The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 382

ROSSINI, GIOACCHINO, celebrated Italian composer of operatic music, born at Pesaro; his operas were numerous, of a high order, and received with unbounded applause, beginning with "Tancred," followed by "Barber of Seville," "La Gazza Ladra," "Semiramis," "William Tell," &c.; he composed a "Stabat Mater," and a "Ma.s.s" which was given at his grave (1792-1868).

ROSTOCK (44), a busy German port in Mecklenburg, on the Warnow, 7 m.

from its entrance into the Baltic; exports large quant.i.ties of grain, wool, flax, &c., has important wool and cattle markets; s.h.i.+pbuilding is the chief of many varied industries, owns a flouris.h.i.+ng university, a beautiful Gothic church, a ducal palace, &c.

ROSTOFF, 1, a flouris.h.i.+ng town (67) of South Russia, on the Don, 34 m. E. of Taganrog; manufactures embrace tobacco, ropes, leather, s.h.i.+pbuilding, &c. 2, One of the oldest of Russian market-towns (12), on the Lake of Rostoff, 34 m. SW. of Jaroslav, seat of an archbishop; manufactures linens, silks, &c.

ROSTOPCHINE, COUNT, Russian general, governor of Moscow; was charged with having set fire to the city against the entrance of the French in 1812; in his defence all he admitted was that he had set fire to his own mansion, and threw the blame of the general conflagration on the citizens and the French themselves (1763-1826).

ROSTRUM (lit. a beak), a pulpit in the forum of Rome where the orators delivered harangues to the people, so called as originally constructed of the prows of war-vessels taken at the first naval battle in which Rome was engaged.

ROTHE, RICHARD, eminent German theologian, born at Posen, professor eventually at Heidelberg; regarded the Church as a temporary inst.i.tution which would decease as soon as it had fulfilled its function by leavening society with the Christian spirit; he wrote several works, but the greatest is ent.i.tled "Theological Ethics" (1799-1867).

ROTHERHAM (42), a flouris.h.i.+ng town in Yorks.h.i.+re, situated on the Don, 5 m. NE. of Sheffield; its cruciform church is a splendid specimen of Perpendicular architecture; manufactures iron-ware, chemicals, pottery, &c.

ROTHESAY (9), popular watering-place on the W. coast of Scotland, capital of Butes.h.i.+re, charmingly situated at the head of a fine hill-girt bay on the NE. side of the island of Bute, 19 m. SW. of Greenock; has an excellent harbour, esplanade, &c.; Rothesay Castle is an interesting ruin; is a great health and holiday resort.

ROTHSCHILD, MEYER AMSCHEL, the founder of the celebrated banking business, born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, a Jew by birth; began his career as a money-lender and made a large fortune (1743-1812); left five sons, who were all made barons of the Austrian empire--AMSELM VON R., eldest, head of the house at Frankfort (1773-1855); SOLOMON VON R., the second, head of the Vienna house (1774-1855); NATHAN VON R., the third, head of the London house (1777-1836); KARL VON R., the fourth, head of the house at Naples (1755-1855); and JACOB VON R., the fifth, head of the Paris house (1792-1868).

ROTROU, JEAN DE, French poet, born at Dreux; was a contemporary of Corneille and a rival, wrote a number of plays, almost all tragedies, on romantic and cla.s.sical subjects, some of which have kept the stage till now (1609-1650).

ROTTERDAM (223), the chief port and second city of Holland, situated at the junction of the Rotte with the Maas, 19 m. from the North Sea and 45 m. SW. of Amsterdam; the town is cut in many parts by handsome ca.n.a.ls, which communicate with the river and serve to facilitate the enormous foreign commerce; the quaint old houses, the stately public buildings, broad tree-lined streets, ca.n.a.ls alive with fleets of trim barges, combine to give the town a picturesque and animated appearance. Boymans'

Museum has a fine collection of Dutch and modern paintings, and the Groote Kerk is a Gothic church of imposing appearance; there is also a large zoological garden; s.h.i.+pbuilding, distilling, sugar-refining, machine and tobacco factories are the chief industries.

