LONG BRANCH,a city of Monmouth county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the easternmost or “long” branch of the Shrewsbury river and on the Atlantic coast, about 30 m. S. of New York City. Pop. (1890) 7231; (1900) 8872, of whom 1431 were foreign-born and 987 were negroes; (1910 census) 13,298. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Central of New Jersey, the New York & Long Branch, and electric railways, and by steamboats to New York. The carriage roads in the vicinity are unusually good. Long Branch is one of the oldest American watering-places. It is situated on a bluff which rises abruptly 20-35 ft. above the beach, and along the front of which bulkheads and jetties have been erected as a protection from the waves; along or near the edge of the bluff, Ocean Avenue, 60 ft. wide and about 5 m. long (from Seabright to Deal), commands delightful views of the ocean. A “bluff walk” runs above the water for 2 m. The city has one public park, Ocean Park (about 10 acres), and two privately owned parks, one of which is Pleasure Bay Park (25 acres), on the Shrewsbury river, where operas are given in the open air. The principal public institutions are the Monmouth Memorial Hospital and the Long Branch Circulating Library. In Long Branch the Monmouth County Horse Show is held annually in July. The southern part of Long Branch, known as Elberon, contains some beautiful summer residences—in one of its cottages General U. S. Grant spent his summers for many years, and in another, the Francklyn, President J. A. Garfield died in 1881. In 1909 a monument to Garfield was erected in Ocean Park. Adjoining Long Branch on the N. is the borough of Monmouth Beach (incorporated in 1906; population, 1910, 485). Before the War of Independence the site of Long Branch was owned by Colonel White, a British officer. It was confiscated as a result of the war, and late in the century its development as a watering-place began. Long Branch was chartered as a city in 1904.
LONGCHAMP, WILLIAM(d. 1197), chancellor of England and bishop of Ely, entered public life at the close of Henry II.’s reign as official to the king’s son Geoffrey, for the archdeaconry of Rouen. Henry II., who disliked him, called him the “son of two traitors.” He soon deserted Geoffrey for Richard, who made him chancellor of the duchy of Aquitaine. He always showed himself an able diplomatist. He first distinguished himself at Paris, as Richard’s envoy, when he defeated Henry II.’s attempt to make peace with Philip Augustus (1189). On Richard’s accession William became chancellor of the kingdom and bishop of Ely. When Richard left England (Dec. 1189), he put the tower of London in his hands and chose him to share with Hugh de Puiset, the great bishop of Durham, the office of chief justiciar. William immediately quarrelled with Hugh, and by April 1190 had managed to oust him completely from office. In June 1190 he received a commission as legate from Pope Celestine. He was then master in church as well as state. But his disagreeable appearance and manners, his pride, his contempt for everything English made him detested. His progresses through the country with a train of a thousand knights were ruinous to those on whom devolved the burden of entertaining him. Even John seemed preferable to him. John returned to England in 1191; he and his adherents were immediately involved in disputes with William, who was always worsted. At last (June 1191) Geoffrey, archbishop of York and William’s earliest benefactor, was violently arrested by William’s subordinates on landing at Dover. They exceeded their orders, which were to prevent the archbishop from entering England until he had sworn fealty to Richard. But this outrage was made a pretext for a general rising against William, whose legatine commission had now expired, and whose power was balanced by the presence of the archbishop of Rouen, Walter Coutances, with a commission from the king, William shut himself up in the Tower, but he was forced to surrender his castles and expelled from the kingdom. In 1193 he joined Richard in Germany, and Richard seems to have attributed the settlement soon after concluded between himself and the emperor, to his “dearest chancellor.” For the rest of the reign Longchamp was employed in confidential and diplomatic missions by Richard all over the continent, in Germany, in France and at Rome. He died in January 1197. His loyalty to Richard was unswerving, and it was no doubt through his unscrupulous devotion to the royal interest that he incurred the hatred of Richard’s English subjects.
Authorities.—Benedictus,Gesta Henrici, vol. ii.; Giraldus Cambrensis,De Vita Galfridi; Stubbs’ Preface to Roger of Hoveden, vol. iii.; L. Bovine-Champeaux,Notice sur Guillaume de Longchamp(Évreux, 1885).
