The inner town was formerly fortified, but the fortifications were transformed into pleasure grounds in 1811. Lemberg is the residence of Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Armenian archbishops, and contains three cathedrals. The Roman Catholic cathedral was finished by Casimir IV. in 1480 in Gothic style; near it is a chapel (1609) remarkable for its architecture and sculpture. The Greek cathedral, built in 1740–1779 in the Basilica style, is situated on a height which dominates the town. The Armenian cathedral was built in 1437 in the Armenian-Byzantine style. The Dominican church, built in 1749 after the model of St Peter’s at Rome, contains a monument by Thorvaldsen to the Countess Dunin-Borkowska; the Greek St Nicholas church was built in 1292; and the Roman Catholic St Mary church was built in 1363 by the first German settlers. The town hall (1828–1837) with a tower 250 ft. high is situated in the middle of a square. Also notable are the hall of the estates (1877–1881), the industrial museum, the theatre, the palace of the Roman Catholic archbishop and several educational establishments. There are many beautiful private buildings, broad and well-paved streets, numerous squares and public gardens. At the head of the educational institutions stands the university, founded in 1784 by Joseph II., transformed into a lycée in 1803, and restored and reorganized in 1817. Since 1871 the language of instruction has been Polish, and in 1901 the university had 110 lecturers, and was attended by 2060 students. There are also a polytechnic, gymnasia—for Poles, Ruthenians and Germans respectively—seminaries for priests, training colleges for teachers, and other special and technical schools. In Lemberg is the National Institute founded by Count Ossolinski, which contains a library of books and manuscripts relating chiefly to the history and literature of Poland, valuable antiquarian and scientific collections, and a printing establishment; also the Dzieduszycki museum with collections of natural history and ethnography relating chiefly to Galicia. Industrially and commercially Lemberg is the most important city in Galicia, its industries including the manufacture of machinery and iron wares, matches, stearin candles and naphtha, arrack and liqueurs, chocolate, chicory, leather and plaster of Paris, as well as brewing, corn-milling and brick and tile making. It has important commerce in linen, flax, hemp, wool and seeds, and a considerable transit trade. Of the well-wooded hills which surround Lemberg, the most important is the Franz-Josef-Berg to the N.E., with an altitude of 1310 ft. Several beautiful parks have been laid out on this hill.
Leopolis was founded about 1259 by the Ruthenian prince Leo Danilowicz, who moved here his residence from Halicz in 1270. From Casimir the Great, who captured it in 1340, it received the Magdeburg rights, and for almost two hundred years the public records were kept in German. In 1412 it became the see of a Roman Catholic archbishopric, and from 1432 until 1772 it was the capital of the Polish province of Reussen (Terra Russia). During the whole period of Polish supremacy it was a most important city, and after the fall of Constantinople it greatly developed its trade with the East. In 1648 and 1655 it was besieged by the Cossacks, and in 1672 by the Turks. Charles XII. of Sweden captured it in 1704. In 1848 it was bombarded.
LEMERCIER, LOUIS JEAN NÉPOMUCÉNE (1771–1840), French poet and dramatist, was born in Paris on the 21st of April 1771. His father had been intendant successively to the duc de Penthièvre, the comte de Toulouse and the unfortunate princesse de Lamballe, who was the boy’s godmother. Lemercier showed great precocity; before he was sixteen his tragedy of Méléagre was produced at the Théâtre Français. Clarissa Harlowe (1792) provoked the criticism that the author was not assez roué pour peindre les roueries. Le Tartufe révolutionnaire, a parody full of the most audacious political allusions, was suppressed after the fifth representation. In 1795 appeared Lemercier’s masterpiece Agamemnon, called by Charles Labitte the last great antique tragedy in French literature. It was a great success, but was violently attacked later by Geoffroy, who stigmatized it as a bad caricature of Crébillon. Quatre métamorphoses (1799) was written to prove that the most indecent subjects might be treated without offence. The Pinto (1800) was the result of a wager that no further dramatic innovations were possible after the comedies of Beaumarchais. It is a historical comedy on the subject of the Portuguese revolution of 1640. This play was construed as casting reflections on the first consul, who had hitherto been a firm friend of Lemercier. His extreme freedom of speech finally offended Napoleon, and the quarrel proved disastrous to Lemercier’s fortune for the time. None of his subsequent work fulfilled the expectations raised by Agamemnon, with the exception perhaps of Frédégonde et Brunéhaut (1821). In 1810 he was elected to the Academy, where he consistently opposed the romanticists, refusing to give his vote to Victor Hugo. In spite of this, he has some pretensions to be considered the earliest of the romantic school. His Christophe Colomb (1809), advertised on the playbill as a comédie shakespirienne (sic), represented the interior of a ship, and showed no respect for the unities. Its numerous innovations provoked such violent disturbances in the audience that one person was killed and future representations had to be guarded by the police. Lemercier wrote four long and ambitious epic poems: Homère, Alexandre (1801), L’Atlantiade, ou la théogonie newtonienne (1812) and Moïse (1823), as well as an extraordinary Panhypocrisiade (1819–1832), a distinctly romantic production in twenty cantos, which has the sub-title Spectacle infernal du XVI e siècle. In it 16th-century history, with Charles V. and Francis I. as principal personages, is played out on an imaginary stage by demons in the intervals of their sufferings. Lemercier died on the 7th of June 1840 in Paris.
LEMERY, NICOLAS (1645–1715), French chemist, was born at Rouen on the 17th of November 1645. After learning pharmacy in his native town he became a pupil of C. Glaser’s in Paris, and then went to Montpellier, where he began to lecture on chemistry. He next established a pharmacy in Paris, still continuing his lectures, but in 1683, being a Calvinist, he was obliged to retire to England. In the following year he returned to France, and turning Catholic in 1686 was able to reopen his shop and resume his lectures. He died in Paris on the 19th of June 1715. Lemery did not concern himself much with theoretical speculations, but holding chemistry to be a demonstrative science, confined himself to the straightforward exposition of facts and experiments. In consequence, his lecture-room was thronged with people of all sorts, anxious to hear a man who shunned the barren
obscurities of the alchemists, and did not regard the quest of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life as the sole end of his science. Of his Cours de chymie (1675) he lived to see 13 editions, and for a century it maintained its reputation as a standard work. His other publications included Pharmacopée universelle (1697), Traité universel des drogues simples (1698), Traité de l’antimoine (1707), together with a number of papers contributed to the French Academy, one of which offered a chemical and physical explanation of underground fires, earthquakes, lightning and thunder. He discovered that heat is evolved when iron filings and sulphur are rubbed together to a paste with water, and the artificial volcan de Lemery was produced by burying
underground a considerable quantity of this mixture, which he regarded as a potent agent in the causation of volcanic action.
His son Louis (1677–1743) was appointed physician at the Hôtel Dieu in 1710, and became demonstrator of chemistry at the Jardin du Roi in 1731. He was the author of a Traité des aliments (1702), and of a Dissertation sur la nature des os (1704), as well as of a number of papers on chemical topics.
LEMERY, a town of the province of Batangas, Luzon, Philippine Islands, on the Gulf of Balayan and the Pansipit river, opposite Taal (with which it is connected by a bridge), and about 50 m. S. of Manila. Pop. of the municipality (1903) 11,150. It has a fine church and convent. Lemery is situated on a plain in a rich agricultural district, which produces rice, Indian corn, sugar and cotton, and in which horses and cattle are bred. It is also a port for coasting vessels, and has an important trade with various parts of the archipelago. The language is Tagalog.
