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Rh in his eighty-first year he began to write the Weltgeschichte (9 vols., Leipzig, 1883-88). Drawing on the knowledge accumulated during sixty years, he had brought it down to the end of the 15th century before his death in Berlin on the 23rd of May 1886.

Ranke's other writings include Zur deutschen Geschichte. Vom Religionsfrieden bis zum 30 jahrigenliriege (Leipzig, 1868); Geschichte Wallensteins (Leipzig, 1869; 5th ed., 1896); Abhandlungen und Versuche (Leipzig, 1877; a new c0lle'ction of these writings was edited by A. Dove and T. Wiedemann, Leipzig, 1888); Aus dem Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms IV. mit Bunsen (Leipzig, 187 3); Die deutschen M achte und der Furstenbund. Deutsche Geschichte 1780—go (1871-72); Historischbiographische Studien (Leipzig, 1878); Ursprung und Beginn der Revolutionskriege I7QI-Q2 (Leipzig, 1875); and Zur Geschichte von Oesterreich und Preussen zwischen den Friedensschlitssen zu Aachen und Hubertusberg (Leipzig, 1875). He also wrote biographies of Frederick the Great and Frederick William IV. for the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie.

Ranke married, at Windermere, in 1843, Miss Clara Graves, daughter of an Irish barrister. She died in 1870, leaving two sons and one daughter.

At the time of his death Ranke was, not in his own country alone, generally regarded as the first of modern historians. It is no disparagement to point out that the recognition he obtained was due not only to his published work, but also to his success as a teacher. His public lectures, indeed, were never largely attended, but in his more private classes, where he dealt with the technical work of a historian, he trained generations of scholars. No one since Heyne has had so great an influence on German academical life, and for a whole generation the Berlin school had no rival. He took paternal pride in the achievements of his pupils, and delighted to see, through them, his influence spreading in every university. While his own work lay chiefly in more modern times, he trained in his classes a school of writers on German medieval history. As must always happen, it is only a part of his characteristics which they learnt from him, for his greatest qualities were incommunicable. The critical method which has since become almost a formal system, aiming at scientific certainty, was with him an unexampled power, based on the insight acquired from wide knowledge, -which enabled him to judge the credibility of an author or the genuineness of an authority; but he has made it impossible for any one to attempt to write modern history except on the “ narratives of eye-witnesses and the most genuine immediate documents” preserved in the archives. From the beginning he was determined never to allow himself to be misled, in his search for truth, by those theories and prejudices by which nearly every other historian was influenced—Hegelianism, Liberalism, Romanticism, religious and patriotic prejudice; but his superiority to the ordinary passions of the historian could only be attained by those who shared his elevation of character. “My object is simply to find out how the things actually occurred.” “I am first a historian, then a Christian, ” he himself said. In another way no historian is less objective, for in his greatest works the whole narrative is coloured by the quality of his mind expressed in his style. An enemy to all controversy and all violence, whether in act or thought, he had a serenity of character comparable only to that of Sophocles or Goethe. Apt to minimize difficulties, to search for the common ground of unity in opponents, he turned aside, with a disdain which superficial critics often mistook for indifference, from the base, the violent and the common. As in a Greek tragedy, we hear in his works the echo of great events and terrible catastrophes; we do not see them. He also made it a principle not to relate that which was already well known, a maxim which necessarily prevented his works attaining a popularity with the unlearned equal to their reputation among historians. But no writer has surpassed him in the clearness and brevity with which he could sum up the characteristics of an epoch in the history of the world, or present and define the great forces by which the world has been influenced. His classicism led to his great limitations as an historian. He did not deal with the history of the people, with economic or social problems-the dignity of history was to him a reality. He belonged to the school of Thucydides and Gibbon, not to that of Macaulay and Taine; he deals by preference with the rulers and leaders of the world, and he strictly limits his field to the history of the state, or, as we should say, political history; and in this he is followed by Seeley, one of the greatest of his adherents. The leader of modern historians, he was in truth a man of the ancien regime.

