The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 292

LUCKNOW (273), fourth city in India, cap. of the prov. of Oudh, on the Gumti, a tributary of the Ganges, 200 m. NW. of Benares; is a centre of Indian culture and Mohammedan theology, an industrial and commercial city. It has many magnificent buildings, Canning and Martiniere Colleges, various schools and Government offices. It manufactures brocades, shawls, muslins, and embroideries, and trades in country products, European cloth, salt, and leather. Its siege from July 1857 to March 1858, its relief by Havelock and Outram, and final deliverance by Sir Colin Campbell, form the most stirring incidents of the Indian Mutiny.

LUCRETIA, a Roman matron, the wife of Collatinus, whose rape by a son of Tarquinus Superbus led to the dethronement of the tyrant, the expulsion of his family from Rome, and the establishment of the Roman republic.

LUCRETIUS, t.i.tUS CARUS, a Roman poet of whose personal history nothing is known, only that he was the author of a poem ent.i.tled "De Rerum Natura," a philosophic, didactic composition in six books, in which he expounds the atomic theory of Leucippus, and the philosophy of Epicurus; the philosophy of the work commends itself only to the atheist and the materialist, but the style is the admiration of all scholars, and has ensured its translation into most modern languages (about 95-31 B.C.).

LUCULLUS, LUCIUS, a Roman general, celebrated as conqueror of Mithridates, king of Pontus, and for the luxurious life he afterwards led at Rome on the wealth he had ama.s.sed in Asia and brought home with him; one day as he sat down to dine alone, and he observed his servant had provided for him a less sumptuous repast than usual, he took him sharply to task, and haughtily remarked, "Are you not aware, sirrah, that Lucullus dines with Lucullus to-day?"

LUDDISM, fanatical opposition to the introduction of machinery as it originally manifested itself among the hand-loom weavers of the Midlands.

LUDDITES name a.s.sumed by the anti-machinery rioters of 1812-1861, after a Leicesters.h.i.+re idiot, Ned Ludd, of 1780; appearing first at Nottingham, the agitation spread through Derby, Leicester, Ches.h.i.+re, Lancas.h.i.+re, and Yorks.h.i.+re, finally merging in the wider industrial and political agitations and riots that marked the years that followed the peace after Waterloo.

LUDLOW, EDMUND, a republican leader in the Civil War against Charles I., born in Wilts.h.i.+re of good family; entered the army of the Parliament, and was present in successive engagements, but opposed Cromwell on his a.s.sumption of the Protectorate, and was put under arrest; rea.s.serted his republicanism on Cromwell's death, but died in exile after the Restoration; left "Memoirs" (1630-1693).

LUDOVICUS VIVES, a humourist, born in Valentia, Spain; studied at Paris, wrote against scholasticism, taught at Oxford, was imprisoned for opposing Henry VIII.'s divorce; died at Bruges (1472-1540).

LUGA'NO, a lake partly in the Swiss canton of Ticino and partly in the Italian province of Como, 15 m. by 2 m., in the midst of picturesque grand scenery, with a town of the name on the NW. side amid vineyards and olive plantations.

LUINI, BERNARDINO, a painter of the Lombard school, born at Luino, in the territory of Milan, and a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, so that some of his works, which though they show a grace and delicacy of their own, pa.s.s for those of his master; is famed for his works in oil as well as in fresco; is, in Ruskin's regard, one of the master painters of the world (1460-1540).

LUKE or LUCa.n.u.s, author of the third Gospel, as well as the Acts, born in Antioch, a Greek by birth and a physician by profession, probably a convert, as he was a companion, of St. Paul; is said to have suffered martyrdom and been buried at Constantinople; is the patron saint of artists, and represented in Christian art with an ox lying near him, or in the act of painting; his Gospel appears to have been written before the year 63, and shows a Pauline interest in Christ, who is represented as the Saviour of Jew and Gentile alike; it was written for a Gentile Christian and in correspondence with eye-witnesses of Christ's life and death.

LULLI, a composer of operatic music, born in Provence; was director of the French opera in the reign of Louis XIV. (1633-1687).

LULLY, RAYMOND, the _Doctor Illuminatus_, as he was called, born at Palma, in Majorca, who was early smitten with a zeal for the conversion of the Mohammedans, in the prosecution of which mission he invented a new method of dialectic, called after him _Ars Lullia_; held public discussions with the Mohammedans, who showed themselves as zealous to convert him as he was to convert them, till he ventured in his over-zeal when in Africa among them to threaten them with divine judgment if they did not abjure their faith, upon which they waxed furious, dragged him out of the city, and stoned him to death in the year 1315; his works, several on alchemy, fill 16 volumes.

LUNAR CYCLE, a period of time at the close of which the new moons return on the same days of the year.

LUNAR MONTH, a month of 29 days, the time of the revolution of the moon, a lunar year consisting of 12 times the number.

LUNAR THEORY, an explanation by mathematical reasoning of perturbations in the movements of the moon founded on the law of gravitation.

LUNAR YEAR, a period of 12 synodic lunar months, being about 354.5 days.

LUND (14), a city in the S. of Sweden, 10 m. NE. of Malmo, once the capital of the Danish kingdom, the seat of an archbishop, with a Romanesque cathedral and a flouris.h.i.+ng university.

