VOLUME XVI SLICE VIII Logarithm to Lord Advocate (continued 11)

LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838- ), American lawyer and political leader, was born in Buckfield, Oxford county, Maine, on the 27th of October 1838. He graduated at Harvard in 1857, studied law at the Harvard Law School and in 1861 was admitted to the bar. He practised in Boston, became active in politics as a Republican, was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1875-1878 and its speaker in 1876-1878, lieutenant-governor of the state in 1879, and governor in 1880-1882. In 1883-1889 he was a member of the National House of Representatives, and from March 1897 to May 1902 was secretary of the navy, in the cabinet, first of President McKinley and then of President Roosevelt. In 1902 he became president of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College. His publications include a version of the Aeneid (1879), After-Dinner and Other Speeches (1895) and The New American Navy (1903).

LONG BRANCH, a city of Monmouth county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the easternmost or “long” branch of the Shrewsbury river and on the Atlantic coast, about 30 m. S. of New York City. Pop. (1890) 7231; (1900) 8872, of whom 1431 were foreign-born and 987 were negroes; (1910 census) 13,298. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Central of New Jersey, the New York & Long Branch, and electric railways, and by steamboats to New York. The carriage roads in the vicinity are unusually good. Long Branch is one of the oldest American watering-places. It is situated on a bluff which rises abruptly 20-35 ft. above the beach, and along the front of which bulkheads and jetties have been erected as a protection from the waves; along or near the edge of the bluff, Ocean Avenue, 60 ft. wide and about 5 m. long (from Seabright to Deal), commands delightful views of the ocean. A “bluff walk” runs above the water for 2 m. The city has one public park, Ocean Park (about 10 acres), and two privately owned parks, one of which is Pleasure Bay Park (25 acres), on the Shrewsbury river, where operas are given in the open air. The principal public institutions are the Monmouth Memorial Hospital and the Long Branch Circulating Library. In Long Branch the Monmouth County Horse Show is held annually in July. The southern part of Long Branch, known as Elberon, contains some beautiful summer residences—in one of its cottages General U. S. Grant spent his summers for many years, and in another, the Francklyn, President J. A. Garfield died in 1881. In 1909 a monument to Garfield was erected in Ocean Park. Adjoining Long Branch on the N. is the borough of Monmouth Beach (incorporated in 1906; population, 1910, 485). Before the War of Independence the site of Long Branch was owned by Colonel White, a British officer. It was confiscated as a result of the war, and late in the century its development as a watering-place began. Long Branch was chartered as a city in 1904.

LONGCHAMP, WILLIAM (d. 1197), chancellor of England and bishop of Ely, entered public life at the close of Henry II.’s reign as official to the king’s son Geoffrey, for the archdeaconry of Rouen. Henry II., who disliked him, called him the “son of two traitors.” He soon deserted Geoffrey for Richard, who made him chancellor of the duchy of Aquitaine. He always showed himself an able diplomatist. He first distinguished himself at Paris, as Richard’s envoy, when he defeated Henry II.’s attempt to make peace with Philip Augustus (1189). On Richard’s accession William became chancellor of the kingdom and bishop of Ely. When Richard left England (Dec. 1189), he put the tower of London in his hands and chose him to share with Hugh de Puiset, the great bishop of Durham, the office of chief justiciar. William immediately quarrelled with Hugh, and by April 1190 had managed to oust him completely from office. In June 1190 he received a commission as legate from Pope Celestine. He was then master in church as well as state. But his disagreeable appearance and manners, his pride, his contempt for everything English made him detested. His progresses through the country with a train of a thousand knights were ruinous to those on whom devolved the burden of entertaining him. Even John seemed preferable to him. John returned to England in 1191; he and his adherents were immediately involved in disputes with William, who was always worsted. At last (June 1191) Geoffrey, archbishop of York and William’s earliest benefactor, was violently arrested by William’s subordinates on landing at Dover. They exceeded their orders, which were to prevent the archbishop from entering England until he had sworn fealty to Richard. But this outrage was made a pretext for a general rising against William, whose legatine commission had now expired, and whose power was balanced by the presence of the archbishop of Rouen, Walter Coutances, with a commission from the king, William shut himself up in the Tower, but he was forced to surrender his castles and expelled from the kingdom. In 1193 he joined Richard in Germany, and Richard seems to have attributed the settlement soon after concluded between himself and the emperor, to his “dearest chancellor.” For the rest of the reign Longchamp was employed in confidential and diplomatic missions by Richard all over the continent, in Germany, in France and at Rome. He died in January 1197. His loyalty to Richard was unswerving, and it was no doubt through his unscrupulous devotion to the royal interest that he incurred the hatred of Richard’s English subjects.

Authorities.—Benedictus, Gesta Henrici, vol. ii.; Giraldus Cambrensis, De Vita Galfridi; Stubbs’ Preface to Roger of Hoveden, vol. iii.; L. Bovine-Champeaux, Notice sur Guillaume de Longchamp (Évreux, 1885).

LONGCLOTH, a plain cotton cloth originally made in comparatively long pieces. The name was applied particularly to cloth made in India. Longcloth, which is now commonly bleached, comprehends a number of various qualities. It is heavier than cambric, and finer than medium or Mexican. As it is used principally for underclothing and shirts, most of the longcloth sold in Great Britain passes through the hands of the shirt and underclothing manufacturers, who sell to the shopkeepers, though there is still a considerable if decreasing retail trade in piece-goods. The lower kinds of longcloth, which are made from American cotton, correspond in quality to the better kinds of “shirting” made for the East, but the best longcloths are made from Egyptian cotton, and are fine and fairly costly goods.

LONG EATON, an urban district in the Ilkeston parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, 10 m. E.S.E. of Derby, on the Midland railway. Pop. (1891) 9636; (1901) 13,045. It lies in the open valley of the Trent, at a short distance from the river, and near the important Trent Junction on the Midland railway system. The church of St Lawrence has Norman portions, and an arch and window apparently of pre-Conquest date. The large industrial population of the town is occupied in the manufacture of lace, which extended hither from Nottingham; there are also railway carriage works. To the north is the township of Sandiacre (pop. 2954), where the church has a fine Decorated chancel.

LONGEVITY, a term applied to express either the length or the duration of life in any organism, but, as cases of long duration excite most interest, frequently used to denote a relatively unusual prolongation of life. There is no reason to suppose that protoplasm, the living material of organisms, has a necessarily limited duration of life, provided that the conditions proper to it are maintained, and it has been argued that since every living organism comes into existence as a piece of the protoplasm of a pre-existing living organism, protoplasm is potentially immortal. Living organisms exist, however, as particles or communities of particles of protoplasm (see Life), and as such have a limited duration of life. Longevity, as E. Ray Lankester pointed out in 1869, for practical purposes must be understood to mean the “length of time during which life is exhibited in an individual.” The word “individual” must be taken in its ordinary sense as a wholly or partially independent, organized mass produced from a pre-existing organized mass, as otherwise the problem will be confused by arguments as to the meaning of biological individuality.

Empirical Data.—A multitude of observations show that only a very brief life, ranging from a few hours to a few days, is the normal fate of the vast majority of single-celled organisms, whether these be animal or vegetable or on the border-line between the two kingdoms. Death comes to them rapidly from internal or external causes, or the individual life ends in conjugation or division or spore-formation. Under special conditions, natural or artificial, the individual life may be prolonged by desiccation, or freezing, or by some similar arrest of functional activity.

The duration of life among plants is varied. The popular division into annuals, biennials and perennials is not absolute, for natural and artificial conditions readily prolong the lives of annuals and biennials for several seasons, whereas the case of perennials is much complicated by the mode of growth, and the problem of individuality, however we desire to exclude it, obtrudes itself. In the vast majority of cases where a plant is obviously a simple individual, its life is short, ranging from a few days in the case of fungi, to two seasons in the case of biennial herbs. Most of the simple algae are annual, their life enduring only for part of the year; the branching algae are more often perennial, but in their cases not only are observations as to duration lacking, but however simply we may use the term individual, its application is difficult. The larger terrestrial plants with woody tissues which we denote roughly as shrubs and trees have an individuality which, although different from that of a hyacinth or carrot, is usually obvious. Shrubs live from four to ten or more years, and it apparently is the case that odoriferous shrubs such as sage and lavender display the longer duration. Trees with soft wood, such as poplars and willows, last for about fifty years, fruit-trees rather longer. Estimates of the age which large trees can attain, based partly on attempts to count the annual rings, have been given by many writers, and range from about three hundred years in the case of the elm to three to five thousand years in the case of Sequoia gigantea of California, and over five thousand years in that of the baobab (Adansonia digitata) of Cape Verde. It is impossible to place exact reliance on these estimates, but it is at least certain that very many trees have a duration of life exceedingly great in comparison with the longest-lived animals.

