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 [Greek: Nous (hoti exô tou
nou hyphestêke ta noêta]: see F. Überweg, _Grundriss der Geschichte der
Philosophie_, 9th ed., 1903, i. § 72). Plotinus, after reading his
treatise [Greek: Peri archôn] (_On First Principles_), remarked that
Longinus might be a scholar ([Greek: philologos]), but that he was no
philosopher ([Greek: philosophos]). 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, [Greek: philologoi homiliai] (_Philological
Discourses_) consisting of at least 21 books, is omitted. A considerable
fragment of the [Greek: Peri telous] (_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 [Greek: ek tôn Logginou] (Spengel, i. 325-328) may possibly be
from the [Greek: philologoi homiliai].
It is as the reputed author of the well-known and remarkable work
[Greek: Peri hypsous] (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 [Greek: Dionysiou ê
Logginou], thus giving an alternative author Dionysius; in the
Laurentian MS. at Florence the title has [Greek: anônymou], 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 [Greek: Peri hypsous] was written with
a view of correcting the faults of style and method in a treatise by
Caecilius (q.v.) of Calacte 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 [Greek: Peri hypsous] ("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
[Greek: phainetai moi kênos isos theoisin],
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
rivers[1] 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.)