"supplications," documentary evidence is defective. Sometimes it would
appear that the "procession" or "litany" did nothing else but chant
_Kyrie eleison_ without variation. There is no reason to doubt that from
an early period the special written litanies of the various churches all
showed the common features which are now regarded as essential to a
litany, in as far as they consisted of (1) invocations, (2)
deprecations, (3) intercessions, (4) supplications. But in details they
must have varied immensely. The offices of the Roman Catholic Church at
present recognize two litanies, the "Litaniae majores" and the "Litaniae
breves," which differ from one another chiefly in respect of the fulness
with which details are entered upon under the heads mentioned above. It
is said that in the time of Charlemagne the angels Orihel, Raguhel,
Tobihel were invoked, but the names were removed by Pope Zacharias as
really belonging to demons. In some medieval litanies there were special
invocations of S. Fides, S. Spes, S. Charitas. The litanies, as given in
the Breviary, are at present appointed to be recited on bended knee,
along with the penitential psalms, in all the six week-days of Lent when
ordinary service is held. Without the psalms they are said on the feast
of Saint Mark and on the three rogation days. A litany is chanted in
procession before mass on Holy Saturday. The "litany" or "general
supplication" of the Church of England, which is appointed "to be sung
or said after morning prayer upon Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and
at other times when it shall be commanded by the ordinary," closely
follows the "Litaniae majores" of the Breviary, the invocations of
saints being of course omitted. A similar German litany will be found in
the works of Luther. In the Roman Church there are a number of special
litanies peculiar to particular localities or orders, such as the
"Litanies of Mary" or the "Litanies of the Sacred Name of Jesus."
There was originally a close connexion between the litany and the
liturgy (q.v.). The ninefold _Kyrie eleison_ at the beginning of the
Roman Mass is a relic of a longer litany of which a specimen may still
be seen in the Stowe missal. In the Ambrosian liturgy, the threefold
_Kyrie eleison_ or Lesser Litany occurs thrice, after the _Gloria in
excelsis_, after the gospel and at the end of Mass; and on the first
five Sundays in Lent a missal litany is placed before the _Oratio super
populum_, and on the same five Sundays in the Mozarabic rite before the
epistle. In Eastern liturgies litanies are a prominent feature, as in
the case of the deacon's litany at the beginning of the _Missa fidelium_
in the Clementine liturgy, immediately before the _Anaphora_ in the
Greek liturgy of St James, &c. (F. E. W.)
LITCHFIELD, a township and the county-seat of Litchfield county,
Connecticut, U.S.A., about 28 m. W. of Hartford, and including the
borough of the same name. Pop. of the township (1890) 3304; (1900) 3214;
(1910) 3005; of the borough (1890) 1058; (1900) 1120; (1910) 903. Area
of the township, 48.6 sq. m. The borough is served by the New York, New
Haven & Hartford railroad. It is situated on elevated land, and is one
of the most attractive of southern New England summer resorts. The
principal elevation in the township is Mt. Prospect, at the base of
which there is a vein of pyrrhotite, with small quantities of nickel and
copper. On the southern border of the borough is Lake Bantam (about 900
acres, the largest lake in the state) whose falls, at its outlet,
provide water power for factories of carriages and electrical
appliances. Dairying is the most important industry, and in 1899 the
county ranked first among the counties of the state in the value of its
dairy products--$1,373,957, from 3465 farms, the value of the product
for the entire state being $7,090,188.