ROTTI (60), a fertile hilly island in the Indian Archipelago, SW. of Timor, a Dutch possession.

ROUBAIX (115), a busy town in the department of Nord, N. of France; situated on a ca.n.a.l 6 m. NE. of Lille; is of modern growth; actively engaged in the manufacture of all kinds of textiles, in brewing, &c.

ROUBILLIAC, LOUIS FRANcOIS, sculptor, born at Lyons; studied in Paris, came to London; executed there statues of Shakespeare in the British Museum, Sir Isaac Newton at Cambridge, and Handel at London (1693-1762).

ROUBLE, a silver coin of the value of 3s. 2d.; the unit of the Russian monetary system; a much depreciated paper rouble is also in circulation; the rouble is divided into 100 copecks.

ROUEN (112), the ancient capital of Normandy, a busy manufacturing town on the Seine, 87 m. NW of Paris; a good portion of the old, crowded, picturesque town has given place to more s.p.a.cious streets and dwellings; the old ramparts have been converted into handsome boulevards; has several Gothic churches unrivalled in beauty, a cathedral (the seat of an archbishop), &c.; the river affords an excellent waterway to the sea, and as a port Rouen ranks fourth in France; is famed for its cotton and other textiles; Joan of Arc was burned here in 1431.

ROUGET DE LISLE, officer of the Engineers, born at Lons-le-Saulnier; immortalised himself as the author of the "Ma.r.s.eILLAISE" (q. v.); was thrown into prison by the extreme party at the Revolution, but was released on the fall of Robespierre; fell into straitened circ.u.mstances, but was pensioned by Louis Philippe (1760-1836).

ROUGE-ET-NOIR (i. e. red and black), a gambling game of chance with cards, so called because it is played on a table marked with two red and two black diamond-shaped spots, and arranged alternately in four different sections of the table.

ROUHER, EUGeNE, French Bonapartist statesman, born at Riom, where he became a barrister; entered the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly in 1848, and in the following year became Minister of Justice; was more or less in office during the next 20 years; he became President of the Senate in 1869; fled to England on the fall of the Empire; later on re-entered the National a.s.sembly, and vigorously defended the ex-emperor Napoleon III.

(1814-1884).

ROULERS (20), a manufacturing town in West Flanders, 19 m. SW. of Bruges; engaged in manufacturing cottons, lace, &c.; scene of a French victory over the Austrians in 1794.

ROULETTE, a game of chance, very popular in France last century, now at Monaco; played with a revolving disc and a ball.

ROUMANIA (5,800), a kingdom of SE. Europe, wedged in between Russia (N.) and Bulgaria (S.), with an eastern sh.o.r.e on the Black Sea; the Carpathians on the W. divide it from Austro-Hungary; comprises the old princ.i.p.alities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which, long subject to Turkey, united under one ruler in 1859, and received their independence in 1878, in which year the province of Dobrudja was ceded by Russia; in 1881 the combined provinces were recognised as a kingdom; forms a fertile and well-watered plain sloping N. to S., which grows immense quant.i.ties of grain, the chief export; salt-mining and petroleum-making are also important industries; the bulk of the people belong to the Greek Church; peasant proprietors.h.i.+p on a large scale is a feature of the national life; government is vested in a hereditary limited monarch, a council of ministers, a senate, and a chamber of deputies; BUCHAREST (q. v.) is the capital, and GALATZ (q. v.) the chief port.

ROUMELIA, a former name for a district which embraced ancient Thrace and a portion of Macedonia; the territory known as East Roumelia was incorporated with Bulgaria in 1885.

ROUND TABLE, THE, the name given to the knighthood of King Arthur: a larger, from including as many as 150 knights; and a smaller, from including only 12 of the highest order.

ROUND TOWERS, ancient towers, found chiefly in Ireland, of a tall, round, more or less tapering structure, divided into storeys, and with a conical top, erected in the neighbourhood of some church or monastery, and presumably of Christian origin, and probably used as strongholds in times of danger; of these there are 118 in Ireland, and three in Scotland--at Abernethy, Brechin, and Eglishay (Orkney).

