Anatomy (1860, afterwards revised in new editions). He died in Philadelphia on the 30th of April 1891.
See Memoir and portrait in Amer. Geologist, vol. ix. (Jan. 1892) and Bibliography in vol. viii. (Nov. 1891) and Memoir by H. C. Chapman in Proc. Acad. Nat. Sc. (Philadelphia, 1891), p. 342.
LEIF ERICSSON [Leifr Eiriksson] (fl. 999–1000), Scandinavian explorer, of Icelandic family, the first known European discoverer of “Vinland,” “Vineland” or “Wineland, the Good,” in North America. He was a son of Eric the Red (Eirikr hinn raudi Thorvaldsson), the founder of the earliest Scandinavian settlements—from Iceland—in Greenland (985). In 999 he went from Greenland to the court of King Olaf Tryggvason in Norway, stopping in the Hebrides on the way. On his departure from Norway in 1000, the king commissioned him to proclaim Christianity in Greenland. As on his outward voyage, Leif was again driven far out of his course by contrary weather—this time to lands (in America) “of which he had previously had no knowledge,” where “self-sown” wheat grew, and vines, and “mösur” (maple?) wood. Leif took specimens of all these, and sailing away came home safely to his father’s home in Brattahlid on Ericsfiord in Greenland. On his voyage from this Vineland to Greenland, Leif rescued some shipwrecked men, and from this, and his discoveries, gained his name of “The Lucky” (hinn heppni). On the subsequent expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefni for the further exploration and settlement of the Far Western vine-country, it is recorded that certain Gaels, incredibly fleet of foot, who had been given to Leif by Olaf Tryggvason, and whom Leif had offered to Thorfinn, were put on shore to scout.
Such is the account of the Saga of Eric the Red, supported by a number of briefer references in early Icelandic and other literature. The less trustworthy history of the Flatey Book makes Biarni Heriulfsson in 985 discover Helluland (Labrador?) as well as other western lands which he does not explore, not even permitting his men to land; while Leif Ericsson follows up Biarni’s discoveries, begins the exploration of Helluland, Markland and Vinland, and realizes some of the charms of the last named, where he winters. But this secondary authority (the Flatey Book narrative), which till lately formed the basis of all general knowledge as to Vinland, abounds in contradictions and difficulties from which Eric the Red Saga is comparatively free. Thus (in Flatey) the grapes of Vinland are found in winter and gathered in spring; the man who first finds them, Leif’s foster-father Tyrker the German, gets drunk from eating the fruit; and the vines themselves are spoken of as big trees affording timber. Looking at the record in Eric the Red Saga, it would seem probable that Leif’s Vinland answers to some part of southern Nova Scotia. See Vinland. (As to Helluland and Markland see Thorfinn Karlsefni.)
The MSS. of Eric the Red’s Saga are Nos. 544 and 557 of the Arne-Magnaean collection in Copenhagen; the MS. of the Flatey Book, so called because it was long the property of a family living on Flat Island in Broad Firth (Flatey in Breiðafjord [B-eidafj-d]), on the north-west coast of Iceland, was presented in 1662 to the Royal Library of Denmark, of which it is still one of the chief treasures. These leading narratives are supplemented by Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, chap. 38 (247 Lappenberg) of book iv. (often separately entitled Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis; Adam’s is the earliest extant reference to Vinland, c. 1070): we have also notices of Vinland in the Libellus Islandorum of Ari Frodi (c. 1120), the oldest Icelandic historian; in the Kristni Saga (repeated in Snorri Sturlason’s Heimskringla); in Eyrbyggia Saga (c. 1250); in Gretti Saga (c. 1290); and in an Icelandic chorography of the 14th century, or earlier, partly derived from the famous traveller Abbot Nicolas of Thing-eyrar (†1159).
