LANGUR, one of the two Hindu names (the other being hanuman) of the sacred Indian monkey scientifically known as Semnopithecus entellus, and hence sometimes called the entellus monkey. A prodigiously long tail, beetling eyebrows with long black hairs, black ears, face, feet and hands, and a general greyish-brown colour of the fur are the distinctive characteristics of the langur. These monkeys roam at will in the bazaars of Hindu cities, where they help themselves freely from the stores of the grain-dealers, and they are kept in numbers at the great temple in Benares. In a zoological sense the term is extended to embrace all the monkeys of the Asiatic genus Semnopithecus, which includes a large number of species, ranging from Ceylon, India and Kashmir to southern China and the Malay countries as far east as Borneo and Sumatra. These monkeys are characterized by their lank bodies, long slender limbs and tail, well-developed thumbs, absence of cheek-pouches, and complex stomachs. They feed on leaves and young shoots.
(R. L.*)
LANG VON WELLENBURG, MATTHÄUS (1469-1540), German statesman and ecclesiastic, was the son of a burgher of Augsburg. He afterwards assumed the name of Wellenburg from a castle that came into his possession. After studying at Ingolstadt, Vienna and Tübingen he entered the service of the emperor Frederick III. and quickly made his way to the front. He was also one of the most trusted advisers of Frederick’s son and successor Maximilian I., and his services were rewarded in 1500 with the provostship of the cathedral at Augsburg and in the following year with the bishopric of Gurk. In 1511 he was made a cardinal by Pope Julius II., and in 1514 he became coadjutor to the archbishop of Salzburg, whom he succeeded in 1519. He also received the bishopric of Cartagena in Murcia in 1521, and that of Albano in 1535. Lang’s adherence to the older faith, together with his pride and arrogance, made him very unpopular in his diocese of Salzburg; in 1523 he was involved in a serious struggle with his subjects, and in 1525, during the Peasants’ War, he had again to fight hard to hold his own. He was one of the chief ministers of Charles V.; he played an important part in the tangled international negotiations of his time; and he was always loyal to his imperial masters. Not without reason has he been compared with Cardinal Wolsey. He died on the 30th of March 1540.
LANIER, SIDNEY (1842-1881), American poet, was born at Macon, Georgia, on the 3rd of February 1842. He was of Huguenot descent on his father’s side, and of Scottish and Virginian on his mother’s. From childhood he was passionately fond of music. His subsequent mastery of the flute helped to support him and greatly increased his reputation. At the age of fourteen he entered Oglethorpe College, where, after graduating with distinction, he held a tutorship. He enlisted in the Confederate army in April 1861, serving first in Virginia, and finding opportunities to continue his studies. After the Seven Days’ battles around Richmond, he was transferred to the signal service. About this time the first symptoms of consumption appeared. He subsequently served in a blockade-runner, but his vessel was captured, and he was confined for five months in a Federal prison, his flute proving the best of companions. Exchanged early in 1865, he started home on foot, arriving in a state of exhaustion that led to a severe illness. In 1867 he visited New York in connexion with his novel Tiger Lilies—an immature work, dealing in part with his war experiences, and now difficult to obtain. Later in the same year he took charge of a country school in Alabama, and was married to Miss Mary Day of his native town. The next year he returned to Macon in low health, and began to study and practise law with his father. In 1872 he went to Texas for his health, but was forced to return, and he secured an engagement as first flute in the Peabody concerts at Baltimore (December 1873). He wrote a guide-book to Florida (1876), and tales for boys from Froissart, Malory, the Mabinogion and Percy’s Reliques (1878-1882). He now made congenial friends, such as Bayard Taylor, his reputation gradually increased, and he was enabled to study music and literature, especially Anglo-Saxon poetry. In 1876 he wrote his ambitious cantata for the Centennial Exhibition, and brought his family north. A small volume of verse appeared in the next year. In 1879 he was made lecturer on English literature at Johns Hopkins University. His lectures became the basis of his Science of English Verse (1880)—his most important prose work, and an admirable discussion of the relations of music and poetry—and also of his English Novel (New York, 1883), which, devoted largely to George Eliot, is suggestive, but one-sided. Work had to be abandoned on account of growing feebleness, and in the spring of 1881 he was carried to Lynn, North Carolina, to try camp life, and died there on the 7th of September. Since his death his fame has grown steadily and greatly, an enlarged and final edition (1884) of his poems, prepared by his wife, his Letters, 1866-1881 (1899), and several volumes of miscellaneous prose having assisted in keeping his name before the public. A posthumous work on Shakspere and his Forerunners (London, 2 vols., 1902) was edited by H. W. Lanier. Among his more noteworthy poems are “Corn,” “The Revenge of Hamish,” “Song of the Chattahoochee” and “The Marshes of Glynn.” By some his genius is regarded as musical rather than poetic, and his style is considered hectic; by others he is held to be one of the most original and most talented of modern American poets. He is considered the leading writer of the New South, the greatest Southern poet since Poe, and a man of heroic and exquisite character.