LUNDY ISLAND, a precipitous rugged island 3 m. long by 1 m. broad, belonging to Devon, with the remains of an old castle, and frequented by myriads of sea-fowl.

LuNEBURG (21), on the Ilmenau, 30 m. SE. of Hamburg, an ancient German city with old Gothic churches, once the capital of an independent duchy, now in Hanover; has salt and gypsum mines, iron and chemical manufactures; the British royal house is descended from the princes of Brunswick-Luneburg.

LUPERCALIA, a Roman festival held on Feb. 15 in honour of Lupercus, regarded as the G.o.d of fertility, in the celebration of which dogs and goats were sacrificed and their skins cut up into thongs, with which the priests ran through the city striking every one, particularly women, that threw themselves in their way.

LUPERCUS, an ancient Italian G.o.d, wors.h.i.+pped by shepherds as the protector of their flocks against wolves.

LUPUS, a chronic disease of the skin, characterised by the tuberculous eruptions which eat into the skin, particularly of the face, and disfigure it.

LUSATIA, a district of Germany, between the Elbe and the Oder, originally divided into Upper and Lower, belongs partly to Saxony and partly to Prussia; it swarmed at one time with Wends.

LUSIAD or LUSIADES, a poem of Camoens in ten cantos, in celebration of the discoveries of the Portuguese in the East Indies, and in which Vasco da Gama is the princ.i.p.al figure; it is a genuine national epic, in which the poet pa.s.ses in review all the celebrated exploits and feats that glorify the history of Portugal.

LUSITANIA, the ancient name of Portugal, still used as the name of it in modern poetry.

l.u.s.tRUM, a sacrifice for expiation and purification offered by one of the censors of Rome in name of the Roman people at the close of the taking of the census, and which took place after a period of five years, so that the name came to denote a period of that length.

LUTETIA, the ancient name of Paris, _Lutetia Parisiorum_, mud-town of the borderers, as Carlyle translates it.

LUTHER, MARTIN, the great Protestant Reformer, born at Eisleben, in Prussian Saxony, the son of a miner, was born poor and brought up poor, familiar from his childhood with hards.h.i.+p; was sent to study law at Erfurt, but was one day at the age of 19 awakened to a sense of higher interests, and in spite of remonstrances became a monk; was for a time in deep spiritual misery, till one day he found a Bible in the convent, which taught him for the first time that "a man was not saved by singing ma.s.ses, but by the infinite grace of G.o.d"; this was his awakening from death to life, and to a sense of his proper mission as a man; at this stage the Elector of Saxony was attracted to him, and he appointed him preacher and professor at Wittenberg; on a visit to Rome his heart sank within him, but he left it to its evil courses to pursue his own way apart; if Rome had let him alone he would have let it, but it would not; monk Tetzel arrived at Wittenberg selling indulgences, and his indignation was roused; remonstrance after remonstrance followed, but the Pope gave no heed, till the agitation being troublesome, he issued his famous "fire-decree," condemning Luther's writings to the flames; this answer fired Luther to the quick, and he "took the indignant step of burning the decree in 1520 at the Elster Gate of Wittenberg, Wittenberg looking on with shoutings, the whole world looking on"; after this Luther was summoned to the Diet of Worms, and he appeared there before the magnates, lay and clerical, of the German empire on April 17, 1521; how he demeaned himself on that high occasion is known to all the world, and his answer as well: "Here stand I; I can do no other; so help me G.o.d"; "it was the grandest moment in the modern history of man"; of the awakening this produced Luther was the ruling spirit, as he had been the moving one, and he continued to be so to the end of his life; his writings show the man as well as his deeds, and amid all the turmoil that enveloped him he found leisure to write and leave behind him 25 quarto volumes; it is known the German Bible in use is his work, executed by him in the Castle of Wartburg; it was begun by him with his back to the wall, as it were, and under the protestation, as it seemed to him, of the prince of darkness himself, and finished in this obstructive element pretty much throughout, the New Testament in 1522, the Pentateuch in 1523, and the whole, the Apocrypha included, in 1534; he was fond of music, and uttered many an otherwise unutterable thing in the tones of his flute; "the devils fled from his flute," he says; "death-defiance on the one hand, and such love of music on the other, I could call these,"

says Carlyle, "the two opposite poles of a great soul, between these two all great things had room.... Luther," he adds, "was a true great man, great in intellect, in courage, in affection, and integrity,... great as an Alpine mountain, but not setting up to be great at all--his, as all greatness is, an unconscious greatness" (1488-1546).

LUTHERANISM, that form of Protestantism which prevails in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Northern Germany. See LUTHERANS.

LUTHERANS, the name given to that school of the Protestant Church which accepted Luther's doctrine, especially that of the Eucharist, in opposition to that of the members of the Reformed Church, who a.s.sented to the views in that matter of Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer; the former maintaining the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and that the grace of Christ is communicated in the celebration of it, and the latter maintaining that it is a merely commemorative ordinance, and the means of grace to the believing recipient only.

LUTTERWORTH, a small town in Leicesters.h.i.+re, on the Swift, 8 m. NE.

of Rugby, of the church of which Wiclif was rector, and where he was buried, though his bones were afterwards, in 1428, dug up and burned, and the ashes cast into the river.

LuTZEN, a small town in Prussian Saxony, the vicinity of it the scene of a victory of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, and of another by Napoleon over the combined forces of Russia and Prussia in 1813.