text:
Weird Tales/Volume 45/Issue 4/An Offering to the Moon

"I believe," announced Morley, "that the roofless temples of Mu were not all devoted to solar worship, but that many of them were consecrated to the moon. And I am sure that the one we have now discovered proves my point. These hieroglyphics are lunar symbols beyond a doubt."

Thorway, his fellow-archaelogist, looked at Morley with a surprise not altogether due to the boldly authoritative pronouncement. He was struck anew by the singularity of Morley's tones and expression. The dreamy, beardless, olive featutes, that seemed to repeat some aboriginal Aryan type, were transfigured by a look of ecstatic absorption. Thorway himself was not incapable of enthusiasm when the occasion seemed to warrant it; but this well-nigh religious ardor was beyond his comprehension. He wondered (not for the only time) if his companion's mentality were not a trifle... eccentric.

However, he mumbled a rejoinder that was deferential even though non-committal. Morley had not only financed the expedition, but had been paying a liberal stipend to Thorway for more than two years. So Thorway could afford to be respectful, even though he was a little tired of his employer's odd and unauthorized notions, and the interminable series of sojourns they had made on Melagesian isles. From the monstrous and primordial stone images of Easter Island to the trun- cated pyramidal columns of the Ladrones, they had visited all the far-strewn remains which are held to prove the former existence of a great continent in the mid-Pacific. Now, on one of the lesser Marquesas, hitherto unexplored, they had located the massive walls of a large temple-like edifice, As usual, it had been difficult to find, for such places were universally feared and shunned by the natives, who believed them haunted by the immemorial dead, and could not be hired to visit them or even to reveal their whereabouts. It was Morley who had stumbled upon the place, almost as if he were led by a subconscious instinct.

Truly, they had made a significant discovery, as even Thorway was compelled to admit. Except for a few of the colossal topmost stones, which had fallen or splintered away, the walls were in well-nigh perfect preservation. The place was surrounded by a tangle of palms and jackfruit and various tropical shrubs; but somehow none of them had taken root within the walls. Portions of a paved floor were still extant, amid centurial heaps of rubble. In the center was a huge, square block, rising four feet above the ground-level, which might well have served as an altar. It was carved with rude symbols which appeared to represent the moon in all its digits, and was curiously grooved across the top from the middle to one side with a trough that became deeper toward the edge. Like all other buildings of the sort, it was plain that the temple had never supported a roof.

"Yes, the symbols are undoubtedly lunar," admitted Thorway.

"Also," Morley went on, "I believe that rites of human sacrifice were performed in these temples. Oblations of blood were poured not only to the sun but to the moon."

"The idea is maintainable, of course," rejoined Thorway. "Human sacrifice was pretty widespread at a certain stage of evolution. It may well have been practiced by the people who built this edifice."

Morley did not perceive the dryness and formality of his confrere's assent. He was preoccupied with feelings and ideas, some of which could hardly have been the natural result of his investigations. Even as in visiting many others of the ancient remains, he had been troubled by a nervous agitation which was a compound of irresoluble awe and terror, of nameless, eager fascination and expectancy. Here, among these mighty walls, the feeling became stronger than it had been anywhere else; and it mounted to a pitch that was veritably distracting, and akin to the disturbed awareness that ushers in the illusions of delirium.

His idea, that the temple was a place of lunar worship, had seized him almost with the authority of an actual recollection, rather than a closely reasoned inference. Also, he was troubled by sensory impressions that bordered upon the hallucinative. Though the day was tropically warm, he was conscious of a strange chill that emanated from the walls — a chill as of bygone cycles; and it seemed to him that the narrow shadows wrought by a meridian sum were peopled with unseen faces. More than once, he was 'prompted to rub his eyes, for ghostly films of color, like flashes of yellow and purple garments, came and went in the most infinitesimal fraction of time. Though the air was utterly still, he had the sense of perpetual movement all around him, of the passing to and fro of intangible throngs. It was many thousand years, in all likelihood, since human feet had trodden these pavements; but Morley could have cried aloud with the imminence of the longdead ages. It appeared to him, in a brief glimpse, that his whole life, as well as his journeyings and explorations in the South Seas, had been but a devious return to some earlier state of being; and that the resumption of this state was now at hand. All this, however, continued to perplex him mightily: it was as if he had suffered the intrusion of an alien entity.

He heard himself speaking to Thorway, and the words were unfamiliar and remote, as if they had issued from the lips of another.

"They were a joyous and a child-like race, those people of Mu," he was saying; "but not altogether joyous, not wholly child-like. There was a dark side... and a dark worship — the cult of death and night, personified by the moon, whose white, implacable, frozen lips were appeased only by the warm blood that flowed upon her altars. They caught the blood in goblets as it ran from the stone grooves... they raised it aloft... and the goblets were swiftly drained in mid-air by the remote goddess, as if the sacrifice had proven acceptable."

"But how do you know all this?" Thorway was quite amazed, no less by his companion's air than by the actual words. Morley, he thought, was less like a modern, every-day American than ever. He remembered, inconsequently, how all the natives of the various island groups had taken to Morley with an odd friendliness, without the reserve and suspicion often accorded to other white men. They had even warned Morley against the guardian spirits of the ruins — and they did not always trouble to warn others. It was almost as if they regarded him as being in some manner akin to themselves. Thorway wondered... though he was essentially unimaginative.

"I tell you, I know," Morley said, as he walked up and down beside the altar. "I have seen..." his voice trailed off in a frozen whisper, and he seemed to stiffen in every limb, and stood still as with some momentary catelepsy. His face grew deadly pale, his eyes were set and staring. Then, from between rigid lips; he uttered the strange words, "Rhalu muvasa than," in a monotonous, hieratic tone, like a sort of invocation.

Morley could not have told what it was that he felt and saw in that moment. He was no longer his known and wonted self; and the man beside him was an unheeded stranger. But he could remember nothing afterwards — not even the odd vocals he had uttered whatever his mental experience may have been, it was like a dream that fades instantly when one awakens. The moment passed, the extreme rigidity left his limbs and features, and he resumed his interrupted pacing.

His confrere was staring at him in astonishment, not unmingled with solicitude.

"Are you ill? The sun is pretty hot today. And one should be careful. Perhaps we had best return to the schooner. "

Morley gave a mechanical assent and followed Thorway from the ruins towards the seashore, where the schooner they had used in their voyaging was anchored in a little harbor less than a mile distant. His mind was full of confusion and darkness. He no longer felt the queer emotions that had seized him beside the altar, nor could he recall them otherwise than dimly. All the while he was trying to recollect something which lay just below the rim of memory; something very momentous, which he had forgotten long, long ago.

Lying in a cane couch beneath an awning on the schooner's deck, Morley drifted back to his normal plane of consciousness. He was not unwilling to accept Thorway's suggestion, that he had suffered a touch of sun among the ruins. His ghostly sensations, the delirium-like approach to a state of awareness which had no relation to his daily life, were now unlikely and unreal, In an effort to dismiss them altogether, he went over in his mind the whole of the investigative tour be had undertaken, and the events of the years preceding it.

He remembered his youthful luctations against poverty, his desire for that wealth and leisure which alone makes possible the pursuit of every chimera; and his slow but accelerative progress when once he had acquired a modicum of capital and had gone into business for himself as an importer of Oriental rugs. Then he recalled the chance inception of his archaeological enthusiasm — the reading of an illustrated article which described the ancient remains on Easter Island. The insoluble strangeness of these little-known relics had thrilled him profoundly, though he knew not why; and, he had resolved to visit them some day. The theory of a lost continent in the Pacific appealed to him with an almost intimate lure and imaginative charm; it became his own particular chimera, though he could not have traced to their psychal origin the feelings behind his interest. He read everything procurable on the subject; and as soon as his leisure permitted, he made a trip to Easter Island. A year later, he was able to leave his business indefinitely in the hands of an efficient manager. He hired Thorway, a professional archaeologist with much experience in Italy and Asia Minor, to accompany him; and purchasing an old schooner, manned by a Swedish crew and captain, he had set out on his long, devious voyage among the islands.

Going over all this in his thoughts, Morley decided that it was now time to return home. He had learned all that was verifiable regarding the mysterious ruins. The study had fascinated him as nothing else in his life had ever done; but for some reason his health was beginning to suffer. Perhaps he had thrown himself too assiduously into his labors; the ruins had absorbed him too deeply. He must get away from them, must not risk a renewal of the queer, delusory sensations he had experienced. He recalled the superstitions of the natives, and wondered if there were something in them after all; if unwholesome influences were attached to those primeval stones. Did ghosts return or linger from a world that had been buried beneath the waves for unknown ages? Damn it, he had almost felt at times as if he were some sort of revenant himself.

He called to Thorway, who was standing beside the rail in conversation with one of the Norse sailors.

"I think we have done enough for one voyage, Thorway," he said. "We will lift anchor in the morning and return to San Francisco."

Thorway made little effort to conceal his relief. He did not consider the Polynesian isles a very fruitful field for research: the ruins were too old and fragmentary, the period to which they belonged was too conjectural, and did not deeply engage his interest.

"I agree," he rejoined. "Also, if you will pardon me for saying it, I don't think the South Sea climate is one of ideal salubriousness. I've noticed occasionally indispositions on your part for some time past."

Morley nodded in a weary acquiescence. It would have been impossible to tell Thorway his actual thoughts and emotions. The man was abysmally unimaginative.

He only hoped that Thorway did not think him a little mad — though, after all, it was quite immaterial.

The day wore on; and the swift, purpureal darkness of eventide was curtailed by the rising of a full moon which inundated sea and land with warm, ethereous quicksilver. At dinner, Morley was lost in a taciturn abstraction; and Thorway was discreetly voluble, but made no reference to the late archaeological find. Svensen, the captain, who ate with them, maintained a monosyllabic reticence, even when he was told of the proposed return to San Francisco. After eating, Morley excused himself and went back to the cane couch. Somewhat to his relief, he was not joined by Thorway.

