of Macao. The arrangement is altogether abnormal, and was consented to by the Portuguese government in 1887 to assist the Chinese authorities in the suppression of opium smuggling. A similar arrangement prevails at the British colony of Hong-Kong, where the Chinese customs station is Kowloon. In both cases the customs stations levy duties on vessels entering and leaving the foreign port in lieu of levying them, as ought to be done, on entering or leaving a Chinese port.
LAPPARENT, ALBERT AUGUSTE COCHON DE (1839–1908), French geologist, was born at Bourges on the 30th of December 1839. After studying at the École Polytechnique from 1858 to 1860 he became ingénieur au corps des mines, and took part in drawing up the geological map of France; and in 1875 he was appointed professor of geology and mineralogy at the Catholic Institute, Paris. In 1879 he prepared an important memoir for the geological survey of France on Le Pays de Bray, a subject on which he had already published several memoirs, and in 1880 he served as president of the French Geological Society. In 1881–1883 he published his Traité de géologie (5th ed., 1905), the best European text-book of stratigraphical geology. His other works include Cours de minéralogie (1884, 3rd ed., 1899), La Formation des combustibles minéraux (1886), Le Niveau de la mer et ses variations (1886), Les Tremblements de terre (1887), La Géologie en chemin de fer (1888), Précis de minéralogie (1888), Le Siècle du fer (1890), Les Anciens Glaciers (1893), Leçons de géographie physique (1896), Notions générales sur l’écorce terrestre (1897), Le Globe terrestre (1899), and Science et apologétique (1905). With Achille Delesse he was for many years editor of the Révue de géologie and contributed to the Extraits de géologie, and he joined with A. Potier in the geological surveys undertaken in connexion with the Channel Tunnel proposals. He died in Paris on the 5th of May 1908.
LAPPENBERG, JOHANN MARTIN (1794–1865), German historian, was born on the 30th of July 1794 at Hamburg, where his father, Valentin Anton Lappenberg (1759–1819), held an official position. He studied medicine, and afterwards history, at Edinburgh. He continued to study history in London, and at Berlin and Göttingen, graduating as doctor of laws at Göttingen in 1816. In 1820 he was sent by the Hamburg senate as resident minister to the Prussian court. In 1823 he became keeper of the Hamburg archives; an office in which he had the fullest opportunities for the laborious and critical research work upon which his reputation as an historian rests. He retained this post until 1863, when a serious affection of the eyes compelled him to resign. In 1850 he represented Hamburg in the German parliament at Frankfort, and his death took place at Hamburg on the 28th of November 1865. Lappenberg’s most important work is his Geschichte von England, which deals with the history of England from the earliest times to 1154, and was published in two volumes at Hamburg in 1834–1837. It has been translated into English by B. Thorpe as History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (London 1845, and again 1881), and History of England under the Norman Kings (Oxford, 1857), and has been continued in three additional volumes from 1154 to 1509 by R. Pauli. His other works deal mainly with the history of Hamburg, and include Hamburgische Chroniken in Niedersächsischer Sprache (Hamburg, 1852–1861); Geschichtsquellen des Erzstiftes und der Stadt Bremen (Bremen, 1841); Hamburgisches Urkundenbuch (Hamburg, 1842); Urkundliche Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes zu London (Hamburg, 1851); Hamburgische Rechtsalterthümer (Hamburg, 1845); and Urkundliche Geschichte des Ursprunges der deutschen Hanse (Hamburg, 1830), a continuation of the work of G. F. Sartorius. For the Monumenta Germaniae historica he edited the Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg, the Gesta Hammenburgensis ecclesiae pontificum of Adam of Bremen and the Chronica Slavorum of Helmold, with its continuation by Arnold of Lübeck. Lappenberg, who was a member of numerous learned societies in Europe, wrote many other historical works.
See E. H. Meyer, Johann Martin Lappenberg (Hamburg, 1867); and R. Pauli in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, Band xvii. (Leipzig, 1883).
