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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Valentinian III.

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​VALENTINIAN III., emperor of the West from 425 to 455, the son of Constantius and Placidia, daughter of the great Theodosius. He was only six years of age when he received the title of Augustus, and during his minority the conduct of affairs was in the hands of his mother, who purposely neglected his education. His reign is marked by the dismemberment of the Western Empire; the conquest of the province of Africa by the Vandals in 439; the final abandonment of Britain in 446; the loss of great portions of Spain and Gaul, in which the barbarians had established themselves; and the ravaging of Sicily and of the western coasts of the Mediterranean by the fleets of Genseric. As a set-off against these calamities there was the great victory of Aetius over Attila in 451 near Chalôns, and his successful campaigns against the Visigoths in southern Gaul (426, 429, 436), and against various invaders on the Rhine and Danube (428–31). The burden of taxation became more and more intolerable as the power of Rome decreased, and the loyalty of her remaining provinces was seriously impaired in consequence. Ravenna was Valentinian’s usual residence; but he fled to Rome on the approach of Attila, who, after ravaging the north of Italy, died in the following year (453). In 454 Aëtius, between whose son and a daughter of the emperor a marriage had been arranged, was treacherously murdered by Valentinian. Next year, however, the emperor himself was assassinated by two of the barbarian followers of Aetius. He not merely lacked the ability to govern the empire in a time of crisis, but aggravated its dangers by his self-indulgence and vindictiveness.
Our chief original sources for the reign of Valentinian III. are Jordanes, Prosper’s Chronicles, written in the 6th century, and the poet Apollinaris Sidonius. See also Gibbon Decline and Fall, chaps. 33—35; J. B. Bury, Later Roman Empire, bk. ii. chaps. 6–8; E. A. Freeman, "Tyrants of Britain, Gaul and Spain" (Eng. Hist. Review, January 1886), and "Aetius and Boniface" (ibid., July 1887).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Valentinus (pope)

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​VALENTINUS, pope for thirty or fourty days in 827, in succession to Eugenius II. (824–27). He was a Roman by birth, and, according to the Liber Pontificalis, was first made a deacon by Paschal I. (817–24). Nothing further is known of his history. His successor was Gregory IV. (827–44).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Valentine

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​VALENTINE, or Valentinus, the name of a considerable number of saints. The most celebrated are the two martyrs whose festivals fall on the 14th of February—the one, a Roman ​priest, the other, bishop of Terni (Interamna). The Passion of the former is part of the legend of SS. Marius and Martha and their companions; that of the latter has no better historical foundation: so that no argument can be drawn from either account to establish the differentiation of the two saints . It would appear from the two accounts that both belonged to the same period, i.e. to the reign of the emperor Claudius (Gothicus); that both died on the same day; and that both were buried on the Via Flaminia, but at different distances from Rome. The Martyrologium Hieronymianum mentions only one Valentinus: “Interamnae miliario LXIIII. via Flaminia natale Valentini.” It is probable that the basilica situated at the second milestone on the Via Flaminia was also dedicated to him. It is impossible to fix the date of his death. The St Valentinus who is spoken of as the apostle of Rhaetia, and venerated in Passau as its first bishop, flourished in the 5th century. Although the name of St Valentine is very popular in England, apparently no church has been dedicated to him. For the peculiar observances that used to be commonly connected with St Valentine’s Eve and Day, to which allusion is frequently made by English writers, such works as John Brand’s Popular Antiquities (edited by W. C. Hazlitt, vol. ii. pp. 606–11, London, 1905), W. Hone’s Every-Day Book, and Chambers’s Book of Days may be consulted. Their appropriateness to the spring season is, in a general way perhaps, obvious enough, but the association of the lovers’ festival with St Valentine seems to be purely accidental.
See Acta Sanctorum, February, ii. 753, 756, and January, i. 1094; G. B. de Rossi, Bullettino di archeologia cristiana (1871), p. 101 and (1878) p. 59. (H. De.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Valentinois