The duration of life amongst multicellular invertebrate animals is little known, except in the frequent instances where it is normally brief. Many sponges and polyps die at the end of the season, leaving winter eggs or buds. The much-branched masses of the larger sponges and compound hydrozoa certainly may be perennial. A sea-anemone (Actinia mesembryanthemum), captured in 1828 by Sir John Dalyell, a Scottish naturalist, and then guessed to be about seven years old, lived in captivity in Edinburgh until 1887, the cause of death being unknown. As other instances of great ages attained by sea-anemones are on record, it is plain that these animals, although simple polyps, are long-lived. Echinoderms are inferred to live to considerable ages, as they grow slowly and as there is great difference in size amongst fully adult specimens. On similar reasoning, considerable age is attributed to the larger annulates and crustacea, but the smaller forms in many cases are known to have very short lives. The variation in the length of life of molluscs appears to be great. Many species of gastropods live only a few years; others, such as Natica heros, have reached thirty years, whilst the large Tridacna gigas is stated to live from sixty to a hundred years. Among insects, the adult stage has usually only a very short duration of life, extending from a few hours to a few months, but the larval stages may last much longer. Including these latter, the range of duration among insects, taking the whole life from hatching to death, appears to lie between the limits of a few weeks in the case of plant-lice to seventeen years in the case of the American Cicada septemdecim, the larva of which lives seventeen years, the adult only a month. Most butterflies are annuals, but those which fail to copulate may hibernate and live through a second season, whilst the lives of some have been preserved artificially for seven years. Worker bees and drones do not survive the season, but queens may live from two to five years. In the case of vertebrates, the duration of life appears to be greater among fish and reptiles than among birds and mammals. The ancient Romans have noted that eels, kept in aquaria, could reach the age of sixty years. Estimates based on size and rate of growth have led to the inference that salmon may live to the age of a hundred years, whilst G. L. L. Buffon set down the period of life of carp in ponds as one hundred and fifty years, and there is evidence for a pike having reached the age of over two centuries. More recently it has been claimed that the age of fish can be ascertained exactly by counting the annual rings of the otoliths. No great ages have as yet been recorded by this method, whilst, on the other hand, by revealing great variations of weight and size in fishes with the same number of annual rings, it has thrown doubt on the validity of estimates of age based on size and rate of growth. The evidence as a whole is unsatisfactory, but it is highly probable that in the absence of accidents most fish can attain very great ages. The duration of life among batrachia is little known, but small frogs have been recorded as living over twelve years, and toads up to thirty-six years.

Almost nothing is known as to the longevity of snakes and lizards, but it is probable that no great ages are reached. Crocodiles, alligators and caymans grow slowly and are believed to live very long. There is exact evidence as to alligators in captivity in Europe reaching forty years without signs of senescence, and some of the sacred crocodiles of India are believed to be more than a hundred years old. Chelonians live still longer. A tortoise has lived for eighty years in the garden of the governor of Cape Town, and is believed to be at least two hundred years old. There are records of small land-tortoises that have been kept in captivity for over a century, whilst the very large tortoises of the Galapagos Islands certainly attain ages of at least two centuries and possibly much more. A considerable body of information exists regarding the longevity of birds, and much of this has been brought together by J. H. Gurney. From his lists, which include more than fifty species, it appears that the duration is least in the case of small passerine and picarian birds, where it ranges from eight or nine years (goat-suckers and swifts) to a maximum of twenty-five years, the latter age having been approached by larks, canaries and goldfinch. Gulls have been recorded as living over forty years, ducks and geese over fifty years (the duchess of Bedford has recorded the case of a Chinese goose having been in possession of the same family for fifty-seven years). Parrots frequently live over eighty years, swans nearly as long, ravens and owls rather less, whilst there is excellent evidence of eagles and falcons considerably exceeding a hundred years. Notwithstanding their relatively large size, struthious birds do not reach great ages. The records for cassowaries and rheas do not exceed thirty years, and the maximum for ostriches is fifty years, and that on doubtful evidence.

Exact records regarding the longevity of mammals are surprisingly few. There is no evidence as to Monotremes. The life of Marsupials in captivity is seldom long; a phalanger has lived in the London Zoological Gardens and showed no signs of age at more than ten years old; it may be inferred that the larger forms are capable of living longer. Reliable records as to Edentates do not exist; those in captivity have short lives, but the size and structure of some of the extinct forms suggests that they may have reached a great age. Nothing is known regarding the longevity of Sirenians, except that they do not live long in captivity. In the case of Cetaceans, estimates based on the growth of whale-bone assign an age of several centuries to whale-bone whales; exact records do not exist. More is known regarding Ungulates, as many of these are domesticated, semi-domesticated or are frequently kept in captivity. Great length of life has been assigned to the rhinoceros, but the longest actual record is that of an Indian rhinoceros which lived for thirty-seven years in the London Zoological Gardens. The usual duration of life in the case of horses, asses and zebras is from fifteen to thirty years, but instances of individuals reaching fifty years are fairly well authenticated. Domestic cattle may live from twenty-five to thirty years, sheep and goats from twelve to fourteen years, antelopes rather longer, especially in the case of the larger forms. A giraffe has lived for nineteen years in the London Zoological Gardens. Deer are reputed to live longer than sheep, and records of individuals at the London Gardens confirm this, but it is doubtful if they live as long as cattle. Camels are long-lived, according to repute, but actual records show no great age; a llama which died in the London Gardens at the age of seventeen years showed unmistakable signs of senility. The hippopotamus is another large ungulate to which great longevity has been assigned, but the longest actual record is the case of a female born in the London Gardens which died in its thirty-fifth year. The duration of life assigned to domestic swine is about twenty years; an Indian wild boar, alive in the London Zoological Gardens in 1910, and apparently in full vigour, was fifteen years old. Elephants are usually supposed capable of reaching great ages, but the actual records of menagerie and military animals show that thirty to forty years is a normal limit. Facts as to rodents are not numerous; the larger forms such as hares and rabbits may live for ten years, smaller forms such as rats and mice, for five or six years. Bats have a reputation for long duration of life, and tropical fruit-bats are known to have lived for seventeen years. No great ages have been recorded for Carnivora, but the average is fairly high. Twenty-five years appears to be a limit very rarely exceeded by lions, tigers or bears; domestic cats may live for from twelve to twenty-three years, and dogs from sixteen to eighteen years, though cases of as many as thirty-four years have been noted. Less is known of the smaller forms, but menagerie records show that ages between twelve and twenty are frequently reached. There were in 1910 in the London Zoological Gardens, apparently in good health, a meerkat at least twelve years old, a sand-badger fourteen years and a ratel nineteen years of age. Records regarding monkeys are unsatisfactory, for these creatures are notoriously delicate in captivity, and it is practically certain that under such circumstances they rarely die of old age. A grey lemur eleven years old and a chimpanzee eleven and a half, both in good health in the London Zoological Gardens, appear to be the oldest primates definitely recorded. Estimates based on size, condition of the skull and so forth obtained by examination of wild specimens that have been killed would seem to establish a rough correspondence between the size of monkeys and their duration of life, and to set the limits as between seven or eight and thirty years.

With regard to the human race, there seems to be almost no doubt but that the average duration of life has increased with civilization; the generally improved conditions of life, the greater care of the young and of the aged and the advance in medical and surgical science far more than outweigh any depressing effect caused by the more strenuous and nervous activity required by modern social organization. The expectation of life of those who attain the age of sixty varies with race, sex and occupation, but is certainly increasing, and an increasing number of persons have a chance of reaching and do reach ages between ninety and one hundred. Careful investigation has thrown doubt almost amounting to disproof on the much-quoted cases of great longevity, such as that of Thomas Parr, the Shropshire peasant, who was supposed to have reached his hundred and fifty-third year, and, although the existence of centenarians is thoroughly established, any ages exceeding a hundred by more than two or three years are, at the most, dubious.

A survey of the facts of longevity, so far as these are established on reasonable evidence, discloses that the recorded ages both of men and animals are much shorter than those assigned in popular belief. The duration of life is usually brief in the animal kingdom, and except for some fish and reptiles, and possibly whales, it is certain that a man enjoys the longest average duration of life and that centenarians occur more frequently amongst men than amongst most of the lower animals.

Theories of Longevity.—Ray Lankester has pointed out that several meanings are attached to the word longevity. It may be used of an individual, and in this sense has little importance, partly because of the inevitable variability of the individual, and partly because there may be individuals that are abnormal in duration of life, just as there are abnormalities in weight or height. It may be used for the average duration of life of all the individuals of a species and so be another way of expressing the average mortality that affects the species, and that varies not only with structure and constitution but with the kind of enemies, accidents and conditions to which the members of the species are subject. If we reflect on the large incidence of mortality from external causes affecting a species and particularly the young of a species, we shall see that we must conclude that intrinsic, physiological causes can have relatively little weight in determining the average mortality rate. Finally, longevity may be used, and is most conveniently used, to denote the specific potential longevity, that is to say the duration of life that would be attained by normal individuals of a species if the conditions were most favourable. It is necessary to keep in mind these various applications of the term when considering the theoretical explanations that have been associated with the empirical facts.

There is a certain relation between size and longevity. As a general rule small animals do not live so long as larger creatures. Whales survive elephants, elephants live longer than camels, horses and deer, and these again than rabbits and mice. But the relation is not absolute; parrots, ravens and geese live longer than most mammals and than many larger birds. G. L. L. Buffon tried to find a more definite measure of longevity, and believed that it was given by the ratio between the whole period of life and the period of growth. He believed that the possible duration of life was six or seven times that of the period of growth. Man, he said, takes fourteen years to grow, and his duration of life is ninety to one hundred years; the horse has reached its full size at four years of age and may live for a total period of twenty-five to thirty years. M. J. P. Flourens attempted to make Buffon’s suggestion more exact; he took the end of the period of growth as the time at which the epiphyses of the long bones united with the bones themselves, and on this basis held that the duration of life was five times the length of the period of growth. The theories of Buffon and Flourens, however, do not apply to all vertebrates and have no meaning in the case of invertebrates. Y. Bunge has suggested that in the case of mammals the period taken by the new-born young to double in weight is an index of the rapidity of growth and is in a definite relation to the possible duration of life. M. Oustalet has discussed the existence of definite relations between duration of life and size, rate of growth, period of gestation and so forth, and found so many exceptions that no general conclusion could be drawn. He finally suggested that diet was the chief factor in determining the span of life. E. Metchnikoff has provided the most recent and fullest criticism and theory of the physiological causes of longevity. He admits that many factors must be involved, as the results vary so much in different kinds of animals. He thinks that too little is known of the physiological processes of invertebrates to draw any valid conclusions in their case. With regard to vertebrates, he calls attention to the gradual reduction of longevity as the scale of life is ascended. On the whole, reptiles live much longer than birds, and birds than mammals, the contrast being specially notable when birds and mammals are compared. He dismisses the effect of the reproductive tax from possible causes of short duration of life, for the obvious reason that longevity is nearly equal in the two sexes, although females have a much greater reproductive drain. He points out that the hind-gut or large intestine is least developed in fishes, relatively small in reptiles, still small but relatively larger in birds and largest in mammals, relatively and absolutely, the caecum or caeca being reckoned as part of the hind-gut. The area of the intestinal tract in question is of relatively little importance in digestion, although a considerable amount of absorption may take place from it. It serves chiefly as a reservoir of waste matter and is usually the seat of extensive putrefactive change. The products of putrefaction are absorbed by the blood and there results a constant auto-intoxication of the body which Metchnikoff believes to be the principal agent in senile degeneration. Mammals, if they escape from enemies, diseases and accidents, fall victims to premature senility as the result of the putrefactive changes in their intestines, and the average mortality of the species is much too high, the normal specific longevity being rarely if ever attained. Metchnikoff urges, and so far probably is followed by all competent authorities, that improvements in the conditions of life, greater knowledge of disease and of hygiene and simplification of habits are tending to reduce the average mortality of man and the domestic animals, and to bring the average longevity nearer the specific longevity. He adds to this, however, a more special theory, which, although it appears rapidly to be gaining ground, is yet far from being accepted. The theory is that duration of life may be prolonged by measures directed against intestinal putrefaction.

