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 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. 213–273), Greek rhetorician and philosophical critic, surnamed. 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  : see F. Überweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 9th ed., 1903, i. § 72). Plotinus, after reading his treatise  (On First Principles), remarked that Longinus might be a scholar ( ), but that he was no philosopher ( ). 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,  (Philological Discourses) consisting of at least 21 books, is omitted. A considerable fragment of the  (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  (Spengel, i. 325-328) may possibly be from the .

It is as the reputed author of the well-known and remarkable work <span title="Perì hýpsous"> (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 <span title="Dionysíou hḗ Longínou">, thus giving an alternative author Dionysius; in the Laurentian MS. at Florence the title has <span title=anōnýmou>, 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 <span title="Perì hýpsous"> was written with a view of correcting the faults of style and method in a treatise by (q.v.) of Calactē on the same subject. As Caecilius flourished during the reign of Augustus, it is hardly likely that his work would have been selected for purposes of criticism in the 3rd century. (5) General considerations of style and language and of the point of view from which the work is written. In favour of Longinus: (1) The traditional ascription, which held its ground<section end="Longinus, Cassius" />