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​VALENTINOIS, the name of a countship in France, the chief town of which was Valence (Drôme). From the 12th to the 15th century Valentinois belonged to a family of Poitiers, which must not be confused with that of the counts of Poitiers. To the detriment of his kinsmen, the lords of St Vallier, Count Louis II. (d. 1419) bequeathed his counties of Valentinois and Diois to the Dauphin Charles, afterwards King Charles VII.; and in 1498 Louis XII. erected the countship of Valentinois into a duchy, and gave it to Caesar Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. A few years later Borgia was deprived of the duchy, which, in 1548, was given by Henry II. to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, a descendant of the counts of Valentinois. Having again reverted to the Crown, the duchy was given by Louis XIII. to Honoré Grimaldi, prince of Monaco, whose descendants retained it until the French Revolution. The new duchy of Valentinois, however, did not consist of the lands attached to the former one, but was made up of several scattered lordships in Dauphine. The title of duke of Valentinois is still borne by the prince of Monaco.
See J . Chevalier, Mémoires pour servir a l'histoire des comtés de Valentinois et de Diois (Paris, 1897—1906).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lawson, Sir John

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​LAWSON, SIR JOHN (d. 1665), British sailor, was born at Scarborough. Joining the parliamentary navy in 1642, he accompanied Penn to the Mediterranean in 1650, where he served for some time. In 1652 he served under Blake in the Dutch War and was present at the first action in the Downs and the battle of the Kentish Knock. At Portland, early in 1653, he was vice-admiral of the red, and his ship was severely handled. Lawson took part in the battles of June and July in the following summer. In 1654–1655 he commanded in the North Sea and the Channel. Appointed in January 1655–1656 as Blake’s second-in-command, Lawson was a few weeks later summarily dismissed from his command, probably for political reasons. He was a Republican and Anabaptist, and therefore an enemy to Cromwell. It is not improbable that like Penn and others he was detected in correspondence with the exiled Charles II., who certainly hoped for his support. In 1657, along with Harrison and others, he was arrested and, for a short time, imprisoned for conspiring against Cromwell. Afterwards he lived at Scarborough until the fall of Richard Cromwell’s government. During the troubled months which succeeded that event Lawson, flying his flag as admiral of the Channel fleet, played a marked political rôle. His ships escorted Charles to England, and he was soon afterwards knighted. Sent out in 1661 with Montagu, earl of Sandwich, to the Mediterranean, Lawson conducted a series of campaigns against the piratical states of the Algerian coast. Thence summoned to a command in the Dutch War, he was mortally wounded at Lowestoft. He died on the 29th of June 1665.
See Charnock, Biographia navalis, i. 20; Campbell, Lives of the Admirals, ii. 251; Penn, Life of Sir William Penn; Pepys, Diary.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lawson, Cecil Gordon

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​LAWSON, CECIL GORDON (1851–1882), English landscape painter, was the youngest son of William Lawson of Edinburgh, esteemed as a portrait painter. His mother also was known for her flower pieces. He was born near Shrewsbury on the 3rd of December 1851. Two of his brothers (one of them, Malcolm, a clever musician and song-writer) were trained as artists, and Cecil was from childhood devoted to art with the intensity of a serious nature. Soon after his birth the Lawsons moved to London. Lawson’s first works were studies of fruit, flowers, &c., in the manner of W. Hunt; followed by riverside Chelsea subjects. His first exhibit at the Royal Academy (1870) was “Cheyne Walk,” and in 1871 he sent two other Chelsea subjects. These gained full recognition from fellow-artists, if not from the public. Among his friends were now numbered Fred Walker, G. J. Pinwell and their associates. Following them, he made a certain number of drawings for wood-engraving. Lawson’s Chelsea pictures had been painted in somewhat low and sombre tones; in the “Hymn to Spring” of 1872 (rejected by the Academy) he turned to a more joyous play of colour, helped by work in more romantic scenes in North Wales and Ireland. Early in 1874 he made a short tour in Holland, Belgium and Paris; and in the summer he painted his large “Hop Gardens of England.” This was much praised at the Academy of 1876. But Lawson’s triumph was with the great luxuriant canvas “The Minister’s Garden,” exhibited in 1878 at the Grosvenor Gallery, and now in the Manchester Art Gallery. This was followed by several works conceived ​in a new and tragic mood. His health began to fail, but he worked on. He married in 1879 the daughter of Birnie Philip, and settled at Haslemere. His later subjects are from this neighbourhood (the most famous being “The August Moon,” now in the National Gallery of British Art) or from Yorkshire. Towards the end of 1881 he went to the Riviera, returned in the spring, and died at Haslemere on the 10th of June 1882. Lawson may be said to have restored to English landscape the tradition of Gainsborough, Crome and Constable, infused with an imaginative intensity of his own. Among English landscape painters of the latter part of the 19th century his is in many respects the most interesting name.
See E. W. Gosse, Cecil Lawson, a Memoir (1883); Heseltine Owen, “In Memoriam: Cecil Gordon Lawson,” Magazine of Art (1894).  (L. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lawrence, Sir Thomas

