Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/163

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148
LUZ-SAINT-SAUVEUR—LYALL, EDNA
  

exponent, and his Poética is an admirable example of destructive criticism. The defects of Lope de Vega and Calderón are indicated with vigilant severity, but on the constructive side Luzán is notably weak, for he merely proposes to substitute one exhausted convention for another. The doctrine of the dramatic unities had not the saving virtues which he ascribed to it, and, though he succeeded in banishing the older dramatists from the boards, he and his school failed to produce a single piece of more than mediocre merit. His theories, derived chiefly from Muratori, were ineffective in practice; but their ingenuity cannot be denied, and they acted as a stimulus to the partisans of the national tradition.

LUZ-SAINT-SAUVEUR, a town of south-western France in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées, 21 m. S. of Lourdes by rail. Pop. (1906) 1069. Luz is beautifully situated at a height of 2240 ft. on the Bastan. It has a remarkable church, built by the Templars in the 12th and 13th centuries and fortified later. The crenelated ramparts with which it is surrounded, and the tower to the north of the apse resembling a keep, give it the aspect of a fortress; other interesting features are the Romanesque north door and a chapel of the 16th century. The village of St Sauveur lies a little above Luz on the left bank of the gorge of the Gave de Pau, which is crossed higher up by the imposing Pont Napoléon (1860). It is a pleasant summer resort, and is visited for its warm sulphurous springs. Discovered in the 16th century, the waters came into vogue after 1820, in which year they were visited by the duchesses of Angoulême and Berry. There is much picturesque mountain scenery in the vicinity; 12 m. to the south is the village of Gavarnie, above which is the magnificent rock amphitheatre or cirque of Gavarnie, with its cascade, one of the highest in Europe.


LUZZATTI, LUIGI (1841–  ), Italian economist and financier, was born of Jewish parents at Venice on the 11th of March 1841. After completing his studies in law at the university of Padua, he attracted the attention of the Austrian police by his lectures on political economy, and was obliged to emigrate. In 1863 he obtained a professorship at the Milan Technical Institute; in 1867 he was appointed professor of constitutional law at Padua, whence he was transferred to the university of Rome. Gifted with eloquence and energy, he popularized in Italy the economic ideas of Schultze-Delitzsch, worked for the establishment of a commercial college at Venice, and contributed to the spread of people’s banks on a basis of limited liability throughout the country. In 1869 he was appointed by Minghetti under secretary of state to the ministry of agriculture and commerce, in which capacity he abolished government control over commercial companies and promoted a state inquiry into the conditions of industry. Though theoretically a free trader, he was largely instrumental in creating the Italian protective system. In 1877 he participated in the commercial negotiations with France, in 1878 compiled the Italian customs tariff, and subsequently took a leading part in the negotiations of all the commercial treaties between Italy and other countries. Appointed minister of the treasury in the first Di Rudini cabinet of 1891, he imprudently abolished the system of frequent clearings of bank-notes between the state banks, a measure which facilitated the duplication of part of the paper currency and hastened the bank crisis of 1893. In 1896 he entered the second Di Rudini cabinet as minister of the treasury, and by timely legislation helped to save the bank of Naples from failure. After his fall from office in June 1898, his principal achievement was the negotiation of the Franco-Italian commercial treaty, though, as deputy, journalist and professor, he continued to take an active part in all political and economic manifestations. He was again minister of the treasury from November 1903 to March 1905 in Giolitti’s second administration, and for the third time from February to May 1906, under Sonnino’s premiership. During the latter term of office he achieved the conversion of the Italian 5% debt (reduced to 4% by the tax) to 33/4% to be eventually lowered to 31/2%, an operation which other ministers had attempted without success; although the actual conversion was not completed until after the fall of the cabinet of which he formed part the merit is entirely his. In 1907 he was president of the co-operative congress at Cremona.

See L. Carpi’s Risorgimento Italiano, vol. ii. (Milan, 1886), which contains a biographical sketch of Luzzatti.