The lands included in the township of Litchfield (originally called
Bantam) were bought from the Indians in 1715-1716 for £15. the Indians
reserving a certain part for hunting. The township was incorporated in
1719, was named Litchfield, after Lichfield in England, and was settled
by immigrants from Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield, Farmington and
Lebanon (all within the state) in 1720-1721. In 1751 it became the
county-seat of Litchfield county, and at the same time the borough of
Litchfield (incorporated in 1879) was laid out. From 1776 to 1780 two
depôts for military stores and a workshop for the Continental army were
maintained, and the leaden statue of George III., erected in Bowling
Green, New York City, in 1770, and torn down by citizens on the 9th of
July 1776, was cut up and taken to Litchfield, where, in the house
(still standing) of Oliver Wolcott it was melted into bullets for the
American army by Wolcott's daughter and sister. Aaron Burr, whose only
sister married Tapping Reeve (1744-1823), lived in Litchfield with Reeve
in 1774-1775. In 1784 Reeve established here the Litchfield Law School,
the first institution of its kind in America. In 1798 he associated with
himself James Gould (1770-1838), who, after Reeve's retirement in 1820,
continued the work, with the assistance of Jabez W. Huntington
(1788-1847), until 1833. The school was never incorporated, it had no
buildings, and the lectures were delivered in the law offices of its
instructors, but among its 1000 or more students were many who
afterwards became famous, including John C. Calhoun; Levi Woodbury
(1789-1851), United States senator from New Hampshire in 1825-1831 and
in 1841-1845, secretary of the navy in 1831-1834 and of the treasury in
1834-1841, and a justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1845;
John Y. Mason; John M. Clayton; and Henry Baldwin (1780-1844), a justice
of the United States Supreme Court from 1830. In 1792 Mrs Sarah Pierce
made one of the first efforts toward the higher education of women in
the United States by opening in Litchfield her Female Seminary, which
had an influential career of about forty years, and numbered among its
alumnae Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs Marshall O. Roberts, Mrs Cyrus W.
Field and Mrs Hugh McCulloch. Litchfield was the birthplace of Ethan
Allen; of Henry Ward Beecher; of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel,
_Poganuc People_, presents a picture of social conditions in Litchfield
during her girlhood; of Oliver Wolcott, Jr. (1760-1833); of John
Pierpont (1785-1866), the poet, preacher and lecturer; and of Charles
Loring Brace, the philanthropist. It was also the home, during his last
years, of Oliver Wolcott (1726-1797); of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge
(1774-1835), an officer on the American side in the War of Independence
and later (from 1801 to 1817) a Federalist member of Congress; and of
Lyman Beecher, who was pastor of the First Congregational church of
Litchfield from 1810 to 1826.
See Payne K. Kilbourne, _Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of
Litchfield, Connecticut_ (Hartford, Conn., 1859); George C. Boswell,
_The Litchfield Book of Days_ (Litchfield, 1900); and for an account
of the Litchfield Female Seminary, Emily N. Vanderpoel, _Chronicles of
a Pioneer School_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1903).
LITCHFIELD, a city of Montgomery county, Illinois, U.S.A., about 50 m.
N. E. of St Louis, Missouri. Pop. (1900) 5918; (1910) 5971. Its
principal importance is as a railway and manufacturing centre; it is
served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago & Alton, the
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Illinois Central, the
Wabash, and the Litchfield & Madison railways, and by electric lines
connecting with St Louis and the neighbouring towns. In the vicinity are
deposits of bituminous coal, fire-clay and moulding sand. There are
various manufactures in the city. Litchfield was incorporated as a town
in 1856, and was first chartered as a city in 1859.
LITCHI, or LEE-CHEE, the fruit of _Nephelium Litchi_, a small tree,
native of southern China and one of the most important indigenous
fruits. It is also cultivated in India. The tree bears large compound
leaves with two to four pairs of leathery lanceolate pointed leaflets
about 3 in. long, and panicles of small flowers without petals. The
fruits are commonly roundish, about 1½ in. in diameter, with a thin,
brittle, red shell which bears rough protuberances. In the fresh state
they are filled with a sweet white pulp which envelops a large brown
seed, but in the dried condition the pulp forms a blackish fleshy
substance. The pulp is of the nature of an aril, that is, an additional
seed-coat.
_Nephelium Longana_, the longan tree, also a native of southern China,
is cultivated in that country, in the Malay Peninsula, India and
Ceylon for its fruit, which is smaller than that of the litchi, being
half an inch to an inch in diameter with a nearly smooth
yellowish-brown brittle skin, and containing a pulpy aril resembling
that of the litchi in flavour. Another species, _N. lappaceum_, a tall
tree native of the Malay Peninsula, where it is known under the names
Rambutan or Rambosteen, is also cultivated for its pleasantly acid
pulpy aril. The fruit is oval, bright red in colour, about 2 in. long
and covered with long fleshy hairs.
_Nephelium_ belongs to the natural order Sapindaceae, and contains
about twenty-two species.
LITERATURE, a general term which, in default of precise definition, may
stand for the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing.