Moonlight had always aroused in Morley a vague but profound emotion. Even as the ruins had done, it stirred among the shadows of his mind a million ghostly intimations; and the thrill he felt was at times not unalloyed with a cryptic awe and trepidation, akin, perhaps, to the primal fear of darkness itself.

Now, as he gazed at the tropic plenilune, he conceived the sudden and obsessing idea that the orb was somehow larger, and its light more brilliant than usual; even as they might have been in ages when the moon and earth were much younger. Then he was possessed by a troublous doubt, by an inenarrable sense of dislocation, and a dream-like vagueness which attached itself to the world about him. A wave of terror surged upon him, and he felt that he was slipping irretrievably away from all familiar things. Then the terror ebbed; far that which he had lost was far off and incredible; and a world of circumstances long-forgot was assuming or resuming, the tinge of familiarity.

What, he wondered, was he doing on this queer ship? It was the night of the sacrifice to Rhalu, the selenic goddess; and he, Matla, was to play an essential part in the ceremony. He must reach the temple ere the moon had mounted to her zenith above the star-stone. And it now lacked only an hour of the appointed time.

He rose and peered about with questioning eyes. The deck was deserted, for it was unnecessary to keep watch in that tranquil harbor. Svensen and the mate were doubtless drinking themselves to sleep as usual; the sailors were playing their eternal whist and pedro; and Thorway was in his cabin, probably writing a no-lesseternal monograph on Etruscan tombs. It was only in the most remote and exiguous manner that Morley recollected their existence.

Somehow, he managed to recall that there was a boat which he and Thorway had used in their visits to the isle; and that this boat was moored to the schooner's side. With a tread as lithe and supple as that of a native, he was over the rail and was rowing silently shoreward. A, hundred yards, or little more, and then he stood on the moon-washed sand.

Now he was climbing the palm-clustered hill above the shore, and was heading toward the temple. The air was suffused with a primal, brooding warmth, with the scent, of colossal flowers and ferns not known to modern botanists. He could see them towering beside his way with their thick, archaic fronds and petals, though such things have not lifted to the moon for aeons. And mounting the crest of the hill, which had dominated the little isle and had looked down to the sea on two sides, he saw in the mellow light the far, unbounded reaches of a softly rolling plain, and sealess horizons everywhere, that glowed with the golden fires of cities. And he knew the names of these cities, and recalled the opulent life of Mu, whose prosperity had of late years been menaced by Atlantean earthquakes and volcanic upheavals. These, it was believed, were owing to the wrath of Rhalu, the goddess who controlled the planetary forces; and human blood was being poured in all her fanes to placate the mysterious deity.

Morley (or Matla) could have remembered a million things; he could have called to mind the simple but strange events of his entire pre-existence in Mu, and the lore and history of the far-flung continent. But there was little room in his consciousness for anything but the destined drama of the night. Long ago (how long he was not sure) he had been chosen among his people for an awful honor; but his heart had failed him ere the time ordained, and he had fled. Tonight, however, he would not flee. A solemn religious rapture, not untinged with fear, guided his steps toward the temple of the goddess.

As he went on, he noticed his raiment, and was puzzled. Why was he wearing these ugly and unseemly garments? He began to remove them and to cast them aside one by one. Nakedness was ordained by sacerdotal law for the role he was to play.

He heard the soft-vowelled murmur of voices about him, and saw the multi-colored robes or gleaming amber flesh of forms that flitted among the archaic plants. The priests and worshippers were also on their way to the temple.

His excitement rose, it became more mystical and more rhapsodic as he neared his destination. His being was flooded by the superstitious awe of ancient man, by the dreadful reverence due to the unknown powers of nature. He peered with a solemn trepidation at the moon as it rose higher in the heavens, and saw in its rounded orb the features of a divinity both benign and malevolent.

Now he beheld the temple, looming whitely above the tops of titan fronds. The walls were no longer ruinous, their fallen blocks were wholly restored. His visit to the place with Thorway was dim as a fever fantasy; but other visits during his life as Matla, and ceremonials of the priests of Rhalu which he had once beheld, were clear and immediate in his memory. He knew the faces he would see, and the ritual wherein he would participate. He thought mostly in pictures; but the words of a strange vocabulary were ready for his recollection; and phrases drifted through his mind with unconscious ease; phrases that would have seemed untelligible gibberish an hour before.

Matla was aware of the concentrated gaze of several hundred eyes as he entered the great, roofless fane. The place was thronged with people, whose round features were of a pre-Aryan type; and many of the faces were familiar to him. But at that moment all of them were parcel of a mystic horror, and were awesome and obscure as the night. Nothing was clear before him, save an opening in the throng, which led to the altar-stone around which the priests of Rhalu were gathered, and wherein Rhalu herself looked down in relentless, icy splendor from an almost vertical elevation.

He went forward with firm steps. The priests, who were clad in lunar purple and yellow, received him in an impassive silence. Counting them, he found that there were only six instead of the usual seven. One there was among them who carried a large, shallow goblet of silver; but the seventh, whose hand would lift the long and curving knife of some copperish metal, had not yet arrived.

Thorway had found it curiously hard to apply himself to the half-written monograph on Etruscan tombs. An obscure and exasperating restlessness finally impelled him to abandon his wooing of the reluctant muse of archaeology. In a state of steadily mounting irritation, wishing that the bothersome and unprofitable voyage were over, he went on deck.

The moonlight dazzled him with its preternatural brilliance, and he did not perceive for a few moments that the cane couch was empty, When he saw that Morley was gone, he experienced a peculiar mixture of alarm and irritation. He felt sure that Morley had not returned to his cabin. Stepping to the schooner's shoreward side, he noted with little surprise the absence of the moored boat. Morley must have gone ashore for a moonlight visit to the ruined temple; and Thorway frowned heavily at this new presumptive evidence of his employer's eccentricity and aberration. An unwonted of responsibility: deep and solemn, stirred him. He seemed to hear an inward injunction, a half-familiar voice, bidding him to take care of Morley. This unhealthy and exorbitant interest in a more than problematic past should be discouraged or at least supervised.

Very quickly, he made up his mind as to what he should do. Going below, he called two of the Swedish sailors from their game of pedro and had them row him ashore in the ship's dinghy. As they neared the beach the boat used by Morley was plainly visible in the plumy shadow of a clump of seaward-leaning palms.

Thorway, without offering any explanation of his purpose in going ashore, told the sailors to return to the ship. Then, following the well-worn trail toward the temple, he mounted the island-slope.

Step by step, as he went on, he became aware of a strange difference in the vegetation. What were these monstrous ferns and prinordial-looking flowers about him? Surely it was some weird trick of the moonlight, distorting the familiar palms and shrubs. He had seen nothing of the sort in his daytime visits, and such forms were impossible, anyway. Then, by degrees, he was beset with terrible doubt and bewilderment. There came to him the ineffably horrifying sensation of passing beyond his proper self, beyond all that he knew as legitimate and verifiable. Fantastic, unspeakable thoughts, alien, abnormal imphlses, thronged upon him from the sorcerous glare of the effulgent moon. He shuddered at repellent but insistent memories that were not his own, at the ghastly compulsion of an unbelievable command. What on earth was possessing him? Was he going mad like Morley? The moon-bright isle was like some bottomless abyss of nightmare fantasy, into which he sank with nightmare terror.

He sought to recover his hard, materialistic sanity, his belief in the safe literality of things. Then, suddenly and without surprise, he was no longer Thorway.

He knew the real purpose for which he had come ashore — the solemn rite in which he was to play an awful but necessary part. The ordained hour was near -- the worshippers, the sacrifice and the six fellow-priests awaited his coming in the immemorial fane of Rhalu.

Unassisted by any of the priests, Matla had stretched himself on the cold altar. How long he lay there, waiting, he could not tell. But at last, by the rustling stir and murmur of the throng, he knew that the seventh priest had arrived.

All fear had left him, as if he were already beyond the pain and suffering of earth. But he knew with a precision well-nigh real as physical sight and sensation the use which would be made of the copperish knife and the silver goblet.

He lay gazing at the wan heavens, and saw dimly, with far-focused eyes, the leaning face of the seventh priest. The face was doubly familiar... but he had forgotten something. He did not try to remember. Already it seemed to him that the white moon was drawing nearer, was stooping from her celestial station to quaff the awaited sacrifice. Her light blinded him with unearthly fulgor; but he saw dimly the flash of the falling knife ere it entered his heart. There was an instant of tearing pain that plunged on and on through his body, as if its tissues were a deep abyss. Then a sudden darkness took the heavens and blotted out the face of Rhalu; and all things, even pain, were erased for Matla by the black mist of an eternal nothing.

In the morning, Svensen and his sailors waited very patiently for the return of Morley and Thorway from the island. When afternoon came and the two were still absent, Svensen decided that it was time to investigate.

He had received orders to lift anchor for San Francisco that day; but he could not very well depart without Thorway and Morley.

With one of the crew, he rowed ashore and climbed the hill to the ruins. The roofless temple was empty, save for the plants that had taken root in the crevices of its pavement. Svensen and the sailor, looking about for the archaeologists, were horrified from their stolidity by the stains of newly dried blood that lined the great groove in the altar-block to its edge.

