entries of that year numbered 217, of which 203 entered with general cargo and 14 with coal exclusively. The exports included 152,625 bags coffee, 114,947 bags cacao and 152,891 hides. For 1905–1906 the imports at La Guaira were valued officially at £767,365 and the exports at £663,708. The city stands on sloping ground stretching along the circular coast line with a varying width of 130 to 330 ft. and having the appearance of an amphitheatre. The port improvements added 18 acres of reclaimed land to La Guaira’s area, and the removal of old shore batteries likewise increased its available breadth. In this narrow space is built the town, composed in great part of small, roughly-made cabins, and narrow, badly-paved streets, but with good business houses on its principal street. From the mountain side, reddish-brown in colour and bare of vegetation, the solar heat is reflected with tremendous force, the mean annual temperature being 84° F. The seaside towns of Maiquetia, 2 m. W. and Macuto, 3 m. E., which have better climatic and sanitary conditions and are connected by a narrow-gauge railway, are the residences of many of the wealthier merchants of La Guaira.
La Guaira was founded in 1588, was sacked by filibusters under Amias Preston in 1595, and by the French under Grammont in 1680, was destroyed by the great earthquake of the 26th of March 1812, and suffered severely in the war for independence. In 1903, pending the settlement of claims of Great Britain, Germany and Italy against Venezuela, La Guaira was blockaded by a British-German-Italian fleet.
LA GUÉRONNIÈRE, LOUIS ÉTIENNE ARTHUR DUBREUIL HÉLION,
Vicomte de (1816–1875), French politician, was the
scion of a noble Poitevin family. Although by birth and education
attached to Legitimist principles, he became closely
associated with Lamartine, to whose organ, Le Bien Public, he
was a principal contributor. After the stoppage of this paper
he wrote for La Presse, and in 1850 edited Le Pays. A character
sketch of Louis Napoleon in this journal caused differences with
Lamartine, and La Guéronnière became more and more closely
identified with the policy of the prince president. Under the
Empire he was a member of the council of state (1853), senator
(1861), ambassador at Brussels (1868), and at Constantinople
(1870), and grand officer of the legion of honour (1866). He
died in Paris on the 23rd of December 1875. Besides his Études
et portraits politiques contemporains (1856) his most important works are those on the foreign policy of the Empire: La France, Rome et Italie (1851), L’Abandon de Rome (1862), De la politique intérieure et extérieure de la France (1862).
His elder brother, Alfred Dubreuil Hélion, Comte de La Guéronnière (1810–1884), who remained faithful to the Legitimist party, was also a well-known writer and journalist. He was consistent in his opposition to the July Monarchy and the Empire, but in a series of books on the crisis of 1870–1871 showed a more favourable attitude to the Republic.
LAGUERRE, JEAN HENRI GEORGES (1858–), French
lawyer and politician, was born in Paris on the 24th of June
1858. Called to the bar in 1879, he distinguished himself by
brilliant pleadings in favour of socialist and anarchist leaders,
defending Prince Kropotkine at Lyons in 1883, Louise Michel
in the same year; and in 1886, with A. Millerand as colleague
he defended Ernest Roche and Duc Quercy, the instigators of
the Decazeville strike. His strictures on the procureur de la
République on this occasion being declared libellous he was suspended
for six months and in 1890 he again incurred suspension
for an attack on the attorney-general, Quesnay de Beaurepaire.
He also pleaded in the greatest criminal cases of his time, though
from 1893 onwards exclusively in the provinces, his exclusion
from the Parisian bar having been secured on the pretext of
his connexion with La Presse. He entered the Chamber of
Deputies for Apt in 1883 as a representative of the extreme
revisionist programme, and was one of the leaders of the
Boulangist agitation. He had formerly written for Georges
Clemenceau’s organ La Justice, but when Clemenceau refused
to impose any shibboleth on the radical party he became director
of La Presse. He rallied to the republican party in May 1891,
some months before General Boulanger’s suicide. He was not
re-elected to the Chamber in 1893. Laguerre was an excellent
lecturer on the revolutionary period of French history, concerning
which he had collected many valuable and rare documents.
