Rudohtadt, were written under the Humani tarian inspiration. From the year 1843 M. Leroux devoted himself tothe practical applications of his doctrines. He established at Boussac (Creuse) a printing association organized according to his systematic ideas, and founded the Revue Sociale, in which, as well as in separate publica tions, he continued to explain and develop his theoretic views and his suggestions for the renovation of society, professing, amongst other things, to supply &quot; a pacific solution of the problem of the proletariat.&quot; After the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 he was elected to the constituent assembly as representative of the department of the Seine, obtaining 90,000 votes, and afterwards, in 1849, to the legislative assembly. He spoke there on the organization of labour, on the colonization of Algeria, and other questions. His discourses from the tribune were sometimes of so abstract and mystical a character, and contained proposals so eccentric and impracticable that they rather created ridicule than influenced opinion. The coup d etat of 1851 made him an exile; he settled with his family in Jersey, where he pursued agricultural experi ments. The general amnesty of 1860 permitted his return to France, but he lived at Lausanne till after the definitive amnesty of 1869, when he again fixed his residence at Paris. He died there in April 1871, during the reign of the Commune. That body deputed two of its members to attend his funeral, as a homage, &quot; not to the partisan of the mystical idea, of which we now feel the evil, but to the politician who, after the days of June, courageously undertook the defence of the vanquished.&quot; The writings of Leroux, though they won a transitory eclat and gave him a position as head of a school, appear to have no permanent significance in the history of thought. His social theories do not rest on any scientific basis ; he was rather the propagandist of sentiments and aspirations than the expounder of well-defined and distinctly appreciable ideas. He seems to have had a natural bent towards the mystic and the nebulous. He has, indeed, a system, but it is a singular medley of doctrines borrowed, not only from Saint- Simonian, but from Pythagorean and Buddhistic sources. In philosophy his fundamental principle is that of what he calls the &quot;triad,&quot; a triplicity which he finds to pervade all things, which in God is &quot;power, intelligence, and love&quot; in man &quot;sensation,