Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/327

Rh R E C R E C 309 parts of words. Camden mentions an instance of this kind of wit in a gallant who expressed his love to a woman named Rose Hill by painting in the border of his gown a rose, a hill, an eye, a loaf, and a well ; this, in the style of the rebus, reads " Rose Hill I love well." This kind of wit was long practised by the great, who took the pains to find devices for their names. It was, however, happily ridiculed by Ben Jonson in the humorous description of Abel Drugger's device in the Alchemist and by the Spectator in the device of Jack of Newberry. The name is also applied to arrangements of words in which the position of the several vocables is to be taken into account in divining the meaning. Thus " I understand you undertake to over- throw my undertaking " makes the rebus stand take to taking I you throw my ; or in French pir vent venir un vient d'un may be read "un soupir vient souvent d'un souvenir." The original use of the word, which" comes to us from France, was, however, wider : any equivoque or satirical pleasantry might be so named, and the origin of the term is ascribed by Menage to the clerks of Picardy, who at carnival time used to put out satirical squibs called " De rebus quae geruntur." " Rebus," in heraldry, is a coat of arms which bears an allusion to the name of the person, as three castles for Castleton, three cups for Butler, three conies for Coningsby. RECAMIER, MADAME (whose maiden name was JEANNE FRAN<JOISE JULIE ADELAIDE BERNARD), was born on 4th December 1777 at Lyons, and died at Paris on llth May 1849. She was married at fifteen to the banker Recamier, who was more than old enough to be her father. Beautiful, accomplished, with a real love for literature, she possessed at the same time a temperament which protected her from scandal, and from the early days of the consulate to almost the end of the July monarchy her salon was one of the chief resorts of literary and political society that pretended to fashion. For some time she was much under the in- fluence of Madame de Stael, and it was partly through her that Madame Recamier became acquainted with Benjamin Constant, whose singular political tergiversations during the last days of the empire and the first of the restoration have been attributed to Madame Recamier. There is no doubt that she succeeded in inspiring a real and almost desperate passion in the heart of Constant, whose letters to her have had a singular fate, having been twice published in part, and twice interfered with by judicial proceedings on the part of the representatives of the parties concerned. In Madame Recamier's later days she lost most of the for- tune which, when she was the wife of a rich banker, had given her part of her consequence ; but she continued to receive visitors at the Abbaye-aux-Bois. Here Chateau- briand was a constant visitor, and in a manner master of the house ; but Madame Recamier never even in old age, ill -health, and reduced circumstances lost her attraction. After her death Souvenirs et Correspondances tires des Papiers de Madame Becamier were published. To compile, however, a real account of her would necessitate the ransack of all the memoirs, correspondence, and anecdotage con- cerning French political and literary life for the first half of this century. RECANATI, a city of Italy, in the province of Macerata, 17 1 miles from Loreto, on the highway between Ancona and Rome, is built on a hill 910 feet above the sea, and still retains portions of its 15th-century walls and gateways. It is now perhaps best known as the birthplace of the poet Leopardi, whose monument adorns the principal piazza and whose family has collected in the town a very interesting museum of Leopardiana; but it also contains fine old mansions of the Leopardi, Mazzagalli, Massucci, and Car- radori in the main street, a palazzo communale with a bronze representation of the removal of the Holy House to Loreto, and a Gothic cathedral, built towards the close of the 14th century and dedicated to St Flavianus, patriarch of Constantinople. The population in 1881 was 8864 in the town and port (3040) and 19,524, in the commune. Recanati appears as a strong castle in the 10th century or earlier. Round this gathered a community whose petty wars with Osimo (Auximum) called for the interference of Innocent III. in 1198. From Frederick II. it obtained the right of having a port on the Adriatic ; and by Gregory IX. it was made a city and the seat of the bishopric transferred from Osimo. This oscillation between Guelf and Ghibelline continued characteristic of Eecanati. Urban IV. abolished the "city" and bishopric ; Nicholas IV. restored them. John XXII. again, in 1320, removed the bishopric and placed the city under interdict. The interdict was withdrawn in 1328 on payment of a heavy fine, but the bishopric remained in abeyance till 1357. Gregory XII., who on his deposition by the council of Constance was made papal legate of the sees of Macerata and Recanati, died in this city in 1417. The assistance rendered by Recanati to the popes in their struggles with the Sforza seems to have exhausted its resources, and it began to decline. Considerable damage was done by the earthquake of 1741 ; and the French, who were twice in possession of the city in 1797, pillaged it in 1799. RECHABITES, or SONS OF RECHAB, in ancient Israel formed a sort of religious order in some respects analogous to the Nazarites, with whom they shared the rule of abstinence from wine. They went farther than the latter, however, in eschewing the luxuries and pursuits of settled life, living in tents and refusing to sow grain as well as to plant vineyards. Their origin must have been in northern Israel, for their " father " or founder, to whom they referred their rule of life, was that Jehonadab or Jonadab, son of Rechab, who lent his countenance to Jehu in the abolition of Tyrian Baal-worship (2 Kings x.). The order founded by Jehonadab must from its constitution have soon become a sort of hereditary clan, and as such the "house of Rechab" appears in Jer. xxxv., from which we learn that they had survived in Judah after the fall of the northern kingdom and continued to observe the ordi- nance of Jehonadab till the approach of Nebuchadnezzar drove them for protection into Jerusalem. Jeremiah pro- mised them as a reward of their obedience that they should never lack a man to represent them (as a priest) before Jehovah. This perhaps is the origin of the later Jewish tradition that the Rechabites intermarried with the Levites and so entered the temple service. 1 Hegesippus in his account of the death of James the Just even speaks of Rechabite priests and makes one of them protest against the crime (Eus., H.E., ii. 23). RECIFE. See PERNAMBUCO. RECOGNIZANCE, in law,, is, in the words of Black- stone, " an obligation of record, entered into before some court or magistrate duly authorized, whereby the party bound acknowledges that he owes to the king or a private plaintiff (as the case may be) a certain sum of money, with condition to be void if he shall do some particular act, as if he shall appear at the assizes, keep the peace, pay a certain debt, or the like." The term itself means that the person bound recognizes the existence of a debt. Recog- nizance was at one time used as a security for money lent, something in the nature of a mortgage. In this sense it is practically obsolete, though it is alluded to in modern Acts of Parliament, e.g., 27 and 28 Viet. c. 112, by which a recognizance entered into after 29th July 1864 does not bind the land until actual delivery in execution. The principal use of recognizances at the present day is in chancery and criminal procedure. In chancery recogniz- ances are entered into as a form of security by certain 1 From the obscure passage 1 Chron. ii. 55 it would seem that in later times the Rechabites were regarded as Kenites.