Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/558

Rh 538 11 I C R I C VOLTERRA, was born in 1509, and studied painting under Razzi and Peruzzi. Tlie young artist, settling in Rome, strove most unweariedly to attain eminence in his profes- sion. No efforts were spared on his pictures. He pro- ceeded with a careful slowness, attempting to reach his ideal by a close imitation of Michelangelo. It is even said that he sometimes in a difficulty had recourse to the more direct aid of that great master's own hand. The result of this earnest labour was that Ricciarelli obtained abund- ant encouragement. His constant friend, Michelangelo, recommended him on all possible occasions. He had the honour to beautify with works of art a chapel in the church of the Trinita, to paint in the Farnese Palace, to execute certain decorations in the Palazzo de' Medici at Navona, and to begin the stucco work and the pictures in the Hall of the Kings. Nor was he less highly patronized when, towards the close of his life, he turned his atten- tion to statuary. His last work was a bronze horse intended for an equestrian statue of Henry II. of France. He died in 1566. The principal extant works of Ric- ciarelli are at Rome. These are a St John the Baptist in the picture gallery of the Capitol, a Saviour bearing the Cross in the Palazzo Rospigliosi, and a Descent from the Cross, his masterpiece, in the church of Trinitk de Monti. There is also an Elijah at Volterra. RICCOBONI, MADAME (1714-1792), whose maiden name was Marie Jeanne Laboras de Mezieres, and who married and was deserted by an actor and author of little merit, was born at Paris in 1714. She herself was an actress, but did not succeed on the stage. She then took to novel writing and deserves a considerable place in the history of the sentimental novel. Her first work was the remarkable Histoire du Marquis de Cressy (1758). This was followed by Milady Catesby, Fanny Butler (both of them, as indeed are almost all her books, in letter form), Ernestine (sometimes thought her masterpiece), three series of Lettres in the names of Adelaide de Dammartin (often quoted as Madame de Sancerre Elizabeth Sophie de Valliere, Milord Rivers, and others. These books were much admired, but brought their author little money. She obtained, however, a small pension from the crown, but the Revolution deprived her of it, and she died in 1792 in great indigence. Besides the works named she translated Fielding's Amelia, and tried a continuation (but not the conclusion sometimes erroneously ascribed to her) of Marivaux's unfinished Marianne. All Madame Riccoboni's work is very clever, and there is real pathos in it. But it is among the most eminent examples of the ' sensibility " novel, of which no examples but Sterne's have kept their place in England, and that not in virtue of their sensibility. A still nearer parallel may be found in the work of Mackenzie. Madame Kiccoboni is an especial offender in the use of mechanical aids to impressiveness italics, dashes, rows of points, and the like. The principal edition of her complete works is that of Paris, 1818. The chief novels appear in a volume of Garnier's Biblio- thkque Amusante, Paris, 1865. RICE. According to Roxburgh the cultivated rice with all its numerous varieties has originated from a wild plant called in India Newaree or Nivara (Oryza sativa). It is said to grow on the borders of lakes in the Circars and elsewhere in India, and is also native in tropical Australia. The rice plant is an annual grass with long linear glabrous leaves, each provided with a long sharply- pointed ligule. The spikelets are borne on a compound or branched spike, erect at first but afterwards bent down- wards. Each spikelet contains a solitary flower with two outer small glumes and two inner, larger and folded lengthwise, the outer one of the two rather larger and sometimes provided with an awn. Within these are six stamens, a hairy ovary surmounted by two feathery styles which ripens into the fruit (grain), and which is invested by the husk formed by the persistent glumes. The culti- vated varieties are extremely numerous, some kinds being adapted for marshy land, others for growth on the hill-sides. The cultivators make two principal divisions according as the sorts are early or late. Other subdivisions depend upon the habit of the plant, the presence or absence of an awn, the colour of the grain, and other particulars. Rice has been cultivated from time immemorial in tropical countries. According to Stanislas Julien a ceremonial ordinance was established in China by the emperor Chin- nung 2800 years B.C., in accordance with which the emperor sows the rice himself while the seeds of four other kinds may be sown by the princes of his family. This fact, joined to other considerations, induced Alphonse de Candolle to consider rice as a native of China. It was very early culti- vated in India, in some parts of which country, as in tro- pical Australia, it is, as we have seen, indigenous. It is not mentioned in the Bible, but its culture is alluded to in the Talmud. There is no evi- dence of the exist- ence of rice in Egyptian remains, nor is there any trace of it as a native plant among the Greeks, Ro- mans, or ancient Persians. There is proof of its culture in the Euphrates valley and in Syria four hundred yearsbefore Christ. Crawfurd on phi- lological grounds considers that rice was introduced into Persia from southern India. The Arabs carried the plant into Spain under the name " aruz," the arros of the Spanish, the rizo of the Italian, whence our word rice. Rice was first cultivated in Italy near Pisa in 1468. It was not introduced into Carolina until 1700, and then, as it is said, by accident, although at one time the southern United States furnished a large proportion of the rice introduced into commerce. Rice, says Crawfurd, sports into far more varieties than any of the corns familiar to Europeans, for some varieties grow in the water and some on dry land ; some come to maturity in three months, while others take four and six months to do so. The Hindus, however, are not content with such broad distinctions as might be derived from these obvious sources, but have names for varieties the distinctions between which are unappreciable by Europeans ; besides terms for this corn founded on variety, on season, and on mode of culture, the grain itself bears one name in the straw, another when threshed, one name in the husk and another when freed from it, and a fifth when cooked. A similar abundance of terms is found in the languages of the Malay and Philippine Islands. Such minute nomen- Rice (Oryza sativa). A, spikelet (enlarged) ; B, bearded variety ; C, spikelet of B (enlarged).