Its various forms are the result of race peculiarities, or of diverse
individual temperaments, or of political circumstances securing the
predominance of one social class which is thus enabled to propagate its
ideas and sentiments. In early stages of society, the classes which
first attain a distinct literary utterance are priests who compile the
chronicles of tribal religious development, or rhapsodes who celebrate
the prowess of tribal chiefs. As man feels before he reasons, so poetry
generally precedes prose. It embodies more poignantly the sentiment of
unsophisticated man. Hence sacred books and war-songs are everywhere the
earliest literary monuments, and both are essentially poetic
compositions which have received a religious or quasi-religious
sanction. The recitation of the Homeric poems at the Panathenaea
corresponds to the recitation elsewhere of the sacred texts in the
temple; the statement of Phemios (_Odyssey_, xxii. 347) that a god
inspired his soul with all the varied ways of song expresses the
ordinary belief of early historical times. Versicles of the sacred
chronicles, or fragments of epic poems, were learned by heart and
supplied a standard of popular literary taste. The public declamation of
long chosen passages by priests, and still more by contending rhapsodes,
served to evoke the latent sense of literary criticism; and, at a later
stage, the critical spirit was still further stimulated by the
performance of dramatic pieces written by competing poets. The epical
record of the past was supplemented by the lyrical record of
contemporary events, and as the Homeric poets had immortalized the siege
of Troy, so Pindar commemorated Salamis. Prose of any permanent value
would first show itself in the form of oratory, and the insertion of
speeches by early historians indicates a connexion with rhetoric. The
development of abstract reasoning would tend to deprive prose of its
superfluous ornament and to provide a simpler and more accurate
instrument.
No new _genre_ has been invented since the days of Plato. The evolution
of literature is completed in Greece, and there its subdivisions may
best be studied. Epic poetry is represented by the Homeric cycle,
lyrical poetry by Tyrtaeus, dramatic poetry by Aeschylus, history by
Herodotus, oratory by Pericles, philosophy by Plato, and criticism by
Zoilus, the earliest of slashing reviewers; and in each department there
is a long succession of illustrious names. Roughly speaking, all
subsequent literature is imitative. Ennius transplanted Greek methods to
Rome; his contemporary L. Fabius Pictor, the earliest Roman historian,
wrote in Greek; and the later Roman poets from Lucretius to Horace
abound in imitations of Greek originals. The official adoption of
Christianity as the state religion changed the spirit of literature,
which became more and more provincial after the downfall of the empire.
Literature did not perish during the "dark ages" which extend from the
sixth century to the beginning of the 11th, but it was subordinate to
scholarship. The dissolution of Latin was not complete till about the
middle of the 9th century, and the new varieties of Romance did not
become ripe for literary purposes till a hundred years later. Meanwhile,
not a single literary masterpiece was produced in western Europe for
five centuries; by comparison only do Boëthius and Venantius Fortunatus
seem to be luminous points in the prolonged night; the promise of a
literary renaissance at the court of Charlemagne was unfulfilled, and
the task of creating a new literature devolved upon the descendants of
the barbarians who had destroyed the old. The Celtic and Teutonic races
elaborated literary methods of their own; but the fact that the most
popular form of Irish verse is adopted from Latin prosody is conclusive
evidence that the influence of Roman--and therefore of Greek--models
persisted in the literature of the outlying provinces which had attained
political independence. The real service rendered to literature by the
provincials lay in the introduction and diffusion of legends freighted
with a burden of mystery which had disappeared with Pan, and these new
valuable materials went to form the substance of the new poetry.
The home of modern European literature must be sought in France, which
assimilated the best elements in Celtic and Teutonic literature. From
the 11th to the 14th century, France was the centre of intellectual life
in Europe, as Greece and Rome had been before, and as Italy was to be
afterwards. The _chansons de geste_, inspired by the sense of patriotism
and the yearning for religious unity, inculcate feudal and Catholic
doctrine, and as society in the western world was universally committed
to feudalism and Catholicism, these literary expressions of both
theories were widely accepted and copied. The Germanic origin of the
French epic is lost sight of, and imitators are attracted by the French
execution, and by the creative power of the _chansons de geste_. Again,
France takes the stories of the Arthurian court from Welsh texts or from
the lips of Welsh settlers, rehandles the romantic element, and, through
Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes, imparts to the whole a touch of
personal artistry which is absent from the _chansons de geste_. The
_matière de Bretagne_ goes forth to Italy, Germany and England--later to
Portugal and Spain--bearing the imprint of the French genius. Thus
France internationalizes local subjects, and first assumes a literary
function which, with few interruptions, she has since discharged. She
further gives to Europe models of allegory in the _Roman de la rose_,
founds the school of modern history through Villehardouin, inaugurates
the religious drama and the secular theatre. She never again dominated
the literatures of Europe so absolutely.
