Part 382 (2/2)
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).
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