LUZZATTO, MOSES ḤAYIM (1707–1747), Hebrew dramatist and mystic, was born in Padua 1707, and died at Acre 1747. He was influenced by Isaac Luria (q.v.) on the mystical side, and on the poetical side by Italian drama of the school of Guarini (q.v.). He attacked Leon of Modena’s anti-Kabbalistic treatises, and as a result of his conflict with the Venetian Rabbinate left Italy for Amsterdam, where, like Spinoza, he maintained himself by grinding lenses. Here, in 1740, he wrote his popular religious manual the Path of the Upright (Messilath Yesharim) and other ethical works. He visited London, but finally settled in Palestine, where he died. Luzzatto’s most lasting work is in the realm of Hebrew drama. His best-known compositions are: the Tower of Victory (Migdal ʽOz) and Glory to the Upright (Layesharim Tehillah). Both of these dramas, which were not printed at the time but were widely circulated in manuscript, are of the type which preceded the Shakespearean age—they are allegorical and all the characters are types. The beautiful Hebrew style created a new school of Hebrew poetry, and the Hebrew renaissance which resulted from the career of Moses Mendelssohn owed much to Luzzatto.

See Grätz, History of the Jews, v. ch. vii.; I. Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, pp. 190, 268; N. Slouschz, The Renascence of Hebrew Literature, ch. i.  (I. A.) 

LUZZATTO, SAMUEL DAVID (1800–1865), Jewish scholar, was born at Trieste in 1800, and died at Padua in 1865. He was the most distinguished of the Italian Jewish scholars of the 19th century. The first Jew to suggest emendations to the text of the Hebrew Bible, he edited Isaiah (1856–1867), and wrote a commentary on the Pentateuch (1871). His grammatical works were mostly written in Italian. He also contributed to the history of the Synagogue liturgy, and enjoys with Geiger (q.v.) and Zunz (q.v.) the honour of reviving interest in the medieval Hebrew hymnology and secular verse.

See Grätz, History of the Jews (Eng. trans.), v. 622 seq.; N. Slouschz, The Renascence of Hebrew Literature, pp. 84-92; the Jewish Encyclopedia, viii. 225–226, with list of works.  (I. A.) 

LYALL, SIR ALFRED COMYN (1835–  ), Anglo-Indian civil servant and man of letters, son of the Rev. Alfred Lyall, was born in 1835, and educated at Eton and Haileybury. He entered the Bengal civil service in 1855, saw service during the Mutiny in the Bulandshahr district, at Meerut, and with the Khaki Risala of volunteers. He was commissioner in Berar (1867), secretary to the government of India in the Home and Foreign departments, lieutenant-governor of the North-western Provinces (1882–1887), and member of the Council of India (1888–1903). Among his writings, his Verses Written in India (1889) attained considerable popularity, and in his Asiatic Studies (1882 and 1899) he displays a deep insight into Indian life and character. He wrote the Life of Lord Dufferin (1905), and made numerous contributions to periodical literature.

LYALL, EDNA, the pen-name of Ada Ellen Bayly (1857–1903), English novelist. She was born at Brighton in 1857, the daughter of a barrister. Her parents died while she was a child, and she was brought up at Caterham, Surrey. At Eastbourne, where most of her life was spent, she was well known for her philanthropic activity. She died on the 8th of February 1903. Edna Lyall’s vogue as a novelist was the result of a combination of the story-teller’s gift with a sincere ethical and religious spirit of Christian tolerance, which at the time was new to many readers. Though her Won by Waiting (1879) had some success, it was with Donovan (1882) and We Two (1884), in which the persecuted atheist was inevitably identified with Charles Bradlaugh, that she became widely popular. Other novels were In the Golden Days (1885), a story of the Great Rebellion; Knight Errant (1887); Autobiography of a Slander (1887); A Hardy Norseman (1889); Derrick Vaughan, The Story of a Novelist (1889); To Right the Wrong (1892); Doreen (1894), a statement of the case for Irish Home Rule; The Autobiography of a Truth (1896), the proceeds of which were devoted to the