LINTH, or Limmat, a river of Switzerland, one of the tributaries of the Aar. It rises in the glaciers of the Tödi range, and has cut out a deep bed which forms the Grossthal that comprises the greater portion of the canton of Glarus. A little below the town of Glarus the river, keeping its northerly direction, runs through the alluvial plain which it has formed, towards the Walensee and the Lake of Zürich. But between the Lake of Zürich and the Walensee the huge desolate alluvial plain grew ever in size, while great damage was done by the river, which overflowed its bed and the dykes built to protect the region near it. The Swiss diet decided in 1804 to undertake the “correction” of this turbulent stream. The necessary works were begun in 1807 under the supervision of Hans Conrad Escher of Zürich (1767-1823). The first portion of the undertaking was completed in 1811, and received the name of the “Escher canal,” the river being thus diverted into the Walensee. The second portion, known as the “Linth canal,” regulated the course of the river between the Walensee and the Lake of Zürich and was completed in 1816. Many improvements and extra protective works were carried out after 1816, and it was estimated that the total cost of this great engineering undertaking from 1807 to 1902 amounted to about £200,000, the date for the completion of the work being 1911. To commemorate the efforts of Escher, the Swiss diet in 1823 (after his death) decided that his male descendants should bear the name of “Escher von der Linth.” On issuing from the Lake of Zürich the Linth alters its name to that of “Limmat,” it does not appear wherefore, and, keeping the north-westerly direction it had taken from the Walensee, joins the Aar a little way below Brugg, and just below the junction of the Reuss with the Aar.
(W. A. B. C.)
LINTON, ELIZA LYNN (1822-1898), English novelist, daughter of the Rev. J. Lynn, vicar of Crosthwaite, in Cumberland, was born at Keswick on the 10th of February 1822. She early manifested great independence of character, and in great measure educated herself from the stores of her father’s library. Coming to London about 1845 with a large stock of miscellaneous erudition, she turned this to account in her first novels, Azeth the Egyptian (1846) and Amymone (1848), a romance of the days of Pericles. Her next story, Realities, a tale of modern life (1851), was not successful, and for several years she seemed to have abandoned fiction. When, in 1865, she reappeared with Grasp your Nettle, it was as an expert in a new style of novel-writing—stirring, fluent, ably-constructed stories, retaining the attention throughout, but affording little to reflect upon or to remember. Measured by their immediate success, they gave her an honourable position among the writers of her day, and secure of an audience, she continued to write with vigour nearly until her death. Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg (1866), Patricia Kemball (1874), The Atonement of Leam Dundas (1877) are among the best examples of this more mechanical side of her talent, to which there were notable exceptions in Joshua Davidson (1872), a bold but not irreverent adaptation of the story of the Carpenter of Nazareth to that of the French Commune; and Christopher Kirkland, a veiled autobiography (1885). Mrs Linton was a practised and constant writer in the journals of the day; her articles on the “Girl of the Period” in the Saturday Review produced a great sensation, and she was a constant contributor to the St James’s Gazette, the Daily News and other leading newspapers. Many of her detached essays have been collected. In 1858 she married W. J. Linton, the engraver, but the union was soon terminated by mutual consent; she nevertheless brought up one of Mr Linton’s daughters by a former marriage. A few years before her death she retired to Malvern. She died in London on the 14th of July 1898.
Her reminiscences appeared after her death under the title of My Literary Life (1899) and her life has been written by G. S. Layard (1901).
LINTON, WILLIAM JAMES (1812-1897), English wood-engraver, republican and author, was born in London. He was educated at Stratford, and in his sixteenth year was apprenticed to the wood-engraver G. W. Bonner. His earliest known work is to be found in Martin and Westall’s Pictorial Illustrations of the Bible (1833). He rapidly rose to a place amongst the foremost wood-engravers of the time. After working as a journeyman engraver with two or three firms, losing his money over a cheap political library called the “National,” and writing a life of Thomas Paine, he went into partnership (1842) with John Orrin Smith. The firm was immediately employed on the Illustrated London News, just then projected. The following year Orrin Smith died, and Linton, who had married a sister of Thomas Wade, editor of Bell’s Weekly Messenger, found himself in sole charge of a business upon which two families were dependent. For years he had concerned himself with the social and European political problems of the time, and was now actively engaged in the republican propaganda. In 1844 he took a prominent part in exposing the violation by the English post-office of Mazzini’s correspondence. This led to a friendship with the Italian revolutionist, and Linton threw himself with ardour into European politics. He carried the first congratulatory address of English workmen to the French Provisional Government in 1848. He edited a twopenny weekly paper, The Cause of the People, published in the Isle of Man, and he wrote political verses for the Dublin Nation, signed “Spartacus.” He helped to found the “International League” of patriots, and, in 1850, with G. H. Lewes and Thornton Hunt, started The Leader, an organ which, however, did not satisfy his advanced republicanism, and from which he soon withdrew. The same year he wrote a series of articles propounding the views of Mazzini in The Red Republican. In 1852 he took up his residence at Brantwood, which he afterwards sold to John Ruskin, and from there issued The English Republic, first in the form of weekly tracts and afterwards as a monthly magazine—“a useful exponent of republican principles, a faithful record of republican progress throughout the world; an organ of propagandism and a medium of communication for the active republicans in England.” Most of the paper, which never paid its way and was abandoned in 1855, was written by himself. In 1852 he also printed for private circulation an anonymous volume of poems entitled The Plaint of Freedom. After the failure of his paper he returned to his proper work of wood-engraving. In 1857 his wife died, and in the following year he married Eliza Lynn (afterwards known as Mrs Lynn Linton) and returned to London. In 1864 he retired to Brantwood, his wife remaining in London. In 1867, pressed by financial difficulties, he determined to try his fortune in America, and finally separated from his wife, with whom, however, he always corresponded affectionately. With his children he settled at Appledore, New Haven, Connecticut, where he set up a printing-press. Here he wrote Practical Hints on Wood-Engraving (1879), James Watson, a Memoir of Chartist Times (1879), A History of Wood-Engraving in America (1882), Wood-Engraving, a Manual of Instruction (1884), The Masters of Wood-Engraving, for which he made two journeys to England (1890), The Life of Whittier (1893), and Memories, an autobiography (1895). He died at New Haven on the 29th of December 1897. Linton was a singularly gifted man, who, in the words of his wife, if he had not bitten the Dead Sea apple of impracticable politics, would have risen higher in the world of both art and letters. As an engraver on wood he reached the highest point of execution in his own line. He carried on the tradition of Bewick, fought for intelligent as against merely manipulative excellence in the use of the graver, and championed the use of the “white line” as well as of the black, believing with Ruskin that the former was the truer and more telling basis of aesthetic expression in the wood-block printed upon paper.
See W. J. Linton, Memories; F. G. Kitton, article on “Linton” in English Illustrated Magazine (April 1891); G. S. Layard, Life of Mrs Lynn Linton (1901).
(G. S. L.)