They summoned the remainder of the crew. A daylong search of the little island, however, was without result. The natives knew nothing of the whereabouts of Morley and Thorway, and were queerly reticent even in avowing their ignorance. There was no place where the two men could have hidden themselves, granting that they had any reason for a procedure so peculiar. Svensen and his men gave it up. If they had been imaginative, it might have seemed to them that the archaeologists had vanished bodily into the past.


text: Don Quixote on Market Street

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Don Quixote on Market Street


text:
Author:Barack Hussein Obama/Senatorial Speeches

As Illinois State Senator (D)

 * Iraq Speech (2 October 2002)

As United States Senate candidate (D-Ill)

 * Statement on Darfur, Sudan (7 October 2004)
 * Election night speech (2 November 2004)

As United States Senator (D-Ill)

 * Commencement address at Knox College (4 June 2005)
 * Securing Our Energy Future (15 September 2005)
 * Moving Forward In Iraq (22 November 2005)
 * Remarks at the Lobbying Reform Summit (26 January 2006)
 * Energy Security is National Security (28 February 2006)
 * The Coming Storm: Energy Independence and the Safety of Our Planet (April 3, 2006)
 * University of Massachusetts at Boston Commencement Address (2 June 2006)
 * Remarks on Taking Back America (14 June 2006)
 * Northwestern University Commencement Address (16 June 2006)
 * "Call to Renewal" Keynote Address (28 June 2006)
 * Campus Progress Annual Conference (12 July 2006)
 * Xavier University Commencement Address (11 August 2006)
 * An Honest Government, A Hopeful Future (28 August 2006)
 * A Way Forward in Iraq (20 November 2006)
 * Decision to Form a Presidential Exploratory Committee (16 January 2007)
 * The Time Has Come for Universal Health Care (25 January 2007)


text:
Author:Barack Hussein Obama/2008 Presidential Campaign

The following speeches were delivered by Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign season, presidential transition, and president-elect period:

2008 Presidential campaign

 * Announcement to Run for U.S. President (10 February 2007)
 * Selma Voting Rights March Commemoration (4 March 2007)
 * Remarks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (23 April 2007)
 * Remarks to the California State Democratic Convention (2 May 2007)
 * Remarks to the National Conference of Black Mayors (5 May 2007)
 * Remarks to the Detroit Economic Club (7 May 2007)
 * Remarks at Southern New Hampshire University Commencement (19 May 2007)
 * Cutting Costs and Covering America: A 21st Century Health Care System (29 May 2007)
 * Remarks to the Hampton University Annual Ministers' Conference (5 June 2007)
 * Take Back America 2007 (19 June 2007)
 * Taking Our Government Back (22 June 2007)
 * Remarks to the National Education Association Annual Meeting (5 July 2007)
 * Changing the Odds for Urban America (18 July 2007)
 * Remarks of Senator Barack Obama to Caucus4Priorities (October 2007)
 * Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Dinner Speech (10 November 2007)
 * The Bedrock of This Nation (3 January 2008)
 * New Hampshire Primary Speech (8 January 2008)
 * The Great Need of the Hour - given at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s church in Atlanta, Georgia (20 January 2008)
 * On My Faith and My Church (14 March 2008)
 * A More Perfect Union - given across from Liberty Hall, Philadelphia (18 March 2008)
 * U.S. Economy Speech (27 March 2008)
 * Press conference re: Jeremiah Wright (29 April 2008)
 * The Full Measure of Their Devotion (26 May 2008)
 * Remarks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (4 June 2008)
 * Remarks to the Health Care Town Hall (5 June 2008)
 * Remarks on Chicago's 2016 Summer Olympic bid (6 June 2008)
 * Remarks at Carnegie Mellon University (26 June 2008)
 * Remarks on Patriotism given in Independence, Missouri (30 June 2008)
 * A World that Stands as One given in Berlin (24 July 2008)
 * New rules for a 21st century economy (16 September 2008)
 * Press conference re: the economic crisis (23 September 2008)
 * Election victory speech in Chicago (4 November 2008)
 * Communication From the Honorable Barack Obama (19 November 2008) (resignation from the United States Senate)

The Obama-Biden Transition Project

 * Remarks to the Bipartisan Governors Climate Summit (18 November 2008)
 * Remarks to the International Olympic Committee (21 November 2008)
 * Remarks on the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (28 November 2008)
 * Remarks on World AIDS Day (1 December 2008)
 * Remarks to the National Governors Association (2 December 2008)
 * The Change.gov Agenda (3 December 2008)
 * Remarks on rising unemployment rates (4 December 2008)
 * Interview on Meet the Press (7 December 2008)
 * Remarks on Human Rights Day (10 December 2008)
 * Remarks on the auto-industry bailout (12 December 2008)
 * Remarks on Bill Richardson's withdrawal (4 January 2009)
 * The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan (8 January 2009)
 * Interview on This Week (11 January 2009)
 * A Better World in Our Time (17 January 2009)
 * Voices Calling for Change (18 January 2009)

Press Conferences as President-elect

 * The State of Our Economy (7 November 2008)
 * Economic Policy Team I (24 November 2008)
 * Economic Policy Team II (25 November 2008)
 * Economic Policy Team III (26 November 2008)
 * National Security Team (1 December 2008)
 * Secretary of Commerce (3 December 2008)
 * Secretary of Veterans Affairs (7 December 2008)
 * Secretary of Health and Human Services (11 December 2008)
 * Energy & Environment Team (15 December 2008)
 * Secretary of Education (16 December 2008)
 * Agriculture and the Interior (17 December 2008)
 * Financial Regulatory Team (18 December 2008)
 * Labor, Transportation, USTR, and SBA (19 December 2008)


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Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/202

Rh 2. ‘Report on the Age of the Utrecht Psalter,’ 1874. 3. ‘The Library of Corpus Christi College,’ 1891. He left by will to his college his collection of coins, gems, vases, and archæological books (now known as the Lewis collection), and the reversion of his personal estate. The gems were catalogued by Professor Middleton in 1892.

 LEWIS, STUART (1756?–1818), Scottish poet, born about 1756 at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, son of an innkeeper with Jacobite sympathies, was named after Prince Charles the young Pretender. His school career was shortened by his father's early death. For a time he was in partnership as a merchant tailor in Chester, but being ruined by his partner returned to Ecclefechan to carry on the same occupation. He read much and wrote popular verses, besides establishing and fostering a village library and a debating club. But his business did not prosper, and he enlisted into the Hopetoun Fencibles. Here he somewhat augmented his regulation pay by what he received for writing suitable lyrics for the officers. On the disbanding of the regiment in 1799 Lewis was employed as a travelling cloth-merchant in the west of England, but he fell a victim to intemperance, and from about his fiftieth year roamed over Scotland as ‘the mendicant bard,’ picking up a livelihood as ‘beggar, ballad-vendor, and tinker’ (Bards of Bon-Accord, p. 648). Fever, induced by a fall into the Nith, ended in his death at Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, 22 Sept. 1818. His wife died a year before.

While at Ecclefechan Lewis produced his poem on ‘Fair Helen of Kirkconnell,’ Edinburgh, 1796, 8vo. The poem was afterwards published for the author at Aberdeen in 1816. The preface, in which he tries to settle the history of the famous legendary ballad on the same theme, is interesting and valuable (Scots Musical Museum, iv. 208*). ‘Moranza, or the African Slave, an Address to Poverty, and an Elegy on a Young Gentleman who died at Angola,’ was published at Edinburgh, 1816, 8vo. Of his miscellaneous lyrics ‘O'er the Muir’ is noteworthy both for its intrinsic merits and because it is either an anticipation or an expansion of ‘O'er the Muir amang the Heather,’ by Jean Glover (1758–1801) [q. v.] Lewis averred that his piece was the earlier (Gallovidian Encyclopædia, p. 338), but the precise relationship of the two cannot be determined.

 LEWIS, THOMAS (1689–1749?), controversialist, son of Stephen Lewis, vicar of Weobly and rector of Holgate, Shropshire, was born at Kington, Herefordshire, on 14 March 1688–9. He was educated at Hereford ‘Free Schole’ under a Mr. Traherne, was admitted a Bible clerk at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, whence he matriculated 3 July 1704, graduated B.A. in 1711, does not appear to have proceeded M.A., but was ordained priest in 1713 at Worcester. Four years later he established a periodical publication entitled ‘The Scourge, in vindication of the Church of England.’ This sheet, which appeared every Monday, was characterised by violent and trenchant abuse of dissenters, broad churchmen, and papists alike. On 15 July 1717 the writer denounced Hoadly from the text, ‘Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defie the Armes of the Living God?’ Six weeks later he headed an attack on Scottish presbyterianism with the words, ‘Every beast loveth his like.’ Such high-flying sentiments being little to the taste of the party in power, his paper was presented by the grand jury of Westminster as the work of a libeller and an embroiler of the nation, and Lewis, who promptly absconded, was ordered to stand his trial for sedition at the king's bench. In the meantime there appeared ‘The Scourge Scourged, or a short Account of the Life of the Author of the Scourge,’ full of violent and obscene abuse of Lewis and his ‘weekly excrement.’

From his hiding-place Lewis defiantly issued ‘The Danger of the Church Establishment of England from the Insolence of the Protestant Dissenters, wherein it appears from their late writing that they have attempted to subvert the Liturgy, the Canons, Articles and the whole Discipline of the Church of England, to Ruin the Reputation of the Universities and the Episcopal Clergy, and to inflame the minds of the People against the Established Form of Church Government in this Kingdom. In a Letter to Sir John Smith [his accuser in the matter of the “Scourge.”] “Heu pietas, heu prisca fides,”’ London, 1718. This epistle, which included a bitter attack upon Hoadly, rapidly passed through two editions, and was shortly answered by a comparatively moderate, though anonymous, pamphlet entitled ‘A brief Answer to a long Libel.’ Lewis had the last word in the controversy with his ‘Anatomy of the Heretical Synod of Dissenters at Salter's Hall,’ 1719. Lewis's remaining writings, enumerated below, are less acrimoniously controversial; all alike are supported by much erudition and ingenuity. About 1720 Lewis appears to have been acting as


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Rh curate at St. Clement Danes. In 1735 he writes from Hampstead, where he kept for several years a private boarding-school. Leaving Hampstead in 1737 he settled at Chelsea, whence he sent an account of his life to Rawlinson on 12 Sept. 1737. The date of his death does not appear to be known, but he is probably the ‘Rev. J. Lewis’ whose death took place at Chelsea, according to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ on 8 Sept. 1749.

