liberal tone at variance with the preceding part of the work; and in 1802 he published his History of Scotland from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Kingdoms, a work showing considerable research. Attached to the History was a dissertation on the Gowrie conspiracy, and another on the supposed authenticity of Ossian’s poems. In another dissertation, prefixed to a second and corrected edition of the History published in 1804, Laing endeavoured to prove that Mary, queen of Scots, wrote the Casket Letters, and was partly responsible for the murder of Lord Darnley. In the same year he edited the Life and Historie of King James VI., and in 1805 brought out in two volumes an edition of Ossian’s poems. Laing, who was a friend of Charles James Fox, was member of parliament for Orkney and Shetland from 1807 to 1812. He died on the 6th of November 1818.
LAING, SAMUEL (1810–1897), British author and railway
administrator, was born at Edinburgh on the 12th of December
1810. He was the nephew of Malcolm Laing, the historian of
Scotland; and his father, Samuel Laing (1780–1868), was also
a well-known author, whose books on Norway and Sweden
attracted much attention. Samuel Laing the younger entered
St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1827, and after graduating as
second wrangler and Smith’s prizeman, was elected a fellow,
and remained at Cambridge temporarily as a coach. He was
called to the bar in 1837, and became private secretary to Mr
Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton), the president of the
Board of Trade. In 1842 he was made secretary to the railway
department, and retained this post till 1847. He had by then
become an authority on railway working, and had been a member
of the Dalhousie Railway Commission; it was at his suggestion
that the “parliamentary” rate of a penny a mile was instituted.
In 1848 he was appointed chairman and managing director of
the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, and his business
faculty showed itself in the largely increased prosperity of the
line. He also became chairman (1852) of the Crystal Palace
Company, but retired from both posts in 1855. In 1852 he
entered parliament as a Liberal for Wick, and after losing his
seat in 1857, was re-elected in 1859, in which year he was appointed
financial secretary to the Treasury; in 1860 he was
made finance minister in India. On returning from India, he
was re-elected to parliament for Wick in 1865. He was defeated
in 1868, but in 1873 he was returned for Orkney and Shetland,
and retained his seat till 1885. Meanwhile he had been reappointed
chairman of the Brighton line in 1867, and continued
in that post till 1894, being generally recognized as an admirable
administrator. He was also chairman of the Railway Debenture
Trust and the Railway Share Trust. In later life he became
well known as an author, his Modern Science and Modern Thought
(1885), Problems of the Future (1889) and Human Origins
(1892) being widely read, not only by reason of the
writer’s influential position, experience of affairs and clear
style, but also through their popular and at the same time
well-informed treatment of the scientific problems of the day.
Laing died at Sydenham on the 6th of August 1897.
LAING’S [or Lang’s] NEK, a pass through the Drakensberg,
South Africa, immediately north of Majuba (q.v.), at an elevation
of 5400 to 6000 ft. It is the lowest part of a ridge which slopes
from Majuba to the Buffalo river, and before the opening of
the railway in 1891 the road over the nek was the main artery
of communication between Durban and Pretoria. The railway
pierces the nek by a tunnel 2213 ft. long. When the Boers
rose in revolt in December 1880 they occupied Laing’s Nek
to oppose the entry of British reinforcements into the Transvaal.
On the 28th of January 1881 a small British force endeavoured
to drive the Boers from the pass, but was forced to retire.
LAIRD, MACGREGOR (1808–1861), Scottish merchant,
pioneer of British trade on the Niger, was born at Greenock in
1808, the younger son of William Laird, founder of the Birkenhead
firm of shipbuilders of that name. In 1831 Laird and
certain Liverpool merchants formed a company for the commercial
development of the Niger regions, the lower course of the Niger
having been made known that year by Richard and John Lander.
In 1832 the company despatched two small ships to the Niger,
one, the “Alburkah,” a paddle-wheel steamer of 55 tons designed
by Laird, being the first iron vessel to make an ocean voyage.
Macgregor Laird went with the expedition, which was led by
Richard Lander and numbered forty-eight Europeans, of whom
all but nine died from fever or, in the case of Lander, from
wounds. Laird went up the Niger to the confluence of the
Benue (then called the Shary or Tchadda), which he was the
first white man to ascend. He did not go far up the river but
formed an accurate idea as to its source and course. The expedition
returned to Liverpool in 1834, Laird and Surgeon R. A. K.
Oldfield being the only surviving officers besides Captain (then
Lieut.) William Allen, R.N., who accompanied the expedition
by order of the Admiralty to survey the river. Laird and
Oldfield published in 1837 in two volumes the Narrative of an
Expedition into the Interior of Africa by the River Niger . . . in
1832, 1833, 1834. Commercially the expedition had been
unsuccessful, but Laird had gained experience invaluable to
his successors. He never returned to Africa but henceforth
devoted himself largely to the development of trade with West
Africa and especially to the opening up of the countries now
forming the British protectorates of Nigeria. One of his principal
reasons for so doing was his belief that this method was the best
means of stopping the slave trade and raising the social condition
of the Africans. In 1854 he sent out at his own charges, but with
the support of the British government, a small steamer, the
“Pleiad,” which under W. B. Baikie made so successful a voyage
that Laird induced the government to sign contracts for annual
trading trips by steamers specially built for navigation of the
Niger and Benue. Various stations were founded on the Niger,
and though government support was withdrawn after the death
of Laird and Baikie, British traders continued to frequent the
river, which Laird had opened up with little or no personal
advantage. Laird’s interests were not, however, wholly African.
In 1837 he was one of the promoters of a company formed to
run steamships between England and New York, and in 1838
the “Sirius,” sent out by this company, was the first ship to
cross the Atlantic from Europe entirely under steam. Laird
died in London on the 9th of January 1861.
His elder brother, John Laird (1805–1874), was one of the first to use iron in the construction of ships; in 1829 he made an iron lighter of 60 tons which was used on canals and lakes in Ireland; in 1834 he built the paddle steamer “John Randolph” for Savannah, U.S.A., stated to be the first iron ship seen in America. For the East India Company he built in 1839 the first iron vessel carrying guns and he was also the designer of the famous “Birkenhead.” A Conservative in politics, he represented Birkenhead in the House of Commons from 1861 to his death.
LAÏS, the name of two Greek courtesans, generally distinguished
as follows. (1) The elder, a native of Corinth, born
c. 480 B.C., was famous for her greed and hardheartedness, which
gained her the nickname of Axinē (the axe). Among her lovers
were the philosophers Aristippus and Diogenes, and Eubatas
(or Aristoteles) of Cyrene, a famous runner. In her old age
she became a drunkard. Her grave was shown in the Craneion
near Corinth, surmounted by a lioness tearing a ram. (2) The
younger, daughter of Timandra the mistress of Alcibiades, born
at Hyccara in Sicily c. 420 B.C., taken to Corinth during the
Sicilian expedition. The painter Apelles, who saw her drawing
water from the fountain of Peirene, was struck by her beauty,
and took her as a model. Having followed a handsome Thessalian
to his native land, she was slain in the temple of Aphrodite by
women who were jealous of her beauty. Many anecdotes are
told of a Laïs by Athenaeus, Aelian, Pausanias, and she forms
the subject of many epigrams in the Greek Anthology; but,
owing to the similarity of names, there is considerable uncertainty
to whom they refer. The name itself, like Phryne, was used
as a general term for a courtesan.
See F. Jacobs, Vermischte Schriften, iv. (1830).
LAISANT, CHARLES ANNE (1841– ), French politician,
was born at Nantes on the 1st of November 1841, and was
educated at the École Polytechnique as a military engineer.
