Chapter Lane to La Roche of L by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Lane to La Roche

Lane (Jane), daughter of Thomas, and sister of colonel John Lane. To save king Charles II. after the battle of Worcester, she rode behind him from Bentley, in Staffordshire, to the house of her cousin Mrs. Norton, near Bristol. For this act of loyalty, the king granted the family the following armorial device: a strawberry horse saliant (couped at the flank), bridled, bitted, and garnished, supporting between its feet a royal crown proper. Motto: Garde le roy.

Lane (The), Drury Lane.

There were married actresses in his company when he managed the Garden and afterwards the Lane.—Temple Bar (W. C. Macready), 76 (1875).

Laneham (Master Robert), clerk of the council-chamber door.

Sybil Laneham, his wife, one of the revellers at Kenilworth Castle.—Sir W. Scott: Kenilworth (time, Elizabeth).

Langcale (The laird of), a leader of the covenanters’ army.—Sir W. Scott: Old Mortality (time, Charles II.).

Langley (Sir Frederick), a suitor to Miss Vere, and one of the Jacobite conspirators with the laird of Ellieslaw.—Sir W. Scott: The Black Dwarf (time, Anne).

Langosta (Duke of), the Spanish nickname of Aosta the elected king of Spain. The word means “a locust” or “plunderer.”

Language (The Primæval).

(1) Psammetichus, an Egyptian king, wishing to ascertain what language Nature gave to man, shut up two infants where no word was ever uttered in their hearing. When brought before the king, they said, bekos (“toast”).—Herodotos, ii. 2.

(2) Frederick II. of Sweden tried the same experiment.

(3) James IV. of Scotland, in the fifteenth century, shut up two infants in the Isle of Inchkeith, with only a dumb attendant to wait on them, with the same object in view.

Language Characteristics.

Charles Quint used to say, “I speak German to my horses, Spanish to my household, French to my friends, and Italian to my mistress.”

The Persians say, the serpent in paradise spoke Arabic (the most suasive of all languages); Adam and Eve spoke Persian (the most poetic of all languages); and the angel Gabriel spoke Turkish (the most menacing of all languages).—Chardin: Travels (1686).

L’Italien se parle aux dames;
Le Français se parle aux savants (or) aux hommes;
L’Anglais se parle aux oiseaux;
L’Allemand se parle aux chiens;
L’Espagnol se parle à Dieu.

Language given to Man to Conceal his Thoughts. Said by Montrond, but generally ascribed to Talleyrand. (See Talleyrand.)

Languish (Lydia), a romantic young lady, who is for ever reading sensational novels, and moulding her behaviour on the characters which she reads of in these books of fiction. Hence she is a very female Quixote in romantic notions of a sentimental type (see act i. 2).—Sheridan: The Rivals (1775).

Miss Mellon [1775–1837] called on Sheridan, and was requested to read the scenes of Lydia Languish and Mrs. Malaprop from The Rivals. She felt frightened, and answered, with the native, unaffected