his liberty through the unwearied exertions of the Princess Montpensier, but was forbidden to appear in the royal presence. In 1668 he visited England, and was well received at court and in the fashionable circles of London; and when the Revolution took place he was intrusted by James with the delicate task of conveying the queen and prince of Wales to France. He performed this service most successfully, and was again received into favour by Louis, and permitted to return to court. James conferred upon him the order of the garter, and his own sovereign raised him to the rank of duke. In 1690 Lauzun was appointed to command the French troops sent to fight the battles of King James in Ireland—an unfortunate selection; for though a brave soldier, he was much fitter for a knight-errant than for a general. He was present at the battle of the Boyne, but did nothing either there or subsequently to retrieve the disasters which were gathering round the exiled monarch. He became wearied of Ireland and the war, and soon returned to France. He died in 1723 in his ninetieth year.—J. T.
LA VALETTE, Antoine Marie Chamans, Count de, was born in 1769 of humble parentage. He was originally destined for the church; but on the outbreak of the Revolution his ambition took another direction. He attached himself to Bonaparte, who made him his confidant and employed him in several important services; took him with him in his expedition to Egypt and Syria; gave him in marriage Emilie Louise de Beauharnais, niece of Josephine's first husband; made him a councillor of state and a count of the empire in 1808; grand officer of the legion of honour in 1811; and intrusted him with the administration of the post-office. He was removed from this office in 1814, but resumed his former duties on Napoleon's return from Elba. He was created a peer on the 2d of June following. On the downfall of the emperor La Valette was arrested, brought to trial on a charge of treason, and condemned to death. But on the evening previous to the day appointed for his execution he escaped from prison disguised in the clothes of his wife, who remained in his place and afterwards suffered imprisonment for the offence, along with her daughter and nurse. Sir Robert Wilson, and Messrs. Hutchinson and Bruce, who had assisted in her husband's escape. The sufferings to which the unfortunate lady was subjected destroyed her reason, and she became a maniac. La Valette found his way to Munich; but in 1821 he received a pardon and was allowed to return to France, where he died in 1830.—J. T.
LAVATER, Johann Caspar, the celebrated physiognomist, was a native of Zurich, where his father was a physician and member of the municipal council, and where he was born on the 15th November, 1741. From his boyhood he was remarkable for the combination of deep religiousness of feeling, with love for the fine arts; and having early chosen the ministry for the vocation of his life, he went through the usual course of study at Zurich, and was ordained in the spring of 1762. At that date his attainments in classical and theological learning were only moderate; but in strength of character, in the development of his moral and religious life, he had already grown up to be no ordinary, no average, but a highly remarkable man, firmly resolved for life "to walk humbly before his Creator and Redeemer, to strive after the highest perfection, never to stand still, never to be weary, God in all things to honour, to be no slave of men, and to be no seeker of self." His first public act was a singular one, and full of character. On the 27th of August, 1762, he wrote a letter to one of the civil functionaries at Zurich, who had committed great acts of injustice, in which he called upon him to redress the injuries he had done, giving him two months' time to do so; and warning him that if he failed, he should at the end of that time be branded with the mark of public infamy. The evil-doer took no notice of this strange message; and at the end of two months young Lavater left letters of complaint against him at the doors of all the most influential members of the council, which led to an investigation of the whole case, and ended in the deposition and disgrace of the offender, who was compelled to make restitution. It was an eccentric mode of proceeding, and Lavater was told that he should have availed himself of the courts of law; but it revealed a generous enthusiasm on the side of justice and right, and Göthe, with a kindred enthusiasm, declared such an act to be a teacher worth a hundred books. From that day Lavater became "a public character," and an object of warm admiration and sympathy to thousands of hearts. During the next two years he travelled through Germany with his two friends, Felix Hess and Henry Fissile, making the acquaintance and enjoying the society of such men as Gellert, Klopstock, and Spalding; and returning to Zurich in 1764, he remained for two more years without public office in the church. His circumstances were easy, and allowed him to take ample time for study and preparation. In 1766 he married Anna Schinz, the daughter of one of the magistrates of Zurich, a connection which proved eminently suitable and happy; and in the same year he took part in founding the Helvetic Society, which had for its aim to awaken and elevate the public and patriotic spirit of the country, for which purpose he also wrote and published in 1764 his "Schweizerlieder," or Swiss Lays, many of which were of great merit, and sank into the heart and memory of his countrymen. It was now, however, full time that he should enter upon the main work of his life. In 1769 he accepted the office of deacon of the church of the orphan-house at Zurich. In 1775 he became pastor of the same church; and in 1778 he was promoted to be deacon of the church of St. Peter, one of the principal churches in the city. Here he developed great gifts as a preacher, and in this church he continued to minister till his death. Both his preaching and his personality were eminently evangelical, but it was his personality more than his preaching that gave him influence over men. He was no rationalist in an age abounding in rationalism; he had had his doubts and difficulties, but he had been able to overcome them, and entirely to throw off their cramping and weakening influence; and he fought against the unbelief of his age, not with scholastic weapons or with critical reasonings, but out of the fullness of his own fresh and original religious experience. The most important of his religious writings was his "Pontius Pilatus," published in 1782. It contains an answer to Pilate's question—"What is truth?" and is full of his own remarkable individuality. It is himself that one sees in it; it is a window through which we look into his heart. He says of it himself, "The book is as I am myself—he who hates the book must hate me; and he who loves it must love me." It was in truth too individual and peculiar to have any very extensive apologetic usefulness. But, as Professor Schenkel of Heidelberg remarks, "it was a heroic testimony to the truth in an age which had lost all faith in Christ, and which hated every man who publicly and manfully confessed him." And Lavater's testimony was all the more noble that he imperilled thereby a wide fame which he had gained as a man of genius and taste in another field. We refer to his celebrity as a physiognomist. He had long occupied himself with the study of the human countenance viewed as an exponent of character; and from 1769 he had been a collector of portraits of remarkable men of all ages and countries. He had conceived the idea of reducing physiognomy to the certainty of a science; and however fruitless his efforts were in that direction, the importance and gravity of such an aim at least justifies the amount of time and attention which he bestowed upon the subject, and offers some apology too for the large and even excessive expense which he incurred in laying the results of his labours before the world, an expense which crippled him with debt till the end of his life. His publications on this curious subject began in 1772; and when the wars of the French revolution broke out, he had a splendid French edition of his principal work in the press in Holland, the finishing of which was retarded by the confusions of the French invasion. His speculations were at first received with an extravagant degree of admiration, and afterwards fell into as extravagant a degree of ridicule and contempt. No doubt, if he had claimed for them less than the dignity and certainty of true science, the reaction against them would have been less violent. The best reward of his labours in this field was the friendships which they won for him among the most distinguished men of his time, including Herder, Göthe, Wieland, Jacobi, Sailer, and Oberlin. His correspondence with Herder and Göthe in particular became intimate and confidential. Both of them loved and honoured him in a high degree, and nothing but his faithfulness to divine truth was the cause of Herder's subsequent estrangement from him. Herder was a theologian, and could feel the odium theologicum. Göthe did not profess to be even a christian; but he admired and loved Lavater, and cherished his intercourse to the last. When the French revolution began, Lavater, like many more great men, hailed it with joy; but its lawless and bloody progress tilled him with disappointment and horror. When the French established their influence in Switzerland, he did his best to counterwork it, and his enlightened
