The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 370

REAL, an old Spanish silver coin still in use in Spain, Mexico, and some other of the old Spanish colonies, also is a money of account in Portugal; equals one-fourth of the _peseta_, and varies in value from 2 d. to 5d. with the rise and fall of exchange.

REAL, a legal term in English law applied to property of a permanent or immovable kind, e. g. land, to distinguish it from _personal_ or movable property.

REAL PRESENCE, the a.s.sumed presence, really and substantially, in the bread and wine of the Eucharist of the body and blood, the soul and divinity, of Christ, a doctrine of the Romish and certain other Churches.

REALISM, as opposed to Nominalism, is the belief that general terms denote real things and are not mere names or answerable to the mere conception of them, and as opposed to idealism, is in philosophy the belief that we have an immediate cognition of things external to us, and that they are as they seem. In art and literature it is the tendency to conceive and represent things as they are, however unsightly and immoral they may be, without any respect to the beautiful, the true, or the good.

In Ruskin's teaching mere realism is not art; according to him art is concerned with the rendering and portrayal of ideals.

REALM, ESTATES OF THE, the Sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons in Great Britain.

REAL-SCHULE, a German school in which languages, sciences, and arts are taught to qualify for apprenticeship in some special business or craft.

REASON, in philosophy is more than mere understanding or reasoning power; it is the const.i.tutive and regulative soul of the universe a.s.sumed to live and breathe in the inner life or soul of man, as that develops itself in the creations of human genius working in accord with and revealing the deep purpose of the Maker.

REASON, in German _Vernunft_, defined by Dr. Stirling "the faculty that unites and brings together, as against the understanding," in German _Verstand_, "the faculty that separates, and only in separation knows,"

and that is synthetic of the whole, whereof the latter is merely a.n.a.lytic of the parts, sundered from the whole, and without idea of the whole, the former being the faculty which construes the diversity of the universe into a unity or the one, whereas the latter dissolves the unity into diversity or the many.

REASON, G.o.dDESS OF, a Mrs. Momoro, wife of a bookseller in Paris, who, on the 10th November 1793, in the church of Notre Dame, represented what was called Reason, but was only scientific a.n.a.lysis, which the revolutionaries of France proposed, through her representing such, to install as an object of worship to the dethronement of the Church, _l'infame_.

ReAUMUR, French scientist, born in La Roch.e.l.le; made valuable researches and discoveries in the industrial arts as well as in natural history; is best known as the inventor of the thermometer that bears his name, which is graduated into 80 degrees from the temperature of melting ice to that of boiling water (1683-1757).

REBECCA THE JEWESS, a high-souled Hebrew maiden, who is the heroine in Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe."

REBECCAITES, a band of Welsh rioters who in 1843, dressed as females, went about at nights and destroyed the toll-gates, which were outrageously numerous; they took their name from Gen. xxiv. 60.

REBELLION, name of two risings of Jacobites in Scotland to restore the exiled Stuart dynasty to the throne, one in behalf of the Pretender in 1715, headed by the Earl of Mar, and defeated at Sheriffmuir, and the other in behalf of the Young Chevalier, and defeated at Culloden in April 1746.

ReCAMIR, MADAME, Frenchwoman, born at Lyons; became at 15 the wife of a rich banker In Paris thrice her own age; was celebrated for her wit her beauty, and her salon; was a friend of Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand, whom she soothed in his declining years, and a good woman (1777-1849).

RECANATI (6), a pretty Italian town, 15 m. S. of the Adriatic port Ancona, the birthplace of Leopardi; has a Gothic cathedral.

RECENSION, the name given to the critical revision of the text of an author, or the revised text itself.

RECHABITES, a tribe of Arab origin and Bedouin habits who attached themselves to the Israelites in the wilderness and embraced the Jewish faith, but retained their nomadic ways; they abstained from all strong drink, according to a vow they had made to their chief, which they could not be tempted to break, an example which Jeremiah in vain pleaded with the Jews to follow in connection with their vow to the Lord (See Jer.

x.x.xv.).

