to its elongation; and the kangaroo, sitting upright to support the young in its pouch, he imagines to have had its fore-limbs dwarfed by disuse, and its hind legs and tail exaggerated by using them in leaping. The fourth law expresses the inheritance of acquired characters, which is denied by August Weismann and his followers. For a more detailed account of Lamarck’s place in the history of the doctrine of evolution, see Evolution.
LA MARGHERITA, CLEMENTE SOLARO, Count del (1792–1869),
Piedmontese statesman, was born at Mondovi. He studied
law at Siena and Turin, but Piedmont was at that time under
French domination, and being devoted to the house of Savoy
he refused to take his degree, as this proceeding would have
obliged him to recognize the authority of the usurper; after the
restoration of the Sardinian kingdom, however, he graduated.
In 1816 he entered the diplomatic service. Later he returned
to Turin, and succeeded in gaining the confidence and esteem
of King Charles Albert, who in 1835 appointed him minister of foreign affairs. A fervent Roman Catholic, devoted to the pope
and to the Jesuits, friendly to Austria and firmly attached to
the principles of autocracy, he strongly opposed every attempt
at political innovation, and was in consequence bitterly hated
by the liberals. When the popular agitation in favour of constitutional
reform first broke out the king felt obliged to dispense
with La Margherita’s services, although he had conducted public
affairs with considerable ability and absolute loyalty, even
upholding the dignity of the kingdom in the face of the arrogant
attitude of the cabinet of Vienna. He expounded his political
creed and his policy as minister to Charles Albert (from February
1835 to October 1847) in his Memorandum storico-politico,
published in 1851, a document of great interest for the study of
the conditions of Piedmont and Italy at that time. In 1853 he
was elected deputy for San Quirico, but he persisted in regarding
his mandate as derived from the royal authority rather than
as an emanation of the popular will. As leader of the Clerical
Right in the parliament he strongly opposed Cavour’s policy,
which was eventually to lead to Italian unity, and on the establishment
of the kingdom of Italy he retired from public life.
LA MARMORA, ALFONSO FERRERO (1804–1878), Italian
general and statesman, was born at Turin on the 18th of
November 1804. He entered the Sardinian army in 1823, and
was a captain in March 1848, when he gained distinction and
the rank of major at the siege of Peschiera. On the 5th of August
1848 he liberated Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, from the
Milan revolutionaries, and in October was promoted general
and appointed minister of war. After suppressing the revolt of
Genoa in 1849, he again assumed in November 1849 the portfolio
of war, which, save during the period of his command of the
Crimean expedition, he retained until 1859. Having reconstructed
the Piedmontese army, he took part in the war of 1859
against Austria; and in July of that year succeeded Cavour in
the premiership. In 1860 he was sent to Berlin and St Petersburg
to arrange for the recognition of the kingdom of Italy,
and subsequently he held the offices of governor of Milan and
royal lieutenant at Naples, until, in September 1864, he succeeded
Minghetti as premier. In this capacity he modified the scope
of the September Convention by a note in which he claimed
for Italy full freedom of action in respect of national aspirations
to the possession of Rome, a document of which Visconti Venosta
afterwards took advantage when justifying the Italian occupation
of Rome in 1870. In April 1866 La Marmora concluded an
alliance with Prussia against Austria, and, on the outbreak of
war in June, took command of an army corps, but was defeated
at Custozza on the 23rd of June. Accused of treason by his fellow-countrymen,
and of duplicity by the Prussians, he eventually
published in defence of his tactics (1873) a series of documents
entitled Un po’ più di luce sugli eventi dell’ anno 1866 (More
light on the events of 1866) a step which caused irritation in
Germany, and exposed him to the charge of having violated
state secrets. Meanwhile he had been sent to Paris in 1867 to
oppose the French expedition to Rome, and in 1870, after the
occupation of Rome by the Italians, had been appointed lieutenant-royal
of the new capital. He died at Florence on the 5th
of January 1878. La Marmora’s writings include Un episodio
del risorgimento italiano (Florence, 1875); and I segreti di
stato nel governo constituzionale (Florence, 1877).
See G. Massani, Il generale Alfonso La Marmora (Milan, 1880).
LAMARTINE, ALPHONSE MARIE LOUIS DE PRAT DE
(1790–1869), French poet, historian and statesman, was born at
Mâcon on the 21st of October 1790. The order of his surnames
is a controversial matter, and they are sometimes reversed.
The family of Lamartine was good, and the title of Prat was
taken from an estate in Franche Comté. His father was imprisoned
during the Terror, and only released owing to the events
of the 9th Thermidor. Lamartine’s early education was received
from his mother. He was sent to school at Lyons in 1805, but
not being happy there was transferred to the care of the Pères de
la Foi at Belley, where he remained until 1809. For some time
afterwards he lived at home, reading romantic and poetical
literature, but in 1811 he set out for Italy, where he seems to
have sojourned nearly two years. His family having been steady
royalists, he entered the Gardes du corps at the return of the
Bourbons, and during the Hundred Days he sought refuge first in
Switzerland and then at Aix-en-Savoie, where he fell in love, with
abundant results of the poetical kind. After Waterloo he returned
to Paris. In 1818–1819 he revisited Switzerland, Savoy
and Italy, the death of his beloved affording him new subjects
for verse. After some difficulties he had his first book, the
Méditations, poétiques et religieuses, published (1820). It was
exceedingly popular, and helped him to make a position. He
had left the army for some time; he now entered the diplomatic
service and was appointed secretary to the embassy at Naples.
On his way to his post he married, in 1823, at Geneva a young
English lady, Marianne Birch, who had both money and beauty,
and in the same year his Nouvelles méditations poétiques appeared.
In 1824 he was transferred to Florence, where he remained five years. His Last Canto of Childe Harold appeared in 1825, and he had to fight a duel (in which he was wounded) with an Italian officer, Colonel Pepe, in consequence of a phrase in it. Charles X., on whose coronation he wrote a poem, gave him the order of the Legion of Honour. The Harmonies poétiques et religieuses appeared in 1829, when he had left Florence. Having refused an appointment in Paris under the Polignac ministry, he went on a special mission to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. In the same year he was elected to the Academy. Lamartine was in Switzerland, not in Paris, at the time of the Revolution of July, and, though he put forth a pamphlet on “Rational Policy,” he did not at that crisis take any active part in politics, refusing, however, to continue his diplomatic services under the new government. In 1832 he set out with his wife and daughter for Palestine, having been unsuccessful in his candidature for a seat in the chamber. His daughter Julia died at Beirut, and before long he received the news of his election by a constituency (Bergues) in the department of the Nord. He returned through Turkey and Germany, and made his first speech shortly after the beginning of 1834. Thereafter he spoke constantly, and acquired considerable reputation as an orator,—bringing out, moreover, many books in prose and verse. His Eastern travels (Voyage en Orient) appeared in 1835, his Chute d’un ange and Jocelyn in 1837, and his Recueillements, the last remarkable volume of his poetry, in 1839. As the reign of Louis Philippe went on, Lamartine, who had previously been a liberal royalist, something after the fashion of Chateaubriand, became more and more democratic in his opinions. He set about his greatest prose work, the Histoire des Girondins, which at first appeared periodically, and was published as a whole in 1847. Like many other French histories, it was a pamphlet as well as a chronicle, and the subjects of Lamartine’s pen became his models in politics.
At the revolution of February Lamartine was one of the first to declare for a provisional government, and became a member of it, with the post of minister for foreign affairs. He was elected for the new constituent assembly in ten different departments, and was chosen one of the five members of the Executive Committee. For a few months indeed Lamartine, from being a
