(Latin Lausonium; Italian Losanna), a city of Switzerland, the capital of the canton of Vaud, stands on the lower slopes of the Mount Jorat, on the northern shore of the Lake of Geneva. As it is built on three distinct eminences and the intervening gorges, its streets are steep and irregular, and few of its houses are built on the same level. One of the ravines is spanned by a lofty bridge, called the Pont Pichard. The principal edifice is the cathedral, founded in the tenth, and finished in the thirteenth century. For the beauty of its interior, it surpasses all the churches in Switzerland. It is crowned by a lofty tower and a spire 200 feet high, and contains the tombs of Amadeus VIII., Duke of Savoy, and Bernard de Menthon, founder of the Hospice of the Great St Bernard. John Kemble, the famous actor, was also buried here. From the terrace of the cathedral a fine view of the Lake of Geneva and the vicinity is obtained. On a higher platform, behind the cathedral, stands the castle, a massive square building, with turrets at the angles. It was formerly the residence of the bishops of Lausanne, but is now the council-house of the canton. The other public buildings are the church of St Francis, a college, a cantonal museum, containing many curiosities, natural and antiquarian, a theatre, prison, penitentiary, post-office, and normal school. The manufactures of Lausanne are few, comprising only cotton and woollen cloths, leather, paper, and jewellery. There is little trade; and foreigners resort to the city chiefly on account of its cheap education and the beauty of the surrounding scenery. Haller, Tissot, and Voltaire resided here. Here Gibbon wrote the latter half of his History, in a house which, under its present name of the Hotel Gibbon, is one of the notoriety of the city. At Ouchy, the port of Lausanne, Byron composed his "Prisoner of Chillon." Between this port and other towns on the Lake of Geneva, steamboats ply regularly. Pop. 17,108.

Laval, a town of France, capital of the department of Mayenne, is situated on the Mayenne, a tributary of the Loire, 157 miles W. by S. of Paris by railway. It stands on a declivity on the W. side of the river, which is here crossed by two bridges, connecting the proper town with a large suburb. The streets of the town are narrow, steep, crooked, and dirty. The houses are almost all built of wood, in the old French style, each storey jutting out beyond the one underneath, thus rendering the streets dark and gloomy. Laval proper is inclosed by old walls, now in a state of decay. The suburb on the opposite side of the river is of recent date, and is laid out on a regular plan, having wide and regular streets. This faubourg forms a third of the entire town, and is the residence of the better class of the inhabitants. The village of Averières also adjoins the town, and may be considered as another suburb. It contains a fine old church in the Norman style, erected in the year 1010. The principal edifices of Laval belong to the middle ages. An old castle of the twelfth century, now used as a gaol, stands on the right bank of the river, near the old bridge; it was formerly held by the Counts of Laval and Trémouille. The cathedral, the church of St Véran, and two hospitals, are nearly of the same age as the castle, and are worthy of attention as curious specimens of Gothic architecture. The linen hall is a large and handsome building of recent date. Ambrose Paré, the father of French surgery, was born here in 1509; and a statue to his memory has been erected in the Place de l'Hotel de Ville. Laval may now be considered as wholly a manufacturing town, its staple articles being linens and ticking, for which it has long been famous. Besides these, however, it also manufactures cotton, flannels, soap, and leather, and possesses a considerable trade in wine, brandy, and marble. The town is the see of a bishop, and contains a tribunal of first instance and a chamber of commerce.

Laval probably owes its origin to a castle built here in the earlier part of the middle ages, to protect the surrounding country from the raids of the Bretons. This fortress was destroyed by the Northmen in the ninth century, but was afterwards rebuilt and possessed by the Laval family for many years, until it fell into the hands of the English under Lord Talbot in 1466. Next year, however, it was recovered by the French, and the castle returned to its former owners. In more modern times Laval was the scene of a memorable conflict between the Royalists and Republicans. In 1793 the Vendéens, under Larochejaquelin, carried this town at the point of the bayonet, and then marching against the Republicans under Lechelle, routed them at a place called Les Croix de Bataille, a little distance S. of Laval. Pop. (1851) 17,538.