The process of putrefaction takes place in masses of badly-digested food, and may be combated by careful dieting, avoidance of rich foods of all kinds and particularly of flesh and alcohol. Putrefaction, however, cannot take place except in the presence of a particular group of bacteria, the entrance of which to the body can be prevented to a certain extent. But it would be impossible or impracticable to secure a sterilized diet, and Metchnikoff urges that the bacteria of putrefaction can be replaced or suppressed by another set of microbes. He found that there was a widely spread popular belief in the advantage of diet consisting largely of products of soured milk and that there was a fair parallel between unusual longevity and such a diet. Experimentally he showed that the presence of the bacilli which produce lactic acid inhibited the process of putrefaction. Accordingly he recommends that the diet of human beings should include preparations of milk soured by cultures of selected lactic acid bacilli, or that the spores of such bacilli should be taken along with food favourable to their development. In a short time the bacilli establish themselves in the large intestine and rapidly stop putrefactive change. The treatment has not yet been persisted in sufficiently long by a sufficient number of different persons to be accepted as universally satisfactory, and there is even more difference of opinion as to Metchnikoff’s theory that the chief agent in senile degeneration is the stimulation of phagocytes by the products of putrefaction with the resulting destruction of the specific cells of the tissues. Metchnikoff, however, gave it to the world, not as a proved and completed doctrine, but as the line of inquiry that he himself had found most promising. He has suggested further that if the normal specific longevity were attained by human beings, old and not degenerate individuals would lose the instinct for life and acquire an instinct for death, and that as they had fulfilled the normal cycle of life, they would accept death with the same relieved acquiescence that they now accept sleep.

The various writers whose opinions have been briefly discussed agree in supposing that there is a normal specific longevity, although Metchnikoff alone has urged that this differs markedly from the average longevity, and has propounded a theory of the causes of the divergence. It is common ground that they believe the organism to be wound up, so to say, for a definite period, but have no very definite theory as to how this period is determined. A. Weismann, on the other hand, in a well-known essay on the duration of life, has developed a theory to explain the various fashions in which the gift of life is measured out to different kinds of creatures. He accepts the position that purely physiological conditions set a limit to the number of years that can be attained by each kind of multicellular organism, but holds that these conditions leave room for a considerable amount of variation. Duration of life, in fact, according to Weismann, is a character that can be influenced by the environment and that by a process of natural selection can be adapted to the conditions of existence of different species.

If a species is to maintain its existence or to increase, it is obvious that its members must be able to replace the losses caused by death. It is necessary, moreover, for the success of the species, that an average population of full vigour should be maintained. Weismann argues that death itself is an adaptation to secure the removal of useless and worn-out individuals and that it comes as soon as may be after the period of reproductive activity. It is understood that the term reproductive activity covers not merely the production of new individuals but the care of these by the parents until they are self-sufficient. The average longevity, according to Weismann, is adapted to the needs of the species; it is sufficiently long to secure that the requisite number of new individuals is produced and protected. He has brought together a large number of instances which show that there is a relation between duration of life and fertility. Birds of prey, which breed slowly, usually producing an annual brood of no more than one or two, live to great ages, whilst rabbits which produce large litters at frequent intervals have relatively short lives. Allowance has to be made in cases where the young are largely preyed upon by enemies, for this counteracts the effect of high fecundity. In short, the duration of life is so adapted that a pair of individuals on the average succeed in rearing a pair of offspring. Metchnikoff, however, has pointed out that the longevity of such fecund creatures must have arisen independently, as otherwise species subject to high risks of this nature would have ceased to exist and would have disappeared, as many species have vanished in the past of the world’s history.

The normal specific longevity, the age to which all normal individuals of a species would survive under the most favourable conditions, must depend on constitution and structure. No doubt selection is involved, as it is obvious that creatures would perish if their constitution and structure were not such that they could live long enough to reproduce their kind. The direct explanation, however, must be sought for in size, complexity of structure, length of period of growth, capacity to withstand the wear and tear of life and such other intrinsic qualities. The average specific longevity, on the other hand, depends on a multitude of extrinsic conditions operating on the intrinsic constitution; these extrinsic conditions are given by the environment of the species as it affects the young and the adults, enemies, diseases, abundance of food, climatic conditions and so forth. It would seem most natural to suppose that in all cases, except perhaps those of intelligent man and the domestic animals or plants he harbours, the average longevity must vary enormously with changing conditions, and must be a factor of greater importance in the survival of the species than the ideal normal specific longevity. It also seems more probable that the reproductive capacity, which is extremely variable, has been adapted to the average longevity of the species, than that, as Weismann supposed, it should itself be the determining cause of the duration of life.

References.—G. L. L. Buffon, Histoire naturelle générale et particulière, vol. ii. (Paris, 1749); Y. Bunge, Archiv. f. die gesammte Physiologie, vol. xcv. (Bonn, 1903); M. J. P. Flourens, De la longévité humaine et de la quantité de vie sur le globe (Paris, 1855); J. H. Gurney, On the Comparative Ages to which Birds live, Ibis, p. 19 (1899); Sir E. Ray Lankester, Comparative Longevity in Man and the Lower Animals (London, 1870); E. Metchnikoff, The Prolongation of Life (London, 1908); M. Oustalet, La Nature, p. 378 (1900); A. Weismann, Essays upon Heredity (Oxford, 1889).

(P. C. M.)

LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH (1807-1882), American poet, was born on the 27th of February 1807, at Portland, Maine. His ancestor, William Longfellow, had immigrated to Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1676, from Yorkshire, England. His father was Stephen Longfellow, a lawyer and United States congressman, and his mother, Zilpha Wadsworth, a descendant of John Alden and of “Priscilla, the Puritan maiden.”

Longfellow’s external life presents little that is of stirring interest. It is the life of a modest, deep-hearted gentleman, whose highest ambition was to be a perfect man, and, through sympathy and love, to help others to be the same. His boyhood was spent mostly in his native town, which he never ceased to love, and whose beautiful surroundings and quiet, pure life he has described in his poem “My Lost Youth.” Here he grew up in the midst of majestic peace, which was but once broken, and that by an event which made a deep impression on him—the war of 1812. He never forgot

“the sea-fight far away. How it thundered o’er the tide. And the dead captains as they lay In their graves o’erlooking the tranquil bay. Where they in battle died.”

The “tranquil bay” is Casco Bay, one of the most beautiful in the world, studded with bold, green islands, well fitted to be the Hesperides of a poet’s boyish dreams. At the age of fifteen Longfellow entered Bowdoin College at Brunswick, a town situated near the romantic falls of the Androscoggin river, about 25 m. from Portland, and in a region full of Indian scenery and legend. Here he had among his classfellows Nathaniel Hawthorne, George B. Cheever and J. S. C. Abbott. During the latter years of his college life he contributed to the United States Literary Gazette some half-dozen poems, which are interesting for two reasons—(1) as showing the poet’s early, book-mediated sympathy with nature and legendary heroisms, and (2) as being almost entirely free from that supernatural view of nature which his subsequent residence in Europe imparted to him. He graduated in 1825, at the age of eighteen, with honours, among others that of writing the “class poem”—taking the fourth place in a class of thirty-eight. He then entered his father’s law office, without intending, however, it would appear, to devote himself to the study of the law. For this profession he was, both by capacity and tastes, utterly unfitted, and it was fortunate that, shortly after his graduation, he received an offer of a professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin College. In order the better to qualify himself for this appointment, he went to Europe (May 15th, 1826) and spent three years and a half travelling in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland and England, learning languages, for which he had unusual talent, and drinking in the spirit of the history and life of these countries. The effect of Longfellow’s visit was twofold. On the one hand, it widened his sympathies, gave him confidence in himself and supplied him with many poetical themes; on the other, it traditionalized his mind, coloured for him the pure light of nature and rendered him in some measure unfit to feel or express the spirit of American nature and life. His sojourn in Europe fell exactly in the time when, in England, the reaction against the sentimental atheism of Shelley, the pagan sensitivity of Keats, and the sublime, Satanic outcastness of Byron was at its height; when, in the Catholic countries, the negative exaggerations of the French Revolution were inducing a counter current of positive faith, which threw men into the arms of a half-sentimental, half-aesthetic medievalism; and when, in Germany, the aristocratic paganism of Goethe was being swept aside by that tide of dutiful, romantic patriotism which flooded the country, as soon as it began to feel that it still existed after being run over by Napoleon’s war-chariot. He returned to America in 1829, and remained six years at Bowdoin College (1829-1835), during which he published various text-books for the study of modern languages. In his twenty-fourth year (1831) he married Miss Mary Story Potter, one of his “early loves.” In 1833 he made a series of translations from the Spanish, with an essay on the moral and devotional poetry of Spain, and these were incorporated in 1835 in Outre-mer: a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea.

