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LER hiéroglyphique," Rome, 1837, having made his name known in wider circles, he was encouraged to undertake a series of archæological researches, which were productive of the two works, "Auswahl der wichtigsten Urkunden des ägyptischen Alterthums," and "Todtenbuch der Agypter nach dem hieroglyphischen Papyrus in Turin," both published at Leipsic in 1842. Before the publication of these works, Lepsius had repeated interviews with his friend Bunsen, who had gone as Prussian ambassador to London; and the result was the organization of a great scientific exploration of Egypt, undertaken chiefly at the expense of King Frederick William IV. The expedition, consisting of two Englishmen and seven Germans, headed by Lepsius, set out from Alexandria in October, 1842, and being under the special protection of Mehemet Ali, had the most satisfactory results. Returning to Berlin at the beginning of 1846, Lepsius was nominated honorary professor at the university, and immediately began the publication of his great work on Egypt, "Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien," brought out at the expense of the king on a most magnificent scale. The publication of this book lasted ten years, from 1849 to 1859, and forms the most complete monument of ancient Egypt which, as yet, has been given to the world. Numerous smaller works of the author accompanied and followed this undertaking. The most notable in the list are "Chronologie der Ägypter," Berlin, 1849; "Über den ersten ägyptischen Götterkreis," Berlin, 1851; "Briefe aus Ägypten, Äthiopien, und der Halbinsel des Sinai," ibid. 1852; "Über die zwölfte Ägyptische Königsdynastie," ibid. 1852; "Über einige Ergebnisse der hieroglyphischen Inschriften für die Ptolomaergeschichte," ibid. 1853; "Das allgemeine linguistische Alphabet," ibid 1855; "Über eine hieroglyphische Inschrift am Tempel von Edfu," ibid. 1860; and various memoirs in the Transactions of the Academy of Berlin and other learned societies. Nearly all of the above works have been translated into French and English.—F. M.  LERI. See .  LERMA,, Duke of. Marquis of Denia, the favourite and minister of Philip III. of Spain, who raised him to the dukedom immediately on his accession in 1598, and resigned to him the chief authority in the state. His administration is notable for two unsuccessful expeditions against England in 1599 and 1602; for the failure of the campaign in the Netherlands, ending in the recognition of the independence of the United Provinces in 1608; but still more so for the expulsion of the Moors, marked by circumstances of great cruelty, and ruinous to the industrial progress of Spain. In 1618 he was compelled to resign all his offices, having been supplanted in the king's favour by his own son. After the death of the king in 1621, he was compelled to refund large sums. He died in comparative obscurity in 1625.—F. M. W.  LERMINIER,, a French author, born at Paris, 29th of March, 1803; died 25th of August, 1857. He studied law, and was appointed to the chair of "legislations comparées," one of the three chairs founded in 1831 at the college of France. His eloquent expositions won him a brilliant reputation; but six years later his liberal opinions appeared to have undergone a change, and the college of France became the scene of riots, which rendered it impossible for him to continue. In 1849 he tried to renew a course of lectures on law, but the riots were repeated, and he betook himself to the pen. He was attached to the staff of the Assemblée Nationale, and wrote in the Revue des deux Mondes. His last work was the article "Guizot" in that work of superlative excellence, the Biographie Generale.—P. E. D.  LERMONTOFF,, a Russian poet and novelist of celebrity, was born in 1811, of a noble family, said to have been originally Scottish (Learmont—Lermont-off?). He was a young officer in the Russian guards when, in 1837, the great poet Pushkin fell in a duel with a Frenchman whom he suspected, it now seems erroneously, of an intrigue with his wife. In a MS. poem on this event, Lermontoff called for vengeance on the foreigner with such vehemence and violence that the Emperor Nicholas sent him to serve in the army of the Caucausus, a region with which he was already familiar. There in military exile he wrote the poems and novels which have made him famous. Byronic in their general tone, they abound in vivid descriptions of life and nature in the Caucasus. He has been called "the poet of the Caucasus," and his sympathies were evidently more with the Circassians than with their Russian enemies, his own fellow-soldiers. He fell in a duel in the Caucasus in 1841, the year after the successful publication at St. Petersburg of his novel, "A Hero of our own Times." His poems were collected and published at St. Petersburg in 1842. For an acquaintance with their sombre beauty western readers are indebted chiefly to Bodenstedt's excellent German translation (in the metres of the original) published at Berlin in 1855. His "Hero" has been twice translated into English, and some of his other tales appeared in an English dress in 1855, as "Sketches of Russian Life in the Caucasus."