He wrote, besides the works already noticed: 1. ‘An Historical Essay upon the Consecration of Churches,’ 1719. 2. ‘The Nature of Hell-Fire, the Reality of Hell-Fire, and the Eternity of Hell Torments explain'd and Vindicated,’ 1720. 3. ‘The Obligation of Christians to beautify and adorn their Churches, shewn from the authority of the Holy Scriptures, from the Practice of the Primitive Church, and from the Discipline of the Church of England Established by Law,’ London, 1721. 4. ‘Seasonable Considerations on the Indecent and Dangerous Custom of Burying in Churches and Church Fields,’ 1721. 5. ‘The History of Hypatia. A most impudent School-Mistress of Alexandria. Murdered and torn to pieces by the Populace. In defence of Saint Cyril and the Alexandrian Clergy from the Aspersions of Mr. Toland,’ 1721: a reply to the third section of Toland's ‘Tetradymus’ (1720). 6. ‘Origines Hebrææ. The Antiquities of the Hebrew Republick, in 4 books, designed as an exposition of every branch of Levitical Law and all the Ceremonies of the Hebrews, both civil and sacred,’ London, 1724, 8vo. This laborious compilation from the most distinguished writers, Jewish and Christian, was reprinted at the Clarendon press in 1834, 3 vols. 8vo. A summary of the contents is given in Darling's ‘Cyclopedia,’ col. 1835. 7. ‘Churches no Charnel Houses,’ a reiteration of the arguments used in No. 4. 8. ‘The History of the Parthian Empire … contained in a succession of twenty-nine Kings, compiled from the Greek and Latin Historians and other Writers,’ 1728. 9. ‘An Enquiry into the Shape, the Beauty, and Stature of the Person of Christ and of the Virgin Mary offered to the consideration of the late Converts to Popery,’ 1735; a learned and acute disquisition, in which, after comparing and carefully discounting the evidence for and against the personal beauty of Jesus, he concludes that the latter was in appearance rather mean and ill-favoured. It is dedicated to the Bishop of London. He also edited a translation of Bishop Sanderson's ‘Casus Conscientiæ,’ under the title ‘A Preservation against Schism and Rebellion,’ 1722, 8vo.

LEWIS, THOMAS FRANKLAND (1780–1855), politician, only son of John Lewis of Harpton Court, Radnorshire, by his second wife, Anne, second daughter of Admiral Sir Thomas Frankland, bart. [q. v.], was born in London 14 May 1780. He was educated at Eton, where his name appears in the school lists for 1793 and 1796, and afterwards proceeded to Christ Church, but took no degree there. From 1806 to 1815 he was lieutenant-colonel of the Radnorshire militia. He was M.P. for Beaumaris from 1812 till 1826, when he was returned for Ennis. This seat he quitted in February 1828 for Radnorshire, which he represented till his retirement in 1834 on becoming chairman of the poor-law commission, but he again sat in parliament for the Radnor Burghs from 1847 until his death. From an early date he was employed in political and administrative posts of the second rank. He was appointed a member of the commission to inquire into the Irish revenue in 1821, of that to inquire into the revenue of Great Britain and Ireland in 1822, and was from 1825 to 1828 a member of the commission on Irish education. Being an adherent of Canning, he was, on 4 Sept. 1827, appointed joint-secretary to the treasury, and from February to May 1828, when he retired with Huskisson, he was vice-president of the board of trade. On taking this office he was sworn of the privy council. In February 1830 he succeeded John Charles Herries [q. v.] in the treasurership of the navy, when Herries was sent to the board of trade; but he personally added little strength to the Wellington administration, and, although the salary of his post was reduced from 3,000l. to 2,000l. by the pressure of the opposition, the fact that the post was filled up at all exposed the ministry to the charge of having broken their pledges of economy. In August 1834 the whig ministry made him chairman of the new English poor-law commission. He displayed much administrative prudence, and in 1836, when the Irish poor-law commissioners had reported somewhat hastily in favour of extensive reclamation works (see State Papers, 1836, xxx. 3), he induced the ministry to send his colleague, Nicholls, to Ireland to report independently on the subject (for this report see Parl. Papers, 1839, li. 255). In 1839 he resigned


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Rh lor, and was a zealous member of the high church party. In February 1617–18 he was elected, by the influence of the chancellor, provost of Oriel. Wood ascribes his election to a faction of Welshmen. Lewis held the post for four years, in spite of his youth, and in spite of the scandalous rumours about his mode of life, which doubtless were aggravated, if they were not originated, by his puritan enemies. Acting on Bacon's advice, Lewis made himself an expert in the art of writing persuasive letters, and successfully begged subscriptions for the rebuilding of his college, contributing 100l. himself for the same purpose long afterwards (1637). On Bacon's fall Lewis, no longer able to withstand his enemies, abruptly resigned the provostship (21 June 1621) and went to Paris, where he was frequently employed in diplomatic business. On his return he became chaplain and secretary to George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, accompanied the duke to Rochelle in 1627, and remained in his service till the duke's assassination (1628), when he became chaplain to Charles I on Laud's recommendation (, Canterburies Doom, p. 66). Before setting out for the Rochelle expedition, on 25 May 1627, he was created D.D. at Oxford by royal letters patent, in which the king dwelt on the diligence and ability Lewis had displayed ‘in some affairs of weight wherein he had in foreign parts employed him.’ After Buckingham's expedition to Rhé, Lewis drew up ‘The General Relation of a Voyage to Rhé,’ which Wood saw in manuscript, a folio of eighteen pages. It was apparently never published. He was rewarded for his services by a canonry of Winchester, in which he was installed on 24 March 1627, and he was made master of the hospital of St. Cross 6 Feb. 1628. He was incorporated D.D. at Cambridge in 1629, and in 1631 became rector of East Woodhay, Hampshire. Lewis was ejected under the Commonwealth from all his preferments and forced to fly abroad, where his two sons became Roman catholics. He is probably the William Lewis whose estate of Llanwyby, Merionethshire, was declared forfeit for treason by act of parliament 18 Nov. 1652. He was reinstated to both his posts at the Restoration, and died at the hospital of St. Cross 7 July 1667. He was buried in the chapel there. Dr. Milner gives the Latin inscription from his gravestone, which is before the altar steps (History of St. Cross, p. 28).

LEWIS, WILLIAM (1714–1781), chemist, son of John Lewis of London, was born in 1714. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 17 March 1730–1, graduated B.A. in 1734, and proceeded M.A. 1737, M.B. 1741, M.D. 1745. At the opening of the Radcliffe Library in 1749 Lewis delivered the oration. He practised as a physician, and in 1745 was living in Dover Street, London, but shortly afterwards removed to Kingston-upon-Thames. On 31 Oct. 1745 he was admitted F.R.S.; he died on 21 Jan. 1781. Lewis was eminent for his writings on the Pharmacopœia. His chief works were: 1. ‘A Course of Practical Chemistry,’ London, 1746, 8vo. 2. ‘Pharmacopœia Edinburgensis,’ London, 1748, 8vo. 3. ‘The New Dispensatory,’ London, 1753, 8vo, Edinburgh, 1781, 1791. 4. ‘Experimental History of the Materia Medica,’ London, 1761, 4to; 2nd edit. 1768; 3rd edit. by J. Aiken, 1784; German translation, 1771. 5. ‘Commercium Philosophico-Technicum,’ London, 1763–6, 4to. He also published translations of Caspar Neuman's chemical works in 1759, and (posthumously) of Hoffman's ‘System of the Practice of Medicine,’ 1783. Two papers by him upon platinum appeared in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1754 and 1757 respectively. In 1767 the Society for the Improvement of Arts, Manufactures, &c., of which he was one of the founders, awarded him a gold medal for an essay upon ‘Potashes.’

LEWIS, WILLIAM (d. 1855?), writer on chess and chess-player, played in 1821 a match at Paris with Des Chapelles, the leading player in France previous to De la Bourdonnais, receiving the odds of the pawn and one move. Lewis won the first game in twenty-seven moves, the second and third being drawn (, Selection of Games at Chess, 1836, p. 273). Subsequently he settled in Nassau Street, Soho, London, and was well known as a teacher of chess. Among his pupils was Alexander McDonnell [q. v.] Some beautiful games, in which Lewis gave his pupil a pawn and move and generally won (though it is said that McDonnell could afterwards have given the same odds to him or any other English player), are given in Walker's ‘Thousand Games’ (pp. ix, 82–4). Lewis is believed to have died on 8 Feb. 1855 at New Cross (Gent. Mag. 1855, i. 442.)


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Rh Lewis was the author of numerous works on chess, mostly elementary in character. The chief of these are: 1. ‘A Treatise on the Game of Chess,’ 1814, 8vo; reduced for Bohn's Series, 1858. 2. ‘Oriental Chess, or Specimens of Hindostanee Excellence in that celebrated Game,’ London, 2 vols. 12mo, 1817. Taken largely from ‘Les Stratagêmes des Echecs,’ Strasburg, 1802. 3. ‘Greco's celebrated Treatise on Chess, with numerous Remarks … by W. L.,’ 8vo, 1819. 4. ‘Carrera's Treatise on Chess, to which is added the Art of Playing without seeing the Board,’ 8vo, 1822. 5. ‘A Selection of Games at Chess played at the Westminster Chess Club between M. L. C. De la Bourdonnais, the best Player in France, and an English Amateur of first-rate Skill’ (McDonnell), London, 8vo, 1835. 6. ‘Fifty Games at Chess, played by the Author and some of the best Players in England, France, and Germany, to which is added an Account of the Village of Stroebeck, Germany, and of the Game practised there,’ London, 8vo, 1835.