The literary sceptre passed from France to Italy during the 14th
century. Brunetto Latini, who wrote in French as well as in Italian, is
the connecting link between the literatures of the two countries; but
Italy owes its eminence not so much to a general diffusion of literary
accomplishment as to the emergence of three great personalities. Dante,
Boccacio and Petrarch created a new art of poetry and of prose. England
yielded to the fascination in the person of Chaucer, Spain in the person
of her chancellor López de Ayala, and France in the person of Charles
d'Orléans, the son of an Italian mother. Petrarch, once ambassador in
France, alleged that there were no poets out of Italy, and indeed there
were no living poets to compare with him elsewhere. But in all countries
he raised up rivals--Chaucer, Marot, Garcilaso de la Vega--as Sannazaro
did a century and a half later. Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ captured the
Portuguese Montemôr, whose pastoral novel the _Diana_, written in
Spanish, inspired d'Urfé no less than Sidney, and, as d'Urfé's _Astrée_
is considered the starting-point of the modern French novel, the
historical importance of the Italian original cannot be exaggerated.
Spain never obtained any intellectual predominance corresponding to that
exercised by France and Italy, or to her political authority during the
16th and 17th centuries. This may be attributed partly to her
geographical position which lies off the main roads of Europe, and
partly to the fact that her literature is essentially local. Cervantes,
indeed, may be said to have influenced all subsequent writers of
fiction, and the influence of Spanish literature is visible in the body
of European picaresque tales; but, apart from Corneille and a few other
dramatists who preceded Molière in France, and apart from the
Restoration drama in England, the influence of the Spanish drama was
relatively small. In some respects it was too original to be imitated
with success. Much the same may be said of England as of Spain. Like
Spain, she lies outside the sphere of continental influence; like Spain,
she has innumerable great names in every province of literature, and, in
both cases, to Europe at large these long remained names and nothing
more; like Spain, she is prone to reproduce borrowed materials in shapes
so transformed and rigid as to be unrecognizable and unadaptable.
Moreover, the Reformation isolated England from literary commerce with
the Latin races, and till the 18th century Germany was little more than
a geographical expression. Even when Germany recovered her literary
independence, Lessing first heard of Shakespeare through Voltaire.
Neither Shakespeare nor Milton was read in France before the 18th
century--the first translated by Ducis, the second by Dupré de
Saint-Maur--and they were read with curiosity rather than with rapture.
On the other hand, Boileau, Rapin and Le Bossu were regarded as oracles
in England, and through them French literature produced the
"correctness" of Queen Anne's reign. Horace Walpole is half a Frenchman,
Hume imitates Montesquieu's cold lucidity, Gibbon adapts Bossuet's
majestic periods to other purposes. On the other hand Voltaire takes
ideas from Locke, but his form is always intensely personal and
inimitably French. After the 16th century English literature, as a
whole, is refractory to external influence. Waves of enthusiasm pass
over England--for Rousseau, for Goethe--but leave no abiding trace on
English literature. During the latter half of the 18th century France
resumed something of her old literary supremacy; the literatures of
Italy and Spain at this period are purely derivative, and French
influence was extended still further on the continent as the result of
the Romantic movement. Since that impulse was exhausted, literature
everywhere has been in a state of flux: it is less national, and yet
fails to be cosmopolitan. All writers of importance, and many of no
importance, are translated into other European languages; the quick
succession of diverse and violent impressions has confused the scheme of
literature. Literature suffers likewise from the competition of the
newspaper press, and as the press has multiplied it has grown less
literary. The diversities of modern interests, the want of leisure for
concentrated thought, suggest that literature may become once more the
pleasure of a small caste. But the desire for the one just form which
always inspires the literary artist visits most men sometimes, and it
cannot be doubted that literature will continue to accommodate itself to
new conditions. (J. F.-K.)
