Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/108

 on 29 Aug. 1844, aged 82. He was interred in the cemetery attached to the schools, where a memorial church was erected in his honour. The Irish christian brothers have recently had ninety-seven houses in Ireland, with three hundred schools attached, and an average daily attendance of thirty thousand pupils. Within recent years they have opened establishments in Newfoundland, Gibraltar, Calcutta, and Allahabad. The brothers also conduct six male industrial schools in Ireland, a deaf mutes' and a blind institution, and orphanages for the poor and middle classes.



RICE, GEORGE (1724–1779), politician, born in 1724, was son of Edward Rice of Newton, Carmarthenshire, M.P. for that county in 1722, by Lucy, daughter of John Morley Trevor of Glynde, Sussex. His father's family had been settled at Newton for many generations. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 26 Jan. 1742, at the age of seventeen (, Alumni Oxon.), but took no degree, and devoted himself to politics and local affairs. At the general election of 1754 he was returned for the county of Carmarthen after a warm contest with Sir Thomas Stepney, and retained his seat, during a period of twenty-five years, until his death, being re-elected four times without opposition. He was made lord-lieutenant of his native county in May 1755 (reappointed 23 June 1761), and, when the Carmarthenshire militia was embodied (7 Dec. 1759), he was nominated colonel of the regiment. He became chamberlain of Brecon and of the counties of Brecon, Glamorgan, and Radnor in 1765, and was sworn in mayor of Carmarthen on 5 June 1767. By his marriage, on 16 Aug. 1756, with Cecil (1733–1793), daughter of William, first earl Talbot, lord steward of the royal household, he greatly increased his political influence, and on 21 March 1761 he accepted office under the Duke of Newcastle as a lord commissioner of the board of trade and foreign plantations, with a salary of 1,000l. a year. This post he held in successive ministries until April 1770, when Lord North selected him for the court appointment of treasurer of the king's chamber, and he was sworn a member of the privy council on 4 May following. Rice, who bore a high character (Autobiography of Mary Delany, ed. Lady Llanover), died in office at the age of fifty-five, on 3 Aug. 1779. His widow became a peeress in her own right as Baroness Dynevor on her father's death on 27 April 1782, and died 14 March 1793, leaving, with two daughters, two sons—George Talbot, afterwards third Lord Dynevor (1765–1852), and Edward (d. 1867), dean of Gloucester, whose son, Francis William, fifth baron Dynevor, was father of the present baron.



RICE, JAMES (1843–1882), novelist and historian of the turf, son of Samuel Rice, was born at Northampton on 26 Sept. 1843, and admitted on 1 Nov. 1865 at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he resided for nine terms. In 1868 he became editor and proprietor of ‘Once a Week,’ which he conducted not very successfully until 1872. At the same time he was studying for the bar, and was called at Lincoln's Inn in 1871, but never obtained much practice. In 1872 he became London correspondent of the ‘Toronto Globe,’ and in 1879 published his history of the British turf in two volumes. Only the first of these can be considered as strictly historical, and it rather merits commendation as a lively contribution to the subject than a serious history, Rice being more inclined to gossip pleasantly about the events of his own time than to retrieve the recollections of the past. The second volume consists mainly of entertaining, desultory essays, too numerous for a history, and too few for a miscellany of ‘Turfiana.’ The book, as a whole, is creditable to his abilities, but can only be regarded as a stopgap.

Seven years before its appearance Rice's abiding reputation had been assured by the publication of ‘Ready Money Mortiboy’ (London, 1872, 8vo), the first of the series of clever novels he issued in conjunction with Mr. (after Sir) Walter Besant, a literary partnership as remarkable as that of the Alsatian romance-writers Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian. Rice numbered Mr. Besant among the contributors to ‘Once a Week,’ and, after attempting singlehanded a novel in its pages with indifferent success, proposed that they should conjointly write the novel which they entitled ‘Ready Money Mortiboy.’ The admirable idea on which the story is founded was Rice's own, and he had already written two or three chapters before inviting Mr. Besant's aid. It was published anonymously at the authors' risk, and proved a great literary, though not a great commercial, success; it was subsequently dramatised, under the title of ‘Ready-Money,’ by the authors. The piece was produced at the Court Theatre 12 March 1874, and printed. After the appearance of its successor, ‘My Little Girl,’ the partnership was for a time placed in jeopardy by Rice's