LUISE VON

PLOENNIES (1803-1872)  , German poet, was born at Hanau on the 7th of November 1803, the daughter of the naturalist Philipp Achilles Leisler . In 1824 she married the physician August von Ploennies in Darmstadt . After his death in 1847 she resided for some years in Belgium, then at Jugenheim on the Bergstrasse, but finally at Darmstadt, where she died on the 22nd of January 1872 . Between 1844 and 1870 she published several volumes of verse, being particularly happy in eclectic love songs, patriotic poems and descriptions of scenery . She also wrote two biblical dramas, Maria Magdalena (187o) and David (1873) . As a translator from the English, Luise von Ploennies published two collections of poems, Britannia (1843) and Englische Lyriker des 'glen Jahrhunderts (1863, 3rd ed., 1867) . PLOgRMEL, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Morbihan, 36 m . N.N.E. of Vannes by rail . Pop . (1906), town, 2492; commune, 5424• The Renaissance church of St Armel (16th century) is remarkable for the delicate carving of the north facade and for fine stained glass . It also possesses statues of John II. and John III., dukes of Brittany, which were transferred to the church from their tomb in an ancient Carmelite monastery founded in 1273 and destroyed by the Protestants in 1592 and again at the Revolution . The lower ecclesiastical seminary has an apartment in which the Estates of Brittany held several meetings .

Remains of ramparts of the 15th century and some houses of the 16th century are also of

interest . Farm-implements are manufactured, slate quarries are worked in the neighbourhood, and there is trade in cattle, wool, hemp, cloth, &c . Ploermel (Plou Armel, people of Armel) owes its name to Armel, a hermit who lived in the district in the 6th century .