—F. E.  LEROY,, a French architect, born at Paris in 1728; died 28th January, 1803. He went to Greece, and in 1758 published "Ruines des plus beaux Monuments de la Grece" This work caused a revolution in the architecture of France. After his return, Leroy for forty years was professor of architecture at the Academy. He published another work on the forms of christian places of worship, and some treatises on the shipbuilding of the ancients.—P. E. D.  * LEROY D'ÉTIOLLES,, a French surgeon, born in 1798. A great part of his life has been devoted to the subject of lithotrity, or breaking down stone in the bladder, without having recourse to the knife. He has also invented various surgical instruments, and successfully treated many surgical cases without having recourse to operation. He is one of the surgeons of the Hotel Dieu, and is the author of several works on subjects connected with surgery.—W. B—d.  LERY or LERI,, a protestant minister, and traveller, born in 1534 in Burgundy. He studied at Geneva, and in 1556 accompanied Nicolas Durand, sieur de Villegagnon, on an expedition to America, of which he has left a most exact and faithful account, "Histoire d'une voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, autrement dite Amerique," &c., 1578. Lery returned to France with Pierre Richer, and at once proceeded to Geneva, but later settled at Belleville, where he resided when the place was taken by the Huguenots. After other changes he settled at La Charité, where many of his flock perished in the massacres of 1572. Thence he removed to Sancerre, where he was during the second siege of the town, of which he has left a curious narrative. He died at Berne in 1611.—B. H. C. <section end="183H" /> <section begin="183Zcontin" />LE SAGE,, the author of "Gil Blas," was born in May, 1668, at the village of Sarzeau, near Vannes, in Brittany, and in what is now the department of Morbihan. His father held a small legal appointment in connection with the Cour Royale of Rhuys. Educated at the Jesuit college of Vannes, he lost both his parents before he was fifteen, and his little patrimony was dissipated by an uncle, his guardian. For five or six years he is conjectured to have filled in his native province an office under government in the revenue department, and perhaps to have lost it under circumstances such as to inspire him with that lasting dislike for all connected with the collection or farming of the public taxes, which is very conspicuous in his best comedy, "Turcaret." He went to Paris in 1692, and qualified himself as an avocat, marrying in 1694 the daughter of a citizen whose face was her only fortune, but with whom he enjoyed for many years complete domestic happiness. Handsome, good-humoured, clever, lively, and agreeable in his manners and conversation, he found his way into good society, and abandoned law for literature. His first work was an unsuccessful adaptation of the Letters of Aristænetus, 1695. A munificent patron, the Abbé de Lyonne (son of the minister), not only gave him a pension of six hundred livres, but directed him to the language and literature of Spain, the country with which his chief triumphs were to be associated. After producing some versions or adaptations of Spanish plays and a translation of the piratical imitator, Avellaneda's continuation of Don Quixote, Le Sage made two hits in 1707, by his "Don César Ursin" (imitated from Calderon); and his "Crispin rival de son maitre," a farce of valet-intrigue, with a smart dialogue (Garrick adapted it as Neck or Nothing). The court applauded "Don César," while it condemned "Crispin;" the verdict of the Paris play-goers was the reverse. He was forty when, in the year of these theatrical successes, he produced the first of his famous books, "Le Diable Boiteux" (the "Devil on two sticks" of the English translation), of which the title and general scope, but nothing more, he took from Guevara's El Diable Cojuelo. While the scene was laid in Madrid, readers recognized in the satire at once pointed and playful a picture of Paris and the Parisians. The "Diable Boiteux" had a prodigious success, and the gay demon Asmodeus who reveals to the hero <section end="183Zcontin" />