Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/186

 adopted the principles of monism, according to which matter and mind are of at least co-ordinate importance and diverse aspects of phenomenal existence. An article in the ‘Contemporary Review’ of the following year (1886) on ‘The World as an Eject’ has distinctly theistic implications; while an ‘Essay on Monism’ (published after the author's death) goes further in the same direction. These modifications of philosophic opinion were accompanied by no less profound modifications of religious conviction. Near the close of his life Romanes was occupied in writing a ‘Candid Examination of Religion,’ to be published under the pseudonym of ‘Metaphysicus.’ Such notes for this work as were sufficiently complete were published after the author's death under the editorship of Canon Gore. They indicate a return to the orthodox position, and express a conviction that the fault of the essay of 1878 lay in an undue reliance on reason to the exclusion of the promptings of the emotional side of man's complex nature.

Romanes married on 11 Feb. 1879, and, settling at 18 Cornwall Terrace, London, threw himself with enthusiasm for the next ten years into the scientific and social life of London. He was for some years honorary zoological secretary of the Linnean Society, and a member of the council of University College, London. In 1890, warned by severe headaches of approaching ill-health, he removed from London to Oxford, where he had many friends and where facilities for scientific work abounded. He took up his residence at an old house in St. Aldates, opposite Christ Church, of which he became a member, being incorporated M.A. of the university of Oxford. There he mainly spent his remaining years as happily as his health permitted. In 1891 he founded in the university a lectureship which bears his name; under the terms of the foundation a man of eminence was to be elected annually to deliver a lecture on a scientific or literary topic. The first Romanes lecture, on ‘Mediæval Universities,’ was delivered by Mr. Gladstone on 24 Oct. 1892. In the same year Romanes's old college (Caius, Cambridge) made him an honorary fellow. Aberdeen University had conferred on him the honorary degree of LL.D. in 1882. For some time before his death Romanes suffered from a disease—a condition of the arteries resulting in apoplexy—the gravity of which he fully realised, facing the inevitable event with admirable fortitude. An occasional visit to Madeira or Costabelle gave only temporary relief. He died at Oxford on 23 May 1894, and was buried in Holywell cemetery.

Romanes was through the greater part of his career an ardent sportsman, and frequently visited Scotland to indulge his sporting tastes. In private life he was a genial and delightful companion, and to those who knew him intimately a warm and staunch friend. His widow (Ethel, only daughter of Andrew Duncan, esq., of Liverpool) survived him, and edited his ‘Life and Letters’ (1896). He left five sons and a daughter.

The following is a list of his published works:
 * 1) ‘A Candid Examination of Theism, by “Physicus,”’ 1878.
 * 2) ‘Animal Intelligence,’ 1881.
 * 3) ‘Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution,’ 1882.
 * 4) ‘Mental Evolution in Animals,’ 1883.
 * 5) ‘Jelly-Fish, Star-Fish, and Sea-Urchins,’ 1885.
 * 6) ‘Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty,’ 1888.
 * 7) ‘Darwin and after Darwin,’ pt. i. 1892.
 * 8) ‘An Examination of Weismannism,’ 1893.
 * 9) ‘Thoughts on Religion,’ posth. 1895.
 * 10) ‘Mind and Motion: An Essay on Monism,’ posth. 1895.
 * 11) ‘Darwin and after Darwin,’ pt. ii. posth. 1895.
 * 12) ‘Essays,’ 1896 (edited by the present writer).

Apart from these works and the scientific papers which he read before learned societies, he was a frequent and versatile contributor to periodical literature and a writer of verse, a volume of which (containing a memorial poem on Charles Darwin) was privately printed in 1889. A selection from his poems has been published under the editorship of Mr. T. H. Warren, president of Magdalen College (1896).



ROMANS, BERNARD (1720?–1784?), engineer and author, was born in Holland about 1720. He was educated in England, and about 1755 was sent to North America by the British government in the capacity of civil engineer. Between 1760 and 1771 he was living near the town of St. Augustine in East Florida, and was described as ‘draughtsman.’ He was also government botanist, and claimed to be the first surveyor settled in the state, then under Spanish rule. In 1775 he stated that during the preceding fourteen years he had been ‘sometimes employed as a commodore in the king's service, sometimes at the head of large bodies of men in the woods, and at the worst of times master of a merchantman fitted in a warlike man-