LISLE, or Lille, an arrondissement of the department of the North, in France. It extends over 356 square miles, is divided into sixteen cantons, and subdivided into 129 communes, which together contain 241,800 inhabitants. The capital is the city of the same name, the most celebrated fortified place in Europe, and in the most fertile district of rrance. It is situated on the river Deule, which is navigable for barges and other small craft. The streets are broader than is usual in fortified places, and the new part of the city is handsome. Some of the public buildings, especially the theatre, the exchange, the barracks, and St Stephen’s church, are fine. It contains 11,500 houses, and 62,500 inhabitants, who are occupied in numerous manufactures, though most of them are on a small scale. The most important are sugar-refining, glass-making, weaving linen, cotton, and woollen goods. The spinning of lace, and making of thread, employs many hands, as does the fabrication of pillow-lace. A vast quantity of seed-oil and of oil-cake is also made, both for domestic use and for exportation. Long. 2. 59. 11. E. Lat. 50. 37. 50. N.

Lisle, Joseph Nicholas de, an eminent astronomer and geographer, was born at Paris in the year 1688. His father having taught him the principles of grammar, he afterwards attended lectures in Mazarin College, where he delivered rhetorical exercises in the year 1706. A total eclipse of the sun having taken place on the 12th of March in that year, his taste for mathematics was thus discovered, and he was accordingly placed under a proper tutor, who taught him the elements of geometry, fortification, and mechanics; but his favourite study was the science of astronomy.

In 1707, he obtained the place of engineer at Martinico which made him acquainted with the art of drawing’; an acquisition which proved highly useful to him in his geographical labours, and also in the study of astronomy. His father having procured a copy of an Account of a Voyage to the South Sea, from his son’s master, young De Lisle was excited by the perusal of it to the study of natural history, and began to make collections of insects, and sketch their varieties; but being afterwards persuaded that a study requiring such immense collections to be made as he found in Aldrovandus, was wholly incompatible with the unremitting attention which his favourite science required, he relinquished it entirely. The attention he paid to astronomical researches was so great, that he was considered as meriting the correspondence of some of the ablest astronomers of Europe at the early age of twenty-one. In 1709 he made a wooden quadrant, which he divided with the utmost accuracy, and which answered the intended purpose in his early observations. He likewise constructed a table for Cassini, of the right ascensions and declinations, adapted to all the degrees of latitude and longitude of the planets, and the obliquity of the ecliptic; and this table was made use of by Cassini in foretelling the occultations of the stars by the moon.

De Lisle being informed by Cassini in 1710 of his method of representing an eclipse of the sun, by the projection of a terrestrial parallel on a plane, he instantly conceived the idea of applying it to every part of the earth, by means of a globe mounted and prepared for that purpose. Such astronomers as he made acquainted with his project conceived it to be impracticable; but when the machine was completed, they bestowed the highest encomiums on the noble invention. The first memorable observation made by De Lisle was that of the moon, on the 23d of January 1712, after which his labours experienced some interruption from indisposition. About this time the situation of his father’s numerous family rendered it necessary that he should provide for himself, so that he was obliged to make his astronomical knowledge subservient to the absurdities of astrology, receiving pecuniary presents from the regent for his services. He also received, in 1715, the grant of a pension of six hundred livres, on which occasion he calculated tables of the moon according to the Newtonian theory, prior to Halley’s communications to him, which were printed in 1719. De Lisle was chosen a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1714.
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In 1720 he delivered a proposal to the academy for ascertaining in France the figure of the earth, a design which was carried into execution some years afterwards. In 1723 he delivered to the same body a memoir on the transits of Mercury, wherein a method of calculating them was proposed by him, as well as the way in which they were to be observed, and the inferences to be deduced from these observations. He proposed the use of the quadrant in observing the transits of Venus and Mercury, which has been found superior to any other instrument for that important purpose, and is sanctioned since his day by the practice of the ablest astronomers.

De Lisle visited England în the year 1724, and there became acquainted with Newton and Halley, and had the honour of obtaining their approbation. Newton made him a present of his own portrait, and Halley gave him a copy of the tables which he had published in 1719. He was also created a member of the Royal Society, and enjoyed similar honours from every literary society in Europe before his death. In 1721 he received an invitation from Peter the Great to go to St Petersburg to fill the chair of astronomer in the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Upon the death of that emperor, his successor Catharine renewed the invitation, at the same time offering him a considerable pension, which he accepted, and, in 1726, set out for St Petersburg, accompanied by his brother Louis and Μ. Vignon, who were to act as his assistants. He reached St Petersburg in the month of October, and was established in the observatory erected by Peter the Great, which he occupied for twenty-one years. It was in every respect commodious, but extremely deficient in astronomical apparatus, which his own ingenuity and indefatigable application in a great measure supplied.

A transit of Mercury over the sun’s disc was expected in the year 1740, which would not be visible in Europe, and therefore De Lisle undertook a journey to the distant regions of Asia; but after travelling through the inhospitable wũlds of Siberia, the cloudiness of the atmosphere prevented him from observing the transit; a mortification which he endeavoured to support by his geographical and physical remarks, and in drawing up a description of the country. He constructed an interesting map of Russia, assisted by his brother Louis, who was appointed to make observations in the most distant parts of that immense empire. He was occasionally employed for the long period of forty years in making meteorological observations, which he executed with an accuracy almost incredible.

After a number ofdiscouragements and difficulties, and the irregular payment of his pension, had been long experienced by De Lisle at St Petersburg, he returned disgusted to his native place, and was chosen professor of mathematics at the Royal College, where he rendered the most essential service to the sciences, by the important instructions which he gave to his numerous pupils, many of whom became afterwards the most distinguished characters, such as MM. de Lalande and Messier.

When the transit of Mercury over the sun was eagerly expected in 1753 by the greatest astronomers, De Lisle published an interesting map of the world, representing the effect of Mercury’s parallaxes in different countries, that those places might be known which were proper for making such observations on the transit as might determine the distance of the sun. As the apparent orbit of the planet traversed nearly the centre of the sun, De Lisle made use of this circumstance to determine the diameter of that luminary. The last work of our author which was inserted in the volumes of the French Academy was a memoir on the comet which appeared in the year 1758, discovered by a peasant in the vicinity of Dresden.

It may perhaps be asserted with justice, that the most important service which he rendered to astronomers was the correction of the double error of Halley respecting the transit of Venus, looked for in the year 1761, as by this means he prevented many learned men from undertaking long voyages in order to observe it. About the year 1754, De Lisle was appointed by the king of France astronomical geographer to the marine, in which capacity he was employed to collect plans and journals of naval captains, to arrange them methodically, and to make extracts from them of whatever might be beneficial to the service. About the year 1758 he withdrew into retirement at the abbey of St Genevieve, where much of his time was spent in devotional exercises, and in acts of charity and beneficence. Still, however, he continued to prosecute those studies which had been so dear to him during the earlier part of his life. In 1768, he was seized with a scorbutic complaint, of which he was cured by his medical friends; but in the month of September of the same year he was seized with a species of apoplexy, which carried him off on the 11th of that month, in the eighty-first year of his age.

His extraordinary merit as a man of science may in some measure be gathered from this concise account of his life; and, as a citizen of the world, his piety was unaffected, his morals pure, his integrity undeviating, his spirit generous and disinterested, and his whole manners highly amiable. The only publication of his, besides those already mentioned, consisted of Memoirs illustrative of the History of Astronomy, in two vols. 4to.