LEWIS, WILLIAM GARRETT (1821–1885), baptist minister, eldest son of William Garrett Lewis, was born at Margate 5 Aug. 1821. His father, who was in business at Margate, moved to Chatham, where he was ordained and became minister of the Zion Chapel in 1824; he was the author of ‘Original Hymns and Poems on Spiritual Subjects,’ London, 1827. The son was educated at Gillingham, Margate, and Uxbridge, and from 1837 to 1840 was articled to Dr. Gray, a Brixton schoolmaster. In 1840 he obtained a clerkship in the post office, went to live at Hackney, and became an active baptist. Being chosen a minister, he worked from September 1847 at the chapel in Silver Street, Kensington Gravel Pits. On 6 April 1853 the new chapel built by his congregation in Leding Road, Westbourne Grove, was opened, and there he continued to preach with great success till the end of 1880. On 3 Jan. 1881 his congregation presented him with four hundred guineas, and he removed to the chapel in Dagnal Street, St. Albans. Lewis was one of the founders of the London Baptist Association, of which he was secretary from 1865 to 1869 and president in 1870. For nearly twenty years he was editor of the ‘Baptist Magazine.’ He died 16 Jan. 1885 at his house in Victoria Street, St. Albans, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery. He married, in December 1847, the youngest daughter of Daniel Katterns of the East India Company. His wife predeceased him, leaving a son and a daughter. Lewis was an excellent preacher and lecturer, and a man of great piety. His chief works were: 1. ‘The Religion of Rome examined,’ London, 1851, 16mo. 2. ‘Westbourne Grove Sermons,’ London, 1872. 3. ‘The Trades and Occupations of the Bible,’ London, 1875; a translation (with alterations) of this work appeared in Welsh, London, 1876.

LEWIS, WILLIAM THOMAS (1748?–1811), called ‘Gentleman’ Lewis, actor, of Welsh descent, the son of William Lewis, a linendraper on Tower Hill, London, subsequently an actor and manager in Ireland, was born at Ormskirk, Lancashire, in or about 1748. His grandfather is stated to have been a clergyman in Glamorganshire, and his great-grandfather, Erasmus Lewis [q. v.] He was educated at Armagh and is said to have been dandled as an infant in the arms of Don John in the ‘Chances.’ Later he was Jeremy, the sleeping boy, in ‘Barnaby Brittle,’ and was first called Mr. in the playbill when he acted Colonel Briton in Mrs. Centlivre's comedy, the ‘Wonder.’ Under Dawson Lewis appeared (1770–71) at Capel Street Theatre, Dublin; another member of the company, Miss Leeson, subsequently became his wife. On 26 Feb. 1770 he was Sir Harry Newburgh in Hugh Kelly's ‘False Delicacy.’ Hastings in ‘Jane Shore’ followed. On 19 Feb. 1771 he was Belcour in the ‘West Indian,’ a part he made wholly his own. On 4 May 1772 Tate Wilkinson, who speaks of him as a sprightly lad, saw him play at Crow Street Theatre Romeo to the Juliet of Mrs. Sparks, and on 28 May Young Belfield in the ‘Brothers.’ Lewis sprang rapidly to the front of popularity in Dublin, supporting, says Hitchcock, ‘a very extensive and varied line of business in tragedy and comedy with great ability’ (View of the Irish Stage, ii. 207), and he is stated to have conducted himself ‘with so much good sense and propriety as to defy malice to point out a blemish’ (ib. ii. 236).

On 15 Oct. 1773, in his favourite character of Belcour in the ‘West Indian,’ Lewis made his first appearance at Covent Garden, where he was well received and sprang into immediate repute. During the season he played Posthumus, Aimwell, Lothario, Florizel in the ‘Winter's Tale,’ Prince of Wales in the ‘First Part of King Henry IV,’ Antonio in ‘Don Sebastian,’ Valentine in ‘Love for Love,’ Petruchio, Lorenzo in the


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Rh ‘Spanish Fryar,’ Carlos in the ‘Revenge,’ and Campley in the ‘Funeral,’ besides a number of original parts in new plays (see list below). Lewis remained at Covent Garden to the close of his career, only quitting it on excursions to Liverpool in the summers of 1776 and 1777, to Birmingham in 1779, and to Dublin in 1806. During this period he played more characters, original and established, than almost any other English comedian on record. He had at first a predilection for serious and poetical parts, and Romeo, Edgar, Hotspur, Philaster, Cassio, Young Norval, Orestes, and Hamlet diversify a list including also Trinket, Sir George Airy, Sir Brilliant Fashion, Mirabell, Mercutio, Touchstone, Sir Courtly Nice, and Sir Harry Flutter. When, however, in 1782 he became deputy-manager of Covent Garden, he practically abandoned his experiments in serious characters.

Lewis created many characters of high and some of primary importance. He was the first Faulkland in the ‘Rivals,’ Wyndham in the ‘Man of Reason,’ Sir Charles Racket in ‘Three Weeks after Marriage,’ Counsellor Witmore in Kenrick's ‘Duellist’ (20 Nov. 1773), Beverley in Colman's ‘Man of Business’ (1774), Arviragus in Mason's ‘Caractacus,’ Millamour in Murphy's ‘Know your own Mind,’ Doricourt in the ‘Belle's Stratagem,’ Egerton in the ‘Man of the World,’ Sir Harry Portland in Holcroft's ‘Duplicity,’ Beauchamp in Mrs. Cowley's ‘Which is the Man?’ On 17 Jan. 1783 he was the first Younger Loveless in the ‘Capricious Lady,’ an adaptation of the ‘Scornful Lady;’ 25 Feb. 1783 Don Julio in Mrs. Cowley's ‘Bold Stroke for a Husband;’ 14 Dec. 1784 Almaviva in ‘Follies of a Day’ (‘La folle journée’); 10 Feb. 1787 Twineall in Mrs. Inchbald's ‘Such things are;’ 28 Nov. 1788 Count Valentia in Mrs. Inchbald's ‘Child of Nature;’ 16 April 1791 Rover in ‘Wild Oats;’ 18 Feb. 1792 Goldfinch in the ‘Road to Ruin;’ 11 Feb. 1801 Frederick in the ‘Poor Gentleman;’ 5 March 1803 Tom Shuffleton in ‘John Bull;’ and 5 Nov. 1803 Jeremy Diddler in ‘Raising the Wind.’ His last original character was Modern in Reynolds's ‘Begone Dull Care,’ 9 Feb. 1808. His farewell to the public took place on 29 May 1809, at the Haymarket, whither, after the destruction of Covent Garden by fire, the company had retired. On that occasion he played Roger in the ‘Ghost’ and the Copper Captain in ‘Rule a Wife and have a Wife,’ and delivered an address, in which he said that he had been thirty-six years in the service of the public, and could not recall having once fallen under its displeasure. He died on Sunday, 13 Jan. 1811, at his house in Westbourne Place, London. On 6 June 1803, in partnership with Thomas Knight (d. 1820) [q. v.], he began a lesseeship of the Liverpool Theatre, which after his death devolved on his son. Before his death he had in conjunction with Knight taken the Manchester Theatre. By his wife, Miss Leeson, a pupil of Macklin and a great favourite in Dublin, he had three sons and two daughters.

The stage has seen few comedians more refined or competent than Lewis. The qualification ‘Gentleman’ which he associated with his name was subsequently with far less justice assigned to Richard Jones (1779–1851) [q. v.] and other actors. Respectable mediocrity may be assigned him in serious parts. In comedy—before he ‘descended to be the gentle buffoon of modern farce’—he was described by Cooke as ‘the unrivalled favourite of the comic muse in all that was frolic, gay, humorous, whimsical, and at the same time elegant.’ Genest complains of a man who could supply such impersonations as Ranger, Mercutio, and the Copper Captain playing in the end all the extravagant parts which Morton and Reynolds thought proper to write for him. Lewis stood aloof from all theatrical squabbles, and theatrical ana scarcely mention his name. The position he held for sixteen years of director of Covent Garden under Harris exposed him necessarily to attacks which he lived down. He was always original, and bestowed upon every part as much care as if his reputation depended upon it. While questioning the right of Lewis to the exclusive title of gentleman, Leigh Hunt considers that ‘vulgarity seems totally impossible to an actor of his manners.’ In characters such as Rover, full of frankness and vivacity, Lewis is conceded ‘an original excellence.’ He is said to be ‘the most complete fop on the stage,’ but is censured for extravagance of dress and for excessive indulgence in shaking of the head and respiration. Hazlitt seems inspired by Lamb in writing of ‘gay, fluttering, hare-brained Lewis, … all life and fashion and volubility and whim, the greatest comic mannerist perhaps that ever lived.’ He was spare in body, and enjoyed fine health.

A portrait of Lewis by Sir Martin Archer Shee, another as Pharnaces in ‘Cleonice’ by Harlowe, and a third as Mercutio by De Wilde are in the Mathews Collection at the Garrick Club. As Tanjore in ‘Speculation,’ Lewis figures with Munden (as Project) and Quick (as Alderman Arable) in a picture by Zoffany, painted at the desire of George III, and now also at the Garrick Club.


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Rh His son, H. Lewis, appeared at Covent Garden, 10 Oct. 1805, as Squire Groom, and played a few parts with little success. He was afterwards on the Dublin stage.

LEWSON, JANE (1700?–1816), commonly called, eccentric centenarian, was born, it is alleged, in 1700 in Essex Street, Strand, her maiden name being Vaughan. Having been left in easy circumstances by the death in 1726 of her husband, a merchant named Leveson or Lewson, she refused several suitors, and lived in the closest retirement, though she continued to keep up a large house and garden in Coldbath Square. To the end of her life, at which period she was attended by one old man-servant, she retained the gold-headed cane, the dress and the manners of the time of George I. Her terror of taking cold led her to prohibit the use of water in her house, with the result that the windows and walls became in course of time completely crusted with dirt. Her face and hands she was in the habit of lubricating with lard. Though she rigidly excluded all drugs and doctors, she enjoyed excellent health, and is said to have cut two new teeth at the age of eighty-seven. A similar story was related by Bacon of the famous Countess of Desmond [see ]; an explanation of the apparent prodigy is given in a paper by Sir Richard Owen on ‘Longevity’ in ‘Fraser's Magazine’ (February 1872, p. 23). She had a retentive memory, and was fond of relating the events of 1715 and 1745. She died in Coldbath Square on 28 May 1816, at the reputed age of 116, and was buried on 3 June in Bunhill Fields. The story of her peculiarities, which was long popular, may have suggested to Charles Dickens Miss Havisham's environment in ‘Great Expectations.’

