CHARLES LUCIEN

See also:

• CHARLES LUCIEN LEANDRE (1862- )

LEANDRE (1862- )  , French caricaturist and painter, was born at Champsecret (Orne), and studied painting under Bin and Cabanel . From 1887 he figured among the exhibitors of the Salon, where he showed numerous portraits and genre pictures, but his popular fame is due to his comic drawings and caricatures . The series of the " Gotha des souverains," published in Le Rire, placed him in the front rank of modern caricaturists . Besides his contributions to Le Rire, Le Figaro and other comic journals, he published a series of albums: Nocturnes, Le Muse des souverains, and Paris et la province . Leandre produced admirable work in lithography, and designed many memorable posters, such as the "Yvette Guilbert." " Les nouveaux maries," " Joseph Prudhomme," " Les Lutteurs," and " La Femme au chien." He was created a knight of the Legion of Honour . LEAP-YEAR (more properly known as bissextile), the name given to the year containing 366 days . The astronomers of Julius Caesar, 46 B.C., settled the solar year at 365 days 6 hours . These hours were set aside and at the end of four years made a day which was added to the fourth year . The English name for the bissextile year is an allusion to the result of the inter-position of the extia day; for after the 29th of February a date " leaps over " the day of the week on which it would fall in ordinary years . Thus a birthday on the loth of June, a Monday, will in the next year, if a leap-year, be on the loth of June,' a Wednesday . Of the origin of the custom for women to woo, not be wooed, during leap-year no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered . In 1288 a law was enacted in Scotland that " it is statut and ordaint that during the rein of hir maist blissit Megeste, for ilk yeare knowne as lepe yeare, ilk mayden ladye of bothe highe and love estait shall hae liberte to bespeke ye man she likes, albeit he refuses to taik hir to be his lawful wyfe, he shall be mulcted in ye sum ane pundis or less, as his estait may be; except and awis gif he can make it appeare that he is betrothit ane ither woman he then shall be free." A few years later a like law was passed in France, and in the 15th century the custom was legalized in Genoa and Florence .