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Rh should be taken from the Jews; and, as the emperor still hesitated, the bigots threw on Reuchlin the whole blame of their ill success. Pfefferkorn circulated at the Frankfort fair of 1511 a gross libel (Handspiegel wider und gegen die Juden) declaring that Reuchlin had been bribed; and Reuchlin retorted as warmly in the Augenspiegel (1 SI 1). His adversary's next move was to declare the Augenspiegel a dangerous book; the Cologne theological faculty, with the inquisitor Jakob von Hochstraten (d. 1527) took up this cry, and on the 7th of October 1512 they obtained an imperial order confiscating the Augenspiegel. Reuchlin was timid, but he was honesty itself. He was willing to receive corrections in theology, which was not his subject, but he could not unsay what he had said; and as his enemies tried to press him into a corner he met them with open defiance in a Defensio contra Calumniatores (1513). The universities were now appealed to for opinions, and were all against Reuchlin. Even Paris (August 1514) condemned the Augenspiegel, and called on Reuchlin to recant. Meantime a formal process had begun at Mainz before the grand inquisitor, but Reuchlin by an appeal succeeded in transferring the question to Rome. judgment was not finally given till July 1516; and then, though the decision was really for Reuchlin, the trial was simply quashed. The result had cost Reuchlin years of trouble and no small part of his modest fortune, but it was worth the sacrifice. For far above the direct importance of the issue was the great stirring of public opinion which had gone forward. And if the obscurantists escaped easily at Rome, with only a half condemnation, they received a crushing blow in Germany. N o party could survive the ridicule that was poured on them in the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, the first volume of which written chiefly by Crotus Rubeanus appeared in 1514, and the second by Ulrich von Hutten in 1517. Hutten and Franz von Sickingen did all they could to force Reuchlin's enemies to a restitution of his material damages; they even threatened a feud against the Dominicans of Cologne and Spires. In 1520 a commission met in Frankfort to investigate the case. It condemned Hochstraten. But the final decision of Rome did not indemnify him. The contest ended, however; public interest had grown cold, absorbed entirely by the Lutheran question, and Reuchlin had no reason to fear new attacks. Reuchlin did not long enjoy his victory in peace. In 1519 Stuttgart was visited by famine, civil war and pestilence. From November of this year to the spring of 1 521 the veteran statesman sought refuge in Ingolstadt and taught there for a year as professor of Greek and Hebrew. It was forty-one years since at Poitiers he had last spoken from a public chair; but the old man of sixty-five had not lost his gift of teaching, and hundreds of scholars crowded round him. This gleam of autumn sunshine was again broken by the plague; but now he was called to Tübingen and again spent the winter of 1 521-22 teaching in his own systematic way. But in the spring he found it necessary to Visit the baths of Liebenzell, and here he was seized with jaundice, of which he died on the 30th of June 1522, leaving in the history of the new learning a name only second to that of his younger contemporary Erasmus.

REUMONT, ALFRED VON (1808–1887), German scholar and diplomatist, the son of Gerhard Reumont (1765–1829), was born on the 15th of August 1808 and was named Alfred after the English king, Alfred the Great. Educated at the universities of Bonn and Heidelberg, he obtained a position in Florence through the influence of an Englishman, William Craufurd, but soon he entered the Prussian diplomatic service and was employed in Florence, in Constantinople and in Rome. He also spent some time in the Foreign Office in Berlin. From 1851 to 1860 he represented his country in Florence. Reumont was the friend and adviser of Frederick William IV. In 1879 he founded the Aachener Geschichtsverein, and having spent his concluding years at Bonn and at Aix-la-Chapelle, he died in the latter city on the 27th of April 1887.

RÉUNION, known also by its former name, an island and French colony in the Indian Ocean, 400 m. S.E. of Tamatave, Madagascar, and 130 S.W. of Port Louis, Mauritius. It is elliptic in form; its greatest length is 45 m. and its greatest breadth 32 m., and it has an area of 965 sq. m. It lies between 20° 51′ and 21° 22′ S. and 55° 15′ and 55° 54′ E. The coast-line (about 130 m.) is little indented, there are no natural harbours and no small islets round the shore. The narrow coast-lands are succeeded by hilly ground which in turn gives place to mountain masses and tableland, which occupy the greater part of the island. The main axis runs N .W. and S.E., and divides the island into a windward (E.) district and a leeward (W.) district, the dividing line being practically that of the watershed. The form of the mountains is the result of double volcanic action. First there arose from the sea a mountain whose summit is approximately represented by Piton des Neiges (10,069 ft.), a denuded crater of immense proportions, and at a later date another crater opened towards the E., which, piling up the mountain mass of Le Volcan, turned what was till then a circle into an ellipse. The oldest erupted rocks belong to the type of the andesites; the newest are varieties of basalt. The two massifs are united by high tablelands. In the older massif the most striking features are now three areas of subsidence—the cirques of Salazie, Riviére des Galets and Cilaos-which lie N.W. and S. of the Piton des Neiges. The first, which may be taken as typical, is surrounded by high almost perpendicular walls of basaltic lava, and its surface is rendered irregular by hills and hillocks of débris fallen from the heights. Towards the S. lies the vast stratum of rocks (ISO to 200 ft. deep) which, on the 26th of November 1875, suddenly sweeping down from the Piton des Neiges and the Gros Morne (a “shoulder ” of the piton), buried the little village of Grand Sable and nearly a hundred of its inhabitants. Besides the Piton des Neiges and the Gros Morne the chief heights in this part of the island are the pyramidical Cimandef (7300 ft.), another shoulder of the piton, and the Grand Bernard (9490 ft.), separating the cirques of Mafate and Cilaos.

The second massif, Le Volcan, is cut off from the rest of the island by two “enclosures,” each about 500 or 600 ft. deep.