LESCOT, PIERRE, a French architect of the 16th century, of whom however nothing is distinctly known, but ho is generally sup posed to have designed and commenced, together with Jean Goujon, the present palace of the Louvre for Francis L and Henri II.: the exact timo is a matter of uncertainty. Leacot was born, according to some accounts, about 1510, and he lived to the age of sixty ; other accounts give the dates 1518 and 1578 as the years of his birth and death. He erected the southern and western sides of the quadrangle, but all that now remains by Lescot is the western side, facing the Tuileries, known as the Vieux Louvre; it contains the ancient Salle des Garden, or Salle des Cent-Suisaes, with the caryatides of Goujon, whence its modern name of Salle des Caryatides.
Lescot's style and services to architecture have been the subjects of various speculations, but they are all extremely vague, and amount to very little. By some he is supposed to have been the first to abandon the old irregular gothic, and to have introduced the Italian style into France; but this was done by Italian artists themselves, several of whom were employed by Francis 1. long before Lescot could have attained anything like mastery in his art, or even maturity of years. Fontainebleau is an instance, in which Serbo, Primaticcio, and others were employed by Francis L Lescot is said also to have designed the Fontaine des Innocents, attributed by some to Gonjon, the sculptor of the nymphs upon it. Leacot was Able6 of Cluny or Clugny, and a canon of Notre-Dame. LESLIE, CHARLES, a person much engaged in the political and theological controversies of the age in which he lived, was the son of an Irish prelate, and was born in Ireland about 1650, and educated at I Trinity College, Dublin. His course in life was very ecceutric. In 1671 ho came to England, and entered himself of an iuu of court with a view to the study of the law. In a few years however he turned himself to divinity, was admitted into orders, and, settling in Ireland, became chancellor of Cloyne. lie was living In Ireland at the time of the revolution, and distinguished himself in some disputations with the Roman Catholics on the aide of the Protestant Church.
Though a zealous Protestant, he scrupled to renounce his allegiance to King James, and to acknowledge King William as his rightful sovereign. There was thus an end to his prospects in the Church, and leaving Ireland he came to England, and there employed himself in writing many of his controversial works. When James II. was dead, Leslie transferred his allegiance to his son, the Pretender ; and as he made frequent visits to the courts of the exiled princes, he so far fell under suspicion at home that he thought proper to leave England, and join himself openly to the court of the Pretender, then at Bar-le Due. He was still a zealous Protestant, and had in that court a private chapel, in which he was accustomed to officiate as a minister of the Protestant Church of England. When the Pretender removed to Italy, Leslie accompanied him ; but becoming at length sensible to the strangeness of hia position, a Protestant clergyman in the court of a zealous Roman Catholic, and age coming on, and with it the natural desire of dying in the land which had given him birth, he sought and obtained from the government of King George L permission to return. This was in 1721. He settled at Glaslough, in the county of Monaghan, and there died in 1722.
Leslie's writings in the political controversies of the time were all in support of high monarchical principles. His theological writings were controversial ; they are too many to be particularised in the brief space which we can allot to him, but they have been distributed into the Six following classes: those against, 1, the Quakers; 2, the Presbyterians; 3, the Deists; 4, tho Jews; 5, the Socinians ; and, 6, the Papists. Some of them, especially the book entitled ' A Short and Easy Method with the Deists,' are still read and held in esteem. Towards the close of his life he collected his theological writings, and published them in two folio volumes, 1721.