LEWYS RHYS  OWAIN (d. 1616?), deputy-herald for Wales. [See .]

LEXINTON,. [See, first , d. 1668;, second , d. 1723.]

LEXINTON or LESSINGTON, JOHN (d. 1257), baron, judge, and often described as keeper of the great seal, eldest son of Richard de Lexinton, baron, who took his designation from Lexinton (now Laxton), near Tuxford, Nottinghamshire, was a clerk of the chancery. In 1238, being then a knight, he and Geoffrey, a templar, had the custody of the seal for a short time on the dismissal of Ralph Neville, the chancellor; he again had it, also for a short time, in 1242; and in September 1247 had charge of the seal on the departure from England of John Mansel, the keeper. In 1249 and in 1253 he also had the custody of the seal for short periods. It may well be doubted whether these circumstances should cause him to be called keeper of the great seal. He was rather a temporary guardian of it during vacancies in the office of chancellor. Having been sent by Henry III as his envoy to attend the council which Gregory IX proposed to hold in 1241, he was with the Genoese fleet which conveyed the prelates going to the council when it was defeated by the Pisan and Sicilian ships under the command of King Enzio on 3 May between the islands of Giglio and Monte Cristo [see under ]. On his return he joined the king in his expedition against David, son of Llewelyn, and was sent from Chester to conduct Gruffydd ab Llewelyn [q. v.] to London. He was the following year appointed a commissioner to amend infringements of the truce with France (Fœdera, i. 244). In 1246 he was sent by the king to the bishops assembled in St. Paul's to forbid them assenting to a large demand for money which the pope was making upon them. Possibly then, and certainly in 1247, he was the king's seneschal. From 1248 onwards some notices occur of his work as a judge. When the king was at Nottingham in 1250, John swore on his behalf to the preliminaries of a truce with France, and in that year succeeded to the estates and barony of his brother, Robert de Lexinton [q. v.] In 1253 the king proposed to send him to conduct Henry's daughter, Margaret, queen of Scotland, to her mother. He was in 1255 chief justice of the forests north of the Trent, and governor of the castles of Bamburgh,


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Mr. Punch's Book of Sports CON. FOR A CRICKETER

(by a looker-on at lawn-tennis).—"They also serve who only stand and wait."

—Q. What is double as good a game as Fives? A. (evident) Tennis.

—Getting thirty to forty at lawn-tennis.

—Why not give lawn-tennis balls in costume during the winter?

— A "grass-lawn" tennis costume.

— Lawn-tennis.

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Rh Scarborough, and Pickering. In that year, being at Lincoln, the cathedral city of his brother, Bishop Henry de Lexinton [q. v.], when the boy called Hugh of Lincoln [q. v.] was found dead, he at once adopted the popular belief that the Jews had murdered the boy, and promised the Jew Copin safety if he would confess. Having obtained the desired statement, he kept the Jew in fetters until the king arrived, who chided him for promising to save the man's life. He died in February 1257. Matthew Paris refers to him as his authority for the miracles wrought at the tomb of the archdeacon Thomas of Hertford, and says that he was a man of weight and learning and a brave and accomplished knight. Paris notes that he bore a cross azure on a shield argent. Lexinton married Margaret Morlay, but left no children.

His brother, (d. 1258), bishop of Lincoln, succeeded to his estates (Calendarium Genealogicum, i. 74, 441). Henry was treasurer of Salisbury in 1241; in 1245 his revenues from the post were seized by Master Martin, the papal nuncio, but Lexinton resigned the treasurership that same year. Previously to 1242 he also held the prebend of North Muskham at Southwell. In 1245 he became dean of Lincoln; when that see fell vacant by the death of Grosseteste, Lexinton and his chapter were involved in a quarrel with Boniface, the archbishop, as to the right to the patronage during a vacancy (, vi. 264–6). On 30 Dec. 1253 he was elected bishop of Lincoln, and went to Gascony to obtain the royal assent; the election was confirmed on 28 March 1254 by Boniface, who consecrated Lexinton on 17 May at Lambeth (Ann. Mon. iii. 190), but Matthew Paris says the consecration took place abroad, which caused great offence. The only incident of his episcopate was a dispute with the scholars of Oxford as to his jurisdiction within the university. He died at Nettleton 8 Aug. 1258, and was buried in Lincoln Cathedral.

LEXINTON, OLIVER (d. 1299), bishop of Lincoln. [See .]

LEXINTON or LESSINGTON, ROBERT (d. 1250), judge, younger and probably second son of Richard de Lexinton, baron [see under ], was an ecclesiastic and a prebendary of the collegiate church of Southwell, and succeeded to the barony of his father, who was alive in 1216. In February 1221 he wrote to Hubert de Burgh [q. v.] informing him of the route taken by the rebel Earl of Aumale and of the measures that he had adopted to secure the safety of the border. He was then acting as a justice in seven counties, and was employed in a like capacity in later years, being in 1225 the head of six judicial commissions. He was warden of the honour and castle of Peak and governor of Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire, and also had charge of Orford Castle. He is described as a justice ‘de banco’ in 1226, and as one of the chief members of the king's court, or bench, in 1229, when he sat with other judges at Westminster to hear the case between the convent and the townsmen of Dunstable. There is reason to suppose that in 1234 he was the senior of the justices of the king's bench. In 1239 he is said to have been elected to the see of Lichfield, but, the right of election being then in dispute between the canons of Lichfield and the monks of Coventry, to have declined it (Annals of Dunstable, an. 1239; comp., Chron. Mag. iii. 542, where no mention is made of Robert, but only of William of Manchester, who was elected by the canons in opposition to the monks' choice, Nicolas of Farnham). When in 1240 Henry III sent justices itinerant through the whole kingdom in the hope of raising money by fines and the like, he appointed Robert chief of the justices for the northern division of England. When he and his brother-justices sat at Lincoln they were denounced by the dean of Christianity (or ‘rural dean’) for trying capital cases on Sunday. In return they abused the dean, and caused his goods and the lands of his nieces, his wards, to be seized on behalf of the crown. Bishop Robert Grosseteste [q. v.] wrote him a sharp rebuke for his presumption in dealing thus with a clerk. He again acted as a justice itinerant the following year. After having gained a high reputation and large possessions, he was seized with paralysis, and retired from office a few years before his death, spending the remainder of his life in prayer and almsgiving. He died on 29 May 1250, and was succeeded by his elder brother John. He founded three chantries in the chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr in Southwell Minster. [Foss's Judges, ii. 385; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 742; Matt. Paris's Chron. Maj. iv. 34, v. 138 (Rolls Ser.); Ann. of Dunstable ap. Ann. Monast.


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Rh iii. 119, 122, 131, 149 (Rolls Ser.); Royal Letters, Hen. III, i. 171, 510 (Rolls Ser.); Epp. Rob. Grosseteste, pp. 266–8 (Rolls Ser.); Nicolas's Hist. Peerage, p. 285, ed. Courthope; Visitations of Southwell Minster, pp. 178, 179 (Camd. Soc.).]  LEXINTON or LESSINGTON, STEPHEN (fl. 1250), abbot of Clairvaux, a younger son of Richard de Lexinton [see ], studied both at Paris and Oxford, and was a disciple of Edmund (Rich) [q. v.], afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. In 1214 John granted him a prebend in the church of Southwell (Cal. Letters Patent, 16 John, p. 138). Moved by Edmund's exhortations, he determined to adopt a monastic life, and in 1221, or perhaps a little earlier, left Oxford with seven companions, and became a monk in the Cistercian abbey of Quarr in the Isle of Wight. He was a man of high character, wise, and learned. After a short residence at Quarr he was elected abbot of Stanley, in Wiltshire, where he received his former master, Edmund, and advised him to pay some attention to worldly concerns. Stephen was in 1228 appointed visitor of the Cistercians in Ireland; he deposed several abbots and replaced them by Englishmen, and sent many monks over to Cistercian houses in France. In 1229 he was elected abbot of Savigny, one of the greater abbeys of the order, situated in the south-west corner of Normandy (Manche department). There he quickened the religious life of the place, largely increased the number of monks, adorned the abbey with new buildings, and made a great translation of the relics of saints. By the command of Gregory IX, he, in 1238, reformed the monks of Redon, in Brittany (Morbihan department). In company with the abbots of Cîteaux and Clairvaux, and many other French prelates, he sailed from Nice to Genoa in 1241, and was thence carried by a Genoese fleet to attend the council which the pope proposed to hold at Rome. The fleet of King Enzio attacked the Genoese ships on 3 May, and Stephen would have fallen into the hands of the enemy had he not been saved by the valour of his brother, John de Lexinton [q. v.] On 6 Dec. 1243 he was elected abbot of Clairvaux. Desiring to remove the reproach which the friars were in the habit of casting on the Cistercians as lacking learning, and no doubt specially moved by the pretensions at that time advanced by the Dominicans in the university of Paris, he in 1244 obtained license from Innocent IV to found a house in Paris for scholars of his order. At first he placed his house close to the buildings of the convent of St. Victor, but to avoid the possibilities of quarrels with that community he moved his foundation to Chardonnet, a site of which the name still survives in the church of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet in the Rue des Bernardins. In 1250 he translated the body of Aletha, mother of St. Bernard, from St. Bénigne de Dijon, where she was buried, to Clairvaux. Alexander IV employed him in some secular business of importance in 1255. His house in Paris was then flourishing, and the scholars who resorted to it were more popular than the friars with the prelates and townsmen. Nevertheless Stephen was in this year deposed from his abbotship by a general chapter of the order, on the ground, it is said, that he had, contrary to the statutes, solicited from the pope a privilege that he should never be deposed. Matthew Paris, who was acquainted with Lexinton's brother John, denies the imputation. The real ground of his deposition was that he had neglected to obtain the sanction of the order for the foundation of his house in Paris. He must have known that an attack on him was impending, and very likely sought to engage the pope on his side; for Alexander IV at once ordered Guy, abbot of Cîteaux, to restore him. Guy pretended that he was about to obey, but did nothing. Alexander complained to Louis IX, who took the side of the order. Stephen had enemies who were jealous of the success of his foundation, and were busy at Rome, and in 1256 the matter dropped. This was according to his own wish, for he was afraid that, if he persisted in defending himself, the authority of the order might be weakened; he declared that he felt no regret at being relieved from the cares of office. He retired to the monastery of Orcamp, to the south-west of Noyon (Oise department), and there died on 21 March. The year is not known.

