buildings are the town hall (1884), containing a free library and school of art; and the Theatre Royal and assembly room. The parish church of All Saints is modernized, and the other churches are entirely modern. The S. Warwickshire hospital and Midland Counties Home for incurables are here. Leamington High School is an important school for girls. There is a municipal technical school. Industries include iron foundries and brickworks. The town lies in a well-wooded and picturesque country, within a few miles of such interesting towns as Warwick, Kenilworth, Coventry and Stratford-on-Avon. It is a favourite hunting centre, and, as a health resort, attracts not only visitors but residents. The town is governed by a mayor, 8 aldermen, and 24 councillors. Area, 2817 acres.
Leamington was a village of no importance until about 1786, when baths were first erected, though the springs were noticed by Camden, writing about 1586. The population in 1811 was only 543, The town was incorporated in 1875. The name in former use was Leamington Priors, in distinction from Leamington Hastings, a village on the upper Leam. By royal licence granted in 1838 it was called Royal Leamington Spa.
LÉANDRE, CHARLES LUCIEN (1862– ), French caricaturist
and painter, was born at Champsecret (Orne), and studied
painting under Bin and Cabanel. From 1887 he figured among
the exhibitors of the Salon, where he showed numerous portraits
and genre pictures, but his popular fame is due to his comic
drawings and caricatures. The series of the “Gotha des
souverains,” published in Le Rire, placed him in the front rank
of modern caricaturists. Besides his contributions to Le Rire,
Le Figaro and other comic journals, he published a series of
albums: Nocturnes, Le Musée des souverains, and Paris et la
province. Léandre produced admirable work in lithography,
and designed many memorable posters, such as the “Yvette
Guilbert.” “Les nouveaux mariés,” “Joseph Prudhomme,”
“Les Lutteurs,” and “La Femme au chien.” He was created
a knight of the Legion of Honour.
LEAP-YEAR (more properly known as bissextile), the name
given to the year containing 366 days. The astronomers of
Julius Caesar, 46 B.C., settled the solar year at 365 days 6 hours.
These hours were set aside and at the end of four years made a
day which was added to the fourth year. The English name
for the bissextile year is an allusion to the result of the interposition
of the extra day; for after the 29th of February a date
“leaps over” the day of the week on which it would fall in
ordinary years. Thus a birthday on the 10th of June, a Monday,
will in the next year, if a leap-year, be on the 10th of June, a
Wednesday. Of the origin of the custom for women to woo,
not be wooed, during leap-year no satisfactory explanation has
ever been offered. In 1288 a law was enacted in Scotland that
“it is statut and ordaint that during the rein of hir maist blissit
Megeste, for ilk yeare knowne as lepe yeare, ilk mayden ladye of
bothe highe and lowe estait shall hae liberte to bespeke ye man
she likes, albeit he refuses to taik hir to be his lawful wyfe, he
shall be mulcted in ye sum ane pundis or less, as his estait may be;
except and awis gif he can make it appeare that he is betrothit
ane ither woman he then shall be free.” A few years later a like
law was passed in France, and in the 15th century the custom
was legalized in Genoa and Florence.
LEAR, EDWARD (1812–1888), English artist and humorist, was
born in London on the 12th of May 1812. His earliest drawings
were ornithological. When he was twenty years old he published
a brilliantly coloured selection of the rarer Psittacidae. Its
power attracted the attention of the 13th earl of Derby, who
employed Lear to draw his Knowsley menagerie. He became
a permanent favourite with the Stanley family; and Edward,
15th earl, was the child for whose amusement the first Book of
Nonsense was composed. From birds Lear turned to landscape,
his earlier efforts in which recall the manner of J. D. Harding;
but he quickly acquired a more individual style. About 1837
he set up a studio at Rome, where he lived for ten years, with
summer tours in Italy and Sicily, and occasional visits to England.