ROUNDHEADS, the name of contempt given by the Cavaliers to the Puritans or Parliamentary party during the Civil War, on account of their wearing their hair close crept.

ROUS, FRANCIS, provost of Eton, born in Cornwall; sat in the Westminster a.s.sembly, and was the author of the metrical version of the Psalms, as used in Presbyterian churches (1579-1659).

ROUSSEAU, JEAN BAPTISTE, French lyric poet, born in Paris, the son of a shoemaker; gave offence by certain lampoons ascribed to him which to the last he protested were forgeries, and was banished; his satires were certainly superior to his lyrics, which were cold and formal; died at Brussels in exile (1670-1741).

ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES, a celebrated French philosopher, and one or the great prose writers of French literature, born in Geneva, the son of a watchmaker and dancing-master; was apprenticed to an engraver, whose inhuman treatment drove him at the age of 16 into running away; for three years led a vagrant life, acting as footman, lackey, secretary, &c.; during this period was converted to Catholicism largely through the efforts of Madame de Warens, a spritely married lady living apart from her husband; in 1731 he took up residence in his patroness's house, where he lived for nine years a life of ease and sentiment in the ambiguous capacity of general factotum, and subsequently of lover; supplanted in the affections of his mistress, he took himself off, and landed in Paris in 1741; supported himself by music-copying, an occupation which was his steadiest means of livelihood throughout his troubled career; formed a _liaison_ with an illiterate dull servant-girl by whom he had five children, all of whom he callously handed over to the foundling hospital; acquaintance with Diderot brought him work on the famous Encyclopedie, but the true foundation of his literary fame was laid in 1749 by "A Discourse on Arts and Sciences," in which he audaciously negatives the theory that morality has been favoured by the progress of science and the arts; followed this up in 1753 by a "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality," in which he makes a wholesale attack upon the cherished inst.i.tutions and ideals of society; morosely rejected the flattering advances of society, and from his retreat at Montlouis issued "The New Helose" (1760), "The Social Contract" (1762), and "emile" (1762); these lifted him into the widest fame, but precipitated upon him the enmity and persecution of Church (for his Deism) and State; fled to Switzerland, where after his aggressive "Letters from the Mountains," he wandered about, the victim of his own suspicious, hypochondriacal nature; found for some time a retreat in Staffords.h.i.+re under the patronage of Hume; returned to France, where his only persecutors were his own morbid hallucinations; died, not without suspicion of suicide, at Ermenonville; his "Confessions" and other autobiographical writings, although unreliable in facts, reflect his strange and wayward personality with wonderful truth; was one of the precursive influences which brought on the revolutionary movement (1712-1778).

ROUSSEAU, PIERRE eTIENNE THeODORE, an eminent French artist, born in Paris; at 19 exhibited in the Salon; slowly won his way to the front as the greatest French landscape painter; in 1848 settled down in Barbizon, in the Forest of Fontainebleau, his favourite sketching ground; his pictures (e. g. "The Alley of Chestnut Trees," "Early Summer Morning") fetch immense prices now (1812-1867).

ROVEREDO (10), an Austrian town in the Tyrol, pleasantly situated on the Leno, in the Lagerthal; is the centre of the Tyrolese silk trade.

ROW, JOHN, a Scottish reformer; graduated LL.D. in Padua; came over from the Catholic Church in 1558, and two years later helped to compile the "First Book of Discipline"; settled as a minister in Perth, and was four times Moderator of the General a.s.sembly (1525-1580). His son, John Row, was minister of Carnock, near Dunfermline, and author of an authoritative "History of the Kirk of Scotland" (1568-1646).

ROWE, NICHOLAS, dramatist and poet-laureate, born at Barford, Bedfords.h.i.+re; was trained for the law, but took to literature, and made his mark as a dramatist, "The Fair Penitent," "Jane Sh.o.r.e," &c., long maintaining their popularity; translated Lucan's "Pharsalia," which won Dr. Johnson's commendation; edited Shakespeare; became poet-laureate in 1715; held some government posts; was buried at Westminster Abbey (1674-1718).