 LEY, HUGH, M.D. (1790–1837), physician, was born in 1790 at Abingdon, Berkshire, where his father, Hugh Ley (1762–1826), was for a time a medical practitioner, afterwards settling at St. Ives, Cornwall.


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The New International Encyclopædia/Braune, Christian Wilhelm

BRAUNE, brou'ne, (1831-92). A German anatomist. He was born in Leipzig, and studied at the universities of Göttingen and Würzburg. In 1872 he became professor of topographical anatomy at the University of Leipzig. In his scientific investigations, Braune devoted himself particularly to the mechanical physiological side of anatomy, particularly as regards the movements of the joints and the equilibrium of the body in their bearing upon the equipment of the infantry. He also introduced dissection of frozen corpses into the technique of anatomy. Among his numerous works are the following: Topographisch-anatomischer Atlas, nach Durchschnitten an gefrorenen Kadavern (1872); Die Lage des Uterus und Fötus am Ende der Schwangerschaft nach Durchschnitten an gefrorenen Kadavern (1873); Das Tenensystem des menschlichen Körpers (1884-88). In collaboration with His, he edited, after 1876, the Archiv für Anatomie und Entwickelungsgeschichte. He was also instrumental in securing the publication of the musical works of Frederick the Great.


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Rh Inn. He failed in his candidature for the attorney-generalship when Bacon vacated it in 1617 on becoming lord keeper, although, according to Buckingham, he offered 10,000l. for the post. On 15 July 1619 he was created a baronet, and on 29 Jan. 1621–2 he became lord chief justice of the king's bench. He was already, in the opinion of Sir Symonds D'Ewes, a ‘decrepit old man’ (Autobiog. i. 160), and he owed his preferment to his marriage in the previous year with a niece of the favourite, Buckingham. When Bacon fell into disgrace in the following March, Ley filled his place as speaker of the House of Lords, and pronounced the judgment of the peers in the cases of Sir Giles Mompesson, of Bacon, and of Sir Henry Yelverton. After his fall Bacon tried to curry favour with Ley, and wrote to him begging him to ‘beware of hardness of heart.’ He finally declared that Ley ‘stood towards him in very good affection and respect’ (, Bacon, vii. 527–8–9).

On 20 Dec. 1624 Ley retired from the bench to become lord high treasurer and a privy councillor. He had had no previous experience of finance, and displayed no aptitude for it, but Buckingham, who was responsible for the appointment, saw in him a useful ally. On 31 Dec. he was created Lord Ley of Ley in Devonshire. After Charles I's accession, he was ‘appointed a joint commissioner of claims’ for the coronation, and a member of the committee on foreign affairs, and he was created Earl of Marlborough (5 Feb. 1625–6). In July 1627 he found himself unable to comply with the king's request to raise money for the projected expedition to Rhé. In July 1628 he resigned the treasurership to his assistant, Sir Richard Weston, chancellor of the exchequer, and was made president of the council. He retired on 14 Dec. of the same year, and dying on 14 March 1628–9, was buried in the church of Westbury, Wiltshire, where a fine monument was erected to his memory by his son Henry.

Ley, although a feeble statesman, was an able, erudite, and impartial judge. Milton addressed a sonnet to his daughter Margaret, afterwards wife of one Captain Hobson of the Isle of Wight, and described him as That Good Earl, once President Of England's Council and her Treasury, Who lived in both unstained with gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content. On the other hand, Sir James Whitelocke denounces him as ‘an old dissembler,’ who was ‘wont to be called “Vulpone,”’ and says that he borrowed money of the judges when lord chief justice (Liber Famelicus, p. 108). Ley had some antiquarian interests, and was an early member of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries. Before that society he read papers on ‘Sterling Money,’ ‘The Antiquity of Arms in England,’ and ‘The Office of Chancellor,’ on ‘Epitaphs and Mottos,’ and on ‘The Antiquities of Funeral Ceremonies in England.’ All these papers are printed in Hearne's ‘Collection of Curious Discourses.’ Ley also collected, with a view to publication, some early Irish chronicles, including the ‘Annals of John Clynne,’ a Minorite friar of Kilkenny, the ‘Annals of the Priory of St. John the Evangelist’ at Kilkenny, and the ‘Annals of Multifernan, Ross, and Clonmell.’ On his death these manuscripts became the property of Henry Bourchier, earl of Bath. Some extracts from them are in the library of Trinity College, Dublin (, Irish Writers, ed. Harris, p. 336;, Cat. MSS. Hib. No. 1649). ‘A Learned Treatise concerning Wards and Liveries,’ by him, was published in 1641 and reissued in 1642. In 1659 appeared Ley's ‘Reports of divers Resolutions in Law arising upon Cases in the Court of Wards and other Courts at Westminster in the Regins of King James and King Charles I’ (6 Jac. I–5 Car. I; 1608–29), with the treatise concerning wards reissued as an appendix. A portrait is prefixed. Another portrait is engraved in Hoare's ‘Wiltshire, Hundred of Westbury,’ iii. 35.

Ley married thrice: first, Mary, daughter of John Petty of Stoke Talmage, Oxfordshire; secondly, Mary, widow of Sir William Bower, knt.; and thirdly, on 4 July 1621, when sixty-nine years old, Jane, daughter of John, lord Boteler or Butler, by Elizabeth, sister of the royal favourite, George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. His third wife remarried William Ashburnham, the king's cofferer, and lived till March 1672, when she was buried at Ashburnham (, Chesters of Chicheley, i. 146). By his first wife he alone had issue—three sons and eight daughters. His heir, Henry, second earl (d. 1638), was father of James Ley, third earl [q. v.] His third son, William, succeeded his nephew in 1665 as fourth earl, and with his death in 1679 the title became extinct.


text: Grimm's Household Tales, Volume 2/The Cunning Little Tailor


text: Grimm's Household Tales, Volume 2/The Bright Sun brings it to Light


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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lewis, William (1592-1667)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lewis, William (1714-1781)


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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lewis, William Garrett


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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ley, Hugh


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ley, James (1550-1629)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ley, James (1618-1665)


text: Grimm's Household Tales, Volume 2/The Three Army-Surgeons


text:
The Most Vulnerable Among Us

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Ladies and gentlemen, President Barack Obama.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Please -- please have a seat.

Good afternoon, everybody. Let me begin by thanking our vice president, Joe Biden, for your dedication, Joe, to this issue, for bringing so many different voices to the table, because while reducing gun violence is a complicated challenge, protecting our children from harm shouldn’t be a divisive one.

Now, over the month since the tragedy in Newtown, we’ve heard from so many, and obviously none have affected us more than the families of those gorgeous children and their teachers and guardians who -- who were lost. And so we’re grateful to all of you for taking the time to be here and recognizing that we honor their memories in part by doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again.

But we also heard from some unexpected people. In particular, I started getting a lot of letters from kids. Four of them are here today: Grant Fritz, Julia Stokes, Hinna Zeejah, and Teja Goode. They’re pretty representative of some of the messages that I got. These are some pretty smart letters from some pretty smart young people.

Hinna, a third-grader -- you can go ahead and wave, Hinna -- that’s you -- Hinna wrote, "I feel terrible for the parents who lost their children. I love my country, and I want everybody to be happy and safe." And then Grant -- go ahead and wave, Grant -- Grant said, "I think there should be some changes. We should learn from what happened at Sandy Hook. I feel really bad." And then Julia said -- Julia, where are you -- there you go -- "I’m not scared for my safety; I’m scared for others. I have four brothers and sisters, and I know I would not be able to bear the thought of losing any of them." And these are our kids. This is what they’re thinking about.

And so what we should be thinking about is our responsibility to care for them and shield them from harm and give them the tools they need to grow up and do everything that they’re capable of doing, not just to pursue their own dreams but to help build this country. This is our first task as a society, keeping our children safe. This is how we will be judged. And their voices should compel us to change.

And that’s why last month I asked Joe to lead an effort, along with members of my Cabinet, to come up with some concrete steps we can take right now to keep our children safe, to help prevent mass shootings, to reduce the broader epidemic of gun violence in this country.

And we can’t put this off any longer. Just last Thursday, as TV networks were covering one of Joe’s meetings on this topic, news broke of another school shooting, this one in California. In the month since 20 precious children and six brave adults were violently taken from us at Sandy Hook Elementary, more than 900 of our fellow Americans have reportedly died at the end of a gun -- 900 in the past month. And every day we wait, that number will keep growing.

So I’m putting forward a specific set of proposals based on the work of Joe’s task force. And in the days ahead I intend to use whatever weight this office holds to make them a reality, because while there is no law or set of laws that can prevent every senseless act of violence completely, no piece of legislation that will prevent every tragedy, every act of evil, if there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try.

And I’m going to do my part. As soon as I’m finished speaking here, I will sit at that desk and I will sign a directive giving law enforcement, schools, mental health professionals and the public health community some of the tools they need to help reduce gun violence. We will make it easier to keep guns out of the hands of criminals by strengthening the background check system. We will help schools hire more resource officers, if they want them, and develop emergency preparedness plans. We will make sure mental health professionals know their options for reporting threats of violence, even as we acknowledge that someone with a mental illness is far more likely to be a victim of violent crime than the perpetrator.