He interested himself in the fate of the “Little Dauphin”
(Louis XVII.), whose supposed remains, buried at Ste Marguerite,
he proved to be those of a boy of fourteen.
LAGUNA, or La Laguna, an episcopal city and formerly the
capital of the island of Teneriffe, in the Spanish archipelago
of the Canary Islands. Pop. (1900) 13,074. Laguna is 4 m. N.
by W. of Santa Cruz, in a plain 1800 ft. above sea-level, surrounded
by mountains. Snow is unknown here, and the mean
annual temperature exceeds 63° F.; but the rainfall is very
heavy, and in winter the plain is sometimes flooded. The
humidity of the atmosphere, combined with the warm climate
and rich volcanic soil, renders the district exceptionally fertile;
wheat, wine and tobacco, oranges and other fruits, are produced
in abundance. Laguna is the favourite summer residence of
the wealthier inhabitants of Santa Cruz. Besides the cathedral,
the city contains several picturesque convents, now secularized,
a fine modern town hall, hospitals, a large public library and
some ancient palaces of the Spanish nobility. Even the modern
buildings have often an appearance of antiquity, owing to the
decay caused by damp, and the luxuriant growth of climbing
plants.
LA HARPE, JEAN FRANÇOIS DE (1739–1803), French critic,
was born in Paris of poor parents on the 20th of November
1739. His father, who signed himself Delharpe, was a descendant
of a noble family originally of Vaud. Left an orphan at the age
of nine, La Harpe was taken care of for six months by the sisters
of charity, and his education was provided for by a scholarship
at the Collège d’Harcourt. When nineteen he was imprisoned
for some months on the charge of having written a satire against
his protectors at the college. La Harpe always denied his guilt,
but this culminating misfortune of an early life spent entirely
in the position of a dependent had possibly something to do
with the bitterness he evinced in later life. In 1763 his tragedy
of Warwick was played before the court. This, his first play,
was perhaps the best he ever wrote. The many authors whom he
afterwards offended were always able to observe that the critic’s
own plays did not reach the standard of excellence he set up.
Timoléon (1764), Pharamond (1765) and Gustave Wasa (1766) were
failures. Mélanie was a better play, but was never represented.
The success of Warwick led to a correspondence with Voltaire,
who conceived a high opinion of La Harpe, even allowing him
to correct his verses. In 1764 La Harpe married the daughter
of a coffee house keeper. This marriage, which proved very
unhappy and was dissolved, did not improve his position.
They were very poor, and for some time were guests of Voltaire
at Ferney. When, after Voltaire’s death, La Harpe in his praise
of the philosopher ventured on some reasonable, but rather
ill-timed, criticism of individual works, he was accused of treachery
to one who had been his constant friend. In 1768 he returned
from Ferney to Paris, where he began to write for the Mercure.
He was a born fighter and had small mercy on the authors whose
work he handled. But he was himself violently attacked, and
suffered under many epigrams, especially those of Lebrun-Pindare.
No more striking proof of the general hostility can be
given than his reception (1776) at the Academy, which Sainte-Beuve
calls his “execution.” Marmontel, who received him,
used the occasion to eulogize La Harpe’s predecessor, Charles
Pierre Colardeau, especially for his pacific, modest and indulgent
disposition. The speech was punctuated by the applause of the
audience, who chose to regard it as a series of sarcasms on the
new member. Eventually La Harpe was compelled to resign
from the Mercure, which he had edited from 1770. On the
stage he produced Les Barmécides (1778), Philoctète, Jeanne de
Naples (1781), Les Brames (1783), Coriolan (1784), Virginie
(1786). In 1786 he began a course of literature at the newly-established
Lycée. In these lectures, published as the Cours de
littérature ancienne et moderne, La Harpe is at his best, for he
found a standpoint more or less independent of contemporary
polemics. He is said to be inexact in dealing with the ancients,