Authorities.—Benedictus,Gesta Henrici, vol. ii.; Giraldus Cambrensis,De Vita Galfridi; Stubbs’ Preface to Roger of Hoveden, vol. iii.; L. Bovine-Champeaux,Notice sur Guillaume de Longchamp(Évreux, 1885).
LONGCLOTH,a plain cotton cloth originally made in comparatively long pieces. The name was applied particularly to cloth made in India. Longcloth, which is now commonly bleached, comprehends a number of various qualities. It is heavier than cambric, and finer than medium or Mexican. As it is used principally for underclothing and shirts, most of the longcloth sold in Great Britain passes through the hands of the shirt and underclothing manufacturers, who sell to the shopkeepers, though there is still a considerable if decreasing retail trade in piece-goods. The lower kinds of longcloth, which are made from American cotton, correspond in quality to the better kinds of “shirting” made for the East, but the best longcloths are made from Egyptian cotton, and are fine and fairly costly goods.
LONG EATON,an urban district in the Ilkeston parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, 10 m. E.S.E. of Derby, on the Midland railway. Pop. (1891) 9636; (1901) 13,045. It lies in the open valley of the Trent, at a short distance from the river, and near the important Trent Junction on the Midland railway system. The church of St Lawrence has Norman portions, and an arch and window apparently of pre-Conquest date. The large industrial population of the town is occupied in the manufacture of lace, which extended hither from Nottingham; there are also railway carriage works. To the north is the township ofSandiacre(pop. 2954), where the church has a fine Decorated chancel.
LONGEVITY,a term applied to express either the length or the duration of life in any organism, but, as cases of long duration excite most interest, frequently used to denote a relatively unusual prolongation of life. There is no reason to suppose that protoplasm, the living material of organisms, has a necessarily limited duration of life, provided that the conditions proper to it are maintained, and it has been argued that since every living organism comes into existence as a piece of the protoplasm of a pre-existing living organism, protoplasm is potentially immortal. Living organisms exist, however, as particles or communities of particles of protoplasm (seeLife), and as such have a limited duration of life. Longevity, as E. Ray Lankester pointed out in 1869, for practical purposes must be understoodto mean the “length of time during which life is exhibited in an individual.” The word “individual” must be taken in its ordinary sense as a wholly or partially independent, organized mass produced from a pre-existing organized mass, as otherwise the problem will be confused by arguments as to the meaning of biological individuality.
Empirical Data.—A multitude of observations show that only a very brief life, ranging from a few hours to a few days, is the normal fate of the vast majority of single-celled organisms, whether these be animal or vegetable or on the border-line between the two kingdoms. Death comes to them rapidly from internal or external causes, or the individual life ends in conjugation or division or spore-formation. Under special conditions, natural or artificial, the individual life may be prolonged by desiccation, or freezing, or by some similar arrest of functional activity.
The duration of life among plants is varied. The popular division into annuals, biennials and perennials is not absolute, for natural and artificial conditions readily prolong the lives of annuals and biennials for several seasons, whereas the case of perennials is much complicated by the mode of growth, and the problem of individuality, however we desire to exclude it, obtrudes itself. In the vast majority of cases where a plant is obviously a simple individual, its life is short, ranging from a few days in the case of fungi, to two seasons in the case of biennial herbs. Most of the simple algae are annual, their life enduring only for part of the year; the branching algae are more often perennial, but in their cases not only are observations as to duration lacking, but however simply we may use the term individual, its application is difficult. The larger terrestrial plants with woody tissues which we denote roughly as shrubs and trees have an individuality which, although different from that of a hyacinth or carrot, is usually obvious. Shrubs live from four to ten or more years, and it apparently is the case that odoriferous shrubs such as sage and lavender display the longer duration. Trees with soft wood, such as poplars and willows, last for about fifty years, fruit-trees rather longer. Estimates of the age which large trees can attain, based partly on attempts to count the annual rings, have been given by many writers, and range from about three hundred years in the case of the elm to three to five thousand years in the case ofSequoia giganteaof California, and over five thousand years in that of the baobab (Adansonia digitata) of Cape Verde. It is impossible to place exact reliance on these estimates, but it is at least certain that very many trees have a duration of life exceedingly great in comparison with the longest-lived animals.