In 1835 Longfellow was chosen to succeed George Ticknor as professor of modern languages and belles-lettres in Harvard. On receiving this appointment, he paid a second visit of some fifteen months to Europe, this time devoting special attention to the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland. During this visit he lost his wife, who died at Rotterdam, on the 29th of November 1835.

On his return to America in December 1836, Longfellow took up his residence in Cambridge, and began to lecture at Harvard and to write. In his new home he found himself amid surroundings entirely congenial to him. Its spaciousness and free rural aspect, its old graveyards and towering elms, its great university, its cultivated society and its vicinity to humane, substantial, busy Boston, were all attractions for such a man. In 1837-1838 several essays of Longfellow’s appeared in the North American Review, and in 1839 he published Hyperion: a Romance, and his first volume of original poetry, entitled Voices of the Night. Hyperion, a poetical account of his travels, had, at the time of its publication, an immense popularity, due mainly to its sentimental romanticism. At present few persons beyond their teens would care to read it through, so unnatural and stilted is its language, so thin its material and so consciously mediated its sentiment. Nevertheless it has a certain historical importance, for two reasons—(1) because it marks that period in Longfellow’s career when, though he had left nature, he had not yet found art, and (2) because it opened the sluices through which the flood of German sentimental poetry flowed into the United States. The Voices of the Night contains some of his best minor poems, e.g. “The Psalm of Life” and “Footsteps of Angels.” In 1842 Longfellow published a small volume of Ballads and other Poems, containing some of his most popular pieces, e.g. “The Skeleton in Armour,” “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” “The Village Blacksmith,” “To a Child,” “The Bridge,” “Excelsior.” In the same year he paid a third brief visit to Europe, spending the summer on the Rhine. During his return-passage across the Atlantic he wrote his Poems on Slavery (1842), with a dedication to Channing. These poems went far to wake in the youth of New England a sense of the great national wrong, and to prepare them for that bitter struggle in which it was wiped out at the expense of the lives of so many of them. In 1843 he married again, his wife being Miss Frances Elizabeth Appleton of Boston, a daughter of Hon. Nathan Appleton, one of the founders of Lowell, and a sister of Thomas G. Appleton, himself no mean poet.

About the same time he bought, and fixed his residence in, the Craigie House, where he had formerly only been a lodger, an old “revolutionary house,” built about the beginning of the 18th century, and occupied by General Washington in 1776. This quaint old wooden house, in the midst of a large garden full of splendid elms, continued to be his chief residence till the day of his death. Of the lectures on Dante which he delivered about this time, James Russell Lowell says: “These lectures, illustrated by admirable translations, are remembered with grateful pleasure by many who were thus led to learn the full significance of the great Christian poet.” Indeed, as a professor, Longfellow was eminently successful. Shortly after the Poems on Slavery, there appeared in 1843 a more ambitious work, The Spanish Student, a Play in Three Acts, a kind of sentimental “Morality,” without any special merit but good intention. If published nowadays it would hardly attract notice; but in those gushing, emotion-craving times it had considerable popularity, and helped to increase the poet’s now rapidly widening fame. A huge collection of translations of foreign poetry edited by him, and entitled The Poets and Poetry of Europe, appeared in 1845, and, in 1846, a few minor poems—songs and sonnets—under the title The Belfry of Bruges. In 1847 he published at Boston the greatest of all his works, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie. It was, in some degree, an imitation of Goethe’s Hermann and Dorothea, and its plot, which was derived from Hawthorne’s American Note-Books, is even simpler than that of the German poem, not to say much more touching. At the violent removal by the British government of a colony of French settlers from Acadie (Nova Scotia) in 1755, a young couple, on the very day of their wedding, were separated and carried in different directions, so that they lost all trace of each other. The poem describes the wanderings of the bride in search of her lover, and her final discovery of him as an old man on his death-bed, in a public hospital which she had entered as a nurse. Slight as the story is, it is worked out into one of the most affecting poems in the language, and gives to literature one of its most perfect types of womanhood and of “affection that hopes and endures and is patient.” Though written in a metre deemed foreign to English ears, the poem immediately attained a wide popularity, which it has never lost, and secured to the dactylic hexameter a recognized place among English metres.

In 1849 Longfellow published a novel of no great merit, Kavanagh, and also a volume of poems entitled The Seaside and the Fireside, a title which has reference to his two homes, the seaside one on the charming peninsula of Nahant, the fireside one in Cambridge. One of the poems in this collection, “Resignation,” has taken a permanent place in literature; another, “Hymn for my Brother’s Ordination,” shows plainly the nature of the poet’s Christianity. His brother, the Rev. Samuel Longfellow, was a minister of the Unitarian Church.

Longfellow’s genius, in its choice of subjects, always oscillated between America and Europe, between the colonial period of American history and the Middle and Romantic Ages of European feeling. When tired of the broad daylight of American activity, he sought refuge and rest in the dim twilight of medieval legend and German sentiment. In 1851 appeared The Golden Legend, a long lyric drama based upon Hartmann von Aue’s beautiful story of self-sacrifice, Der arme Heinrich. Next to Evangeline, this is at once the best and the most popular of the poet’s longer works, and contains many passages of great beauty. Bringing his imagination back to America, he next applied himself to the elaboration of an Indian legend. In 1854 he resigned his professorship. In the following year he gave to the world the Indian Edda, The Song of Hiawatha, a conscious imitation, both in subject and metre, of the Finnish epic, the Kalevala, with which he had become acquainted during his second visit to Europe. The metre is monotonous and easily ridiculed, but it suits the subject, and the poem is very popular. In 1858 appeared The Courtship of Miles Standish, based on a charming incident in the early history of the Plymouth colony, and, along with it, a number of minor poems, included under the modest title, Birds of Passage. One of these is “My Lost Youth.”

Two events now occurred which served to cast a gloom over the poet’s life and to interrupt his activity,—the outbreak of the Civil war, and the tragic fate of his wife, who, having accidentally allowed her dress to catch fire, was burnt to death in her own house in 1861. It was long before he recovered from the shock caused by this terrible event, and in his subsequent published poems he never ventured even to allude to it. When he did in some measure find himself again, he gave to the world his charming Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), and in 1865 his Household Poems. Among the latter is a poem entitled “The Children’s Hour,” which affords a glance into the home life of the widowed poet, who had been left with five children—two sons, Ernest and Charles, and three daughters,

“Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair.”

A small volume entitled Flower de Luce (1867) contains, among other fine things, the beautiful “threnos” on the burial of Hawthorne, and “The Bells of Lynn.” Once more the poet sought refuge in medieval life by completing his translation of the Divina Commedia, parts of which he had rendered into English as much as thirty years before. This work appeared in 1867, and gave a great impulse to the study of Dante in America. It is a masterpiece of literal translation. Next came the New England Tragedies (1868) and The Divine Tragedy (1871), which found no large public. In 1868-1869 the poet visited Europe, and was everywhere received with the greatest honour. In 1872 appeared Three Books of Song, containing translated as well as original pieces, in 1873 Aftermath and in 1875 The Mask of Pandora, and other Poems. Among these “other poems” were “The Hanging of the Crane,” “Morituri Salutamus” and “A Book of Sonnets.” The Mask of Pandora is a proof of that growing appreciation of pagan naturalism which marked the poet’s later years. Though not a great poem, it is full of beautiful passages, many of which point to the riddle of life as yet unsolved, a conviction which grew ever more and more upon the poet, as the ebulliency of romanticism gave way to the calm of classic feeling. In the “Book of Sonnets” are some of the finest things he ever wrote, especially the five sonnets entitled “Three Friends of Mine.” These “three friends” were Cornelius Felton, Louis Agassiz and Charles Sumner, whom he calls

“The noble three, Who half my life were more than friends to me.”

The loss of Agassiz was a blow from which he never entirely recovered; and, when Sumner also left him, he wrote:—

“Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed; I stay a little longer, as one stays To cover up the embers that still burn.”

He did stay a little longer; but the embers that still burnt in him refused to be covered up. He would fain have ceased writing, and used to say, “It’s a great thing to know when to stop”; but he could not stop, and did not stop, till the last. He continued to publish from time to time, in the magazines, poems which showed a clearness of vision and a perfection of workmanship such as he never had equalled at any period of his life. Indeed it may be said that his finest poems were his last. Of these a small collection appeared under the title of Keramos, and other Poems (1878). Besides these, in the years 1875-1878 he edited a collection of Poems of Places in thirty-one small volumes. In 1880 appeared Ultima Thule, meant to be his last work, and it was nearly so. In October 1881 he wrote a touching sonnet on the death of President Garfield, and in January 1882, when the hand of death was already upon him, his poem, Hermes Trismegistus, in which he gives utterance, in language as rich as that of the early gods, to that strange feeling of awe without fear, and hope without form, with which every man of spotless life and upright intellect withdraws from the phenomena of time to the realities of eternity.

In the last years of his life he suffered a great deal from rheumatism, and was, as he sometimes cheerfully said, “never free from pain.” Still he remained as sunny and genial as ever, looking from his Cambridge study windows across the Brighton meadows to the Brookline hills, or enjoying the “free wild winds of the Atlantic,” and listening to “The Bells of Lynn” in his Nahant home. He still continued to receive all visitors, and to take occasional runs up to Castine and Portland, the homes of his family. About the beginning of 1882, however, a serious change took place in his condition. Dizziness and want of strength confined him to his room for some time, and, although after some weeks he partially recovered, his elasticity and powers were gone. On the 19th of March he was seized with what proved to be peritonitis, and he died on the 24th. The poet was buried two days afterwards near his “three friends” in Mount Auburn cemetery. The regret for his loss was universal; for no modern man was ever better loved or better deserved to be loved.

