LOMONOSOFF LONDON. 



521 



the canal of Caraman, by a lateral canal, which still I there was a school at Moscow, in which scholars were 

 bears his name ; lie established institutions for educa- '' >-- T -*;_ ^ j c. u u_ 



tion, also hospitals, and several scholarships at the 

 military school at Toulouse. In 1770, he was made 

 a member of the academy, and, when Beaumont, the 

 archbishop of Paris, died, he would have obtained 

 that elevated situation, but for his attempts at a gene- 

 ral reform of the monasteries, which the bigots at 

 court could not forgive. At the first breaking out of 

 the discontents in France, Brienne was among the 

 most active. He was the first to raise his voice 

 against the administration of Calonne ; and, after the 

 dismission of that minister, the partisans of Brienne 

 induced Louis XVI. to place him, as his successor, 

 at the head of the finances. His brother, the count 

 de Brienne, was, at the same time, (1787), appointed 

 minister of war. The new financier shortly fell short 

 of the most moderate expectations ; and, if some 

 xcuse is found for him in the almost inextricable 

 confusion which reigned in the affairs of France at 

 this period, still his warmest defenders must allow 

 that, for once, at least, they were deceived in him. 

 The confusion increased daily, and the minister, 

 whose ambition had raised him to the rank of prime 

 minister, at this stormy period, showed himself des- 

 titute of ability and resources. Complaints were soon 

 raised against him on all sides, and, in August, 1788, 

 the king found himself compelled to dismiss him, and 

 to appoint Necker in his place ; who, however, as is 

 well known, was himself unable to quell the storm. 

 Brienne had previously been nominated archbishop of 

 Sens, in place of the cardinal De Luynes, and, to 

 console him for the loss of his place as minister, Louis 

 gave him some abbeys, and obtained for him, from 

 Pius VI.. a cardinal's hat. Brienne also took a 

 journey to Italy, but without visiting Rome, and re- 

 turned, in 1790, to France, to make arrangements for 

 the settlement of his debts, which, notwithstanding 

 his immense income, were so considerable as to com- 

 pel him to dispose of a portion of his valuable library. 

 The cardinal de Lomenie, as he was now called, took 

 the oath prescribed to the clergy by the constitution, 

 and, in March, 1691, he asked his dismission from 

 the college of cardinals a favour which Pius wil- 

 lingly granted. Brienne had hoped, by this step, to 

 save himself from the persecutions of the revolution- 

 ary party ; but he was arrested at Sens, in November, 

 1793, was released, and, subsequently, again arrested, 

 and, upon the morning of Feb. 16, 1794, was found 

 dead in his prison. The ill treatment and abuse 

 which he had suffered from his brutal guards, together 

 with an indigestion, had brought on an apoplexy, of 

 which he died, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. 

 His brother, the minister of war, Athanasius Louis 

 Marie de Lomenie, count de Brienne, whose suc- 

 cessor in the ministry was De la Tour du Pin, fell, 

 the same year, beneath the axe of the executioner. 

 There is an Oraison funebre du Dauphin (Paris, 

 1766), by the cardinal de Brienne. 



LOMONOSOFF, MICHAEL WASILOWJTZ ; the 

 creator of the modern poetical language of his 

 country, and the father of Russian literature ; born 

 in 1711, near Cholmogory, in the government of 

 Archangel, in the village of Denissowskaia, where a 

 monument was erected to his memory, in 1825, 

 through the influence of Neophytus, bishop of Arch- 

 angel. His father was a fisherman, whom he as- 

 sisted in his labours for the support of the family. In 

 winter a clergyman taught him to read. A poetical 

 spirit and a love of knowledge were awakened in the 

 boy by the singing of the psalms at church, and the 

 reading of the Bible. Without having received any 

 instruction, he conceived the plan of celebrating the 

 wonders of creation and the great deeds of Peter I., 

 <n songs similar to those of David. But, hearing that 



instructed in Greek, Latin, German, and French, h 

 secretly left his father's house, and went to the cap- 

 ital to seek that instruction which his inquisitive 

 spirit demanded. He was then sent to Kiev, and, in 

 1734, to the newly established academy of literature 

 at St Petersburg, where he studied natural science 

 and mathematics. Two years later, he went to 

 Germany, studied mathematics under Christian Wolf, 

 in Marburg, read the German poets, and studied the 

 art of mining, at Freyberg. On his journey to 

 Brunswick, he was seized by Prussian recruiting of- 

 ficers, and obliged to enter the service ; but, having 

 made his escape, he returned, by the way of Holland, 

 to St Petersburg (1741), where he received a situa- 

 tion in the academy, and was made director of the 

 mineralogical cabinet. Soon after, he published his 

 first celebrated ode (on the Turkish war and the 

 victory of Pultawa). The empress Elizabeth made 

 him professor of chemistry (1745), and, in 1752, he 

 received the privilege of establishing a manufactory 

 for coloured glass beads, &c. As he had been the 

 first to encourage an attempt at mosaic work in 

 Russia, the government confided to him the direction 

 of two large pictures in mosaic, intended to com- 

 memorate the deeds of Peter I. In 1760, the gym- 

 nasiums and the university were put under his 

 inspection ; and, in 1764, he was made counsellor of 

 state. He died April 4, 1765. Catharine II. caused 

 his remains to be deposited with great pomp in the 

 monastic church of saint Alexander Newski. Besides 

 odes and other lyric pieces, he wrote Petreide, a 

 heroic poem on Peter I., in two cantos, which is the 

 best work of the kind that Russia has yet produced. 

 Lomonosoff also wrote a Russian grammar, and sev- 

 eral works on mineralogy, metallurgy, and chemistry. 

 His Grammar, and his Sketch of Russian History, 

 have been translated into German and French. The 

 Russian academy published his works in 6 vols., 4to. 

 (2d edit., 1804, 3 vols.). Admiral Tschitschagoff has 

 written a Life of Lomonosoff. See Bowring's Rus- 

 sian Anthology. 



LOMUS, in Indian mythology; the first being 

 created by Brama, which, to give itself up entirely to 

 the contemplation of divine things, buried itself in 

 the earth, and whose life will last longer even than 

 that of Brama. In order to indicate the enormous 

 duration of the life of Lomus, the Indians say, that 

 Lomus has a body more than ninety miles long, cov- 

 ered with hair. Each time that a Brama dies, who 

 lives 360 days, each day being equal to 4320 human 

 years, Lomus 

 and when, at 



Vishnu and Mahadeva have ceased to live, then the 

 whole universe is dissolved, and all returns to chaos, 

 so that nothing remains but the eternal, original 

 being ; because with the last hair Lomus also dies. 



LON, or LUN ; a Gothic word, signifying wood. 

 London has been derived from it. 



LONDON, the metropolis of the British empire, 

 stands in lat. 51 31' N., and Ion. 5' 37" W. from the 

 observatory at Greenwich. It is situated in the 

 counties of Middlesex and Surrey, about sixty miles 

 west from the sea, on the banks of the Thames, the 

 mean width of which, at London, is about a quarter 

 of a mile, and its average depth about twelve feet. 

 The northern bank slopes gently upward, and its soil 

 is chiefly gravel and clay, with a mixture of loam 

 and sand. On the southern or Surrey side, the sur- 

 face is almost uniformly flat. The buildings on the 

 northern, or Middlesex shore, follow the natural bend 

 of the river, and rise somewhat amphitheatrically, 

 from east to west, stretching northward, on an av 

 erage length, to three miles from the river ; and 

 those on the southern or Surrey side, forming the 



pulls out a single hair from his body ; 

 last, all the hairs are gone, and even 



