Page:EB1911 - Volume 16.djvu/116

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LALO—LĀMĀISM

the secret of his birth on the day of his father’s execution, when he resolved to devote himself to clearing his father’s memory. He was supported by Voltaire, and in 1778 succeeded in persuading Louis XVI. to annul the decree which had sentenced the comte de Lally; but the parlement of Rouen, to which the case was referred back, in 1784 again decided in favour of Lally’s guilt. The case was retried by other courts, but Lally’s innocence was never fully admitted by the French judges. In 1779 Lally-Tollendal bought the office of Grand bailli of Étampes, and in 1789 was a deputy to the states-general for the noblesse of Paris. He played some part in the early stages of the Revolution, but was too conservative to be in sympathy with all even of its earlier developments. He threw himself into opposition to the “tyranny” of Mirabeau, and condemned the epidemic of renunciation which in the session of the 4th of August 1789 destroyed the traditional institutions of France. Later in the year he emigrated to England. During the trial of Louis XVI. by the National Convention (1793) he offered to defend the king, but was not allowed to return to France. He did not return till the time of the Consulate. Louis XVIII. created him a peer of France, and in 1816 he became a member of the French Academy. From that time until his death, on the 11th of March 1830, he devoted himself to philanthropic work, especially identifying himself with prison reform.

See his Plaidoyer pour Louis XVI. (London, 1793); Lally-Tollendal was also in part responsible for the Mémoires, attributed to Joseph Weber, concerning Marie Antoinette (1804); he further edited the article on his father in the Biographie Michaud; see also Arnault, Discours prononcé aux funérailles de M. le marquis de Lally-Tollendal le 13 mars 1830 (Paris); Gauthier de Brecy, Nécrologie de M. le marquis de Lally-Tollendal (Paris, undated); Voltaire, Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1889), in which see the analytical table of contents, vol. ii.

LALO, EDOUARD (1823–1892), French composer, was born at Lille, on the 27th of January 1823. He began his musical studies at the conservatoire at Lille, and in Paris attended the violin classes of Habeneck. For several years Lalo led a modest and retired existence, playing the viola in the quartet party organized by Armingaud and Jacquard, and in composing chamber music. His early works include two trios, a quartet, and several pieces for violin and pianoforte. In 1867 he took part in an operatic competition, an opera from his pen, entitled Fiesque, obtaining the third place out of forty-three. This work was accepted for production at the Paris Opéra, but delays occurred, and nothing was done. Fiesque was next offered to the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, and was about to be produced there when the manager became bankrupt. Thus, when nearly fifty years of age, Lalo found himself in difficulties. Fiesque was never performed, but the composer published the pianoforte score, and eventually employed some of the music in other works. After the Franco-German war French composers found their opportunity in the concert-room. Lalo was one of these, and during the succeeding ten years several interesting works from his pen were produced, among them a sonata for violoncello, a “divertissement” for orchestra, a violin concerto and the Symphonie Espagnole for violin and orchestra, one of his best-known compositions. In the meanwhile he had written a second opera, Le Roi d’Ys, which he hoped would be produced at the Opéra. The administration offered him the “scenario” of a ballet instead. Lalo was obliged to be content with this, and set to work with so much energy that he fell ill, the last scenes of the ballet being orchestrated by Gounod. Namouna, the ballet in question, was produced at the Opéra in 1882. Six years later, on the 7th of May 1888, Le Roi d’Ys was brought out at the Opéra Comique, and Lalo was at last enabled to taste the sweets of success. Unfortunately, fame came to him too late in life. A pianoforte concerto and the music to Néron, a pantomimic piece played at the Hippodrome in 1891, were his last two works. He had begun a new opera, but had only written the first act when, on the 23rd of April 1892, he died. This opera, La Jacquerie, was finished by Arthur Coquard, and was produced in 1895 at Monte Carlo, Aix-les-Bains and finally in Paris. Lalo had distinct originality, discernible in his employment of curious rhythmic devices. His music is ever ingenious and brilliantly effective.

LA MADDALENA, an island 21/2 m. from the N.E. coast of Sardinia. Pop. (1901) 8361. Napoleon bombarded it in 1793 without success, and Nelson made it his headquarters for some time. It is now an important naval station of the Italian fleet, the anchorage being good, and is strongly fortified. A bridge and an embankment connect it with Caprera. It appears to have been inhabited in Roman times.

LĀMĀISM, a system of doctrine partly religious, partly political. Religiously it is the corrupt form of Buddhism prevalent in Tibet and Mongolia. It stands in a relationship to primitive Buddhism similar to that in which Roman Catholicism, so long as the temporal power of the pope was still in existence, stood to primitive Christianity. The ethical and metaphysical ideas most conspicuous in the doctrines of Lāmāism are not confined to the highlands of central Asia, they are accepted in great measure also in Japan and China. It is the union of these ideas with a hierarchical system, and with the temporal sovereignty of the head of that system in Tibet, which constitutes what is distinctively understood by the term Lāmāism. Lāmāism has acquired a special interest to the student of comparative history through the instructive parallel which its history presents to that of the Church of Rome.

The central point of primitive Buddhism was the doctrine of “Arahatship”—a system of ethical and mental self-culture, in which deliverance was found from all the mysteries and sorrows of life in a change of heart to be reached here on earth. This doctrine seems to have been The “Great Vehicle.” held very nearly in its original purity from the time when it was propounded by Gotama in the 6th century B.C. to the period in which northern India was conquered by the Huns about the commencement of the Christian era. Soon after that time there arose a school of Buddhist teachers who called their doctrine the “Great Vehicle.” It was not in any contradiction to the older doctrine, which they contemptuously called the “Little Vehicle,” but included it all, and was based upon it. The distinguishing characteristic of the newer school was the importance which it attached to “Bodhisatship.” The older school had taught that Gotama, who had propounded the doctrine of Arahatship, was a Buddha, that only a Buddha is capable of discovering that doctrine, and that a Buddha is a man who by self-denying efforts, continued through many hundreds of different births, has acquired the so-called Ten Pāramitās or cardinal virtues in such perfection that he is able, when sin and ignorance have gained the upper hand throughout the world, to save the human race from impending ruin. But until the process of perfection has been completed, until the moment when at last the sage, sitting under the Wisdom tree acquires that particular insight or wisdom which is called Enlightenment or Buddhahood, he is still only a Bodhisat. The link of connexion between the various Bodhisats in the future Buddha’s successive births is not a soul which is transferred from body to body, but the karma, or character, which each successive Bodhisat inherits from his predecessors in the long chain of existences. Now the older school also held, in the first place, that, when a man had, in this life, attained to Arahatship, his karma would not pass on to any other individual in another life—or in other words, that after Arahatship there would be no rebirth; and, secondly, that four thousand years after the Buddha had proclaimed the Dhamma or doctrine of Arahatship, his teaching would have died away, and another Buddha would be required to bring mankind once more to a knowledge of the truth. The leaders of the Great Vehicle urged their followers to seek to attain, not so much to Arahatship, which would involve only their own salvation, but to Bodhisatship, by the attainment of which they would be conferring the blessings of the Dhamma upon countless multitudes in the long ages of the future. By thus laying stress upon Bodhisatship, rather than upon Arahatship, the new school, though they doubtless merely thought themselves to be carrying the older orthodox doctrines to their logical conclusion, were really changing the central point of