390 



LAUNCH LAUREL. 



its primary crystal, an oblique rhombic prism, of 

 which the inclination of the terminal plane is from 

 one acute angle to the other. It is white, sometimes 

 wiih a tinge of red, and is translucent, and hard 

 enough to scratch glass. By exposure to the air 

 (even n very short time), it becomes opaque, tender, 

 iind eventually falls into a white powder ; specific 

 gravity, 2'2. Before the blow-pipe, it intumesces, 

 and fuses with difficulty into a colourless glass. It is 

 composed of silex 48'50, alumine 22-10, lime 12-10, 

 and water 16-00. It was first noticed in the lead- 

 mines of Huelgoet, lining the cavities of veins. It 

 has since been found in trap in Ireland and Faroe, 

 Transylvania, Nova Scotia, and in the United States, 

 near New Haven, Connecticut. 



LAUNCH. See Boat. 



LAUNCHING. See Ship. 



LAURA ; Petrarch's mistress. It was long 

 erroneously supposed that this lady, who has been 

 celebrated in the sweetest strains of poetry, was 

 only an allegorical person, or a descendant of the 

 houses of Ciiabaud and Sade, who remained single, 

 and lived at Vaucluse, where the poet had an oppor- 

 tunity of becoming acquainted with her. According 

 to the investigations of the abbe Sade, Memoires pour 

 In f'iede Francois Petrarque (Amsterdam, 176467, 

 3 vols. , 4to); of Tiraboschi, in his History of Italian 

 Literature ; of Baldelli, Del Petrarca (Florence, 

 1797, 4to); of the abbe Arnavon, Petrarque d Vau- 

 cluse, and Retour de la Fontaine de Vaucluse (Paris, 

 1803, and Avignon, 1805); of Guerin, Description de 

 la Fontaine de Vaucluse (Avignon, 1804, 12mo); 

 and, lastly, of Ginguene, in his Histoire litteraire 

 d' Italic (2d vol.), Laura was descended from the old 

 Provengal family of Noves, which has now been 

 extinct 300 years, and was the daughter of the che- 

 valier Audibert Noves, who lived in Avignon. She 

 was born at the village of Noves, or in Avignon, in 

 1307 or 1308, and, after the death of her father, who 

 left her, his oldest daughter, a large fortune, she 

 married (1325) the young Hugh de Sade, of a dis- 

 tinguished family in Avignon. Laura was one of 

 the most beautiful women of the city, which, being 

 at that time the residence of the pope, attracted 

 many strangers. Among them was the young Pe- 

 trarch, whose ancestors had been banished from 

 Tuscany, during the quarrels of the Guelphs and 

 Ghibelines. It was on the 6th of April, 1327, on 

 Monday of the passion-week, at six o'clock in the 

 morning, that Petrarch, then twenty-three years old, 

 first saw, as he himself says, the beautiful Laura, in 

 the church of the nuns of St Clara ; and, from that 

 moment, he was seized with a passion as violent as it 

 was lasting. His vain efforts to lead her from the 

 path of duty, and his ineffectual attempts to conquer a 

 hopeless passion, plainly show that his love was by 

 no means Platonic. He acknowledges, however, that 

 he never received the smallest favour from her, and 

 bestows the highest praise on her virtue. Laura 

 certainly felt flattered by the devotion of the young 

 poet, and was polite and kind towards him, as long 

 as she saw nothing in his attentions to alarm her; 

 but treated him with severity whenever he endea- 

 voured to express the warmth of his passion. For 

 more than twenty years, Petrarch sang the object of 

 his love, and endeavoured to excite a reciprocal 

 passion, or to conquer his own. During this long 

 period, by alternate severity and kindness, Laura 

 succeeded in retaining him a captive to her charms, 

 without ever suffering the least stain on her honour. 