LAPRADE, PIERRE MARTIN VICTOR RICHARD DE (1812–1883), known as Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic, was born on the 13th of January 1812 at Montbrison, in the department of the Loire. He came of a modest provincial family. After completing his studies at Lyons, he produced in 1839 a small volume of religious verse, Les Parfums de Madeleine. This was followed in 1840 by La Colère de Jésus, in 1841 by the religious fantasy of Psyché, and in 1844 by Odes et poèmes. In 1845 Laprade visited Italy on a mission of literary research, and in 1847 he was appointed professor of French literature at Lyons. The French Academy, by a single vote, preferred Émile Augier at the election in 1857, but in the following year Laprade was chosen to fill the chair of Alfred de Musset. In 1861 he was removed from his post at Lyons owing to the publication of a political satire in verse (Les Muses d’État), and in 1871 took his seat in the National Assembly on the benches of the Right. He died on the 13th of December 1883. A statue has been raised by his fellow-townsmen at Montbrison. Besides those named above, Laprade’s poetical works include Poèmes évangéliques (1852), Idylles héroïques (1858), Les Voix de silence (1864), Pernette (1868), Poèmes civiles (1873), Le Livre d’un père (1877), Varia and Livre des adieux (1878–1879). In prose he published, in 1840, Des habitudes intellectuelles de l’avocat. Questions d’art et de morale appeared in 1861, succeeded by Le Sentiment de la nature, avant le Christianisme in 1866, and Chez les modernes in 1868, Éducation libérale in 1873. The material for these books had in some cases been printed earlier, after delivery as a lecture. He also contributed articles to the Revue des deux mondes and the Revue de Paris. No writer represents more perfectly than Laprade the admirable genius of French provincial life, its homely simplicity, its culture, its piety and its sober patriotism. As a poet he belongs to the school of Chateaubriand and Lamartine. Devoted to the best classical models, inspired by a sense of the ideal, and by worship of nature as revealing the divine—gifted, too, with a full faculty of expression—he lacked only fire and passion in the equipment of a romantic poet. But the want of these, and the pressure of a certain chilly facility and of a too conscious philosophizing have prevented him from reaching the first rank, or from even attaining the popularity due to his high place in the second. Only in his patriotic verse did he shake himself clear from these trammels. Speaking generally, he possessed some of the qualities, and many of the defects, of the English Lake School. Laprade’s prose criticisms must be ranked high. Apart from his classical and metaphysical studies, he was widely read in the literatures of Europe, and built upon the groundwork of a naturally correct taste. His dislike of irony and scepticism probably led him to underrate the product of the 18th century, and there are signs of a too fastidious dread of Philistinism. But a constant love of the best, a joy in nature and a lofty patriotism are not less evident than in his poetry. Few writers of any nation have fixed their minds so steadily on whatsoever things are pure, and lovely and of good report.
See also Edmond Biré, Victor de Laprade, sa vie et ses œuvres. (C.)
LAPSE (Lat. lapsus, a slip or departure), in law, a term used
in several senses. (1) In ecclesiastical law, when a patron has
neglected to present to a void benefice within six months next
after the avoidance, the right of presentation is said to lapse.
In such case the patronage or right of presentation devolves
from the neglectful patron to the bishop as ordinary, to the
metropolitan as superior and to the sovereign as patron paramount.
(2) The failure of a testamentary disposition in favour
of any person, by reason of the decease of its object in the
testator’s lifetime, is termed a lapse. See Legacy, Will.
LAPWING (O.Eng. hleápewince = “one who turns about in running or flight”),[1] a bird, the Tringa vanellus of Linnaeus and the Vanellus vulgaris or V. cristatus of modern ornithologists.
- ↑ Skeat, Etym. Dict. (1898), s.v. Caxton in 1481 has “lapwynches” (Reynard the Fox, cap. 27). The first part of the word is from hleápan, to leap; the second part is “wink” (O.H.G. winchan, Ger. wanken, to waver). Popular etymology has given the word its present form, as if it meant “wing-flapper,” from “lap,” a fold or flap of a garment.
