he royal household whose
business it was to celebrate in an ode any joyous occasion connected with
royalty, originally the sovereign's birthday; it is now a mere honour
bestowed by royalty on an eminent poet.

LAURIER, SIR WILFRED, Premier of Canada since 1896, and the first
French-Canadian to attain that honour, born in St. Lin; bred for the bar,
soon rose to the top of his profession; elected in 1871 as a Liberal to
the Quebec Provincial Assembly, where he came at once to the front, and
elected in 1874 to the Federal Assembly, he became distinguished as "the
silver-tongued Laurier," and as the Liberal leader; his personality is as
winning as his eloquence, and he stood first among all the Colonial
representatives at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897; _b_. 1841.

LAUSANNE (33), a picturesque town on the slopes of the Jura, 1 m.
from the N. shore of Lake Geneva, is the capital of the Swiss canton of
Vaud; noted for its educational institutions and museums, and for its
magnificent Protestant cathedral; it has little industry, but
considerable trade, and is a favourite tourist resort; here took place
the disputation between Calvin, Farel, and Viret, and here Gibbon wrote
the "Decline and Fall."

LAVA, a general term for all rocks originating in molten streams
from volcanoes, includes traps, basalts, pumice, and others; the surface
of a lava stream cools and hardens quickly, presenting a cellulose
structure, while below the heat is retained much longer and the rock when
cooled is compact and columnar or crystalline; the largest recorded lava
flow was from Skaptar Joekull, Iceland, in 1783.

LAVALETTE, COUNT DE, French general, born at Paris; condemned to
death after the Restoration as an accomplice of Napoleon, he was saved
from death by the devotion of his wife, who was found in the prison
instead of him on the morning appointed for his execution (1769-1830).

LA VALLIERE, DUCHESSE DE, a fascinating woman, born at Tours, who
became the mistress of Louis XIV.; supplanted by another, she became a
Carmelite nun in 1674 in the Carmelite nunnery in Paris, and continued
doing penance there as would seem till her death (1644-1710).

LAVATER, JOHANN KASPAR, German clergyman, a mystic thinker and
writer on physiognomy, born at Zurich; wrote "Outlooks to Eternity," and
a work on physiognomy, or the art of judging of character from the
features of the face (1741-1804).

LAVOISIER, ANTOINE LAURENT, one of