And while year after year those who oppose even modest gun safety measures have threatened to de-fund scientific or medical research into the causes of gun violence, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it. And Congress should fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds. We don’t benefit from ignorance. We don’t benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence.

Now, these are a few of the 23 executive actions that I’m announcing today, but as important as these steps are, they are in no way a substitute for action from members of Congress. To make a real and lasting difference, Congress too must act, and Congress must act soon. And I’m calling on Congress to pass some very specific proposals right away.

First, it’s time for Congress to require a universal background check for anyone trying to buy a gun. The law already requires licensed gun dealers to run background checks, and over the last 14 years, that’s kept 1.5-million of the wrong people from getting their hands on a gun. But it’s hard to enforce that law when as many as 40% of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check. That’s not safe; that’s not smart; that’s not fair to responsible gun buyers or sellers.

If you want to buy a gun, whether it’s from a licensed dealer or a private seller, you should at least have to show you are not a felon or somebody legally prohibited from buying one. This is common sense. And an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with us on the need for universal background checks, including more than 70 percent of the National Rifle Association’s members, according to one survey. So there’s no reason we can’t do this.

Second, Congress should restore a ban on military-style assault weapons and a 10-round limit for magazines. The type of assault rifle used in Aurora, for example, when paired with high- capacity magazines, has one purpose: to pump out as many bullets as possible as quickly as possible, to do as much damage using bullets often designed to inflict maximum damage. And that’s what allowed the gunman in Aurora to shoot 70 people -- 70 people, killing 12, in a matter of minutes.

Weapons designed for the theater of war have no place in a movie theater. A majority of Americans agree with us on this. And by the way, so did Ronald Reagan, one of the staunchest defenders of the Second Amendment, who wrote to Congress in 1994 urging them -- this is Ronald Reagan speaking -- urging them to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of military-style assault weapons.

And finally, Congress needs to help rather than hinder law enforcement as it does its job. We should get tougher on people who buy guns with the express purpose of turning around and selling them to criminals. And we should severely punish anybody who helps them do this.

Since Congress hasn’t confirmed a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in six years, they should confirm Todd Jones, who will be -- who has been acting and I will be nominating for the post. And at a time when budget cuts are forcing many communities to reduce their police force, we should put more cops back on the job and back on our streets.

And let me be absolutely clear. Like most Americans, I believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. I respect our strong tradition of gun ownership and the rights of hunters and sportsmen. There are millions of responsible, law-abiding gun owners in America who cherish their right to bear arms for hunting or sport or protection or collection.

I also believe most gun owners agree that we can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, law-breaking few from inflicting harm on a massive scale. I believe most of them agree that if America worked harder to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, there would be fewer atrocities like the one that occurred in Newtown.

That’s what these reforms are designed to do. They’re common-sense measures. They have the support of the majority of the American people. And yet that doesn’t mean any of this is going to be easy to enact or implement. If it were, we’d already have universal background checks. The ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines never would have been allowed to expire. More of our fellow Americans might still be alive, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and graduations.

This will be difficult. There will be pundits and politicians and politicians and special interest lobbyists publicly warning of a tyrannical all-out assault on liberty, not because that’s true but because they want to gin up fear or higher ratings or revenue for themselves. And behind the scenes they’ll do everything they can to block any common-sense reform and make sure nothing changes whatsoever.

The only way we will be able to change is if their audience, their constituents, their membership says, this time must be different, that this time we must do something to protect our communities and our kids. I will put everything I’ve got into this, and so will Joe. But I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it.

And by the way, that doesn’t just mean from certain parts of the country. We’re going to need voices in those areas, in those congressional districts where the tradition of gun ownership is strong to speak up and to say this is important. It can’t just be the usual suspects.

We have to examine ourselves in our hearts and ask ourselves what is important. This will not happen unless the American people demand it. If parents and teachers, police officers and pastors, if hunters and sportsmen, if responsible gun owners, if Americans of every background stand up and say, enough, we suffered too much pain and care too much about our children to allow this to continue, then change will -- change will come. That’s what it’s going to take.

You know, on the letter that Julia wrote me, she said, I know that laws have to be passed by Congress, but I beg you to try very hard. Julia, I will try very hard. But she’s right. The most important changes we can make depend on congressional action. They need to bring these proposals up for a vote, and the American people need to make sure that they do.

Get them on record. Ask your member of Congress if they support universal background checks to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Ask them if they support renewing a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And if they say no, ask them why not. Ask them what’s more important, doing whatever it takes to get a -- a “A” grade from the gun lobby that funds their campaigns, or giving parents some peace of mind when they drop their child off for first grade?

This is the land of the free, and it always will be. As Americans, we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights that no man or government can take away from us. But we’ve also long recognized, as our founders recognized, that with rights come responsibilities. Along with our freedom to live our lives as we will comes an obligation to allow others to do the same. We don’t live in isolation. We live in a society, a government of and by and for the people. We are responsible for each other.

You know, the right to worship freely and faithfully, that right was denied to Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The right to assemble peacably, that right was denied shoppers in Clackamas, Oregon and moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado. That most fundamental set of rights -- to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- fundamental rights that were denied to college students at Virginia Tech and high school students at Columbine and elementary school students in Newtown, and kids on street corners in Chicago on too frequent a basis to tolerate, and all the families who’ve never imagined that they’d lose a loved one to a bullet, those rights are at stake. We’re responsible.

You know, when I visited Newtown last month, I spent some private time with many of the families who lost their children that day, and one was the family of Grace McDonnell. Grace’s parents are here. Grace was 7 years old when she was struck down, just a gorgeous, caring, joyful little girl. I’m told she loved pink. She loved the beach. She dreamed of becoming a painter.

And so just before I left, Chris, her father, gave me one of her paintings, and I hung it in my private study just off the Oval Office. And every time I look at that painting, I think about Grace and I think about the life that she lived and the life that lay ahead of her, and most of all, I think about how when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable among us, we must act now for Grace, for the 25 other innocent children and devoted educators who had so much left to give, for the men and women in big cities and small towns who fall victim to senseless violence each and every day, for all the Americans who are counting on us to keep them safe from harm.

Let’s do the right thing. Let’s do the right thing for them and for this country that we love so much. Thank you. I’m going to sign these orders.

title: The Most Vulnerable Among Us


text:
Acting on This Moral Obligation

Please -- please be seated. Thank you.

Before -- before I begin today, let me say to the families of the innocents who were murdered 33 days ago, our heart -- our heart goes out to you. And you show incredible courage, incredible courage being here. And the president and I are going to do everything in our power to -- to honor the memory of your children and your wives with -- with the work we take up here today.

It’s been 33 days since the nation’s heart was broken by the horrific, senseless violence that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Twenty -- twenty beautiful first-graders gunned down in a place that’s supposed to be their second sanctuary; six -- six members of the staff killed trying to save those children. It’s literally been hard for the nation to comprehend, hard for the nation to fathom.

And I know for the families who are here, time is not measured in days but it’s measured in minutes, in seconds since you received that news: another minute without your daughter, another minute without your son, another minute without your wife, another minute without your mom.

I want to personally thank Chris and Lynn McDonnell, who lost a beautiful daughter, Grace, and the other parents who I had a chance to speak to for their suggestions for -- again, just for their -- the courage of all of you to -- to be here today. I -- I admire -- I admire the grace and the resolve that you all are showing.

And I must say I’ve been deeply affected by your faith as well, and the president and I are going to do everything to try to match the resolve you’ve demonstrated. No one can know for certain if this senseless act could have been prevented, but we all know we have a moral obligation -- a moral obligation to do everything in our power to diminish the prospect that something like this could happen again.

As the president knows, I’ve worked in this field a long time in the United States Senate, having chaired a committee that had jurisdiction over these issues of guns and crime, and having drafted the first gun violence legislation -- the last gun violence legislation, I should say, and I have no illusions about we’re up against -- what we’re up against or how hard the task is in front of us. But I also have never seen a nation’s conscience so shaken by what happened at Sandy Hook. The world has changed, and it’s demanding action.

It’s in this context that the president asked me to put together, along with Cabinet members, a set of recommendations about how we should proceed to meet that moral obligation we have. And toward that end, the Cabinet members and I sat down with 229 groups, not just individuals, representing groups -- 229 groups from law enforcement agencies to public health officials to gun officials to gun advocacy groups to sportsmen and hunters and religious leaders. And I’ve spoken with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, had extensive conversation with mayors and governors and county officials.

And the recommendations we provided to the president on Monday call for executive actions he could sign, legislation he could call for and long-term research that should be undertaken. They’re based on the emerging consensus we heard from all the groups with whom we spoke, including some of you who were the victims of this godawful occurrence, ways to keep guns out of the wrong hands as well as ways to take comprehensive action to prevent violence in the first place. We should do as much as we can as quickly as we can, and we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

So some of what you will hear from the president will happen immediately. Some will take some time. But we have begun. And we are starting here today, and we’re resolved to continue this fight. During the meetings that we held, we met with a young man who’s here today -- I think Colin Goddard is here. Where are you, Colin? Colin was one of the survivors of the -- the Virginia Tech massacre. He was in the classroom. He calls himself one of the lucky seven. And -- and he’ll tell you he was shot four times on that day and he has three bullets that are still inside him.

And when I asked Colin about what he thought we should be doing, he said that -- he said, I’m not here because of what happened to me; I’m here because of -- what happened to me keeps happening to other people and we have to do something about it. Colin, we will. Colin, I promise you we will.

This is our intention. We must do what we can now. And there’s no person who is more committed to acting on this moral obligation we have than the president of the United States of America. Ladies and gentlemen, President Barack Obama.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

title: Acting on This Moral Obligation


text: User:TalBot/soft redirect maintenance/December 2012


text: Grimm's Household Tales, Volume 2/The Seven Swabians


text: Grimm's Household Tales, Volume 2/The Three Apprentices