LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE, eminent literary man, born in Warwick, a man of excitable temperament, which involved him in endless quarrels leading to alienations, but did not affect his literary work; figured first as a poet in “Gebir” and “Count Julian,” to the admiration of Southey, his friend, and De Quincey, and ere long as a writer of prose in his “Imaginary Conversations,” embracing six volumes, on which recent critics have bestowed unbounded praise, Swinburne in particular; he died in Florence separated from his family, and dependent on it there for six years; Carlyle visited him at Bath in 1850, and found him “stirring company; a proud, irascible, trenchant, yet generous, veracious, and very dignified old man; quite a ducal or royal man in the temper of him” (1775-1864).

LAND’S END, a bold promontory of granite rock on the SW. coast of Cornwall.

LANDSEER, SIR EDWIN HENRY, greatest English animal-painter, born in London, the son of an engraver and writer on art, trained by his father, sketched animals before he was six years old, and exhibited in the Royal Academy before thirteen; in his early years he portrayed simply the form and colour and movement of animal life, but after his twenty-first year he added usually some sentiment or idea; elected A.R.A. in 1826, and R.A. in 1830; he was knighted in 1853; five years later he won a gold medal in Paris; in 1859 he modelled the Trafalgar Square lions; after 1861 he suffered from mental depression, and declined the Presidency of the Royal Academy in 1866 (1802-1873).

LANDSTURM, the name given to the last reserve in the German army, which is never called out except in time of war.

LANDTHING, the name of the Upper House in the Danish Parliament.

LANDWEHR, a military force in Germany and Austria held in reserve against a time of war, when it is called out to do ordinary military duty.  In Germany those capable of bearing arms have to serve in it five years after completing their seven years’ term of regular service.

LANE, EDWARD WILLIAM, eminent Arabic scholar, born at Hereford; set out for Egypt in 1825; studied the language and manners, and returned in 1828; published in 1836 an “Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians”; translated in 1840 “The Arabian Nights,” and spent seven years in Egypt preparing an Arabic Lexicon which he had all but finished when he died; it was completed and edited by S. Lane-Poole (1801-1876).

LANFRANC, archbishop of Canterbury, born at Pavia; went to France, entered the monastery of Bec, and became prior in 1046, and was afterwards, in 1062, elected prior of the abbey of St. Stephen at Caen; and came over to England with William the Conqueror, who appointed him to the archbishopric rendered vacant by the deposition of Stigand; he was William’s trusted adviser, but his influence declined under Rufus; d. 1089.

LANFREY, PIERRE, historian, born at Chambery; wrote an elaborate History of Napoleon to, it is reckoned, the irreparable damage of its hero (1828-1877).