The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 367

RAFF, JOACHIM, musical composer of the Wagner School, born at Lachen, in Switzerland; began life as a schoolmaster; was attracted to music; studied at Weimar; lived near Liszt, and became Director of the Conservatorium at Frankfort-on-Main; his works include symphonies, overtures, with pieces for the violin and the piano (1822-1882).

RAFFLES, SIR THOMAS STAMFORD, English administrator, born in Jamaica; entered the East India Company's service, and rose in it; became Governor of Java, and wrote a history of it; held afterwards an important post in Sumatra, and formed a settlement at Singapore; returned to England with a rich collection of natural objects and doc.u.ments, but lost most of them by the ship taking fire (1781-1826).

RAFN, KARL CHRISTIAN, Danish archaeologist, born in Funen; devoted his life to the study of northern antiquities; edited numerous Norse MSS.; executed translations of Norse literature; wrote original treatises in the same interest, and by his researches established the fact of the discovery of America by the Nors.e.m.e.n in the 10th century (1796-1864).

RAGGED SCHOOLS, a name given to the charity schools which provide education and, in most cases, food, clothing, and lodging for dest.i.tute children; they receive no Government support. The movement had its beginning in the magnanimous efforts of John Pounds (_d_. 1839), a shoemaker of Portsmouth; but the zeal and eloquence of Dr. GUTHRIE (q. v.) of Edinburgh greatly furthered the development and spread of these schools throughout the kingdom.

RAGLAN, FITZROY SOMERSET, LORD, youngest son of the Duke of Beaufort; entered the army at sixteen; served with distinction all through the Peninsular War; became aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington, and his military secretary; lost his right arm at Waterloo; did diplomatic service at Paris in 1815, and held afterwards a succession of important military posts; was appointed commander-in-chief of the British forces in the Crimea, and was present at all the engagements till attacked by cholera, aggravated by a repulse and unjust reflections on his conduct of the war, he sank exhausted and died (1788-1855).

RAGMAN ROLL, the name given to a record of the acts of fealty and homage done by the Scottish n.o.bility and gentry in 1296 to Edward I. of England, and of value for the list it supplies of the n.o.bles, gentry, burgesses, and clergy of the country at that period. The original written rolls of parchment have perished, but an abridged form is extant, and preserved in the Tower of London.

RAGNARoK, in the Norse mythology the twilight of the G.o.ds, when it was predicted "the Divine powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial victory by the former, should meet at last in universal, world-embracing wrestle and duel, strength against strength, mutually extinctive, and ruin, 'twilight' sinking into darkness, shall swallow up the whole created universe, the old universe of the Norse G.o.ds"; in which catastrophe Vidar and another are to be spared to found a new heaven and a new earth, the sovereign of which shall be Justice.

"Insight this," says Carlyle, "of how, though all dies, and even G.o.ds die, yet all death is but a Phoenix fire-death, and new birth into the greater and the better as the fundamental law of being."

RAGUSA, a decayed Austrian city on the Dalmatian coast, fronting the Adriatic; has interesting remains of its ancient greatness, and still contains several fine monastic and other buildings.

RAHEL, wife of Varnhagen von Ense, born in Berlin, of Jewish parentage; was a woman of "rare gifts, worth, and true genius, and equal to the highest thoughts of her century," and lived in intimate relation with all the intellectual lights of Germany at the time; worshipped at the shrine of Goethe, and was the foster-mother of German genius generally in her day; she did nothing of a literary kind herself; all that remains of her gifts in that line are her Letters, published by her husband on her death, which letters, however, are intensively subjective, and reveal the state rather of her feelings than the thoughts of her mind (1771-1833).

RAIKES, ROBERT, the founder of Sunday Schools, born in Gloucester; by profession a printer; lived to see his pet inst.i.tution established far and wide over England; left a fortune for benevolent objects (1735-1811).

RAILWAY KING, name given by Sydney Smith to GEORGE HUDSON (q. v.), the great railway speculator, who is said to have one day in the course of his speculations realised as much in scrip as 100,000.

RAINY, ROBERT, eminent Scottish ecclesiastic, born in Glasgow; professor of Church History and Princ.i.p.al in the Free Church College, Edinburgh; an able man, a sagacious and an earnest, a distinguished leader of the Free Church; forced into that position more by circ.u.mstances, it is believed, than by natural inclination, and in that situation some think more a loss than a gain to the Church catholic, to which in heart and as a scholar he belongs; _b_. 1826.

RAJAH, a t.i.tle which originally belonged to princes of the Hindu race, who exercised sovereign rights over some tract of territory; now applied loosely to native princes or n.o.bles with or without territorial lordship.

RAJMAHAL (4), an interesting old Indian town, crowns an elevated site on the Ganges, 170 m. NW. of Calcutta; has ruins of several palaces.

RAJON, PAUL ADOLPHE, French etcher, born at Dijon; made his mark in 1866 with his "Rembrandt at Work"; carried off medals at the Salon; visited England in 1872, and executed notable etchings of portraits of J.S. Mill, Darwin, Tennyson, &c. (1842-1888).

RAJPUT, a name given to a Hindu of royal descent or of the high military caste. See CASTE.