Lavater, Johann Caspar, the "Fénélon of Germany," as he is very frequently styled by his German admirers, was born in 1741 at Zürich, where his father was a physician. In his youth he was a timid, solitary child, sensitive and thoughtful; but his shrinking nature was often roused to heroism when he was called to stand forth as a champion in domestic troubles, or in exposing wrongs at school. In early youth he dedicated himself to the church, and Goethe has characterized him as one of the few "fortunate men whose outward vocation perfectly harmonizes with the inner one, and whose earliest culture, coinciding in all points with their subsequent pursuits, gives a natural development to their faculties." In 1762 he entered on the duties of the ministry, and in the two following years travelled in Germany along with Fuseli the painter, and studied theology under Spalding; but it may be easily understood how a mind so observant should learn theology more from instinct in his contact with men than by analytic criticism from hooks or lectures. In 1764 he returned to preach in his native town, where he was appointed preacher, first of the Orphan House, and afterwards of the Petrus Kirche, and this latter duty he continued to discharge till his death.

It was as a preacher and a poet that he first became known to fame, and it is needless to try to sever the two vocations, as his preaching often soared into poetry, and his poetry seldom rose above the level of his preaching. His Swiss Songs and Hymns, and his Peeps into Eternity (Aussichten in die Ewigkeit), were the first of a series of works, in which he was almost as voluminous as Luther, and which may be taken as the types of all his productions, either purely literary, or more strictly religious. With Hamann (the Magus of the North), Claudius, and Jung-Stilling, he was one of a small band who struggled to revive Christianity as a personal faith on historical and living, in contrast with a mythical and passionless, Saviour. In his pulpit he was listened to by thousands, his correspondence extended to all Europe, and when he went out of doors, the people of Zürich kissed him in the streets. In the poetic field he had greater rivals. Klopstock and Cramer were then in the height of their fame, and his poems were too purely an imitation of the former. Like Klopstock, Lavater wrote a Messiah (1780), the Messiah of Martha or common life, as Hamann called it, in opposition to that of Mary or unearthly sublimity. In the lower range of sentiment, Lavater's Sacred Songs have found a secure resting-place in the world. His own spiritual life, however, was too restless and passionate to write long-lived or widely popular hymns; and in sober moments, his songs, whether patriotic or religious, seem far too rhetorical and over-drawn. His Peeps into Eternity are peculiarly characteristic, and throw a strange light on the earnestness with which afterwards, as a physiognomist, he gazed on human faces. The leading principle of the book is the dependence of the celestial state on the education and pursuits of this world; and with this he constructs a fantastic but startling anthropology of a celestial kingdom, "in which the day-labourer will be as indispensable as the king." For himself, he writes to the friend to whom he dedicates the book, he had chosen the pursuit of teaching the children to sing songs in heaven. Unlike Swedenborg, however, Lavater put forth his theory as a conjecture, not as the product of celestial vision. This work was followed by the Pantius Pilatus oder die Bibel in Kleinereu (4 vols., 1782-1785), another picture of the lights and shades of humanity; Die Handbibliothek für Freunde (24 vols., 1790); his Diary, 1771-1773; and his Nathanael, dedicated to Goethe, as a "Nathanael whose hour had not yet come."

Previously to this, however (in 1773-78), there had appeared his Physiognomic Fragments, a profusely illustrated book in four quarto volumes, and published at L.15. It was the result of many years' close observation, and has since been issued in almost every form in all the languages of Europe. Its publication created everywhere a profound sensation. Admiration, contempt, resentment, and fear were cherished towards the author. The discoverer of the new science was everywhere flattered or pilloried; and in many places, where the study of human character from the face became an epidemic, the people went masked through the streets. Musäus and Lichtenberg assailed him with ridicule, but their arrows glanced harmless from the broad shield of Goethe. The principle of the study is at once true and false. Lavater's great error consisted in attempting to elevate it to the dignity of science (see Kant's Anthropology), but this is easily pardonable, when we remember how securely and felicitously he handled the most obscure facts on which he built his theory. In stating his method he studi- ously lets it be seen that he founded his conclusions on the total impression of the face; and he is anxious to discriminate his own science from the science of Phthisiognomy, or the outward expression of occasional passions. It cannot be denied that many of his observations show the keenest sagacity, and it is equally true that his delineations are given, not in irony, but in the profoundest love for everything human.

