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 LAWSON— LAYAED.

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for Portarlington at the general election in July, 1866. Mr. Lawson was appointed a Justice of the Ck>urt of Common Pleas in Ireland, in 1868. On the disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1871 he was appointed Commissioner with Lord Monck, and the late Mr. G. A. Hamilton, to carry into effect the provisions of the Act. In [1882 he was transferred to the Queen's Bench, and is now the senior puisne Judge in Ireland. On Nov. 11, 1882, as Mr. Justice Lawson was walking to the King's Inns to dine with the Benchers, a returned con- vict, Peter Delaney, attempted to shoot him with a revolver, but was seized by a police-constable before he could carry out his murderous object. Mr. Justice Lawson has written "Lectures on Political Economy," 1814, and has contri- buted papers on Law Eeform to the Transactions of the Dublin Statis- tical Society, of which he has been president. He is the author of " Hymni usitati Latine redditi, with other verses," 1883.

LAWSON, Sib Wilpbid, Bart., M.P., son of the late Sir Wilfrid Lawson, of Aspatria, Cumberland, was born Sept. 4, 1829, and suc- ceeded to the title and estates on his father's death, in 1867. From an early age he has been an enthu- siastic advocate of the Temperance movement, and he is now the leader of the United Kingdom Alliance, and its spokesman in Parliament. At the general election of 1859 he stood, in conjunction with his uncle, the late Sir James Graham, as a can- didate for the representation of Carlisle, and succeeded by a narrow majority over his opponent, Mr. Hodgson. In March, 1864, he first moved for leave to introduce the measure now so well known as the Permissive Bill, the main principle of which is the giving to two-thirds of the inhabitants of any parish or township an absolute veto upon all licences for the sale of intoxicating liquors granted within their dis- tricts. It was supported by forty

members. In 1866 he was displaced at the general election by his former opponent, Mr. Hodgson ; but, at the general election of 1868, on appeal- ing to the enlarged constituency as a supporter of Mr. Gladstone, he was returned at the head of the poU. Sir Wilfrid Lawson succeeded, on June 18, 1880, in carrying his *' Local Option" resolution by a majority of 26.

LA YARD, The Eioht Hon, Sib Austen Henbt,G.C.B., son of Henry P. J. Layard, Esq., and grandson of the late Dr. Layard, Dean of Bristol, was born in Paris, March 5, 1817. Havinff commenced the study of the law, which he soon relinquished for more congenial pursuits, he, in 1839, set out with a friend on a course of travel, visited various points in northern Europe, and proceeded through Albania and Boumelia, to Constantinople, where, at one period, he acted as a correspondent of a London newspaper, and afterwards travelled through various parts of Asia, and learned the Arabic and Persian languages. In his wander- ings he made it a special point to explore those spots believed to have been the sites of ancient cities, and when at Mosul, near the mound of Nimroud, he was impelled with an irresistible desire to examine care- fully the spot to which history and tradition point as the "birthplace of the wisdom of the West." On hetkring that M. Botta, a French- man, had been carrying out exca- vations at the cost of his Govern- ment, and had found a great number of curious marbles, Mr. Layard longed for the opportunity of making sinular discoveries. JEtetuming to Constantinople, he laid his views before Sir Stratford Canning, who, in 1845, generously offered t^ share the cost of excavations at Nimroud, and in the autumn Mr. Layard set off for Mosul, and began his labours on a spot previously undisturbed. Here he ultimately succeeded in exhuming some of the numerous wonderful specimens of Assyrian