 She never saw the poet in her own house, because 

 the manners of the time, as well as the jealousy of 

 her husband, forbade it. After her marriage, she 

 always lived at Avignon, in the house of her father- 

 in-law, sit'iated on the Rhone, below the papal 



palace; and it was from the summit of the rock, on 

 which the palace was built, that Petrarch delighted 

 to gaze on her, as she walked in her garden. In the 

 same year (1334), that Petrarch went to Vaucluse, to 

 recover his peace of mind in this lovely solitude, 

 Laura was attacked by an epidemic disease, which 

 mailf great ravages ; but she recovered, and was 

 dearer than ever to the poet. In 1339, the painter 

 Simon of Sienna, who had been called to Avignon to 

 adorn the papal palace, painted Laura's picture, and 

 gave it to the poet, who repaid him with two son- 

 nets. Whether Laura consented to have her por- 

 trait taken for Petrarch, or whether he only obtained 

 a copy, or whether the image of the beautiful lady 

 was so deeply stamped on the mind of the painter, 

 that he could afterwards paint her from recollection, 

 cannot now be ascertained ; but it is certain, that he 

 afterwards introduced Laura into several pictures, 

 as, for instance, those on the ceiling of the cathedral 

 at Avignon. When Petrarch returned to Avignon, 

 after having been crowned with laurel at the capitol, 

 Laura, whether flattered by his fame, or touched by 

 the constancy of a lover whom long absence had 

 rendered more dear to her, received him kindly. 

 Petrarch saw her more frequently, and his visits to 

 Vaucluse became less frequent and long. His poems, 

 which were spread all over Europe, made the beauty 

 of his mistress very celebrated, and all strangers, 

 who came to Avignon, wished to see Laura. Charles 

 of Luxemburg, afterwards the emperor Charles IV., 

 saw her at a ball which was given him, and, beckon- 

 ing to the other ladies to make way, he approached 

 her, and kissed her on the forehead and eyes. But 

 the repeated fatigues of maternity, and the domestic 

 trouble which she suffered from the ill humour of her 

 husband, and the bad conduct of her eldest daughter, 

 made at length such a change in her appearance, 

 that those who saw her for the first time were disap- 

 pointed. A pestilence which arose in the East, and 

 spread desolation over Europe for three years, at 

 length reached Avignon, in 1348, and, on the 6th 

 April, at six o'clock in the morning, the hour which 

 Petrarch has designated, in his mournful recollections, 

 as that of the birth of his love, Laura fell a victim to 

 this disease, and was buried on the same day, in the 

 church of the convent of the Minorites. In 1533, 

 some antiquaries obtained permission to open Laura's 

 grave. They found a parchment enclosed in a leaden 

 box, on which was written a sonnet, bearing Pe- 

 trarch's signature. It was not, however, written in 

 the spirit of that celebrated poet, but appeared to be 

 the work of a friend. They also found a medal, 

 bearing a female figure, with the inscription M. L. 

 M. J. (perhaps, Madonna Laura Morta, face). Fran- 

 cis I., who visited Avignon the same year, sought 

 out Laura's grave, wrote an epitaph on her, and 

 ordered a monument to be erected to her ; but it was 

 never done. The box and the medal were pur- 

 chased (1730), of the under sacristan, by some Eng- 

 lishmen ; but the sonnet was lost, when the castle, 

 belonging to the family of Sade, was destroyed, in 

 1791. The tomb itself was overturned, together 

 with the church, during the revolution. The pre- 

 fect of Vaucluse (1804) caused the tomb stone, which 

 had been given to the family of Sade, to be placed 

 in the old cathedral of Avignon. The abbe Costaing 

 has endeavoured to prove, without any sufficient 

 grounds, that Petrarch's Laura was descended from 

 the family of Baux, and was the daughter of Adhe- 

 mar de Baux. (See his La Muse de Petrarque dans 

 les Collines de Vaucluse, Paris and Avignon, 1819). 

 See the article Petrarch. 



LAUREL (laurus) ; a genus of plants consisting 

 of trees or shrubs, mostly aromatic, and often remark- 

 able for the beauty of their foliage. The leaves are 