RECIDIVISTS, a name applied to the cla.s.s of habitual delinquents or criminals of France.

RECIPROCITY, a term used in economics to describe commercial treaties entered into by two countries, by which it is agreed that, while a strictly protective tariff is maintained as regards other countries, certain articles shall be allowed to pa.s.s between the two contracting countries free of or with only light duties; this is the cardinal principle of Fair Trade, and is so far opposed to Free Trade.

RECLUS, ELISeE, a celebrated French geographer; from his extreme democratic opinions left France In 1851, lived much in exile, and spent much time in travel; wrote "Geographie Universelle," in 14 vols., his greatest work; _b_. 1830.

RECORDE, ROBERT, mathematician, born in Pembroke; a physician by profession, and physician to Edward VI. and Queen Mary; his works on arithmetic, algebra, &c., were written in the form of question and answer; died in the debtors' prison (1500-1558).

RECORDER, an English law official, the chief Judicial officer of a city or borough; discharges the functions of judge at the Quarter-Sessions of his district; must be a barrister of at least five years' standing; is appointed by the Crown, but paid by the local authority; is debarred from sitting on the licensing bench, but is not withheld from practising at the bar; the sheriff in Scotland is a similar official.

RECTOR, a clergyman of the Church of England, who has a right to the great and small t.i.thes of the living; where the t.i.thes are impropriate he is called a vicar.

RECUSANTS, a name given to persons who refused to attend the services of the Established Church, on whom legal penalties were first imposed in Elizabeth's reign, that bore heavily upon Catholics and Dissenters; the Toleration Act of William III. relieved the latter, but the Catholics were not entirely emanc.i.p.ated till 1829.

RED CROSS KNIGHT, St. George, the patron saint of England, and the type and the symbol of justice and purity at feud with injustice and impurity.

RED CROSS SOCIETY, an internationally-recognised society of volunteers to attend to the sick and wounded in time of war, so called from the members of it wearing the badge of St. George.

RED REPUBLICANS, a party in France who, at the time of the Revolution of 1848, aimed at a reorganisation of the State on a general part.i.tion of Property.

RED RIVER, an important western tributary of the Mississippi; flows E. and SE. through Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana; has a course of 1600 m. till it joins the Mississippi; is navigable for 350 m.

RED RIVER OF THE NORTH, flows out of Elbow Lake, Minnesota; forms the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota, and flowing through Manitoba, falls into Lake Winnipeg after a course of 665 m.; is a navigable river.

RED SEA, an arm of the Arabian Sea, and stretching in a NW.

direction between the desolate sandy sh.o.r.es of Turkey in Asia and Africa; is connected with the Gulf of Aden in the SE. by the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, and in the NW. divides into the Gulfs of Suez and Akaba, between which lies the Sinai Peninsula; the SUEZ Ca.n.a.l (q. v.) joins it to the Mediterranean; is 1200 m. long, and averages 180 in breadth; has a mean depth of 375 fathoms (greatest 1200); receives no rivers, and owing to the great evaporation its water is very saline; long coral reefs skirt its sh.o.r.es, and of many islands Jebel Zugur, in the Farisan Archipelago, and Dahlak are the largest; the dangerous Daedalus Reef is marked by a lighthouse; as a seaway between Europe and the East its importance was greatly diminished by the discovery of the Cape route, but since the opening of the Suez Ca.n.a.l it has much more than regained its old position; owes its name probably to the deep red tint of the water often seen among the reefs, due to the presence of microscopic organisms.

REDAN, a rampart shaped like the letter V, with its apex toward the enemy.

REDDITCH (11), a flourishing town of Worcester, on the Warwick border, 13 m. SW. of Birmingham, busy with the manufacture of needles, pins, fish-hooks, &c.