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​LAWRENCE, SIR THOMAS (1769–1830), English painter, was born at Bristol on the 4th of May 1769. His father was an innkeeper, first at Bristol and afterwards at Devizes, and at the age of six Thomas was already shown off to the guests of the Black Boar as an infant prodigy who could sketch their likenesses and declaim speeches from Milton. In 1779 the elder Lawrence had to leave Devizes, having failed in business, and the precocious talent of the son, who had gained a sort of reputation along the Bath road, became the support of the family. His debut as a crayon portrait painter was made at Oxford, where he was well patronized, and in 1782 the family settled in Bath, where the young artist soon found himself fully employed in taking crayon likenesses of the fashionables of the place at a guinea or a guinea and a half a head. In 1784 he gained the prize and silver-gilt palette of the Society of Arts for a crayon drawing after Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” and presently beginning to paint in oil. Throwing aside the idea of going on the stage which he had for a short time entertained, he came to London in 1787, was kindly received by Reynolds, and entered as a student at the Royal Academy. He began to exhibit almost immediately, and his reputation increased so rapidly that he became an associate of the Academy in 1791. The death of Sir Joshua in 1792 opened the way to further successes. He was at once appointed painter to the Dilettanti society, and principal painter to the king in room of Reynolds. In 1794 he was a Royal Academician, and he became the fashionable portrait painter of the age, having as his sitters all the rank, fashion and talent of England, and ultimately most of the crowned heads of Europe. In 1815 he was knighted; in 1818 he went to Aix-la-Chapelle to paint the sovereigns and diplomatists gathered there, and visited Vienna and Rome, everywhere receiving flattering marks of distinction from princes, due as much to his courtly manners as to his merits as an artist. After eighteen months he returned to England, and on the very day of his arrival was chosen president of the Academy in room of West, who had died a few days before. This office he held from 1820 to his death on the 7th of January 1830. He was never married.
Sir Thomas Lawrence had all the qualities of personal manner and artistic style necessary to make a fashionable painter, and among English portrait painters he takes a high place, though not as high as that given to him in his lifetime. His more ambitious works, in the classical style, such as his once celebrated “Satan,” are practically forgotten.
The best display of Lawrence’s work is in the Waterloo Gallery of Windsor, a collection of much historical interest. “Master Lambton,” painted for Lord Durham at the price of 600 guineas, is regarded as one of his best portraits, and a fine head in the National Gallery, London, shows his power to advantage. The Life and Correspondence of Sir T. Lawrence, by D. E. Williams, appeared in 1831.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lawrence, St