See Gustav Storm, “Studies on the Vineland Voyages,” in the Mémoires de la Société royale des Antiquaires du Nord (Copenhagen, 1888); and Eiriks Saga Raudha (Copenhagen, 1891); A. M. Reeves, Finding of Wineland the Good: the History of the Icelandic Discovery of America (London, 1890); in this work the original authorities are given in full, with photographic facsimiles, English translations and adequate commentary; Rafn’s Antiquitates Americanae (Copenhagen, 1837) contains all the sources, but the editor’s personal views have in many cases failed to satisfy criticism; the Flatey text is printed also by Vigfusson and Unger in Flateyjar-bok, vol. i. (Christiania, 1860). There are also translations of Flatey and Red Eric Saga in Beamish, Discovery of North America, by the Northmen (Lond., 1841); E. F. Slafter, Voyages of the Northmen (Boston, 1877); B. F. de Costa, Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen (Albany, 1901); and Original Narratives of Early American History; The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, pp. 1-66 (New York, 1906). See also C. Raymond Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography ii. 48-83 (London, 1901); Josef Fischer, Die Entdeckungen der Normannen in Amerika (Freiburg i. B., 1902); John Fiske, Discovery of America, vol. i.; Juul Dieserud, “Norse Discoveries in America,” in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society (February, 1901); G. Vigfusson, Origines Islandicae (1905), which strangely expresses a preference for the Flatey Book “account of the first sighting of the American continent” by the Norsemen. (C. R. B.)
LEIGH, EDWARD (1602–1671), English Puritan and theologian, was born at Shawell, Leicestershire. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, from 1616, and subsequently became a member of the Middle Temple. In 1636 he entered parliament as member for Stafford, and during the Civil War held a colonelcy in the parliamentary army. He has sometimes been confounded with John Ley (1583–1662), and so represented as having sat in the Westminster Assembly. The public career of Leigh terminated with his expulsion from parliament with the rest of the Presbyterian party in 1648. From an early age he had studied theology and produced numerous compilations, the most important being the Critica Sacra, containing Observations on all the Radices of the Hebrew Words of the Old and the Greek of the New Testament (1639–1644; new ed., with supplement, 1662), for which the author received the thanks of the Westminster Assembly, to whom it was dedicated. His other works include Select and Choice Observations concerning the First Twelve Caesars (1635); A Treatise of Divinity (1646–1651); Annotations upon the New Testament (1650), of which a Latin translation by Arnold was published at Leipzig in 1732; A Body of Divinity (1654); A Treatise of Religion and Learning (1656); Annotations of the Five Poetical Books of the Old Testament (1657). Leigh died in Staffordshire in June 1671.
LEIGH, a market town and municipal borough in the Leigh parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 11 m. W. by N. from Manchester by the London & North-Western railway. Pop. (1891) 30,882, (1901) 40,001. The ancient parish church of St Mary the Virgin was, with the exception of the tower, rebuilt in 1873 in the Perpendicular style. The grammar school, the date of whose foundation is unknown, received its principal endowments in 1655, 1662 and 1681. The staple manufactures are silk and cotton; there are also glass works, foundries, breweries, and flour mills, with extensive collieries. Though the neighbourhood is principally an industrial district, several fine old houses are left near Leigh. The town was incorporated in 1899, and the corporation consists of a mayor, 8 aldermen and 24 councillors. Area, 6358 acres.
LEIGHTON, FREDERICK LEIGHTON, Baron (1830–1896), English painter and sculptor, the son of a physician, was born at Scarborough on the 3rd of December 1830. His grandfather, Sir James Leighton, also a physician, was long resident at the court of St Petersburg. Frederick Leighton was taken abroad at a very early age. In 1840 he learnt drawing at Rome under Signor Meli. The family moved to Dresden and Berlin, where he attended classes at the Academy. In 1843 he was sent to school at Frankfort, and in the winter of 1844 accompanied his family to Florence, where his future career as an artist was decided. There he studied under Bezzuoli and Segnolini at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, and attended anatomy classes under Zanetti; but he soon returned to complete his general education at Frankfort, receiving no further direct instruction in art for five years. He went to Brussels in 1848, where he met Wiertz and Gallait, and painted some pictures, including “Cimabue finding Giotto,” and a portrait of himself. In 1849 he studied for a few months in Paris, where he copied Titian and Correggio in the Louvre, and then returned to Frankfort, where he settled down to serious art work under Edward Steinle, whose pupil he declared he was “in the fullest sense of the term.” Though his artistic training was mainly German, and his master belonged to the same school as Cornelius and Overbeck, he loved Italian art and Italy and the first picture by which he became known to the British public was “Cimabue’s Madonna carried in Procession through the
