d with the wise lessons he had learned from them to frame a code
of laws for his country, which was fast lapsing into a state of anarchy;
when he had finished his work under the sanction of the oracle at Delphi
he set put again on a journey to other lands, but previously took oath of
the citizens that they would observe his laws till his return; it was his
purpose not to return, and he never did, in order to bind his countrymen
to maintain the constitution he gave them inviolate for ever.

LYDGATE, JOHN, an early English poet; was a monk of Bury St. Edmunds
in the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries; was a teacher
of rhetoric as well as a poet, and a man of some note in his day.

LYDIA, a country of Asia Minor; seat of an early civilisation, and a
centre of influences which affected both the religion and culture of
Greece; was noted for its music and purple dyes.

LYELL, SIR CHARLES, celebrated English geologist, born at Kinnordy,
in Forfarshire; bred for and called to the bar; he left his practice, and
gave himself to the study of geology, to which he had been attracted by
Alexander Buckland's lectures when he was at Oxford; his great work was
his "Principles of Geology," which, published in 1830, created quite a
revolution in the science; it was followed by his "Student's Elements of
Geology," which was modified by his conversion to Darwin's views, and by
"Antiquity of Man," written in defence of Darwin's theory (17971875).

LYLY, JOHN, English dramatist, born in Kent; was the author of nine
plays on classical subjects, written for the court, which were preceded
in 1579 by his once famous "Euphues, or Anatomy of Wit," followed by a
second part next year, and entitled "Euphues and his England," and that
from the fantastic, pompous, and affected style in which they were
written gave a new word, Euphuism, to the English language (1553-1606).

LYNCH LAW, the name given in America to the trial and punishment of
offenders without form of law, or by mob law; derived from the name of a
man Lynch, dubbed Judge, who being referred to used to administer justice
in the far West in this informal way.

LYNDHURST, JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY, BARON, thrice Lord Chancellor of
England, born at Boston, Massachusetts, son of an artist; was brought up
in London, educated at Cambridge, and called to the bar in 1804;
acquiring fame in the treason trials of the second decade, he entered
Parliament in 1808, was Soli