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​LAWRENCE (Laurentius, Lorenzo), ST, Christian martyr, whose name appears in the canon of the mass, and whose festival is on the 10th of August. The basilica reared over his tomb at Rome is still visited by pilgrims. His legend is very popular. Deacon of the pope (St) Sixtus (Xystus) II., he was called upon by the judge to bring forth the treasures of the church which had been committed to his keeping. He thereupon produced the church’s poor people. Seeing his bishop, Sixtus, being led to punishment, he cried: “Father! whither goest thou without thy son? Holy priest! whither goest thou without thy deacon?” Sixtus prophesied that Lawrence would follow him in three days. The prophecy was fulfilled, and Lawrence was sentenced to be burnt alive on a gridiron. In the midst of his torments he addressed the judge ironically with the words: Assum est, versa et manduca (“I am roasted enough on this side; turn me round, and eat”). All these details of the well-known legend are already related by St Ambrose (De Offic. i. 41, ii. 28). The punishment of the gridiron and the speech of the martyr are probably a reminiscence of the Phrygian martyrs, as related by Socrates (iii. 15) and Sozomen (v. 11). But the fact of the martyrdom is unquestionable. The date is usually put at the persecution of Valerian in 258.
The cult of St Lawrence has spread throughout Christendom, and there are numerous churches dedicated to him, especially in England, where 228 have been counted. The Escurial was built in honour of St Lawrence by Philip II. of Spain, in memory of the battle of St Quentin, which was won in 1557 on the day of the martyr’s festival. The meteorites which appear annually on or about the 10th of August are popularly known as “the tears of St Lawrence.”
See Ada sanctorum, Augusti ii. 485-532; P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, S. Lorenzo e il supplicio della graticola (Rome, 1900); Analecta Bollandiana, xix. 452 and 453; Fr. Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications or England’s Patron Saints, i. 508-515, iii. 18, 389-390 (1899). (H. De.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lawrence, Stringer

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​LAWRENCE, STRINGER (1697–1775), English soldier, was born at Hereford on the 6th of March 1697. He seems to have entered the army in 1727 and served in Gibraltar and Flanders, subsequently taking part in the battle of Culloden. In 1748, with the rank of major and the reputation of an experienced soldier, he went out to India to command the East India Company’s troops. Dupleix’s schemes for the French conquest of southern India were on the point of taking effect, and not long after his arrival at Fort St David, Stringer Lawrence was actively engaged. He successfully foiled an attempted French surprise at Cuddalore, but subsequently was captured by a French cavalry patrol at Ariancopang near Pondicherry and kept prisoner till the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1749 he was in command at the capture of Devicota. On this occasion Clive served under him and a life-long friendship began. On one occasion, when Clive had become famous, he honoured the creator of the Indian army by refusing to accept a sword of honour unless one was voted to Lawrence also. In 1750 Lawrence returned to England, but in 1752 he was back in India. Here he found Clive in command of a force intended for the relief of Trichinopoly. As senior officer Lawrence took over the command, but was careful to allow Clive every credit for his share in the subsequent operations, which included the relief of Trichinopoly and the surrender of the entire French besieging force. In 1752 with an inferior force he defeated the French at Bahur (Behoor) and in 1753 again relieved Trichinopoly. For the next seventeen months he fought a series of actions in defence of this place, finally arranging a three months’ armistice, which was afterwards converted into a conditional treaty. He had commanded in chief up to the arrival of the first detachment of regular forces of the crown. In 1757 he served in the operations against Wandiwash, and in 1758–1759 was in command of Fort St George during the siege by the French under Lally. In 1759 failing health compelled him to return to England. He resumed his command in 1761 as major-general and commander-in-chief. Clive supplemented his old friend’s inconsiderable income by settling on him an annuity of £500 a year. In 1765 he presided over the board charged with arranging the reorganization of the Madras army, and he finally retired the following year. He died in London on the 10th of January 1775. The East India Company erected a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey.
See Biddulph, Stringer Lawrence (1901).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lawrenceburg

