Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/298

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

282 L A N L A N Bavaria. The manufactures of Landshut are not important; they include beer, cloth, and tobacco. Market gardening and, to a really considerable extent, trade in grain are carried on. From 1300 to 182G, when the university, formerly at Ingolstadt and now at Munich, was located at Landshut, the town woke up to a temporary importance. The name Dreihelm Staclt is sometimes given to Laudshut from the three helmets that form its arms. The population in 1875 was 14,780. LANDSKRONA, one of the principal seaport and garrison towns in Sweden, is situated in the district of Malmo (in Skania) on the Sound (Oresund), about 55 miles west of Christianstad and 15 miles by water from Copen hagen. It is connected by a branch line with the south Swedish railway system. The harbour, protected by the island of Grfien, is the deepest and best on the Skanian coast, and possesses excellent quays, A Swedish line of steamers runs regularly to Liibeck. Wood, grain, and clay are largely exported. In 1 880 the number of foreign vessels entering the port was 1954, with a total burden of 135,894 register tons. Landskrona is one of the chief industrial towns of Sweden, the largest manufacture being sugar re fining. The population was 7323 in 1868, and 9913 in 1880. Landskrona, originally called Landora or Landor, owes its first importance to King Erik XIII., who introduced a body of Carmelite monks from Germany in 1410, and bestowed on the place the same privileges as those enjoyed by Malmo. In 1428 it was plundered by the forces of the Wendish towns, and during the wars of the 16th and 17th centuries it played too conspicuous a part for its own prosperity. Horn took the town by storm in 1644 ; IJuyttT blockaded the Swedish fleet in its harbour in 1657 ; and in 1676 was fought in the neighbourhood the great battle of Landskrona, which saved Sweden from the Danish invaders. LANE, EDWARD WILLIAM (1801-187G), one of the greatest of European Arabists, was the son of Dr Theophilus Lane, a prebendary of Hereford. He lost his father in boyhood, and his character was mainly formed by the influence of his mother, a woman of strong and beautiful nature He was designed for Cambridge and the church, and became proficient in mathematics, but, abandoning the purpose of proceeding to the university, gave himself for some time to the study of engraving. Weak health, aggravated by intense application to Eastern study, com pelled him to throw aside the burin, and in 1825 he started for Egypt, where he spent three years, twice ascended the Nile, proceeding as far as the second cataract, and composed a complete description of Egypt, with a portfolio of one hundred and one drawings. This work was never pub lished, but the account of the modern Egyptians, which formed a part of it, was accepted for separate publication by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. To perfect this work Lane again visited Egypt in 1833-35, residing mainly in Cairo, but retiring to Luxor during the plague of 1835. An interesting journal of this visit to Egypt is included in the memoir by his grand-nephew pre fixed to the sixth part of his great Lexicon. Perfected by the additional observations collected during these years, the Modern Egyptians appeared in 1836, and at once took the place which it has never lost as the best description of Eastern life and an Eastern country ever written. In accuracy, completeness, and graphic simplicity of descrip tion the book approaches ideal perfection. It was followed from 1838 to 1840 by a translation of the Arabian Nights, with a mass of valuable notes and illustrations, designed to make the book a sort of encyclopaedia of Eastern manners, and rivalling the merit of his first work. The translation itself is an admirable proof of scholarship, but is characterized by a somewhat stilted mannerism, which is not equally appropriate to all parts of the motley-coloured original. The character of some of the tales, and the tedious repetitions of the same theme which are found in the Arabic collection, induced Lane to leave considerable parts of the work untranslated. In 1840 Lane married a Greek lady. A useful volume of Selectionsfrom the Kur-dn was published in 1843, but before it passed through the press the indefatigable author was again in Egypt, where he spent seven years (1842-49) collecting materials for a great Arabic lexicon, which the munificence of Lord Prudhoe (afterwards duke of Northumberland) enabled him to under take. The most important of the materials amassed during this sojourn (in which he was accompanied by his wife and by his sister, Mrs Poole, authoress of the Englishwoman in Egypt) with her two sons, afterwards well known in Eastern letters) was a copy in 24 thick quarto volumes of Sheikh Murtada s great lexicon, the Taj et Aries, which, though itself a compilation, is so extensive and exact that it formed the main basis of Lane s subsequent work. The author, who lived in Egypt in last century, used more than a hundred sources, interweaving what he learned from them with the Kdmiis of Firuzabady in the form of a commentary, P>yfar the larger part of this commentary was derived from the Lisdn el Arab of Ibn Mokarram, a work of the 13th century, which Lane was also able to use while in Cairo. Returning to England in the year 1849, Lune devoted the whole remainder of his life to the task of digesting and translating his Arabic material in the form of a great thesaurus of the lexicographical knowledge of the Arabs. In spite of weak health he continued this arduous task with unflagging diligence till a few clays before his death, which took place at Worthing 10th August 187G. The work remains unfinished ; five parts appeared during his lifetime (1863-1874), and two smaller parts have since been published from his papers. Even in its imperfect state the Lexicon is an enduring monument, the complete ness and finished scholarship with which it is executed making each article an exhaustive monograph. All Lane s work has the stamp of masterly perfection. He produced no occasional writings, and two essays contributed to the magazine of the German Oriental Society complete the record of his publications. Lane was not an original mind; his powers were those of observation, industry, and sound judgment. He had singular tact in accommodating himself to the Eastern character ; he lived in the East as an Oriental ; and his familiarity with Eastern life and ways of thought was unique. His personal character was elevated and pure, his strong sense of religious and moral duty being of the type that characterized the best circles of English evangelicalism in the early part of this century. LANFRANC (c. 1005-1089), thirty-fourth archbishop of Canterbury, and first after the Conquest, one of the ablest churchmen and scholars of his time, was the son of Hambald or Hanbald, one of the principal citizens of Pavia, and was born there about the year 1005. Deprived of his father at an early age, he seems to have been educated at Pavia with a view to taking his hereditary place in the governing class, but to have developed a love of learning for its own sake, which induced him to visit other schools ; on his return, after a long absence, he became teacher of jurisprudence in his native town. About 1039, driven from home by the disturbances then prevalent in Italy, and attracted by what he had heard of the need and demand for a supply of competent scholars in Normandy, he with some learned companions migrated thither and set up a school at Avranches, which met with great success. Some three years afterwards (1042), having formed the resolution to become a monk, he suddenly withdrew from his promis ing career as a secular teacher. The causes which led to this change in the plan of his life are not known. Hook thinks it was suggested by the death of his wife, which