RAJPUTANA (12,016), an extensive tract of country in the NW. of India, S. of the Punjab, embracing some twenty native States and the British district, Ajmere-Merwara. The Aravalli Hills traverse the S., while the Thar or Great Indian Desert occupies the N. and W. Jodhpur is the largest of the native territories, and the Rajputs, a proud and warlike people are the dominant race in many of the States.

RAKOCZY MARCH, the national anthem of the Hungarians, composed about the end of the 17th century by an unknown composer, and said to have been the favourite march of Francis Rakoczy II. of Transylvania.

RAKSHASAS, in the Hindu mythology a species of evil spirits, akin to ogres.

RALEIGH, SIR WALTER, courtier, soldier, and man of letters, born near Budleigh, in E. Devon, of ancient family; entered as student at Oxford, but at 17 joined a small volunteer force in aid of the Protestants in France; in 1580 distinguished himself in suppressing a rebellion in Ireland; was in 1582 introduced at court, fascinated the heart of the Queen by his handsome presence and his gallant bearing, and received no end of favours at her hand; joined his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in an expedition to North America, founded a colony, which he called Virginia in honour of the queen, and brought home with him the potato and the tobacco plants, till then unknown in this country; rendered distinguished services in the destruction of the Armada; visited and explored Guiana, and brought back tidings of its wealth in gold and precious things; fell into disfavour with the queen, but regained her esteem; under King James he became suspected of disloyalty, and was committed to the Tower, where he remained 12 years, and wrote his "History of the World"; on his release, but without a pardon, he set out to the Orinoco in quest of gold-mines there, but returned heart-broken and to be sentenced to die; he met his fate with calm courage, and was beheaded in the Old Palace Yard; of the executioner's axe he smilingly remarked, "A sharp medicine, but an infallible cure" (1552-1618).

RALSTON, WILLIAM SHEDDEN, a noted Russian scholar and translator, born in London; studied at Cambridge, and in 1862 was called to the bar, but never practised; a.s.sistant in the British Museum library till 1875; visited Russia; his works embrace "Songs of the Russian People," "Russian Folk-Tales," &c. (1828-1889).

RaMA, in the Hindu mythology an avatar of Vishnu, being the seventh, in the character of a hero, a destroyer of monsters and a bringer of joy, as the name signifies, the narrative of whose exploits are given in the "RaMaYANA" (q. v.).

RAMADAN, the ninth month of the Mohammedan year, a kind of Lent, held sacred as a month of fasting by all Moslems, being the month in the life of Mahomet when, as he spent it alone in meditation and prayer, his eyes were opened to see, through the shows of things, into the one eternal Reality, the greatness and absolute sovereignty of Allah.

RaMaYANA, one of the two great epic poems, and the best, of the Hindus, celebrating the life and exploits of Rama, "a work of art in which an elevated religious and moral spirit is allied with much poetic fiction, ... written in accents of an ardent charity, of a compa.s.sion, a tenderness, and a humility at once sweet and plaintive, which ever and anon suggest Christian influences."

RAMBLER, a periodical containing essays by Johnson in the _Spectator_ vein, issued in 1750-52, but written in that "stiff and c.u.mbrous style which," as Professor Saintsbury remarks, "has been rather unjustly identified with Johnson's manner of writing generally."

RAMBOUILLET, MARQUISE DE, a lady of wealth and a lover of literature and art, born in Rome, who settled in Paris, and conceiving the idea of forming a society of her own, gathered together into her salon a select circle of intellectual people, which, degenerating into pedantry, became an object of general ridicule, and was dissolved at her death (1588-1665).

RAMEAU, JEAN PHILIPPE, French composer, born at Dijon; wrote on harmony, and, settling in Paris, composed operas, his first "Hippolyte et Aricie," and his best "Castor et Pollux" (1683-1764).

RAMESES, the name of several ancient kings of Egypt, of which the most famous are R. II., who erected a number of monuments in token of his greatness, and at whose court Moses was brought up; and R. III., the first king of the twentieth dynasty, under whose successors the power of Egypt fell into decay.

RAMILLIES, Belgian village in Brabant, 14 m. N. of Namur; scene of Marlborough's victory over the French under Villeroy in 1706.

RAMMOHUN ROY, a Brahman, founder of the Brahmo-Somaj, born at Burdwan, Lower Bengal; by study of the theology of the West was led to embrace deism, and tried to persuade his countrymen to accept the same faith, by proofs which he advanced to show that it was the doctrine of their own sacred books, in particular the Upanishads; with this view he translated and published a number of texts from them in vindication of his contention, as well as expounded his own conviction in original treatises; in doing so he naturally became an object of attack, and was put on his defence, which he conducted in a succession of writings that remain models of controversial literature; died in Bristol (1772-1833).

RAMSAY, ALLAN, Scottish poet, born in Crawford, Lanarkshire; bred a wig-maker; took to bookselling, and published his own poems, "The Gentle Shepherd," a pastoral, among the number, a piece which describes and depicts manners very charmingly (1686-1758).

RAMSAY, ALLAN, portrait-painter, son of preceding; studied three years in Italy, settled in London, and was named first painter to George III. (1715-1764).

RAMSAY, EDWARD BANNERMAN, dean of Edinburgh, born at Aberdeen, graduated at Cambridge; held several curacies; became inc.u.mbent of St.