Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/898

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

868 L O N L O N Cousin has devoted four volumes to her, which, though immensely diffuse, give a vivid picture of her time. Her connexion with Port Eoyal should be studied in Arnauld s Memoirs, and in the different histories of that institution. LONGUS, the Greek romancer. Nothing is known of the life of the author of Daphnis and Chloe, and it is only inferred from some apparent imitations of the jEihiopica of Heliodorus that he wrote after the time of Theodosius. He may therefore be placed in the 5th century. His position in literature is interesting and not unimportant : he represents the romantic spirit of expiring classicism, the yearning of a highly artificial society for primitive sim plicity, and the endeavour to create a corresponding ideal. The little idyl in the seventh oration of Dion Chrysostom is a beautiful example of this tendency three centuries before Longus, and the letters of Synesius, nearly in his own day, attest a genuine feeling for nature and a country life. In its literary aspect, nevertheless, this movement has little in common with the return to pure nature which inspired a Wordsworth, or the realism of George Sand s delineations of the peasantry of Berri. Longus s style is rhetorical, and his shepherds and shepherdesses are wholly conventional. It is no small credit to him to have achieved so purely ideal a delineation with so little apparent affecta tion, and without any of the tediousness of almost all modern pastoral writers. If unable to blend the reality and ideality of the pastoral life as Shakespeare has done in As You Like It and The Winters Tale, he has neverthe less imparted real human interest to a purely fanciful picture, and shows no little knowledge of human nature in his delineation of the growth of a passionate attachment between two innocent children. Daphnis and Chloe were probably the prototypes of Paul and Virginia ; and, not withstanding the naivete" of some details, the Greek has a decided advantage over the Frenchman in the simplicity and sincerity which constitute the true modesty of nature. As an analysis of feeling, Daphnis and Chloe makes a nearer approach to the modern novel than its chief rival among Greek erotic romances, the ^Ethiopica of Heliodorus, where the attraction mainly consists in the ingenious succession of incidents. Longus has found an incomparable translator in Amyot, bishop of Auxerre, whose French version, as revised by Paul Louis Courier, is better known than the original. It appeared in 1559, thirty-nine years before the publication of the Greek text at Florence by Alamanni. The chief subsequent editions are those by Jungermann (Hanau, 1603), Villoison (Paris, 1778, which first gave a standard text), Courier (Rome, 1810, the first entirely com plete edition), Seiler (Leipsic, 1835), and Piccolos (Paris, 1866), pronounced by M. Pons the ne plus ultra of accuracy. Pons s account of the literature and bibliography of the subject, appended to his edition of Courier s version (1878), is very careful and complete. There are English translations by Thornley, Craggs, and Le Grice, the last with omissions. The illustrated editions, generally of Amyot s version, are very numerous, and some are very beautiful. Prudhon s designs are especially celebrated. LONS-LE-SAULNIEE, capital of the department of Jura, France, is situated at a distance of 275 miles by rail from Paris, on the Valliere, a small tributary of the Saone, about 820 feet above the sea-level, at the point where the Besan9on, Lyons, and Chalon-sur-Saone railways converge. It is pleasantly surrounded by vine-clad hills from 300 to 500 feet in height, consisting of lower spurs of the Jura chain. It owes its name to its salt-pits, which have been used from a very remote period ; the large quantities of ashes derived from the wood burnt in the process of evaporation are extensively utilized in agriculture. Since 1839 there has been an establishment for the use of the mineral waters. The principal industry of the place is the manufacture of sparkling wines, the Etoile growth being the best for this purpose. There is also a foundry, in addition to printing establishments, tanneries, distilleries, brush factories, and manufactures of coverlets and carpets. About n mile to the west of the town are the salt-mines of Montmorot, employing one hundred and fifty workmen ; the bed of rock salt, which lies at a depth of 400 feet, and is nearly TOO feet thick, yields about 9500 tons of pure salt yearly, 885 tons of sulphate of soda, and 300 tons of chloride of potassium. Lons-le-Saulnier possesses no build ings of special interest ; one of the public squares contains a statue of Lecourbe, and there is a museum containing Gallo-Roman antiquities and various works of art. The library, which like the museum is in the town-hall, has 20,000 volumes. The population in 187G was 11,371. Lons-le-Saulnier, originally a Gallic town, was fortified by the Romans, destroyed by the barbarians, and, afterwards rebuilt and extendeil, belonged for a long time during the mediaeval period to the powerful house of Chalon, a younger branch of that of Burgundy. It was burned in 1364 by the English, and again in 1637, when "it was seized by the duke of Longueville for Louis XIII. It became definitively French in 1674. It was there that the meeting between Ney and Napoleon took place, on the return of the latter from Elba, on March 31, 1815. Kouget de 1 Isle, the author of the Marseillaise Hymn, was born at Montaigu near this town. END OP VOLUME FOURTEENTH, NT?rLL AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, KDrNBUBGH.