During this period he began to publish his Illustrated Journals
of a Landscape Painter: charmingly written reminiscences of
wandering, which ultimately embraced Calabria, the Abruzzi,
Albania, Corsica, &c. From 1848–1849 he explored Greece,
Constantinople, the Ionian Islands, Lower Egypt, the wildest
recesses of Albania, and the desert of Sinai. He returned to
London, but the climate did not suit him. In 1854–1855 he
wintered on the Nile, and migrated successively to Corfu, Malta
and Rome, finally building himself a villa at San Remo. From
Corfu Lear visited Mount Athos, Syria, Palestine, and Petra;
and when over sixty, by the assistance of Lord Northbrock,
then Governor-General, he saw the cities and scenery of greatest
interest within a large area of India. From first to last he was,
in whatever circumstances of difficulty or ill-health, an indomitable
traveller. Before visiting new lands he studied their
geography and literature, and then went straight for the mark;
and wherever he went he drew most indefatigably and most
accurately. His sketches are not only the basis of more finished
works, but an exhaustive record in themselves. Some defect
of technique or eyesight occasionally left his larger oil painting,
though nobly conceived, crude or deficient in harmony; but
his smaller pictures and more elaborate sketches abound in
beauty, delicacy, and truth. Lear modestly called himself a
topographical artist; but he included in the term the perfect
rendering of all characteristic graces of form, colour, and atmosphere.
The last task he set himself was to prepare for popular
circulation a set of some 200 drawings, illustrating from his travels
the scenic touches of Tennyson’s poetry; but he did not live
to complete the scheme, dying at San Remo on the 30th of
January 1888. Until sobered by age, his conversation was
brimful of humorous fun. The paradoxical originality and
ostentatiously uneducated draughtsmanship of his numerous
nonsense books won him a more universal fame than his serious
work. He had a true artist’s sympathy with art under all forms,
and might have become a skilled musician had he not been a
painter. Swainson, the naturalist, praised young Lear’s great
red and yellow macaw as “equalling any figure ever painted
by Audubon in grace of design, perspective, and anatomical
accuracy.” Murchison, examining his sketches, complimented
them as rigorously embodying geological truth. Tennyson’s
lines “To E.L. on his Travels in Greece,” mark the poet’s genuine
admiration of a cognate spirit in classical art. Ruskin placed
the Book of Nonsense first in the list of a hundred delectable
volumes of contemporary literature, a judgment endorsed by
English-speaking children all over the world.
See Letters of Edward Lear to Chichester Fortescue, Lord Carlingford, and Frances, Countess Waldegrave (1907), edited by Lady Strachey, with an introduction by Henry Strachey. (F. L.*)
LEASE (derived through the Fr. from the Lat. laxare, to loosen),
a certain form of tenure, or the contract embodying it, of land,
houses, &c.; see Landlord and Tenant.
LEATHER (a word which appears in all Teutonic languages;
cf. Ger. Leder, Dutch leer or leder, Swed. läder, and in such Celtic
forms as Welsh llader), an imputrescible substance prepared
from the hides or skins of living creatures, both cold and warm
blooded, by chemical and mechanical treatment. Skins in the
raw and natural moist state are readily putrescible, and are
easily disintegrated by bacterial or chemical action, and if dried
in this condition become harsh, horny and intractable. The art
of the leather manufacturer is principally directed to overcoming
the tendency to putrefaction, securing suppleness in the material,
rendering it impervious to and unalterable by water, and increasing
the strength of the skin and its power to resist wear and tear.
Leather is made by three processes or with three classes of substances. Thus we have (1) tanned leather, in which the hides and skins are combined with tannin or tannic acid; (2) tawed leather, in which the skins are prepared with mineral salts; (3) chamoised (shamoyed) leather, in which the skins are rendered imputrescible by treatment with oils and fats, the decomposition products of which are the actual tanning agents.
Sources and Qualities of Hides and Skins.—The hides used in heavy leather manufacture may be divided into three classes: (1) ox and heifer, (2) cow, (3) bull. Oxen and heifer hides produce the best results, forming a tough, tight, solid leather. Cow hides are thin, the hide itself Heavy leathers.