Longfellow was made an LL.D. of Bowdoin College in 1828, at the age of twenty-one, of Harvard in 1859 and of Cambridge (England) in 1868, and D.C.L. of Oxford in 1869. In 1873 he was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Science, and in 1877 of the Spanish Academy.

In person, Longfellow was rather below middle height, broad shouldered and well built. His head and face were extremely handsome, his forehead broad and high, his eyes full of clear, warming fire, his nose straight and graceful, his chin and lips rich and full of feeling as those of the Praxitelean Hermes, and his voice low, melodious and full of tender cadences. His hair, originally dark, became, in his later years, silvery white, and its wavy locks combined with those of his flowing beard to give him that leonine appearance so familiar through his later portraits. Charles Kingsley said of Longfellow’s face that it was the most beautiful human face he had ever seen. A bust to his memory was erected in the Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey in 1884.

In Longfellow, the poet was the flower and fruit of the man. His nature was essentially poetic, and his life the greatest of his poems. Those who knew only the poems he wrote could form but a faint notion of the harmony, the sweetness, the manliness and the tenderness of that which he lived. What he would have been as a poet, if, instead of visiting Europe in early life and drinking in the spirit of the middle ages under the shadows of cathedral towers, he had, like Whittier, grown old amid American scenery and life, we can only guess from his earlier poems, which are as naturalistic, fresh and unmystical as could be desired; but certain it is that, from his long familiarity with the medieval view of nature, and its semi-pagan offspring, the romantic view, he was brought, for the greater part of his life, to look upon the world of men and things either as the middle scene of a miracle play, with a heaven of rewarding happiness above and a purgatory of purifying pain below, or else as a garment concealing, while it revealed, spiritual forms of unfathomed mystery. During this time he could hear “the trailing garments of the night sweep through her marble halls,” and see “the stars come out to listen to the music of the seas.” Later on, as he approached his second youth (he was spared a second childhood), he tended to a more pagan view. About the time when he was writing The Mask of Pandora, he could see “in the sunset Jason’s fleece of gold,” and hear “the waves of the distracted sea piteously calling and lamenting” his lost friend. But through all the periods of his life his view of the world was essentially religious and subjective, and, consequently, his manner of dealing with it hymnal or lyric. This fact, even more than his merits as an artist, serves to account for his immense popularity. Too well-informed, too appreciative and too modest to deem himself the peer of the “grand old masters,” or one of “those far stars that come in sight once in a century,” he made it his aim to write something that should “make a purer faith and manhood shine in the untutored heart,” and to do this in the way that should best reach that heart. This aim determined at once his choice of subjects and his mode of treating them.

The subjects of Longfellow’s poetry are, for the most part, aspects of nature as influencing human feeling, either directly or through historical association, the tender or pathetic sides and incidents of life, or heroic deeds preserved in legend or history. He had a special fondness for records of human devotion and self-sacrifice, whether they were monkish legends, Indian tales, Norse drápas or bits of American history. His mode of treatment is subjective and lyric. No matter what form his works assume, whether the epic, as in Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles Standish and Hiawatha, the dramatic, as in The Spanish Student, The Golden Legend and The Mask of Pandora, or the didactic, as in The Psalm of Life and many of the minor poems; they are all subjective. This is not the highest praise that can be given to works of art; but it implies less dispraise in Longfellow’s case than in almost any other, by reason of his noble subjectivity.

If we look in Longfellow’s poetry for originality of thought, profound psychological analysis or new insights into nature, we shall be disappointed. Though very far from being hampered by any dogmatic philosophical or religious system of the past, his mind, until near the end, found sufficient satisfaction in the Christian view of life to make it indifferent to the restless, inquiring spirit of the present, and disinclined to play with any more recent solution of life’s problems. He had no sympathy with either scepticism or formal dogmatism, and no need to hazard rash guesses respecting man’s destiny. He disliked the psychological school of art, believing it to be essentially morbid and unhealthy. He had no sympathy with the tendency represented by George Eliot, or with any attempt to be analytic in art. He held art to be essentially synthetic, creative and manifesting, not analytic, destructive or questioning. Hence he never strove to draw from nature some new secret, or to show in her relations never discovered before. His aim was to impress upon her familiar facts and aspects the seal of his own gracious nature. A man in intellect and courage, yet without conceit or bravado; a woman in sensibility and tenderness, yet without shrinking or weakness; a saint in purity of life and devotion of heart, yet without asceticism or religiosity; a knight-errant in hatred of wrong and contempt of baseness, yet without self-righteousness or cynicism; a prince in dignity and courtesy, yet without formality or condescension; a poet in thought and feeling, yet without jealousy or affectation; a scholar in tastes and habits, yet without aloofness or bookishness; a dutiful son, a loving husband, a judicious father, a trusty friend, a useful citizen and an enthusiastic patriot,—he united in his strong, transparent humanity almost every virtue under heaven. A thoroughly healthy, well-balanced, harmonious nature, accepting life as it came, with all its joys and sorrows, and living it beautifully and hopefully, without canker and without uncharity. No man ever lived more completely in the light than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Perhaps the most remarkable traits in Longfellow’s character were his accessibility and his charity. Though a great worker, he seemed always to have time for anything he was asked to do. He was never too busy to see a caller, to answer a letter, or to assist, by word or deed, any one that needed assistance. His courtesy to all visitors, even to strangers and children who called to look at him, or who, not venturing to call, hung about his garden-gate in order to catch a glimpse of him, was almost a marvel. He always took it for granted that they had come to see Washington’s study, and, accordingly, took the greatest interest in showing them that. He never, as long as he could write, was known to refuse his autograph, and so far was he from trying to protect himself from intruders that he rarely drew the blinds of his study windows at night, though that study was on the ground floor and faced the street. His acts of charity, though performed in secret, were neither few nor small. Of him it may be said with perfect truth, “He went about doing good”; and not with his money merely, but also with his presence and his encouragement. To how many sad hearts did he come like an angel, with the rich tones of his voice waking harmonics of hope, where before there had been despair and silence? How many young literary people, disappointed at the unsuccess of their first attempts, did he comfort and spur on to renewed and higher efforts! How careful he was to quench no smoking flax! How utterly free he was from jealousy or revengefulness! While poor, morbid Edgar Allan Poe was writing violent and scurrilous articles upon him, accusing him of plagiarism and other literary misdemeanours, he was delivering enthusiastic lectures to his classes on Poe’s poetry. His charity was unbounded. Once, when the present writer proposed to the president of the Harvard University Visiting Committee that Longfellow should be placed on that committee, the president replied: “What would be the use? Longfellow could never be brought to find fault with anybody or anything.” And it was true. His whole life was bathed in that sympathy, that love which suffers long and envies not, which forgives unto seventy times seven times, and as many more if need be. Even in his last years, when loss of friends and continual physical pain made life somewhat “cold, and dark and dreary” for him, he never complained, lamented or blamed the arrangements of nature, and the only way in which it was possible to know that he suffered was through his ever-increasing delight in the health and strength of younger men. His whole nature was summed up in the lines of his favourite poet:—

“Luce intellettual, piena d’amore. Amor di vero ben, pien di letizia. Letizia che trascende ogni dolzore.”

See his Life ... with Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence, by Samuel Longfellow, and the “Riverside” edition of the prose and poems (Boston, 11 vols., 1886-1890). An enlarged edition of the Life (3 vols., 1891) included the journals and correspondence, 1866-1882, published in 1887 as Final Memorials (Boston and New York). Also the volume by T. W. Higginson in the “American Men of Letters” series (1902); E. C. Stedman’s criticism in Poets of America; and an article in W. D. Howells’ My Literary Friends and Acquaintance (New York, 1900) which contains a valuable account of Longfellow’s later life.

(T. Da.)

LONG FIVES. This game, though played in a tennis-court, bears but a slight resemblance to tennis, but is nevertheless a valuable form of preparatory practice. The game is 8 or 11 points, each stroke won counting one point to the winner. The server gives 3 points in 8, or 4 points in 11 to the striker-out. There are no chases. The winning openings count as at tennis. If a ball be struck into any other gallery or opening, it may be counted, by arrangement, either as a “let” (the rest being annulled) or against the striker; a similar arrangement is made for balls that make any chase on the hazard-side, or a chase of the last gallery on the service-side.

LONGFORD, a county of Ireland in the province of Leinster, bounded N.W. by Leitrim, N.E. by Cavan, E. and S. by Westmeath and W. by Lough Ree and Roscommon. With the exception of Carlow, Louth and Dublin, it is the smallest county in Ireland, the area being 269,408 acres, or about 421 sq. m. The general level surface is broken occasionally by low hills, which cover a considerable area at its northern angle. The principal rivers are the Camlin, which rises near Granard and flows past Longford to the Shannon, and the Inny, which entering the county from Westmeath crosses its southern corner and falls into Lough Ree. Lough Ree is partly included in Longford, and the other principal lakes are Lough Gowna, Derrylough, Lough Drum and Lough Bannow.

The Silurian axis of Newry reaches the north of this county, where Lough Gowna lies upon it. The rest of the county, but for anticlinals which bring up Old Red Sandstone at Longford town and Ardagh, belongs to the Carboniferous Limestone plain, in which Lough Ree forms a very characteristic lake, with signs of extension by solution along its shores. Marble of fine quality has been raised. In the north indications of iron are abundant, and there are also some traces of lead.