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​LAWRENCEBURG, a city and the county-seat of Dearborn county, Indiana, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, in the S.E. part of the state, 22 m. (by rail) W. of Cincinnati. Pop. (1890) 4284, (1900) 4326 (413 foreign-born); (1910) 3930. Lawrenceburg is served by the Baltimore & Ohio South-Western and the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis railways, by the Cincinnati, Lawrenceburg & Aurora electric street railroad, and by river packets to Louisville and Cincinnati. The city lies along the river and on higher land rising 100 ft. above river-level. It formerly had an important river trade with New Orleans, beginning about 1820 and growing in volume after the city became the terminus of the Whitewater canal, begun in 1836. The place was laid out in 1802. In 1846 an “old” and a “new” settlement were united, and Lawrenceburg was chartered as a city. Lawrenceburg was the birthplace of James B. Eads, the famous engineer, and of John Coit Spooner (b. 1843), a prominent Republican member of the United States Senate from Wisconsin in 1885–1891 and in 1897–1907; and the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceburg was the first charge (1837–1839) of Henry Ward Beecher.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lawson, Sir Wilfrid

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​LAWSON, SIR WILFRID, Bart. (1829–1906), English politician and temperance leader, son of the 1st baronet (d. 1867), was born on the 4th of September 1829. He was always an enthusiast in the cause of total abstinence, and in parliament, to which he was first elected in 1859 for Carlisle, he became its leading spokesman. In 1864 he first introduced his Permissive Bill, giving to a two-thirds majority in any district a veto upon the granting of licences for the sale of intoxicating liquors; and though this principle failed to be embodied in any act, he had the satisfaction of seeing a resolution on its lines accepted by a majority in the House of Commons in 1880, 1881 and 1883. He lost his seat for Carlisle in 1865, but in 1868 was again returned as a supporter of Mr Gladstone, and was member till 1885; though defeated for the new Cockermouth division of Cumberland in 1885, he won that seat in 1886, and he held it till the election of 1900, when his violent opposition to the Boer War caused his defeat, but in 1903 he was returned for the Camborne division of Cornwall and at the general election of 1906 was once more elected for his old constituency in Cumberland. During all these years he was the champion of the United Kingdom Alliance (founded 1853), of which he became president. An extreme Radical, he also supported disestablishment, abolition of the House of Lords, and disarmament. Though violent in the expression of his opinions, Sir Wilfrid Lawson remained very popular for his own sake both in and out of the House of Commons; he became well known for his humorous vein, his faculty for composing topical doggerel being often exercised on questions of the day. He died on the 1st of July 1906.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Milton (Pennsylvania)

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​MILTON, a borough of Northumberland county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Susquehanna river at the mouth of Limestone Run, about 66 m. N. of Harrisburg. Pop. (1890), 5317; (1900), 6175 (166 foreign-born); (1910), 7460. It is served by the Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia & Reading railways, and is connected with Lewisburg and Watsontown by an electric line. Milton has an attractive public park, is in an agricultural region, and has various manufactures. It was founded in 1792, and incorporated as a borough in 1817. In 1880 it was in great part destroyed by fire.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mimnermus of Colophon

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​MIMNERMUS of Colophon, Greek elegiac poet, flourished about 630–600 B.C. His life fell in the troubled time when the Ionic cities of Asia Minor were struggling to maintain themselves against the rising power of the Lydian kings. One of the extant fragments of his poems refers to this struggle, and contrasts the present effeminacy of his countrymen with the bravery of those who had once defeated the Lydian king Gyges. But his most important poems were a set of elegies addressed to a flute-player named Nanno, collected in two books called after her name. Mimnermus was the first to make the elegiac verse the vehicle for love-poetry. He set his own poems to the music of the flute, and the poet Hipponax says that he used the melancholy νόμος κραδίης, “the fig-branch strain,” said to be a peculiar melody, to the accompaniment of which two human purificatory victims were led out of Athens to be sacrificed during the festival of Thargelia (Hesychius, s.v.).
Edition of fragments in T. Bergk, Poetae lyrici Graeci; see also G. Vanzolini, Mimnermo (1883), a study of the poet, with notes and a metrical version of the fragments.