LESSER ANTILLES 



3386 



LETTERS 



Following that action a company was formed 

 to begin actual work. De Lesseps was ap- 

 pointed to direct the construction and was also 

 made president of the company. After eight 

 years of little progress it was apparent that 

 operations could no longer be carried on with 

 the available funds, and under French manage- 

 ment the enterprise proved unsuccessful. See 

 SUEZ CANAL; PANAMA CANAL. 



LESSER ANTILLES, antil'eez. See AN- 

 TILLES. 



LESSING, les'ing, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM (1729- 

 1781), a German literary critic and dramatist, 

 the first of the classic German writers of highest 

 rank. His famous Letters, published between 

 1758 and 1765, give him a claim to the title 

 "Father of German Criticism," and his 

 Laokoon (1766), which sets forth his theory 

 of the nature of poetry and painting, worked 

 a revolution in the literary taste of his coun- 

 try. In the field of drama his work was like- 

 wise epoch-making in character. His first im- 

 portant play, Miss Sara Sampson (1755), is 

 the earliest "tragedy of common life" in Ger- 

 man literature, and its publication marked the 

 beginning of a new era in German drama. 

 Lessing's fundamental purpose was to emanci- 

 pate the national thought and taste from 

 French influences; in this he was supremely 

 successful. 



He was born on January 22, 1729, at Kamenz, 

 Saxony. At the age of seventeen he entered 

 the University of Leipzig, where he studied, 

 briefly, theology and medicine. Jlis strong 

 liking for theatrical and literary pursuits, how- 

 ever, caused him to abandon his university ca- 

 reer, and, settling in Berlin in 1749, he began 

 his life work as a writer of plays and of lit- 

 erary criticism. In 1760 he accepted a secre- 

 taryship under the governor of Breslau, but 

 returned to Berlin in 1765. In that city he 

 published Laokoon and Minna von Barnhelm; 

 the latter is not only his greatest drama, but 

 was considered the best play produced in Ger- 

 many up to that time. 



After an unsuccessful attempt to found a 

 national theater at Hamburg, in 1770, Lessing 

 became librarian at Wolfenbiittel. There he 

 remained for the rest of his life. Of his later 

 works the most important are a series of essays 

 on dramatic art, called the Dramaturgic; also 

 Emilia Galotti, a powerful tragedy based on 

 the Roman story of Virginia and Appius 

 Claudius; and Nathan the Wise, a philosoph- 

 ical drama inspired by the theological contro- 

 versies which occupied much of his later years. 



LETHBRIDGE, leth'bridj, the chief city of 

 the Medicine Hat district, Alberta, and the 

 third city in size in the province. It is situ- 

 ated on the Belly River, in the southern part 

 of Alberta, forty-eight miles north of the Mon- 

 tana state line. Lethbridge is the distributing 

 point for this section and for the lumbering 

 and mining districts of Southeastern British 

 Columbia, and is an important railway center. 

 It is a divisional point on the Crow's Nest 

 Pass branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway, 

 and is the terminus of branches to Calgary, 126 

 miles northwest, and to Cardston and other 

 towns to the south. Medicine Hat is 101 miles 

 east. Lethbridge was incorporated as a town 

 in 1890 and as a city in 1906; in 1912 it adopted 

 the commission plan of government. In 1911 

 the population was 8,050; in 1916, 9,437. 



Lethbridge is located in a district well adapted 

 to mixed farming; it produces live stock, poul- 

 try, grain, alfalfa, wool, clay and an abundance 

 of coal. There is a considerable area of the 

 land tributary to the city irrigated. There are 

 five big coal mines here, employing about 

 2,000 people. The manufactures include flour, 

 machine shop and foundry products, bricks, 

 boots and shoes. A Dominion experimental 

 farm is located here. The city has a post office, 

 a land office and customs building erected in 

 1914 at a cost of $300,000, a $100,000 court- 

 house, a Y. M. C. A. building, a high school 

 and a manual training school. Lethbridge is 

 the district headquarters 'of the Royal North- 

 west Mounted Police. J.MCC. 



LE'THE, from the Greek word lethe, mean- 

 ing jorgetfulness, was in ancient mythology one 

 of the five rivers of Hades. Its waters made 

 those who drank of them unmindful of the 

 past. Departed spirits before entering the 

 Elysian Fields drank to forget their earthly 

 cares; those who were to return to the upper 

 world in new bodies drank that they might 

 have no recollection of Elysian joys. The word 

 is used figuratively to denote oblivion or for- 

 getfulness, as in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleo- 

 patra: 



The conquering wine hath steeped our sense 



In soft and delict ie Lethe. 



LETTER OF CREDIT. See CREDIT, LETTER 

 OP. 



LETTERS, let'erz, as a branch of literature, 

 have a peculiar advantage over other forms, 

 in the greater freedom and spontaneity which 

 are possible to them. Not being intended for 

 publication, they may be intimate and private, 

 revealing clearly the personality of the writer 



