Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/719

 L I S L I T 695 possesses several tanneries and a large steam flour-mill, aud carries on a brisk trade in grain, cattle, spirits, wine, and furs. The population in 1880 was 11,758, including 3810 Roman Catholics and 1833 Jews. Lissa owes its origin to a number of Moravian Brothers from Bohemia, who were banished by the emperor Ferdinand I. in the 16th century, and found a refuge on the estate of the Polish family of Leczynski. Their settlement received municipal rights in 1548. During the Thirty Years War the population was reinforced by other refugees, and Lissa became an important commercial town, and the chief seat of the Moravian Brothers in Poland. COMEXIUS (q.v.) was long rector of the celebrated Moravian school there. Lissa was twice burned down (in 1656 and 1707) during the Swedish and Polish wars. LISSA (Lat,, Issa ; Slav., Vis), an Austrian island in the Adriatic, 9 miles long, with a greatest breadth of 4 miles, is situated 41 miles from the coast of southern Dalmatia, almost due west of the mouth of the Narenta, in 43 1 N. lat. and 16 6 E. long. &quot; The shape is a long parallelogram with two breaks, the Porto di S. Giorgio (one of the finest harbours of refuge in the Adriatic) on the eastern short side, and the Vallone di Comisa contained between two long prongs stretching due west and south-west. The outer walls are stony ridges rising from 470 to 610 feet above sea-level, and declining quaquaversally to the fertile plateau which, averaging 400 feet high, forms the body of the island. The apex is Monte Hum, a bald and flattened cone (1868 feet) on the south-west&quot; (Burton). Wine growing (for which Issa was famous of old) still forms the principal means of subsistence, an average season yielding from 70,000 to 80,000 barrels ; but the sardine fishery (15,000 to 25,000 barrels per annum) is of growing importance, and the peasants distil about 24,000 Bb of rosemary oil annually. The island is divided into two communes, Lissa and Comisa. In the former is the chief town, Lissa, with the palace of the old Venetian counts Gariboldi, the former residence of the English governor, the monastery of the Minorites, and at a little distance to the west the ruins of the ancient city of Issa. The population, 6485 in 1869, was 7871 in 1880. Issa is said to have been settled by people from Lesbos, the Issa of the /Egean. The Parians, assisted by Dionysius the Elder of Syracuse, introduced a colony in the 4th century u.c. During the First Punic War the Issteans with their beaked ships helped the Roman Duilius; and the great republic, having defended thfiir island against the attacks of Agron of Illyria and his queen Teuta, again found them faithful and serviceable allies in the war with Philip of Macedon. As early as 996 ve find the Venetians in possession of the island, and, though they retired for a time before the Eagu- sans, their power was effectually established in 1278. Velo Selo, which by that time had become the chief settlement, was destroyed by Ferdinand of Naples in 1483, and by the Turks in 1571. The present city arose shortly afterwards. During the Napoleonic wars Lissa was occupied by the French, but the Eng lish defeated their squadron in 1810, and kept possession of the island till July 1815, erecting fortifications (dismantled in 1870) and making it a centre of operations. In 1866 the Italians under Persano made an attack on Lissa, but were defeated by the Austrians under Tegetthoff the battle being fought about 10 miles north of the harbour. See Wilkinson (1848); Neale (18C1); Brackenbury, in the Times, August 14, 866 ; Revue maril. et col., 1867 ; and Burton in Journ. Roy. Geog. Soc., 1879. LISTON, JOHN (1776-1846), comedian, was the son of a watchmaker in Soho, London, where he was born in 177G. While the teacher of a day school near Leicester Square, he began to take part in private theatricals, and soon conceived a passion for the stage. He made his de&quot;but at a small theatre in the Strand, and shortly afterwards obtained an engagement at Dublin theatre, where, although he adopted tragedy as his role, his natural talent for acting attracted the attention of Stephen Kemble, who engaged him for his theatre at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Discovering accidentally that his forte was not tragedy but comedy, Listen displayed in his personation of old men and country boys a fund of drollery and humour which proved irre sistible. An introduction to Charles Kemble led to his appearance at the Haymarket in 1805 as Zekiel Homespun, and from this time he occupied an unrivalled position in his own line of performance, his broad humour being tempered by true artistic finish, while he possessed an original power of creation which, with his boundless faculty in the elaboration of absurdities, filled up meagre and commonplace outlines with the characteristics of vivid individuality. Paul Pry, first represented in 1825, and always his most popular part, soon became to many a real personage. Listen played successively at Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the Olympic, and remained on the stage till almost the close of his life. He died March 22, 1846. LISTON, ROBERT (1794-1847), an eminent Scottish surgeon, was born on the 28th of October 1794, at Eccle- fechan, where his father was parish minister. He com menced the study of anatomy under Dr Barclay in Edin burgh University in 1810, and soon became a skilful anatomist. After eight years study, he began his career as a lecturer on anatomy and surgery in the Edinburgh School of Medicine; and in 1827 he was elected one of the surgeons to the Royal Infirmary. In 1835 he was invited to fill the chair of clinical surgery in University College, London. He held the appointment until his death, on the 7th of December 1847. Liston was a teacher more by what he did than by what he said. He taught simplicity in all operative procedures ; fertile in expedients, of great nerve, and of powerful frame, his name is remembered at the present day as a bold and rapid operator. He inspired all around with confidence, and every one present at his operations felt that the knife in his hands, however rapidly he worked, was guided with skill founded upon knowledge. He was the author of The Elements of Swgery and Practical Surgery, and made several improvements in methods of amputation, and in the dressing of wounds. LITANY. This word (Amu-eta), like AIT?? (both from XiTo/j.ai), is used by Eusebius and Chrysostom, most commonly in the plural, in a quite general sense, to denote a prayer, or prayers, of any sort whatever, whether public or private ; il is similarly employed in the law of Arcadius (Cod. Theod., xvi. tit. 5, leg. 30), which forbids heretics to hold assemblies in the city &quot; ad litaniam faciendam.&quot; But some trace of a more technical meaning is found in the epistle (Ep. 63) of Basil to the church of Neocaesarea, in which he argues, against those who were objecting to certain innovations, that neither were &quot;litanies&quot; used in the time of Gregory Thaumaturgus. The nature of the recently introduced litanies, which must be assumed to have been practised at Neoccesarea in Basil s day, can only be vaguely conjectured ; probably they had many points in common with the &quot; rogationes,&quot; which, according to Sidonius Apollinaris, had been gradually coming into occasional use in France about the beginning of the 5th century, especially when rain or fine weather was desired, and which, so far as the three fast days before Ascension were concerned, were first definitely fixed, for one particular district at least, by Mamertus or Mamercus of Vienne (c. 450 A.D.). We gather that they were penitential and intercessory prayers offered by the community while going about in procession, fasting, and clothed in sackloth. Sidonius alludes to the incongruity of men going &quot; castorinati ad litanias.&quot; In the following century the manner of making litanies (litanias facere) was to some extent regulated for the entire Eastern empire by one of the Novels of Justinian, which forbade their celebration without the presence of the bishops and clergy, and ordered that the crosses (which were carried about in procession) should not be deposited elsewhere than in churches, nor be carried by any but such persons as were duly appointed to do so. The first synod of Orleans (511 A.D.) in its twenty-seventh canon enjoins