See a “Memorial,” by William Hayes Ward, prefixed to the Poems (1884); Letters of Sidney Lanier 1866-1881 (1899), edited by H. W. Lanier and Mrs Sidney Lanier; E. Mims, Sidney Lanier (1905). There is a bibliography of Lanier’s scattered writings in Select Poems (New York, 1896; Toronto, 1900) edited by Morgan Callaway.
(W. P. T.)
LANJUINAIS, JEAN DENIS, Comte (1753-1827), French politician, was born at Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) on the 12th of March 1753. After a brilliant college career, which made him doctor of laws and a qualified barrister at nineteen, he was appointed counsel to the Breton estates and in 1775 professor of ecclesiastical law at Rennes. At this period he wrote two important works which, owing to the distracted state of public affairs, remained unpublished, Institutiones juris ecclesiastici and Praelectiones juris ecclesiastici. He had begun his career at the bar by pleading against the feudal droit du colombier, and when he was sent by his fellow-citizens to the states-general of 1789 he demanded the abolition of nobility and the substitution of the title of king of the French and the Navarrese for king of France and Navarre, and helped to establish the civil constitution of the clergy. Returned to the Convention in September 1792 he developed moderate, even reactionary views, becoming one of the fiercest opponents of the Mountain, though he never wavered in his support of republican principles. He refused to vote for the death of Louis XVI., alleging that the nation had no right to despatch a vanquished prisoner. His daily attacks on the Mountain resulted, on the 15th of April 1793, in a demand by the commune for his exclusion from the assembly, but, undaunted, when the Parisian populace invaded the Chamber on the 2nd of June, Lanjuinais renewed his defiance of the victorious party. Placed under arrest with the Girondins, he escaped to Rennes where he drew up a pamphlet denouncing the constitution of 1793 under the curious title Le Dernier Crime de Lanjuinais (Rennes, 1793). Pursued by J. B. Carrier, who was sent to stamp out resistance in the west, he lay hidden until some time after the revolution of Thermidor (July 1794), but he was readmitted to the Convention on the 8th of March 1795. He maintained his liberal and independent attitude in the Conseil des Anciens, the Senate and the Chamber of Peers, being president of the upper house during the Hundred Days. Together with G. J. B. Target, J. E. M. Portalis and others he founded under the empire an academy of legislation in Paris, himself lecturing on Roman law. Closely associated with oriental scholars, and a keen student of oriental religions, he entered the Academy of Inscriptions in 1808. After the Bourbon restoration Lanjuinais consistently defended the principles of constitutional monarchy, but most of his time was given to religious and political subjects. Besides many contributions to periodical literature he wrote, among other works, Constitutions de la nation française (1819); Appréciation du projet de loi relatif aux trois concordats (1806, 6th ed. 1827), in defence of Gallicanism; and Études biographiques et littéraires sur Antoine Arnauld, P. Nicole et Jacques Necker (1823). He died in Paris on the 13th of January 1827.