LOFODEN ISLANDS (20), a rugged mountainous chain on the NW.  Norwegian coast within the Arctic circle, with winters rendered mild by the Gulf Stream, afford pasturage for sheep; the waters between them and the mainland are a rich cod-fishing ground, visited by thousands of boats between January and March.

LOGAN, JOHN, a Scotch poet, born at Soutra; was for a time minister in South Leith church, but was obliged to resign; was the author of a lyric, “The Braes of Yarrow” and certain of the Scotch paraphrases (1748-1788).  See BRUCE, MICHAEL.

LOGARITHM, the exponent of the power to which a fixed number, called the base, must be raised to produce a certain given number.

LOGIC, the science of correct thinking or of the laws which regulate thought, called also dialectics; or in the Hegelian system “the scientific exposition and development of those notions or categories which underlie all things and all being.”

LOGIC SPECTACLES, Carlyle’s name for eyes that can only discern the external relations of things, but not the inner nature of them.

LOGOS, an expression in St. John’s gospel translated the Word (in chap. i.) to denote the manifestation of God, or God as manifested, defined in theology as the second person of the Deity, and viewed as intermediary between God as Father and God as Spirit.

LOG-ROLLING, mutual praise by authors of each other’s work.

LOHENGRIN, hero of a German 13th-century poem; son of Parzival, and a Knight of the Grail; carried by a swan to Brabant he delivered and married the Princess Elsa; subsequently returning from war against the Saracens, she asked him of his origin; he told her, and was at once carried back again by the swan.  Wagner adapted the story in his opera “Lohengrin.”

LOIRE, the largest river in France, 630 m., rises in the Cevennes, flows northwards to Orleans and westward to the Bay of Biscay, through a very fertile valley which it often inundates.  It is navigable for 550 m., but its lower waters are obstructed by islands and shoals; it is connected by canals with the Seine, Saone, and Brest Harbour.

LOKI, in the Norse mythology, a primitive spirit of evil who mingles with the Norse gods, distinguished for his cunning and ensnaring ways, whose devices are only evil in appearance, and are overruled for good.

LOLLARDS, originally a religious community established at Antwerp in 1300, devoted to the care of the sick and burial of the dead, and as persecuted by the Church, regarded as heretics.  Their name became a synonym for heretic, and was hence applied to the followers of Wycliffe in England and certain sectaries in Ayrshire.

LOMBARD, PETER, a famous schoolman, born in Lombardy in the 12th century, of poor parents; was a disciple of Abelard; taught theology at, and became Bishop of, Paris; was styled the Master of Sentences, as author of a compilation of sentences from Augustine and other Church Fathers on points of Christian doctrine, and long used as a manual in scholastic disputations.