The climate is somewhat moist and cold, and there is a large extent of marsh and bog. The soil in the southern districts resting on the limestone is a deep loam well adapted for pasture, but in the north it is often poor. The proportion of tillage to pasture is roughly as 1 to 2. Oats and potatoes, in decreasing quantities, are the principal crops. The numbers of cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry are well maintained. The population is almost wholly rural, but the principal industry of agriculture is supplemented by a slight manufacture of coarse woollens and linen. The Midland Great Western line from Mullingar to Sligo crosses the centre of the county by way of the county town of Longford; and the Cavan branch touches the extreme east. The Royal Canal enters the county in the south at Abbeyshrule, and joins the Shannon near Cloondara.

The population (52,647 in 1891; 46,672 in 1901) decreases seriously, owing to emigration. About 90% of the total are Roman Catholics. The only towns of any importance are Longford (the county town, pop. 3747) and Granard (1622). The county includes six baronies. Assizes are held at Longford, and quarter sessions at Ballymahon, Granard and Longford. The county is in the Protestant diocese of Ardagh, and the Roman Catholic dioceses of Ardagh and Meath. It is divided into two parliamentary divisions, north and south, each returning one member.

The early name of Longford was Annaly or Analé, and it was a principality of the O’Farrels. Along with the province of Meath, in which it was then included, it was granted by Henry II. to Hugh de Lacy, who planted an English colony. On the division of Meath into two counties in 1543, Annaly was included in Westmeath, but under a statute of 1569, for the shiring of countries not already shired, it was made shire ground under the name of Longford.

Among antiquarian remains the chief ruin is the rath called the Moat of Granard, at the end of the main street of that town. There are monastic remains at Ardagh, a former bishopric, Longford, Moydow and on several of the islands of Lough Ree. The principal old castles are those of Rathcline near Lanesborough, and Ballymahon on the Inny. The principal modern seats are those of Carrickglass on the Camlin, and Castle Forbes, the seat of the earls of Granard. Oliver Goldsmith was born at Pallas, a village near Ballymahon, in this county; and at Edgeworthstown the family of Edgeworth, of which the famous novelist Maria Edgeworth was a member, established themselves in the 16th century.

LONGFORD, the county town of Co. Longford, Ireland, on the river Camlin, and on a branch of the Midland Great Western railway, 75 m. W.N.W. of Dublin. Pop. (1901) 3747. The principal building is St Mel’s Roman Catholic cathedral for the diocese of Ardagh, one of the finest Roman Catholic churches in Ireland. The town has a considerable trade in grain, butter and bacon. There are corn-mills, a spool factory and tanneries. Longford is governed by an urban district council. The ancient name of the town was Athfada, and here a monastery is said to have been founded by St Idus, a disciple of St Patrick. The town obtained a fair and market from James I. and a charter of incorporation from Charles II., as well as the right to return two members to parliament. It was disfranchised at the Union in 1800.

LONGHI, PIETRO (1702-1762), Venetian painter, was born in Venice. He was a pupil of Antonio Palestra and Giuseppe Maria Crespi at Bologna, and devoted himself to the painting of the elegance of the social life in 18th-century Venice. The republic was dying fast, but her sons, even in this period of political decline, retained their love of pageants and ceremonies and of extravagant splendour in attire. The art of Venice was vanishing like her political power; and the only painters who attempted to stem the tide of artistic decadence were the Canaletti, Guardi, Tiepolo and Longhi. But whilst the Canaletti and Guardi dwelt upon the architectural glories of Venice, and Tiepolo applied himself to decorative schemes in which he continued the tradition of Paolo Veronese and Tintoretto, Longhi became the chronicler of the life of his compatriots. In a way his art may be set beside Hogarth’s, though the Venetian did not play the part of a satirical moralist. He has aptly been called the Goldoni of painting. His sphere is that of light social comedy—the life at the café, the hairdresser’s, at the dancing-school, at the dressmaker’s. The tragic, or even the serious, note is hardly sounded in his work, which, in its colour, is generally distinguished by a rich mellow quality of tone. Most of his paintings are in the public and private collections of Venice. They are generally on a small scale, but the staircase of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice is decorated by him with seven frescoes, representing scenes of fashionable life. At the Venice academy are a number of his genre pictures and a portrait of the architect Temanza; at the Palazzo Quirini-Stampalia the portrait of Daniele Dolfino, “The Seven Sacraments” (etched by Pitteri), a “Temptation of St Anthony,” a “Circus,” a “Gambling Scene,” and several other genre pictures and portraits; at the Museo Correr a dozen scenes of Venetian life and a portrait of Goldoni. In England the National Gallery owns “The Exhibition of a Rhinoceros in an Arena,” a “Domestic Group,” “The Fortune-Teller,” and the portrait of the Chevalier Andrea Tron; two genre pictures are at Hampton Court Palace, and others in the Richter and Mond collections. Many of his works have been engraved by Alessandro Longhi, Bartolozzi, Cattini, Faldoni and others. Longhi died in Venice in 1762.

LONGINUS, CASSIUS (c. A.D. 213-273), Greek rhetorician and philosophical critic, surnamed Philologus. The origin of his gentile name Cassius is unknown; it can only be conjectured that he adopted it from a Roman patron. He was perhaps a native of Emesa (Homs) in Syria, the birthplace of his uncle Fronto the rhetorician. He studied at Alexandria under Origen the heathen, and taught for thirty years at Athens, one of his pupils being the Neoplatonist Porphyry. Longinus did not embrace the new speculations then being developed by Plotinus, but continued a Platonist of the old type. He upheld, in opposition to Plotinus, the doctrine that the Platonic ideas existed outside the divine ὅτι ἔξω τοῦ νοῦ ὑφέστηκε τὰ νοητά: see F. Überweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 9th ed., 1903, i. § 72). Plotinus, after reading his treatise Περὶ ἀρχῶν (On First Principles), remarked that Longinus might be a scholar (φιλόλογος), but that he was no philosopher (φιλόσοφος). The reputation which Longinus acquired by his learning was immense; he is described by Porphyry as “the first of critics,” and by Eunapius as “a living library and a walking museum” or encyclopaedia. During a visit to the East he became teacher in Greek, and subsequently chief counsellor in state affairs, to Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. It was by his advice that she endeavoured to regain her independence; Aurelian, however, crushed the attempt, and while Zenobia was led captive to Rome to grace Aurelian’s triumph, Longinus paid the forfeit of his life.

Longinus was the author of a large number of works, nearly all of which have perished. Among those mentioned by Suïdas are Quaestiones Homericae, An Homerus fuerit philosophus, Problemata Homeri et solutiones, Atticorum vocabulorum editiones duae; the most important of his philological works, Φιλόλογοι ὁμιλίαι (Philological Discourses) consisting of at least 21 books, is omitted. A considerable fragment of the Περὶ τέλους (De finibus, On the Chief End) is preserved in the Life of Plotinus by Porphyry (§ 20). Under his name there are also extant Prolegomena to the Encheiridion of Hephaestion on metre (printed in R. Westphal, Scriptores Metrici Graeci, i. 1866) and the fragment of a treatise on rhetoric (L. Spengel, Rhetores Graeci, i. pp. 299-320), inserted in the middle of a similar treatise by Apsines. It gives brief practical hints on invention, arrangement, style, memory and other things useful to the student. Some important excerpts ἐκ τῶν Λογγίνου (Spengel, i. 325-328) may possibly be from the φιλόλογοι ὁμιλίαι.

It is as the reputed author of the well-known and remarkable work Περὶ ὕψους (generally, but inadequately, rendered On the Sublime) that Longinus is best known. Modern scholars, however, with few exceptions, are agreed that it cannot with any certainty be ascribed to him, and that the question of authorship cannot be determined (see Introduction to Roberts’s edition). The following are the chief arguments against Longinus. (1) The treatise is not mentioned by any classical author, nor in any lists of the works attributed to him. (2) The evidence of the MSS. shows that doubts existed even in early times. In the most important (No. 2036 in the Paris Library, 10th century) the heading is Διονυσίου ἥ Λογγίνου, thus giving an alternative author Dionysius; in the Laurentian MS. at Florence the title has ἀνωνύμου, implying that the author was unknown. The ascription in the Paris MS. led to the addition of Dionysius to the name of the reputed author—Dionysius Cassius Longinus, accounted for by the supposition that his early name was Dionysius, Cassius Longinus being subsequently adopted from a Roman patron whose client he had been. (3) The absence of any reference to the famous writers on rhetoric of the age of the Antonines, such as Hermogenes and Alexander son of Numenius. (4) The opening sentences show that the Περὶ ὕψους was written with a view of correcting the faults of style and method in a treatise by Caecilius (q.v.) of Calactē on the same subject. As Caecilius flourished during the reign of Augustus, it is hardly likely that his work would have been selected for purposes of criticism in the 3rd century. (5) General considerations of style and language and of the point of view from which the work is written. In favour of Longinus: (1) The traditional ascription, which held its ground unchallenged till the beginning of the 18th century. (2) The philosophical colouring of the first chapter and the numerous quotations from Plato are in accordance with what is known of his philosophical opinions. (3) The treatise is the kind of work to be expected from one who was styled “the first of critics.” (4) The Ammonius referred to (xiii. 3) is supposed to be Ammonius Saccas (c. 175-242), but it appears from the Venetian scholia to the Iliad that there was an earlier Ammonius (fl. c. 140 B.C.), a pupil and successor of Aristarchus at Alexandria, who, judging from the context, is no doubt the writer in question. The reference is therefore an argument against Longinus.

The work is dedicated to a certain Terentianus, of whom nothing is known (see Roberts’s edition, p. 18).

The alternative author Dionysius of the MSS. has been variously identified with the rhetorician and historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Atticist Aelius Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dionysius Atticus of Pergamum, Dionysius of Miletus. Other suggested claimants to the authorship are Plutarch (L. Vaucher in Études critiques sur le traité du sublime (Geneva, 1854) and Aelius Theon of Alexandria (W. Christ), the author of a work on the Arrangement of Speech. But it seems most probable that the author was an unknown writer who flourished in the 1st century soon after Caecilius and before Hermogenes. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff gives his date as about A.D. 40.

