The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 372

REGNAULT, HENRI, French painter, born in Paris; son of following; a genius of great power and promise, of which several remarkable works by him are proof; volunteered in the Franco-German War, and fell at Buzenval (1843-1871).

REGNAULT, HENRI VICTOR, a noted French physicist, born at Aix-la-Chapelle; from being a Paris shopman he rose to a professorship in Lyons; important discoveries in organic chemistry won him election to the Academy of Sciences in 1840; lectured in the "College de France and the ecole Polytechnique;" became director of the imperial porcelain manufactory of Sevres; did notable work in physics and chemistry, and was awarded medals by the Royal Society of London (1810-1878).

REGNIER, MATHURIN, French poet, born at Chartres; led when young a life of dissipation; ranks high as a poet, but is most distinguished in satire, which is instinct with verve and vigour (1572-1613).

REGULARS, in the Romish Church a member of any religious order who has taken the vows of poverty, chast.i.ty, and obedience.

REGULUS, a Roman of the Romans; was twice over Consul, in 267 and 256 B.C.; defeated the Carthaginians, both by sea and land, but was at last taken prisoner; being sent, after five years' captivity, on parole to Rome with proposals of peace, dissuaded the Senate from accepting the terms, and despite the entreaties of his wife and children and friends returned to Carthage according to his promise, where he was subjected to the most excruciating tortures.

REGULUS, ST., or ST. RULE, a monk of the East who, in the 4th century, it is said, came to Scotland with the bones of St. Andrew, and deposited them at St. Andrews.

REHAN, ADA, actress, born in Limerick; made her _debut_ at 16 in Albany, New York; came to London in 1884, and again in 1893; plays Rosalind in "As You Like It," Lady Teazle in "School for Scandal," and Maid Marian in the "Foresters," and numerous other parts; _b_. 1859.

REHOBOAM, the king of the Jews on whose accession at the death of Solomon, in 976 B.C., the ten tribes of Israel seceded from the kingdom of Judah.

REICH, THE, the old German Empire.

REICHENBACH, KARL, BARON VON, expert in the industrial arts, particularly in chemical manufacture; he was a zealous student of animal magnetism, and the discoverer of Od (1788-1869).

REICHENBERG (31), a town in North Bohemia, on the Neisse, 86 m. NE.

of Prague; chief seat of the Bohemian cloth manufacture.

REICHENHALL (4), a popular German health resort, in South-East Bavaria, 10 m. SW. of Salzburg; is charmingly situated amidst Alpine scenery, and has a number of mineral springs; is the centre of the great Bavarian salt-works.

REICHSRATH, the Parliament of the Austrian Empire.

REICHSTADT, DUKE OF, the son and successor of Napoleon as Napoleon II.; died at Vienna in 1832.

REICHSTAG, the German Imperial Legislature, representative of the German nation, and which consists of 397 members, elected by universal suffrage and ballot for a term of five years.

REID, SIR GEORGE, a distinguished portrait-painter, born in Aberdeen; his portraits are true to the life, and are not surpa.s.sed by those of any other living artist; _b_. 1841.

REID, RIGHT HON. G. H., Premier of Australia, born at Johnstone, Renfrewshire; emigrated with his parents in 1852; adopted law as his profession; became Minister of Education in 1883; became Premier of N.S.W. in 1894; is a great Free Trader, and visited England for the Jubilee in 1897; Prime Minister of the Australian Commonwealth, 1904; _b_. 1845.

REID, CAPTAIN MAYNE, novelist, born in Co. Down; led a life of adventure in America, and served in the Mexican War, but settled afterwards in England to literary work, and wrote a succession of tales of adventure (1819-1883).

REID, THOMAS, Scottish philosopher, and chief of the Scottish school, born in Kincardineshire, and bred for the Scotch Church, in which he held office as a clergyman for a time; was roused to philosophical speculation by the appearance in 1730 of David Hume's "Treatise on Human Nature," and became professor of Philosophy in Aberdeen in 1752, and in Glasgow in 1763, where the year after he published his "Inquiry into the Human Mind," which was followed in course of time by his "Philosophy of the Intellectual and Active Powers"; his philosophy was a protest against the scepticism of Hume, founded on the idealism of Berkeley, by appeal to the "common-sense" of mankind, which admits of nothing intermediate between the perceptions of the mind and the reality of things (1710-1796).

REID, SIR WEMYSS, journalist and man of letters, born in Newcastle-on-Tyne; editor of the _Leeds Mercury_ (1870-86), and of the _Speaker_ since 1890; has written novels and biographies; is President of the Inst.i.tute of Journalists, and was knighted in 1894; _b_. 1842.

REID, SIR WILLIAM, soldier and scientist; served in the Royal Engineers with distinction under Wellington; became Governor successively of Bermudas, Barbadoes, and Malta, and was the author of a scientific work on "The Law of Storms" (1791-1858).

REIGATE (23), a flourishing market-town in Surrey, 21 m. S. of London; is a busy railway centre; has interesting historic ruins; an old church, among others containing the grave of Lord Howard of Effingham.

REIGN OF A HUNDRED DAYS, the period during which Napoleon reigned in Paris from his return from Elba in the beginning of March till he left on the 12th June 1815 to meet the Allies in the Netherlands.

REIGN OF TERROR, the name given to the b.l.o.o.d.y consummation of the fiery French Revolution, including a period which lasted 420 days, from the fall of the Girondists on the 31st May 1793 to the overthrow of Robespierre and his accomplices on 27th July 1794, the actors in which at length, seeing nothing but "Terror" ahead, had in their despair said to themselves, "Be it so. _Que la Terreur soit a l'ordre du jour_ (having sown the wind, come let us reap the whirlwind). One of the frightfulest things ever born of Time. So many as four thousand guillotined, fusilladed, noyaded, done to dire death, of whom nine hundred were women."

REIMARUS, a philosopher of the _AUFKLaRUNG_ (q. v.), born at Hamburg; author of the "Wolfenb.u.t.tel Fragments," published by Lessing in 1777, and written to disprove the arguments for the historical truth of the Bible, and in the interest of pure deism and natural religion (1694-1768).

REIS EFFENDI, one of the chief Ministers of State in Turkey, who is Lord Chancellor, and holds the bureau of foreign affairs.

REITERS, the cavalry of the German Empire in the 14th and 15th centuries.

RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE, the doctrine that all knowledge is of things as they appear to us and not of things as they are in themselves, is subjective and not objective, is phenomenal and not noumenal.

RELIEF, prominence of a sculpture from a plain surface; works in relief are of three kinds: _alto-relievo_, high relief; _mezzo-relievo_, medium relief; _ba.s.so-relievo_, low relief.

RELIGIO MEDICI, a celebrated work of Sir Thomas Browne's, characterised as a "confession of intelligent, orthodox, and logical supernaturalism couched in some of the most exquisite English ever written."

RELIGION, a sense, affecting the whole character and life, of dependence on, reverence for, and responsibility to a Higher Power; or a mode of thinking, feeling, and acting which respects, trusts in, and strives after G.o.d, and determines a man's duty and destiny in this universe, or "the manner in which a man feels himself to be spiritually related to the unseen world."

RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, society founded in 1799 for the circulation of religious works in home and foreign parts, has published in 220 languages, and is conducted by an annually elected body, consisting of four ministers and eight laymen in London.

RELIQUARY, name given to a portable shrine or case for relics of saints or martyrs; they a.s.sumed many forms, and were often rich in material and of exquisite design.