an operator; was
professor of Clinical Surgery in University College, London, and author
of "Elements of Surgery" and "Practical Surgery" (1794-1847).

LISZT, ABBE FRANZ, famous pianist, a Hungarian by birth; born with a
genius for music, his first efforts at composition were not successful,
and it was not till he heard what Paganini made of the violin that he
thought what might be made of the piano, and that he devoted himself to
the culture of piano music, with the result that he not only became the
first pianist himself, but produced a set of compositions that had the
effect of raising the art to the highest pitch of perfection; he was a
zealous Catholic, and took holy orders, but this did not damp his ardour
or weaken his power as a musician; he spent the greater part of his life
at Weimar, but he practised his art far and wide, and his last visit to
England in 1886, the year on which he died, created quite a flutter in
musical circles (1811-1886).

LITANY, a form of supplication in connection with some impending
calamity in which the prayer of the priest or officiating clergyman is
responded to by the congregation.

LITERATURE, defined by Carlyle "as an 'apocalypse of nature,' a
revealing of the 'open secret,' a 'continuous revelation' of the God-like
in the terrestrial and common, which ever endures there, and is brought
out now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees of
clearness ... there being touches of it (i. e. the God-like) in the
dark stormful indignation of a Byron, nay, in the withered mockery of a
French sceptic, his mockery of the false, a love and worship of the
true ... how much more in the sphere harmony of a Shakespeare, the
cathedral music of a Milton; something of it too in those humble, genuine,
lark-notes of a Burns, skylark starting from the humble furrow far overhead
into the blue depths, and singing to us so genuinely there."

LITHUANIA, formerly a grand-duchy occupying portions of the valleys
of the Dwina, Niemen, Dnieper, and Bug; for centuries connected with
Poland; passed to Russia in 1814. The Lithuanians are a distinct race of
the Indo-European stock, fair and handsome, with a language of their
own, and a literature rich in folk-lore and songs. Of a strong religious
temperament, they embraced Christianity late (13th century), and still
retain many pagan superstitions; formerly serfs, they are now a humble
peasantry engaged in agriculture, cattle-breeding, and bee