The rendering On the Sublime implies more than is intended by the Greek Περὶ ὕψους (“impressiveness in style,” Jebb). Nothing abnormal, such as is associated with the word “sublime,” is the subject of discussion; it is rather a treatise on style. According to the author’s own definitions, “Sublimity is a certain distinction and excellence in expression,” “sublimity consists in elevation,” “sublimity is the echo (or expression) of a great soul” (see note in Roberts).

The treatise is especially valuable for the numerous quotations from classical authors, above all, for the preservation of the famous fragment of Sappho, the ode to Anactoria, beginning

φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖσιν,

imitated by Catullus (li.) Ad Lesbiam,

“Ille mi par esse deo videtur.”

“Its main object is to point out the essential elements of an impressive style which, avoiding all tumidity, puerility, affectation and bad taste, finds its inspiration in grandeur of thought and intensity of feeling, and its expression in nobility of diction and in skilfully ordered composition” (Sandys).

A full bibliography of the subject will be found in the edition by W. R. Roberts (Cambridge, 2nd ed., 1907), containing an Introduction, Analysis, Translation and Appendices (textual, linguistic, literary and bibliographical), to which may be added F. Marx, Wiener Studien, xx. (1898), and F. Kaibel, Hermes, xxxiv. (1899), who respectively advocate and reject the claims of Longinus to the authorship; J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (2nd ed., 1906), pp. 288, 338, should also be consulted. The number of translations in all the languages of Europe is large, including the famous one by Boileau, which made the work a favourite text-book of the bellelettristic critics of the 18th century. A text and translation was published by A. O. Prickard (1907-1908).

LONG ISLAND, an island, 118 m. long and 12 to 23 m. wide, with its axis E.N.E. and W.S.W., roughly parallel with the S. shore of Connecticut, U.S.A., from which it is separated by Long Island Sound (115 m. long and 20-25 m. wide) and lying S.E. of the mainland of New York state, of which it is a part, and immediately E. of Manhattan Island. Area, 1682 sq. m. The east end is divided into two narrow peninsulas (the northern culminating in Orient Point about 25 m. long, the southern ending in Montauk Point, the eastern extremity of the island, about 40 m. long) by the three bays, Great Peconic, Little Peconic (in which lies Shelter Island) and Gardiners (in which lies Gardiners Island). The N. shore is broken in its western half by the fjords of Flushing Bay, Little Neck Bay, Manhasset Bay, Cold Spring Harbor; Huntington Bay (nearly landlocked), Smithtown Bay and Port Jefferson Harbor, which also is nearly landlocked. East of Port Jefferson the N. shore is comparatively unbroken. The S. shore has two bays, Jamaica Bay with many low islands and nearly cut off from the ocean by the narrow spur of Rockaway Beach; and the ill-defined Great South Bay, which is separated from the Atlantic by the narrow Long Beach, Jones Beach and Oak Island Beach, and by the long peninsula (35 or 40 m.), called Fire Island or Great South Beach. Still farther E. and immediately S. of Great Peconic Bay is Shinnecock Bay, about 10 m. long and cut off from the ocean by a narrow beach.

The N. side of the island was largely built by deposits along the front of the continental glacier, and its peculiar surface is due to such deposits. At Astoria the dark gneiss bed rock is visible. The S. half of the island is mostly built of a light sandy or loamy soil and is low, except for the hills (140-195 ft.) of Montauk peninsula, which are a part of the “back-bone” of the island elsewhere running through the centre from E. to W. and reaching its highest point in its western extremity, Oakley’s High Hill (384 ft.) and Hempstead Harbor Hill, W. of which are the flat and fertile Hempstead Plains. North of the back-bone or central ridge the country is hilly with glacial drift and many boulders along the coast and with soil stonier and more fertile than that of the “South Side.” There is good clay at Whitestone and at Lloyd’s Point on the north side. This north shore is comparatively well wooded; the middle of the island is covered with stunted oaks and scrubby pines; the south side is a floral mean between the other divisions. It is cut in its middle part by a few creeks and tidal rivers1 flowing into the Great South Bay. Another “river,” the Peconic, about 15 m. long, runs E. into Peconic Bay. On the north side there are few waterways save Nissequoge river, partly tidal, which runs N. into Smithtown Bay. Near the centre of the island is Lake Ronkonkoma, which is well below the level of the surrounding country, and whose deep cold waters with their unexplained ebb and flow are said to have been so feared by the Indians that they would not fish there. There are salt marshes (probably 100 sq. m. in all) on the shore of the Sound and of the Great South Bay.

As regards its fauna Long Island is a meeting-place for equatorial and arctic species of birds and fish; in winter it is visited occasionally by the auk and in summer sometimes by the turkey buzzard. James E. DeKay in his botanical and zoological survey (1842-1849) of New York state estimated that on Long Island there were representatives of two-thirds of the species of land birds of the United States and seven-eighths of the water birds—probably an exaggerated estimate for the time and certainly not true now. There is snipe and duck shooting, especially on the shores of the Great South Bay; there is good deer hunting, especially in Islip town; and there are several private preserves, some stocked with English game birds, within 50 m. of New York City. There are many excellent trout streams and the island was known in aboriginal times for its fresh and salt water fish. Indian names referring to fishing places are discussed in Wm. W. Tooker’s Some Indian Fishing Stations upon Long Island. Long Island wampum was singularly good—the Indian name, Seawanhacky (Seawanhaka, &c.), of the island has been interpreted to mean “shell treasury”—and black wampum was made from the purple part of the shell of the quahaug. Soft clams are dug on the north shore at low tide and hard clams are found along the southern shore, where (at Islip) they were first successfully canned; scallops and other small shell fish are taken, especially at the E. end of the island. But the most important shell fishery is that of oysters. The famous Blue Points grow in the Great South Bay, particularly at Sayville and Bellport, where seed oysters planted from Long Island Sound develop into the Blue Points with characteristics of no other variety of oyster. Farther west, on the S. shore are grown the well-known Rockaway oysters. The New York State Fish Commission has a hatchery at Cold Spring Harbor on the N. shore. The largest commercial fisheries are on the south side, in the ocean off Fire Island Beach, where there are great “pounds” in which captured fish are kept alive before shipment to market. Sag Harbor and East Hampton on the E. end of the island were important whaling ports in the 18th century and the first part of the 19th, and they and other fishing villages afterward did a large business in the capture of menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus), a small shad-like fish, which, following the custom of the Indians, they manufactured into fertilizer. At Glen Cove there are now great starch factories.

The west end of the island has been called New York’s market garden. On the Hempstead Plains and immediately E. of them along the north shore great quantities of cabbage and cucumbers are grown and manufactured into sauerkraut and pickles. There are large cranberry fields near the village of Calverton, immediately W. of Riverhead.

There are a few large farms on Long Island, mostly on the north side, but it is becoming more and more a place of suburban residence. This change is due in part to cool summer and warm winter winds from the ocean, which makes the July mean temperature 68° to 70° F. at the east end and the south side, and 72° on the north shore, as contrasted with 74° for the west end and New York City. The range of temperature is said to be less than in any other place in the United States with the exception of Corpus Christi (Tex.), Eureka (California), Galveston (Texas), and Key West (Florida). Even on the south shore the humidity for August and September is less than that of any location on the Atlantic coast, or Los Angeles and San Diego on the Pacific, according to Dr Le Grand N. Denslow in a paper, “The Climate of Long Island” (1901). Surf-bathing on the south shore, yachting and boating on the Sound, the Great South Bay and the Ocean, and hunting and fishing are attractions. At Garden City, Nassau (Glen Cove), Great River and Shinnecock Hills are well-known golf links; there are several hunt clubs; and at Southampton are some of the best turf tennis-courts in the United States. Few parts of the island are summer resorts in the ordinary use of the word; there are large hotels hardly anywhere save on Coney Island, at Far Rockaway, on Long Beach and on Shelter Island; and a large part of the summer population lives in private mansions. Some Long Island “country places” are huge estates with game and fish preserves and luxurious “châteaux.” The roads are good. The course of the Vanderbilt automobile races is along the roads of the Hempstead Plains. Also on the Hempstead Plains are the Creedmoor Rifle Range, where, in an Interstate Park, E. of Jamaica, annual international rifle shooting tournaments for the championship of America were held until 1909; Garden City, which was founded by A. T. Stewart for the purpose of providing comfortable homes at low cost to his employés and others, and where are the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation, St Paul’s School for Boys and St Mary’s School for Girls; and, near Hempstead, the grounds of the Meadowbrook (hunt and polo) Club and those of the Farm Kennel Club. The only railway is the Long Island Railroad (owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad) with western termini on Manhattan and in Long Island City and Brooklyn, whence lines meet at Jamaica, and thence three principal lines branch, the north shore to Wading River, the main line to Greenport, and the south side to Montauk.

Long Island is a part of New York State, its western third forming Brooklyn and Queens boroughs of New York City—these boroughs were formed respectively from Kings county and from the w. half of Queens county upon the erection of Greater New York, what was formerly the E. half of Queens county then became Nassau county (area 252 sq. m.; pop., in 1900, 55,448, in 1905, 69,477), whose county-seat is Mineola. The eastern and the larger part of the island is the less thickly settled Suffolk county with an area of 918 sq. m. and a population in 1900 of 77,582 and in 1905 of 81,653. The county-seat of Suffolk county is Riverhead, so named from its position at the head of the Peconic river on the W. end of Great Peconic Bay. The ten townships of Suffolk county are large governmental units, showing, by their similarity to the towns of New England, the relation of the early settlers to New England. The largest in area is Brookhaven, which reaches all the way across the island near its central part. The townships of Suffolk county with their population in 1905 were: Huntington (10,236). Babylon (7919), Smithtown (3325), Islip (13,721), Brookhaven (16,050), Riverhead (4950), Shelter Island (1105), Easthampton (4303), Southold (8989) and Southampton (11,024). The total population of Long Island was 1,452,611 in 1900, and 1,718,056 in 1905 (state census), the population of the borough of Brooklyn alone for these years being 1,166,582 and 1,358,686.