The duration of life amongst multicellular invertebrate animals is little known, except in the frequent instances where it is normally brief. Many sponges and polyps die at the end of the season, leaving winter eggs or buds. The much-branched masses of the larger sponges and compound hydrozoa certainly may be perennial. A sea-anemone (Actinia mesembryanthemum), captured in 1828 by Sir John Dalyell, a Scottish naturalist, and then guessed to be about seven years old, lived in captivity in Edinburgh until 1887, the cause of death being unknown. As other instances of great ages attained by sea-anemones are on record, it is plain that these animals, although simple polyps, are long-lived. Echinoderms are inferred to live to considerable ages, as they grow slowly and as there is great difference in size amongst fully adult specimens. On similar reasoning, considerable age is attributed to the larger annulates and crustacea, but the smaller forms in many cases are known to have very short lives. The variation in the length of life of molluscs appears to be great. Many species of gastropods live only a few years; others, such asNatica heros, have reached thirty years, whilst the largeTridacna gigasis stated to live from sixty to a hundred years. Among insects, the adult stage has usually only a very short duration of life, extending from a few hours to a few months, but the larval stages may last much longer. Including these latter, the range of duration among insects, taking the whole life from hatching to death, appears to lie between the limits of a few weeks in the case of plant-lice to seventeen years in the case of the AmericanCicada septemdecim, the larva of which lives seventeen years, the adult only a month. Most butterflies are annuals, but those which fail to copulate may hibernate and live through a second season, whilst the lives of some have been preserved artificially for seven years. Worker bees and drones do not survive the season, but queens may live from two to five years. In the case of vertebrates, the duration of life appears to be greater among fish and reptiles than among birds and mammals. The ancient Romans have noted that eels, kept in aquaria, could reach the age of sixty years. Estimates based on size and rate of growth have led to the inference that salmon may live to the age of a hundred years, whilst G. L. L. Buffon set down the period of life of carp in ponds as one hundred and fifty years, and there is evidence for a pike having reached the age of over two centuries. More recently it has been claimed that the age of fish can be ascertained exactly by counting the annual rings of the otoliths. No great ages have as yet been recorded by this method, whilst, on the other hand, by revealing great variations of weight and size in fishes with the same number of annual rings, it has thrown doubt on the validity of estimates of age based on size and rate of growth. The evidence as a whole is unsatisfactory, but it is highly probable that in the absence of accidents most fish can attain very great ages. The duration of life among batrachia is little known, but small frogs have been recorded as living over twelve years, and toads up to thirty-six years.
Almost nothing is known as to the longevity of snakes and lizards, but it is probable that no great ages are reached. Crocodiles, alligators and caymans grow slowly and are believed to live very long. There is exact evidence as to alligators in captivity in Europe reaching forty years without signs of senescence, and some of the sacred crocodiles of India are believed to be more than a hundred years old. Chelonians live still longer. A tortoise has lived for eighty years in the garden of the governor of Cape Town, and is believed to be at least two hundred years old. There are records of small land-tortoises that have been kept in captivity for over a century, whilst the very large tortoises of the Galapagos Islands certainly attain ages of at least two centuries and possibly much more. A considerable body of information exists regarding the longevity of birds, and much of this has been brought together by J. H. Gurney. From his lists, which include more than fifty species, it appears that the duration is least in the case of small passerine and picarian birds, where it ranges from eight or nine years (goat-suckers and swifts) to a maximum of twenty-five years, the latter age having been approached by larks, canaries and goldfinch. Gulls have been recorded as living over forty years, ducks and geese over fifty years (the duchess of Bedford has recorded the case of a Chinese goose having been in possession of the same family for fifty-seven years). Parrots frequently live over eighty years, swans nearly as long, ravens and owls rather less, whilst there is excellent evidence of eagles and falcons considerably exceeding a hundred years. Notwithstanding their relatively large size, struthious birds do not reach great ages. The records for cassowaries and rheas do not exceed thirty years, and the maximum for ostriches is fifty years, and that on doubtful evidence.
