New volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica > Volume 30, K-MOR

178 LEAMINGTON — LEBANON
the present city, and in the succeeding five years from
$12,000,000 to $15,000,000 worth was taken from it.
Indeed, in the heyday of its prosperity California Gulch
was as busy and populous as was Leadville twenty years
later; but on the exhaustion of its placers the region was
almost deserted, 100 or 200 inhabitants, constituting the
town of Oro, being all that were left. The accidental
discovery here in 1878 of lead carbonates containing silver
in vast quantities caused a mining excitement over the
whole country, and a second stampede to California Gulch
ensued, paralleled only by the first. Two years later, in
1880, Leadville had a population of 14,820. Many very
rich mines were discovered and worked, and the district as
a whole is still as productive as ever. The ore is mainly
a carbonate of lead, but with many accessory metals and
combinations. It lies in beds or sheets, between old rock
strata much broken by faults and dislocations. The yield
of the mines is about $13,000,000 in silver annually,
besides a vast amount of lead and other metals. Most of
the ore is smelted at Leadville, and the matte transported
east for refining. Population (1890), 10,384; (1900),
12,455, of whom 3802 were foreign-born.
Leamington, Leamington Peioks, or Royal
Leamington Spa, a municipal borough and inland water¬
ing-place of Warwickshire, England, on the Learn, 98 miles
north-west of London by rail. In 1885 the boroughs of
Warwick and Leamington were united in one constituency,
returning one member to Parliament. The parish church of
All Saints is mostly modern. Recent erections are a theatre
and a town hall, containing a free library and a school of
art. There is a municipal technical school. There are
iron-foundries and brickworks. Area of civil parish, 1595
acres. Population (1891), 26,930; (1901), 26,888.
Lear, Edward (1812-1888), English -artist and
humorist, was born in London on 12th May 1812. His
earliest drawings were ornithological. When he was
twenty years old he published a brilliantly coloured selec¬
tion of the rarer Psittacidce. Its power attracted the
attention of the 13th earl of Derby, who employed Lear
to draw his Knowsley menagerie. He became a per¬
manent favourite with the Stanley family; and Edward,
15th earl, was the child for whose amusement the first
Book of Nonsense was composed. From birds Lear
turned to landscape, his earlier efforts in which recall the
manner of J. D. Harding; but he quickly acquired a more
individual style. About 1837 he set up a studio at Rome,
where he lived for ten years, with summer tours in Italy
and Sicily, and occasional visits to England. During this
period he began to publish his Illustrated Journals of a
Landscape Painter: charmingly written reminiscences of
wandering, which ultimately embraced Calabria, the
Abruzzi, Albania, Corsica, &c. His wider flights date
from 1848-49, when he explored Greece, Constantinople,
the Ionian Islands, the wildest recesses of Albania, Lower
Egypt, and the desert of Mount Sinai. He returned to
London, but the climate did not suit him. In 1854-55
he wintered on the Nile, and migrated successively to
Corfu, Malta, and Rome, till he finally settled on the
Riviera, building himself a villa at San Remo, where he
closed a career of untiring industry. From Corfu Lear
visited Mount Athos, Syria, Palestine, and Petra; and
when over sixty, by the generous assistance of his intimate
friend Lord Northbrook, then Governor-General, he saw
the cities and scenery of greatest interest within a large
area of India. From first to last he was, in whatever circum¬
stances of difficulty or ill-health, an indomitable traveller.
Before visiting new lands he studied their geography and
literature, and then went straight for the mark; and wherever
he went he drew most indefatigably and most accurately.
His sketches are not only the basis of more finished works
but an exhaustive record in themselves. Some defect of
technique or eyesight occasionally left his larger oil
painting, though nobly conceived, crude or deficient in
harmony; but his smaller pictures and more elaborate
sketches abound in beauty, delicacy, and truth. Lear
modestly called himself a topographical artist; but he
included in the term the perfect rendering of all character¬
istic graces of form, colour, and atmosphere. The last
task he set himself was to prepare for popular circulation
a set of some 200 drawings, illustrating from his travels
the scenic touches of Tennyson’s poetry; but he did not
live to complete the scheme, dying at San Remo on 30th
January 1888. Until sobered by age, his conversation
was brimful of humorous fun. The paradoxical origin¬
ality and ostentatiously uneducated draughtsmanship of
his numerous nonsense books appealed to a wider public,
and won him a more universal fame than his serious work.
He had a true artist’s sympathy with art under all forms,
and might have become a skilled musician had he not
been a painter. Swainson, the naturalist, praised young
Lear’s great red and yellow macaw as “equalling any
figure ever painted by Audubon in grace of design, per¬
spective, and anatomical accuracy.” Murchison, exam¬
ining his sketches, complimented them as rigorously
embodying geological truth. Tennyson’s lines “ To
E. L. on his travels in Greece,” mark the poet’s genuine
admiration of a cognate spirit in classical art. Ruskin
placed the Bopk of Nonsense first in the list of a
hundred delectable volumes of contemporary literature,
a judgment endorsed by English-speaking children all
over the world. (p. l*.)
Leavenworth, a city of Kansas, U.S.A., capital
of Leavenworth county, on the west bank of the Missouri
river, at an altitude of 765 feet. It is laid out regularly
in the bottom-lands of the river, and is divided into six
wards. It is the fourth city of the state in population,
and one of the most important railway centres west of the
Mississippi river, no fewer than nine railways entering it.
These, with the steamboats on the river, give the city a
large trade. Its manufactures are also prominent, and are
varied in character. Two miles north of the city is Fort
Leavenworth, a United States military post, associated with
which is a military prison and a well-known military school.
Population (1890), 19,768; (1900), 20,735, of whom 3402
were foreign-born and 2925 were negroes.
Lebanon.—Since 1875 great progress has been
made in that part of the Lebanon which was made an
independent sanjak under a Christian governor in 1861.
The population has almost doubled, villages have largely
increased in size, nearly all available ground has been
brought under cultivation, roads have been made, the
Beiriit-Damascus railway, opened in 1895, crosses the
district, and a short line runs northwards along the coast
from Beirut to Mameltein. The steady growffh of pro¬
sperity has been accompanied by a rapid increase of popu¬
lation, and this of late years has become larger than the
land can support. The result has been emigration, which
the Porte has vainly attempted to stop, of Druses to the
Hauran, and of Christians to the United States and Egypt.
It has been estimated that the annual number of emigrants,
chiefly from the sanjak, is 10,000, and that of these one-
fifth settle abroad. The others return to their homes after
having earned enough for their simple requirements. Since
the British occupation of Egypt the emigration to that
country has assumed large proportions. There the Syrians
fill many of the minor posts in the ministries and local
governments, are employed as interpreters to the army,
and work on the staffs of the Arabic newspapers published