L A C L A C 195
Revolution he was introduced to some of the constitutionalist leaders, and soon joined the staff of the Moniteur and the Débats; then he became secretary to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. He returned to journalism and joined Chénier and Roucher on the Journal de Paris. The triumph of the Jacobins was not without danger for him, and to avoid it he enlisted in the army, but after Thermidor returned once more to Paris and to newspaper work. The 13th Vendémiaire again drove him from both, and he took to serious composition. He had more than one fluctuation of fortune of the same kind still to undergo, and was actually imprisoned for a considerable time, but continued his historical work, to which after the establishment of Napoleon's power he wholly devoted himself. He became a member of the Academy in 1811, and professor of history in the Parisian faculty of literature next year. The Restoration pleased him from the constitutional point of view, and after it the July monarchy. In 1848 he retired to Mâcon, where he died seven years later. Lacretelle's chief work is a series of histories of the 18th century, the Revolution, and its sequel (Eighteenth Century, 1808; Revolution, 1821-26; Consulate and Empire, 1840; Restoration, 1846). He had previously given a Précis Historique of the Revolution (1801-6). Mr Carlyle's sarcastic remark on Lacretelle's History of the Revolution that it "exists but does not profit much" is partly true of all his books. The author was a moderate and fair-minded man, but possessed neither great powers of style, nor striking historical insight, nor the special historian's power of uniting minute accuracy of detail with breadth of view. If his history of the 18th century deserves to be singled out from his other books, it is chiefly because no exact successor to it has appeared. Besides the works mentioned, he also wrote a History of the Religious Wars, some sketches of his personal adventures in the Revolution, &c. As a journalist, if not as an historian, Lacretelle was not scrupulous about absolute accuracy. The legend of the Abbé Edgeworth's last words to Louis XVI. has been traced to him.
LACROSSE is the national ball game of Canada, as cricket is of England and base ball of the United States of America. The aborigines had the game before the discovery of the Nev World, and different Indian tribes played it in different manners, generally with much roughness and violence. The present name was given it by French Canadians, owing to the resemblance of the curved netted stick, the chief implement used in the pastime, to a bishop's crozier or crosse. As white men gradually took up the game it became more refined. In 1867 the National Lacrosse Association of Canada was formed, and drew up a recognized code of rules. Lacrosse cannot be aptly compared to hockey or football, since striking or even touching the ball with the hands or feet is inadmissible. The crosse somewhat resembles a racket bat. It is a stick with one end curved, and the hook so formed is fitted with network, which must not bag. The ball is of indiarubber, from 8 to 9 inches in circumference. The other requisites are a level piece of turf, about 200 by 100 yards, and the goals. These may be any distance apart, according to agreement and the space available. Each goal is composed of two flag posts, 6 feet high and a like distance apart. The usual number of players is twelve on each side, and the captains station them somewhat as in football. A game is scored by one side driving the ball between their opponents goal posts, and a match is three games out of five. There is no "off side" as in football, and the chief feat of the player is to catch the ball on the network of the crosse, dodge his opponents by running as far as practicable, and then throw the ball to one of his own side who is nearer the enemy's goal. A game is commenced by the ball being placed on the ground midway between the two goals and a player from each side "facing" for it with the crosse till one of them succeeds in sending it on the way to the opposite goal. After each game goals are changed. During winter the game is played by skaters on the ice, or on the snow with the aid of snow shoes. A native Indian team introduced the pastime into England in 1867; several amateur clubs were formed; and a set of rules was drawn up by an English Lacrosse Association on February 12, 1868. They differ somewhat from the Canadian regulations, the goal posts being 7 feet apart with a tape across the top, and a match being decided by the number of goals won during a specified time. The pastime, however, never took deep root in England, so many other old established games of ball being more popular, and is now but little practised.
LA CROSSE, chief city of La Crosse county, Wisconsin, United States, is situated on the east bank of the Mississippi, at the confluence of the Black and La Crosse rivers, 196 miles by rail west-north-west of Milwaukee. La Crosse is the second commercial city and the fourth in the scale of population in the State. An extensive lumbering trade is carried on by means of the Black river. The city contains foundries, machine-shops, saw-mills, flour-mills, shipbuilding yards, and manufactories of agricultural implements, beer, and leather. It has 3 English dailies and 5 weekly newspapers (2 English, 2 Norwegian, 1 German), 20 churches, and a public library containing 3300 volumes. La Crosse became a city in 1856. The population in 1880 was 14,505.
LACRYMATORY, a modern word employed to describe a class of small vessels of terra-cotta, or, more frequently, of glass, found in Roman and late Greek tombs, and fancifully supposed to have been bottles into which mourners dropped their tears. They were used to contain unguents, and it is to the need of unguents at funeral ceremonies that the finding of so many of these vessels in tombs is due. They are shaped like a spindle, or a flask with a long small neck and a body in the form of a bulb.
LACTANTIUS FIRMIANUS, also called Lucius Cæcilius or Lucius Cælius Lactautius Firmianus, was a Christian writer who from the beauty of his style has been called the "Christian Cicero." His history is very obscure. His very name is doubtful; his birthplace, whether in Italy or in Africa, is uncertain; it is impossible to say with any accuracy when his writings were published; and the date of his death is unknown. His parents were heathens; he was a pupil of Arnobius in Sicca in Africa; he went to Nicomedia in Bithynia while Diocletian was emperor to teach rhetoric, but found little work to do in that Greek-speaking city; he became a convert to Christianity, probably late in life; and about ten or twelve years before his death (312-318) he went to Gaul on the invitation of Constantine the Great, and became tutor to his eldest son Crispus. These facts, with his writings, are all that is known about Lactantius. His chief work Divinarum Institutionum Libri Septem is a long introduction to Christianity, written in exquisite Latin, but displaying such ignorance as to have incurred the charge of favouring the Arian and Manichæan heresies. The date of publication has been variously given from 302 to 323 A.D. One sentence seems to say that a persecution, which can scarcely be any other than the Diocletian, was raging while the book was being written (v. 17, 5); whilst in the first, second, fourth, and fifths books Constantine is addressed as emperor. Those who assert the earlier date of publication point out that the references to Constantine are omitted in several MSS. Others adopt the conjecture of Baluze that an early edition was published in Nicomedia aud a later twenty years afterwards (cf. Ebert, Ueber den Verfasser des Buches De Mort. Persecut., p. 129 sq.). The seven books