Exact records regarding the longevity of mammals are surprisingly few. There is no evidence as to Monotremes. The life of Marsupials in captivity is seldom long; a phalanger has lived in the London Zoological Gardens and showed no signs of age at more than ten years old; it may be inferred that the larger forms are capable of living longer. Reliable records as to Edentates do not exist; those in captivity have short lives, but the size and structure of some of the extinct forms suggests that they may have reached a great age. Nothing is known regarding the longevity of Sirenians, except that they do not live long in captivity. In the case of Cetaceans, estimates based on the growth of whale-bone assign an age of several centuries to whale-bone whales; exact records do not exist. More is known regarding Ungulates, as many of these are domesticated, semi-domesticated or are frequently kept in captivity. Great length of life has been assigned to the rhinoceros, but the longest actualrecord is that of an Indian rhinoceros which lived for thirty-seven years in the London Zoological Gardens. The usual duration of life in the case of horses, asses and zebras is from fifteen to thirty years, but instances of individuals reaching fifty years are fairly well authenticated. Domestic cattle may live from twenty-five to thirty years, sheep and goats from twelve to fourteen years, antelopes rather longer, especially in the case of the larger forms. A giraffe has lived for nineteen years in the London Zoological Gardens. Deer are reputed to live longer than sheep, and records of individuals at the London Gardens confirm this, but it is doubtful if they live as long as cattle. Camels are long-lived, according to repute, but actual records show no great age; a llama which died in the London Gardens at the age of seventeen years showed unmistakable signs of senility. The hippopotamus is another large ungulate to which great longevity has been assigned, but the longest actual record is the case of a female born in the London Gardens which died in its thirty-fifth year. The duration of life assigned to domestic swine is about twenty years; an Indian wild boar, alive in the London Zoological Gardens in 1910, and apparently in full vigour, was fifteen years old. Elephants are usually supposed capable of reaching great ages, but the actual records of menagerie and military animals show that thirty to forty years is a normal limit. Facts as to rodents are not numerous; the larger forms such as hares and rabbits may live for ten years, smaller forms such as rats and mice, for five or six years. Bats have a reputation for long duration of life, and tropical fruit-bats are known to have lived for seventeen years. No great ages have been recorded for Carnivora, but the average is fairly high. Twenty-five years appears to be a limit very rarely exceeded by lions, tigers or bears; domestic cats may live for from twelve to twenty-three years, and dogs from sixteen to eighteen years, though cases of as many as thirty-four years have been noted. Less is known of the smaller forms, but menagerie records show that ages between twelve and twenty are frequently reached. There were in 1910 in the London Zoological Gardens, apparently in good health, a meerkat at least twelve years old, a sand-badger fourteen years and a ratel nineteen years of age. Records regarding monkeys are unsatisfactory, for these creatures are notoriously delicate in captivity, and it is practically certain that under such circumstances they rarely die of old age. A grey lemur eleven years old and a chimpanzee eleven and a half, both in good health in the London Zoological Gardens, appear to be the oldest primates definitely recorded. Estimates based on size, condition of the skull and so forth obtained by examination of wild specimens that have been killed would seem to establish a rough correspondence between the size of monkeys and their duration of life, and to set the limits as between seven or eight and thirty years.
With regard to the human race, there seems to be almost no doubt but that the average duration of life has increased with civilization; the generally improved conditions of life, the greater care of the young and of the aged and the advance in medical and surgical science far more than outweigh any depressing effect caused by the more strenuous and nervous activity required by modern social organization. The expectation of life of those who attain the age of sixty varies with race, sex and occupation, but is certainly increasing, and an increasing number of persons have a chance of reaching and do reach ages between ninety and one hundred. Careful investigation has thrown doubt almost amounting to disproof on the much-quoted cases of great longevity, such as that of Thomas Parr, the Shropshire peasant, who was supposed to have reached his hundred and fifty-third year, and, although the existence of centenarians is thoroughly established, any ages exceeding a hundred by more than two or three years are, at the most, dubious.
A survey of the facts of longevity, so far as these are established on reasonable evidence, discloses that the recorded ages both of men and animals are much shorter than those assigned in popular belief. The duration of life is usually brief in the animal kingdom, and except for some fish and reptiles, and possibly whales, it is certain that a man enjoys the longest average duration of life and that centenarians occur more frequently amongst men than amongst most of the lower animals.