History.—The principal Indian tribes on Long Island at the time of the first settlement by the whites were the Montauk, on the eastern end of the island, where they gave their name to the “point” and where their last “king,” David Pharoah, died in 1785; the Shinnecock, who, much admixed with negro blood, now live on the reservation between Canoe Place and Shinnecock Hills; the Manhasset, on what is now Shelter Island; the Patchogue, near the present village of that name; the Massapequa, between the Hempstead Plains and what is now Islip, who were defeated and practically exterminated in 1653 by John Underhill; the Canarsie, who lived near the present Jamaica; and on the north side the Nessaquague or Nissequoge (in the present town of Smithtown), and the Sealtocot who gave their name to Setauket in Brookhaven town. The first pastor of the church (Presbyterian-Congregational) at Easthampton, Thomas James (c. 1620-1696), is supposed to have translated a catechism and parts of the Bible into the dialect of the Montauk, among whom Samson Occum had a school between 1755 and 1765.

The territory of Long Island was included in the grant of 1620 by James I. to the Plymouth Company and in 1635 was conveyed to William Alexander, earl of Stirling. The conflicting claims of English and Dutch were the subject of the treaty concluded at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1650, by which the Dutch were to hold everything west of Oyster Bay, the English everything east—a provision which accomplished no agreement, since Oyster Bay itself was the matter of contention, and English settlers on what the Dutch called the west side of Oyster Bay refused to remove. Long Island was included in the territory assigned to the duke of York in 1663-1664, when the New England towns on the island objected to separation from Connecticut. On the recovery of New York by the Dutch in 1673 the eastern towns refused to submit to the Dutch governor. In 1674 by the treaty of Westminster Long Island became a part of the British colony of New York. The Dutch settlements were more important ethnically than historically; on the west end of the Island the Dutch Reformed Church is still strong and there are many Dutch names; at West Sayville, on the “south side,” about 50 m. from New York, in a settlement made about 1786 by Gustav Tukker, who did much to develop the oyster fisheries, Holland Dutch was the common speech until the last quarter of the 19th century. The “Five Dutch Towns” were: Nieuw Amersfoord (after 1801 officially called Flatlands), on Jamaica Bay, where the first settlement was made about 1623 and the first grant in 1636; Midwout (later Vlackte-Bosch and Flatbush), settled between 1645 and 1650 and having in 1654 the first Dutch church; Nieuw Utrecht, settled soon after 1650 and incorporated in 1660; Breuckelen (now Brooklyn), which was settled a little before its organization as a town in 1646; and Boswijck (Bushwick), first settled by Swedes and Norwegians and incorporated in 1660. These five towns became one administrative district in 1661.

Apparently the earliest English settlement was at Hempstead in 1640 by colonists from Lynn, Massachusetts, who based their claim on the patent (1621) of Nova Scotia to Lord Stirling, but were almost immediately driven out by the Dutch. In 1643 another English settlement was made at Hempstead by men from Stamford, Connecticut, who in 1644 secured a patent from Governor Kieft of New Netherland. In 1645 Kieft granted land at Gravesend to Lady Deborah Moody, who had settled there about 1643, when she had left Lynn and the Salem church because of her anti-pedobaptist views. At Gravesend in 1664 Colonel Richard Nicolls first landed the English troops which occupied the island; and in 1693 it became one of its three ports of entry. The Connecticut towns on Long Island were as follows: Southampton was settled in 1640 by the Lynn men driven out of Hempstead by the Dutch, and in 1644-1664 was in the Connecticut jurisdiction. Southold (the “South Hold of New Haven”), called from 1640 until 1644 by the Indian name Yennicock, had a church in 1640, and a court based on the Levitical law, which was abolished in 1643 upon the remonstrance of the authorities of New Haven. The Southold settlers were from Hingham, Norfolk and New Haven, and the colony joined New Haven in 1648, in which year the colony of Forrett’s (now Shelter) Island also submitted to New Haven. Easthampton was settled in 1648 from Lynn. Oyster Bay was also settled by Lynn men in 1640 and contested by the Dutch and English. Newtown, officially called Middleburgh, was settled in 1652, purchased from the Indians in 1656, “annexed to the other side of the Sound” in 1662, in the same year took the name of Hastings, in 1706 was the scene of the arrest of the Presbyterian itinerants Francis Mackemie and John Hampton, and in 1766 was the site of the Methodist Episcopal Society at Middle Village, the second oldest of that denomination in America. Huntington was settled in 1653 from New Haven, Hempstead, Southold and Southampton. Other early settlements were: Jamaica, about 1657; Brookhaven, first settled at Ashford (now Setauket) from Boston in 1655, and Smithtown, patented in 1677 to Richard Smith of Setauket, who was said to be a soldier of Cromwell, and of whom there is a story that having bargained with the Indians for as much land as a bull could cover in a day he rode his trained bull in a great circuit about the land he coveted and was thereafter known as “Bull” Smith. Almost all these English settlements were made by Presbyterians and from Jamaica east this was the prevailing denomination. During the war of Independence the battle of Long Island (see below) was fought within what is now the borough of Brooklyn.

Authorities.—Benj. F. Thompson, The History of Long Island (New York, 2nd ed. 1843); Nathaniel S. Prime, History of Long Island (New York, 1845), especially valuable for ecclesiastical history, particularly of the Presbyterian church; Martha B. Flint, Early Long Island (New York, 1896); Gabriel Furman, Antiquities of Long Island (New York, 1875), edited by Frank Moore; and the publications of the Long Island Historical Society (of Brooklyn) and of the Suffolk County Historical Society (of Riverhead).

(R. We.)

Battle of Long Island, 1776.—The interest of this battle lies in the fact that it was the first engagement in the campaign of 1776 (see American War of Independence) and was expected in England to be decisive of the contest in the colonies. After the evacuation of Boston (March 1776), Lord Howe moved against New York City, which he thought would afford a better base of operations for the future. The Americans undertook its defence although recognizing the difficulties in the case, as the bay and rivers adjoining would enable the British fleet to co-operate effectively with the army. To protect his left flank Washington was forced to throw a portion of his troops over to the Long Island side of the East river; they fortified themselves there on the site of the present Borough of Brooklyn. Lord Howe, who had encamped on Staten Island at the entrance to the harbour, determined to attack this isolated left wing, and on the 22nd of August landed at Gravesend Bay, Long Island, with about 20,000 men. The Americans maintained strong outposts in the wooded hills in advance of their fortified lines. On the morning of the 27th Howe, after four days’ reconnaissance, attacked these posts with three columns, the left and centre delivering the holding attack, and the right and strongest column turning the enemy’s left by a détour. Howe himself, accompanied by Generals (Sir H.) Clinton and Lord Cornwallis, led the turning movement, which came upon the rear of the enemy at the moment when they were engaged with the two other columns. By noon the Americans had been driven back into the Brooklyn lines in considerable confusion, and with the loss of about half their number. This constituted the battle. The completeness of the English victory was due to the neglect of the Americans in guarding the left of their outposts. Howe has been criticized for not immediately assaulting the American works which he might have carried on the evening of the battle. In view of the fact that he had only defeated a small portion of the American forces, and that the works were of considerable strength, he decided to make a formal siege, and Washington took advantage of the delay in operations to retreat across the river to New York on the night of the 29th. This successful movement repaired to some extent the bad moral effect of the defeat of the 27th in the American camp. In the engagement of Long Island Washington lost about 1200 prisoners and 30 guns, and 400 killed and wounded; of the latter the British lost nearly the same number.

(C. F. A.)

1 G. K. Gilbert, in an article, “The Deflection of Streams” in the American Journal of Science (xxvii. 427-432), points out that each of these streams is “bounded on the west or right side by a bluff 10 to 20 ft. high.”

LONG ISLAND CITY, formerly a city of Queens county, New York, U.S.A., and since the 1st of January 1898 the first ward of the Borough of Queens, New York City. Pop. (1880) 17,129, (1890) 30,506, (1900) 48,272, of whom 15,899 were foreign-born. It has a river front, on East river and Long Island Sound, of 10 m., and is the eastern terminal and the headquarters of the Long Island railway, having a large Y.M.C.A. building (the gift of Mrs Russell Sage) for employees of this railway. Among manufactures are chemicals, pottery, varnish, silk, &c., and there are oil-storage warehouses. Most of the borough offices of Queens borough are in Long Island City, which was formerly the county-seat of Queens county. The first settlement within the limits of what subsequently became Long Island City was made in 1640 by a Dutch blacksmith, Hendrick Harmensen, who soon afterward was murdered by an Indian. Other settlers, both Dutch and English, soon followed, and established detached villages, which became known as Hunter’s Point, Blissville, Astoria, Ravenswood, Dutch Kills, Middleton and Steinway. In 1853 this group of villages, by that time virtually one community, was called Long Island City, and it was formally incorporated under that name in 1870. In 1871-1872 the city was laid out by a commission of which General W. B. Franklin was president. Political convictions, economic considerations and fear combined to make the residents in this region largely loyalist in their attitude during the War of Independence. From 1776 to 1783 British troops occupied Newtown, a village to the S. E. In January 1776 the committee on the state of New York in Congress reported a resolution that “Whereas a majority of the inhabitants of Queens county, in the colony of New York, being incapable of resolving to live and die free men,... all such persons as voted against sending deputies to the present convention in New York ... be put out of the protection of the United Colonies,” &c., an action which led to the arrest and imprisonment of many of the accused persons.