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 REEF (1) (Du. rif, cf. Ger. Riff, Swed. ref, &c., all from O. Nor. rif, rib), in physical geography, a narrow ridge of rock, shingle or sand culminating at or near the surface of the sea. In a transformed sense the word is used in mining of a vein or lode of gold-bearing quartz; (2) (Du. reef, rif, cf. Ger. Reff, Swed. raf, O. Nor. rif, possibly a transferred sense of rif, rib), a part of a sail which can be rolled or folded up, thus diminishing the amount of canvas spread to the wind. In square sails, “reefs” are taken from the top, in fore-and-aft sails from the foot.

 REEL (O.E. hréol, glossed by the Med. Lat. alibrum in Aelfric's Glossary, c. 1050; the word is of unknown origin; it does not appear in cognate languages, and Celtic forms such as Gaelic ruidhil are from English), a cylinder or apparatus of cylindrical shape on which a thread or line can be wound; e.g. the small wooden cylinder with projecting rims at either end on which sewing cotton or silk is wound for immediate use, the revolving “click-reel” attached to a fishing-rod, and the open revolving framework on which thread is wound as it is spun. The name of the Scottish dance (Gaelic righil, ruithil) is probably the same word (see ). In architecture, an ornamental moulding consisting of spherical-shaped bodies alternating with flat reel-shaped disks placed on edge is known as a “bead and reel” moulding.

 REES, THOMAS (1777–1864), Welsh Nonconformist divine, was born at Gelligron, Glamorgan, and educated at the Presbyterian College, Carmarthen. He entered the Unitarian ministry in 1807 at Newington Green Chapel, London, removing to Southwark 1813 and to Stamford Street, Blackfriars, in 1823. He had the degree of LL.D. of Glasgow (1819). He had a great knowledge of the history of anti-trinitarian opinion, especially during the 16th century. His scattered papers, chiefly in the Monthly Repository (1818–22), on such subjects as “Faustus Socinus and Francis David,” “The Italian Reformation,” “Memoirs of the Socini,” are important. Financial troubles drove him to Spain in 1853, and he died in obscurity at Brighton on the 1st of August 1864.

Another (1815–1885), a native of Pen Pontbren, Carmarthenshire, held pastorates at Aberdare (1840), Llanelly (1842), Cendl, Mon. (1849) and Swansea (1862), and became chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, but died just before his term of office was to begin. His History of Protestant Nonconformity in Wales (1861; 2nd ed. 1883) is a sound and judicious piece of work.

REEVE, CLARA (1729–1807), English novelist, daughter of William Reeve, a Suffolk clergyman, was born at Ipswich in 1729. She was an industrious writer, and produced many works in prose and verse, including a history of the Progress of Romance (1785); but her only eminent success was the novel of The Old English Baron (1777), originally published under the title of The Champion of Virtue. In the history of the English novel she stands midway between Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe. She died at Ipswich on the 3rd of December 1807.

REEVE, HENRY (1813–1895), English publicist, younger son of Henry Reeve, a well-known Whig physician and writer of Norwich, and nephew of Mrs. Sarah Austin, was born at Norwich on the 9th of September 1813. He was educated at the Norwich grammar school under Edward Valpy. During his holidays he saw a good deal of the young John Stuart Mill. In 1829 he studied at Geneva and mixed in Genevese society, then very brilliant, and including the Sismondis, Huber, Bonstetten, De Candolle, Rossil, Krasinski (his most intimate friend), and Mickiewicz, whose Faris he translated. During a visit to London in 1831 he was introduced to Thackeray and Carlyle, while through the Austins he made the acquaintance of other men of letters. Next year, in Paris, he met Victor Hugo, Cousin, and Scott. He travelled in Italy, sat under Schelling at Munich and under Tieck at Dresden, became in 1835–36 a frequenter of Madame de Circourt's salon, and numbered among his friends Lamartine, Lacordaire, De Vigny, Thiers, Guizot, Montalembert, and De Tocqueville, of whose books, Démocratie en Amérique and the Ancien régime, he made standard translations into English. In 1837 he was made clerk of appeal and then registrar to the judicial committee of the Privy Council. From 1840 to 1855 he wrote for The Times, his close touch with men like Guizot, Bunsen, Lord Clarendon, and his own chief at the Privy Council Office, Charles Greville, enabling him to write with authority on foreign policy during the critical period from 1848 to the end of the Crimean War. Upon the promotion of Sir George Cornewall Lewis to the Cabinet early in 1855 Reeve was asked by Longman to edit the April number of the Edinburgh Review, to which his father had been one of the earliest contributors, and in the following July he became the editor. His friendship with the Orleanist leaders in France survived all vicissitudes, but he was appealed to for guidance by successive French ambassadors, and was more than once the medium of private negotiations between the English and French governments. In April 1863 he published what was perhaps the most important of his contributions to the Edinburgh—a searching review of Kinglake's Crimea; and in 1872 he brought out a selection of his Quarterly and Edinburgh articles on eminent Frenchmen, entitled Royal and Republican France. Three years later appeared the first of three instalments (1875, 1885 and 1887) of his edition of the famous Memoirs which Charles Greville had placed in his hands a few hours before his death in 1865. A purist in point of form and style, of the school of Macaulay and Milman, Reeve outlived his literary generation, and became eventually one of the most reactionary of old Whigs. Yet he continued to edit and upon the whole to maintain the reputation of the Edinburgh until his death at his seat of Foxholes, in Hants, on the 21st of October 1895. He had been elected a member of “The Club” in 1861, and was made a D.C.L. by Oxford University in 1869, a C.B. in 1871, and a corresponding member of the French Institute in 1865. A striking panegyric was pronounced upon him by his lifelong friend, the duc d'Aumale, before the Académie des Sciences in November 1895.

His Memoirs and Letters (2 vols., with portrait) were edited by Sir J. K. Laughton, in 1898.

 REEVE (O. E. gerefa), an English official who in early times was entrusted with the administration of a division of the country. He was the chief magistrate of a town or district,