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ing 256,668 acres, with an annual rateable value of £151,739, the average rateable value per acre being 11s. 10d. The average size was 588 acres, and 14 per cent. possessed less than 1 acre. The largest owners were Colonel King Harman, 28, 779 acres; earl of Granard, 14,978; Lord Annaly, 12,160; George Maconchy, 10,319.
Manufactures. – These are confined almost entirely to coarse woollen and linen cloth.
Railways. – One branch of the Midland Great Western Railway skirts the eastern boundary of the county, and another passes through its centre to Longford.
Administration and Population. – The county includes 6 baronies, with 26 parishes and 891 townlauds. It is in the north west circuit. Assizes are held at Longford, and quarter sessions at Ballymahon, Granard, and Longford. There is one poor-law union wholly within the county, with portions of other two. It is in the Dublin military district and Birr subdistrict. There are barracks for infantry and cavalry at Longford. The county returns two members to parliament.
The only town of any importance is the county town, Longford. From 25,142 in 1760 the population of the county gradually in creased till in 1841 it was 115,491, but since then it has diminished to 82,348 in 1851, 64,501 in 1871, and 61,009 in 1881, of whom 30,770 were males and 30,239 females. From 1st May 1851 to 31st December 1881 the number of emigrants was 40,726. For the ten years 1871-81 the marriage-rate per 100 of the population was 4, the birth-rate 24 3, and the death-rate 16. In 1881 23 1 per cent. of the population above five years of age were illiterate, the percentage in 1871 being 32. The Roman Catholics formed 91 per cent. of the population in 1881, and the Episcopalians 8.
History and Antiquities. – The early name of Longford was Analé or Annaly, 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 in it an English colony. On the division of Meath into two counties in 1543, Annaly was included in West Meath, but in the 11th of Elizabeth it was made shire ground under the name of Longford, and included in the province of Connaught, from which it was transferred to Leinster in the 27th of the same reign.
The principal antiquarian ruin is the Danish rath called the Moat of Granard, at the end of the main street of the town, and occupying a position 593 feet above sea-level. There are monastic remains at Ardagh, Longford, Moydow, Clone, Derg, Druimchei, and Killinmore, as well as on several of the islands of Lough Ree. The principal old castles are those of Rathcline near Lanesborough, and Ballymahon, Burnacor, and Castlecor on the Inny. The principal modern seats are those of Carrickglass on the Camlin, and Castle Forbes, the seat of the earl of Granard. Oliver Goldsmith was born at Pallas, a village near Ballymahon, in this county.
Longford, the chief town of the above county, is situated on the river Camlin, and on a branch of the Midland Great Western Railway, 75 miles west-north-west of Dublin. The principal buildings are the parish church in the Grecian style, St Mell's Roman Catholic cathedral (one of the finest Roman Catholic churches in Ireland), the courthouse, the market-house, and the county jail. Of the old castle and of the Dominican abbey there are slight remains. The town has a considerable trade in grain, butter, and bacon. There are corn-mills, a spool factory, and tanneries. The population in 1871 was 4375, and in 1881 it was 4380.
The ancient name of the town was Athfada, and it is said to occupy the site of a monastery 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.
LONGINUS, a philosophical critic of great eminence, and one of the brightest spirits of antiquity, uniting Greek subtlety with Roman fervour, flourished in the 3d century, and is known to have perished under sentence of the emperor Aurelian in 273 A.D. He forms one of the last brilliant cluster of pagan literati; and Porphyry, round whom it centred, was the pupil of Longinus. As Porphyry is known to have been born in 233, it is probable that his preceptor, who could not have been less than twenty years his senior, may have been born about 210 A.D. The main authority for the facts of his life is a notice in Suidas, where we find it stated in a preface to a list of his writings that "Longinus Cassius, philosopher, preceptor of Porphyry the philosopher, a learned scholar and critic, lived in the time of the emperor Aurelian, and was cut off by him as having conspired with Zeuobia, the wife of Odenathus." From the same authority we learn that Phronto, the rhetorician of Emesa in Syria, was his uncle, and that Phrontonis, sister of Phronto, was mother to Longinus, who thus became heir to his uncle Phronto. As to his birthplace there is no tradition, but it is probable that he was a native of Syria, possibly of Emesa, to which his uncle belonged. He tells us, as we learn from fragments of his works, that he enjoyed great advantages in travel and education, that his parents, being rich, took him to travel and he saw much of the world, and that he studied at Athens under Phronto, at Alexandria under Ammonius Saccas and the pagan Origenes, and at Rome under Plotinus and Amelius. The Neo-Platonic philosophy was then in the ascendant, but Longinus did not embrace the new speculations which Plotinus was then developing, and continued a Platonist of the old type. Hence the sting of a sarcasm attributed to Plotinus – "Longinus may be a philologer, but he is no philosopher." Longinus does not appear to have reciprocated the sarcastic feeling, for we have still extant a fragment of a letter in which he asks Porphyry to come to Phœnicia and to bring with him the treatises of Plotinus, for, he observes, though he does not feel much attraction for the subjects, he yet likes the man. The reputation which Longinus acquired by his learning was immense; it was of him that Eunapius first used the expression that has since become proverbial "a living library" – in modern phrase, a walking encyclopædia.
The most conspicuous event of his life was also the most tragic in its consequences. He became secretary to Zenobia, the widowed queen of Palmyra, who acquired from him a knowledge of Greek, and made him her chief counsellor in state affairs. In this capacity he favoured the policy by which she aimed at independence of the. Roman empire, encouraged, doubtless, to do so by the recent fate of Valerian, and by the feebleness of the tenure by which Rome held the Syrian provinces. Aurelian, however, crushed the pretension, and, while Zenobia lost her power and was led captive to Rome, Longinus paid the forfeit of his life. According to Zosimus, Zenobia sought to exculpate herself with Aurelian by laying the whole blame on her adviser. He died bravely, not seeking to escape his fate by suicide as a Stoic might have done, but following the example of Socrates and the precept of Plato, to whose philosophy he adhered.[1]
The remains of Longinus that have come down to us, unfortunately scanty, are partly fragments of letters and extracts from criticisms on points of diction; and they bear out the impression we derive from the historical notices of the man. He is vivid and yet minute, lively and penetrating, and his observations show taste, learning, and judgment. Among the most notable of the fragments we have a defence of the Platonic doctrine of the soul as a distinct essence from the body, which defines clearly his philosophical position.
It only remains to advert in a few words to the remarkable production called the Treatise on the Sublime, which has usually passed current as a work of Longinus. This remarkable work, which is among the most notable productions of ancient criticism, second only in importance to the Poetics of Aristotle, and superior to that work in luminous beauty and sense of form, cannot be with certainty ascribed to Longinus, although the internal evidence favours the usual ascription. Of the two most startling difficulties the first is the absence of any mention of a treatise (
Greek characters) in the list by Suidas. The enumeration is, however, incomplete, and the phrase "many other works," with which it closes, may be held to cover much. A more formidable difficulty is the circumstance that in the most important
- ↑ It is probable that he owed part of his political fervour to the influence or inheritance of the name "Cassius," from whatever source this surname was derived. The associations of this name were distinctly anti-imperial and even regicidal, as seen in Caius Cassius and in Cassius Chærea.