Theories of Longevity.—Ray Lankester has pointed out that several meanings are attached to the word longevity. It may be used of an individual, and in this sense has little importance, partly because of the inevitable variability of the individual, and partly because there may be individuals that are abnormal in duration of life, just as there are abnormalities in weight or height. It may be used for the average duration of life of all the individuals of a species and so be another way of expressing the average mortality that affects the species, and that varies not only with structure and constitution but with the kind of enemies, accidents and conditions to which the members of the species are subject. If we reflect on the large incidence of mortality from external causes affecting a species and particularly the young of a species, we shall see that we must conclude that intrinsic, physiological causes can have relatively little weight in determining the average mortality rate. Finally, longevity may be used, and is most conveniently used, to denote the specific potential longevity, that is to say the duration of life that would be attained by normal individuals of a species if the conditions were most favourable. It is necessary to keep in mind these various applications of the term when considering the theoretical explanations that have been associated with the empirical facts.
There is a certain relation between size and longevity. As a general rule small animals do not live so long as larger creatures. Whales survive elephants, elephants live longer than camels, horses and deer, and these again than rabbits and mice. But the relation is not absolute; parrots, ravens and geese live longer than most mammals and than many larger birds. G. L. L. Buffon tried to find a more definite measure of longevity, and believed that it was given by the ratio between the whole period of life and the period of growth. He believed that the possible duration of life was six or seven times that of the period of growth. Man, he said, takes fourteen years to grow, and his duration of life is ninety to one hundred years; the horse has reached its full size at four years of age and may live for a total period of twenty-five to thirty years. M. J. P. Flourens attempted to make Buffon’s suggestion more exact; he took the end of the period of growth as the time at which the epiphyses of the long bones united with the bones themselves, and on this basis held that the duration of life was five times the length of the period of growth. The theories of Buffon and Flourens, however, do not apply to all vertebrates and have no meaning in the case of invertebrates. Y. Bunge has suggested that in the case of mammals the period taken by the new-born young to double in weight is an index of the rapidity of growth and is in a definite relation to the possible duration of life. M. Oustalet has discussed the existence of definite relations between duration of life and size, rate of growth, period of gestation and so forth, and found so many exceptions that no general conclusion could be drawn. He finally suggested that diet was the chief factor in determining the span of life. E. Metchnikoff has provided the most recent and fullest criticism and theory of the physiological causes of longevity. He admits that many factors must be involved, as the results vary so much in different kinds of animals. He thinks that too little is known of the physiological processes of invertebrates to draw any valid conclusions in their case. With regard to vertebrates, he calls attention to the gradual reduction of longevity as the scale of life is ascended. On the whole, reptiles live much longer than birds, and birds than mammals, the contrast being specially notable when birds and mammals are compared. He dismisses the effect of the reproductive tax from possible causes of short duration of life, for the obvious reason that longevity is nearly equal in the two sexes, although females have a much greater reproductive drain. He points out that the hind-gut or large intestine is least developed in fishes, relatively small in reptiles, still small but relatively larger in birds and largest in mammals, relatively and absolutely, the caecum or caeca being reckoned as part of the hind-gut. The area of the intestinal tract in question is of relatively little importance in digestion, although a considerableamount 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).
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 tolove, 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 layIn their graves o’erlooking the tranquil bay.Where they in battle died.”
“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 theUnited States Literary Gazettesome 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 inOutre-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 theNorth American Review, and in 1839 he publishedHyperion: a Romance, and his first volume of original poetry, entitledVoices 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. TheVoices of the Nightcontains some of his best minor poems,e.g.“The Psalm of Life” and “Footsteps of Angels.” In 1842 Longfellow published a small volume ofBallads 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 hisPoems 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 thePoems 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 entitledThe Poets and Poetry of Europe, appeared in 1845, and, in 1846, a few minor poems—songs and sonnets—under the titleThe 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’sHermann and Dorothea, and its plot, which was derived from Hawthorne’sAmerican 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 foreignto 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 entitledThe 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 appearedThe Golden Legend, a long lyric drama based upon Hartmann von Aue’s beautiful story of self-sacrifice,Der arme Heinrich. Next toEvangeline, 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, theKalevala, 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 appearedThe 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 charmingTales of a Wayside Inn(1863), and in 1865 hisHousehold 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 entitledFlower 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 theDivina 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 theNew England Tragedies(1868) andThe 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 appearedThree Books of Song, containing translated as well as original pieces, in 1873Aftermathand in 1875The 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 Pandorais 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 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 staysTo cover up the embers that still burn.”
“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 ofKeramos, and other Poems(1878). Besides these, in the years 1875-1878 he edited a collection ofPoems of Placesin thirty-one small volumes. In 1880 appearedUltima 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.