LITERNUM, an ancient town of Campania, Italy, on the low sandy coast
between Cumae and the mouth of the Volturnus. It was probably once
dependent on Cumae. In 194 B.C. it became a Roman colony. It is mainly
famous as the residence of the elder Scipio, who withdrew from Rome and
died here. His tomb and villa are described by Seneca. Augustus is said
to have conducted here a colony of veterans,[1] but the place never had
any great importance, and the lagoons behind it made it unhealthy,
though the construction of the Via Domitiana through it must have made
it a posting station. It ceased to exist in the 8th century. No remains
are visible.
See J. Beloch, _Campanien_, ed. ii. (Breslau, 1890), 377.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Mommsen in C.I.L. x. 343 does not accept this statement, but an
inscription found in 1885 confirms it.
LITHGOW, WILLIAM (1582-? 1650), Scottish traveller and writer, was born
and educated in Lanark. He was caught in a love-adventure, mutilated of
his ears by the brothers of the lady (hence the sobriquet "Cut-lugged
Willie"), and forced to leave Scotland. For nineteen years he travelled,
mostly on foot, through Europe, the Levant, Egypt and northern Africa,
covering, according to his estimate, over 36,000 m. The story of his
adventures may be drawn from _The Totall Discourse of the Rare
Adventures and painfull Peregrinations of long nineteene Yeares_
(London, 1614; fuller edition, 1632, &c.); _A True and Experimentall
Discourse upon the last siege of Breda_ (London, 1637); and a similar
book giving an account of the siege of Newcastle and the battle of
Marston Moor (Edinburgh, 1645). He is the author of a _Present Surveigh
of London_ (London, 1643). He left six poems, written between 1618 and
1640 (reprinted by Maidment, Edinburgh, 1863). Of these "Scotland's
Welcome to King Charles, 1633" has considerable antiquarian interest.
His writing has no literary merit; but its excessively aureate style
deserves notice.
The best account of Lithgow and his works is by F. Hindes Groome in
the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ The piece entitled _Scotland's Paraenesis to
King Charles II._ (1660), ascribed to him in the catalogue of the
Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, cannot, from internal evidence, be his.
LITHGOW, a town of Cook county, New South Wales, Australia, 96 m. W.N.W.
of Sydney by rail. Pop. (1901) 5268. The town is situated at an altitude
of 3000 ft., in a valley of the Blue Mountains. It has pottery and
terra-cotta works, breweries, a tweed factory, iron-works, saw-mills,
soap-works and brickfields. Coal, kerosene shale, iron ore and building
stone are found in the district.
LITHIUM [symbol Li, atomic weight 7.00 (O = 16)], an alkali metal,
discovered in 1817 by J. A. Arfvedson (_Ann. chim. phys._ 10, p. 82). It
is only found in combination, and is a constituent of the minerals
petalite, triphyline, spodumene and lepidolite or lithia mica. It occurs
in small quantities in sea, river and spring water, and is also widely
but very sparingly distributed throughout the vegetable kingdom. It may
be obtained (in the form of its chloride) by fusing lepidolite with a
mixture of barium carbonate and sulphate, and potassium sulphate (L.
Troost, _Comptes rendus_, 1856, 43, p. 921). The fused mass separates
into two layers, the upper of which contains a mixture of potassium and
lithium sulphates; this is lixiviated with water and converted into the
mixed chlorides by adding barium chloride, the solution evaporated and
the lithium chloride extracted by a mixture of dry alcohol and ether.
The metal may be obtained by heating dry lithium hydroxide with
magnesium (H. N. Warren, _Chem. News_, 1896, 74, p. 6). L. Kahlenberg
(_Jour. phys. Chem_., 3, p. 601) obtained it by electrolysing the
chloride in pyridine solution, a carbon anode and an iron or platinum
cathode being used. O. Ruff and O. Johannsen (_Zeit. elektrochem._,
1906, 55, p. 537) electrolyse a mixture of bromide and chloride which
melts at 520°. It is a soft, silvery-white metal, which readily
tarnishes on exposure. Its specific gravity is 0.59, and it melts at
180° C. It burns on ignition in air, and when strongly heated in an
atmosphere of nitrogen it forms lithium nitride, Li3N. It decomposes
water at ordinary temperature, liberating hydrogen and forming lithium
hydroxide.