Many of Ranke's works have been translated into English. Among these are Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, by M. A. Garvey (1852); History of England, principally in the 17th Century (Oxford, 1875); History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations, 1494'1514, by P. A. Ashworth (1887) and again by S. R. Dennis (1909); History of the Reformation in Germany, by S. Austin (1845-47); History of Servia and the Servian Revolution, by Mrs A. Kerr (1847); Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II. of Austria; State of Germany after the Reformation, by Lady Duff Gordon (1853); Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg and History of Prussia durin the 17th and 18th Centuries, by Sir Alexander and Lady Duff Gordon (1849); and History of the Popes during the 16th and 17th Centuries, by S. Austin (1840; new eds., 1841 and 1847), by W. K. Kelly (1843), and by E. Foster (1847-53). A collected edition of Ranke's works in fifty-four volumes was issued at Leipzig (1868-90), but this does not contain the Weltgeschichte.

For details of Ranke's life and work see his own Zur eigenen Lebensgeschichte, edited by A. Dove (Leipzig, 1890); and the article by Dove in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie. Also Winckler, Leopold von Ranke. Lichtstrahlen aus seinen Werken (Berlin, 1885); W. von Giesebrecht, Gedachtnisrede auf Leopold von Ranke (Munich, 1887); Guglia, Leopold von Rankes Leben und Werke (Leipzig, 1893); M. Ritter, Leopold von Ranke (Stuttgart, 1895); Nalbandian, Leopold von Rankes Bildungsjahre und Geschichtsaujassung (Leipzig, 1901); and Helmolt, Leopold Ranke (Leipzig, 1907).

RANKINE, WILLIAM JOHN MACQUORN (1820-1872), Scottish engineer and physicist, was born at Edinburgh on the 5th of July 1820, and completed his education in its university. He was trained as an engineer under Sir ]. B. Macneil1, working chiefly on surveys, harbours and railroads, and was appointed in 1855 to the chair of civil engineering in Glasgow, vacant by the resignation of Lewis Gordon, whose work he had undertaken during the previous session. He was a voluminous writer on subjects directly connected with his chair, and, besides contributing almost weekly to the, technical journals, such as the Engineer, brought outa series of standard textbooks on Civil Engineering, The Steam-Engine and other Prime M overs, Machinery and Millwork, and Applied M echanics, which have passed through many editions, and have contributed greatly to the advancement of the subjects with which they deal. To these must be added his elaborate treatise on Shipbuilding, Theoretical and Practical. These writings, however, .corresponded to but one phase of Rankine's immense energy and many-sided character. He was an enthusiastic and most useful leader of the volunteer movement from its beginning, and a writer, composer and singer of humorous and patriotic songs, some of which, as “ The Three Foot Rule ” and “ They never shall have Gibraltar, ” became well known far beyond the circle of his acquaintance. Rankine was the earliest of the three founders of the modern science of Thermodynamics (q.“v.) on the bases laid by' Sadi Carnot and ]. P. ]oule respectively, and the author of the first formal treatise on the subject. His contributions to the theories of Elasticity and of Waves rank high among modern developments of mathematical physics, although they are mere units among the 1 50 scientific papers attached to his name in the Royal Society's Catalogue. The more important of these were collected and reprinted in a handsome volume (Rankine's Scientijc Papers, London, 1881), which contains a memoir of the author by Prof. P. G. Tait. Rankine died at Glasgow on the 24th of December 1872.

RANNOCH, a district of north-west Perthshire, Scotland, partly extending into Argyllshire. It measures 32 m. E. and W. and from IO to 12 m. N. and S. and is surrounded by the districts of Badenoch, Atholl, Breadalbane, Lorne and Lochaber. Much of it is wild, bleak and boggy, and, saving on the E., it is shut in by rugged mountains. The chief rivers are