LEYDEN, one of the chief towns of Holland and characteristically Dutch, 15 m.  NW. of The Hague, with a famous university founded by the Prince of Orange in 1576, containing the richest natural history museum in the world; it is noted for the bravery and power of endurance of its inhabitants, manifest for a whole year (1573-74) during the War of Independence.

LEYDEN, JOHN, poet and Orientalist, born in Denholm, son of a shepherd; bred for the Church, his genius and abilities attracted the notice of influential people; was introduced to Scott, and assisted him in his “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border”; went to India as a military surgeon; studied and prelected on the native dialects; became a judge in Calcutta; died of fever (1775-1811).

LEYDEN, JOHN OF, leader of the Anabaptists in Muenster, born in The Hague; beset with his followers, who regarded him as a prophet, in Muenster, he was taken alive after a siege of six months and tortured to death in 1536.

LEYDEN, LUCAS VAN, an eminent early Dutch painter and engraver, born in Leyden; succeeded in every branch of painting, and, like Duerer, engraved his own pictures; his works are highly valued, and some of them very rare; he spent his means in high living and died young, only 39 (1494-1533).

LEYDEN JAR, an electric condenser, a cylindrical glass bottle lined inside and outside with metal to within a short distance from the top, while a brass rod connected with the inside coating extends upward through a wooden stopper terminating in a knob.

LEYS SCHOOL, the Cambridge school founded in 1875 to supply under unsectarian religious influences a high-class education, the founders of it having been chiefly members of the Methodist body.

LHASSA (seat of the gods) (50), the capital of Thibet, and the metropolis of the Buddhist world in the Chinese Empire, stands in the middle of a plain 11,900 ft. above the sea-level; on a hill in the NW. of the centre of the city, a conical hill called Potala, amid temples and palaces, is the residence of the Grand Lama; the monasteries are 15 in number, and the priests 20,000, and it is the centre of the caravan trade.

L’HOPITAL.  See HOPITAL, MICHEL DE L’.

LI, a Chinese mile, equal to one-third of an English mile.

LIA-FAIL, the stone of destiny on which the Irish kings used to be crowned, which was at length removed to Scone, in Perthshire, and is now in Westminster under the coronation chair, having been removed thither by Edward I.

LIBERALISM, MODERN, “practically summed up” by Ruskin, in “the denial or neglect of the quality and intrinsic worth in things, the incapacity of discerning or refusal to discern worth and unworth in anything, and least of all in man.”

LIBERAL-UNIONIST, one of the Liberal party in English politics, which in 1886 quitted the Liberal ranks and joined the Conservative party in opposition to the Home Rule policy of Mr. Gladstone.