In his declining years, physiognomy itself gave place to even wilder and more objectionable pursuits in the mind of Lavater. From the dreams of his childhood he had believed firmly in the sensible manifestation of supernatural powers, and, still a child in his old age, he gave the most ample credence to the stories of exorcism of devils and miracles by animal magnetism, which were then current all over Europe. Of whatever extravagance he was guilty, and it was greatly exaggerated, his defence is noble, that with his finger on a truth, he was not ashamed to confess where he had learned it, and that it was treason to Christianity itself to reject a true fact merely because it was known and attested by Mesmer, Secinus, Rousseau, Spinoza, or Cagliostro. It is characteristic of the man, and undoubtedly redounds to his credit, that in the religious world he was accused of all heresies, from Atheism to Crypto-Jesuitism, because he dared to acknowledge the truth that was in most, while in the inner intolerance of his own faith he rejected the falsehood that infected all.

His friendship with Goethe is one of the most affecting episodes of literary history. In 1778 they had begun to correspond, and soon after the two friends met at Frankfurt. They travelled together with all the glee of children escaped from school, and in Goethe's autobiography we have an amusing sketch of a journey from Coblenz to Neuwied with Lavater and Basedow:

"Propheten rechts; propheten links; Das Weltkind in der Mitte."

"He is the best, greatest, wisest, sincerest (innigst) of all mortal and immortal men that I know," wrote Goethe soon afterwards. "He is the flower of humanity, the best of the best," he wrote again, after having visited Lavater in Zurich. Their friendship continued till the publication of Pontius Pilate, when Goethe recoiled from the picture which his friend had drawn of the no-Christian, as he confessed himself to be. From that hour the poet's affection was changed into Julian hatred, never to be appeased. In the summer of 1797 Goethe was in Zurich, and walked often in the Peterplatz before Lavater's door. They did not, however, meet. Lavater visited the hotel, and, as a pledge of friendship, wrote his name, upon the room door, but this appeal to their former intimacy was in vain.

With all the Swiss love of freedom, Lavater hailed the French Revolution. After the death of the king, however, his admiration was changed into horror, and in the pulpit he declaimed against the French party with a zeal which cost him a quick and summary banishment. Surrounded with bayonets and dragoons, he quietly allowed himself to be hurried off, saying, with a smile, that "he had never travelled with such pomp before." The popular indignation however, took fire at the outrage, and he was soon after permitted to return. On the 26th September 1799, Massena took Zurich, and Lavater received his death-wound on the streets while protecting a poor woman from assault, and ministering bread and wine to the soldiers. The grenadier who shot him was, according to Jung-Stilling, a Swiss, who knew the fatal power with which Lavater had denounced the tyranny of revolution. Lavater is said to have recognized the man, but in his verses of forgiveness he did not divulge his name. He died 2d January 1801.

A good selection of his voluminous works has been edited by Orelli. His Life has been written by Gessner, and more recently by F. W. Bodemann, Gotha, 1866.

LAVAUR, a town of France, capital of a cognominal arrondissement in the department of Tarn, stands on the left bank of the Agout, here crossed by a handsome bridge, 25 miles S.W. of Alby. In the thirteenth century it was a stronghold of the Albigenese, but was taken in 1211, after a vigorous resistance, by Simon de Montfort, who massacred the inhabitants without distinction of age or sex. Lavaur has a communal college, public library, and 7113 inhabitants, chiefly employed in the manufacture of silk serge, hosiery, cotton yarn, and leather. It is the entrepôt for the silk of Upper Languedoc.

LAVENDER. See Botany, Nat. Ord., 163; and Perfumery.

LAVENHAM, or LANHAM, a market-town of England, county of Suffolk, on a branch of the Bret, 16 miles W.N.W. of Ipswich, and 62 miles from London. It consists of several streets, with a spacious market-place, having a stone cross in the centre. The parish church is a handsome edifice, with a spire 142 feet high, and having the timber ceiling and several of the pews richly carved. Lavenham was formerly noted for its manufacture of woollen cloth, which subsequently gave way to that of hempen goods, but now its manufactures are unimportant. Market-day, Tuesday. Pop. of parish (1851) 1811.

LAVINIUM, an ancient city of Latium, founded by Aeneas in honour of his wife Lavinia, between Laurentum and Ardea. At first it retained its importance, probably as a religious centre, in opposition to the claims of Alba, but it sunk after the fall of that city. Although on friendly terms, it seems, along with Laurentum, to have retained a certain measure of independence. In the time of Trajan, under the name of Lauro-Laviniun, it united with Laurentum, and flourished for a few years.

LAVOISIER, ANTOINE LAURENT. See Sixth Dissertation, § 605.

LAVORO, TERRA DI. See Terra di Lavoro.