Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/21

Rh K U R U 11 He died on January 11, 1762, and was buried in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Roubiliac was very largely employed for portrait statues and busts, and especially for sepulchral monuments in Westminster Abbey and else- where. His chief works in the abbey are the monuments of Handel, Admiral Warren, Marshal Wade, Mrs Night- ingale, and the duke of Argyll, the last of these being the first work which established Roubiliac's fame as a sculptor. The statues of George L, Sir Isaac Newton, and the duke of Somerset at Cambridge, and of George II. in Golden Square, London, were also his work, as well as many other important pieces of portrait sculpture. Trinity College, Cambridge, possesses a series of busts of distinguished members of the college by him. Roubiliac possessed much skill in portraiture, and was technically a real master of his art, but unhappily he lived at a time when it had reached a very low ebb. His figures are uneasy, devoid of dignity and sculpturesque breadth, and his draperies are treated in a manner more suited to painting than sculpture. His excessive striving after dramatic effect takes away from that repose of atti- tude which is so necessary for a portrait in marble. His most celebrated work, the Nightingale monument, in the north transept of Westminster Abbey, a marvel of technical skill, is only saved from being ludicrous by its ghastly hideousness. On this the dying wife is represented as sinking in the arms of her husband, who in vain strives to ward off a dart which Death is aiming at her. The lower part of the monument, on which the two portrait figures stand, is shaped like a tomb, out of the opening door of which Death, as a half-veiled skeleton, is bursting forth. Wonderful patience and anatomical realism [are lavished on the marble bones of this hideous figure, and the whole of the grim conception is carried out with much skill, but in the worst possible taste. The statue of Handel in the south transept is well modelled, but the attitude is affected and the face void of any real expres- sion. It is a striking proof of the degraded taste of the age that these painful works when first set up were enthusi- astically admired. ROUGHER, JEAN ANTOINE (1745-1794), a French poet, to whom a melancholy fate and some descriptive verse equal to anything written during at least three- quarters of a century by any of his countrymen except Andre Chenier, gave some reputation, was born on February 17, 1745 at Montpellier, and perished by the guillotine at Paris on July 25, 1794. He wrote an epithalamium on Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, gained the favour of Turgot, and obtained a salt-tax collector- ship. His main poem was entitled Les Mois ; it appeared in 1779, was praised in MS., damned in print, and restored to a just appreciation by the students of literature of the present century. It has the drawbacks of merely didactic- descriptive poetry on the great scale, but much grace and spirit in parts. Roucher was by no means anti- revolutionary, but ill-luck and perhaps his unpopular em- ployment made him a victim of the Revolution. He lay in prison for nearly a year before his death, and went to it on the same tumbril with Chenier. The malicious wit of Rivarol's mot on the ill-success of Les Mois, " C'est le plus beau naufrage du siecle," is not intelligible unless it is said that one of the most elaborate passages describes a shipwreck, ROUEN, A city of France, the ancient capital of Normandy, and now the administrative centre of the department of Seine Inferieure, the seat of an arch- bishopric and a court of appeal, and the headquarters of the third corps d'armee, stands on a level site on the right bank of the Seine in 49 26' N. lat. and 1 6' E. long, at the point where it is joined by the Aubette and the small Riviere de Robec ; it has also crept some dis- tance up the hills which enclose the valley on the right, and has an extension on the plain on the left bank. The faubourgs by which it is surrounded are, reckoning from the east, Martainville (on the left bank of the Robec), St Hilaire, Beauvoisine, Bouvreuil, and Cauchoise; and the portion which lies on the left bank of the Seine is known as the Faubourg St Sever. Between the old town and the faubourgs runs a line of boulevards. Communication between the two banks of the river is maintained by ferry- boats and by two bridges ; the upper bridge, a stone struc- ture, is divided into two parts by the Lacroix island and decorated by a statue of Corneille ; the lower is an iron suspension bridge which opens in the middle to let masted vessels pass. The railway from Havre to Paris crosses the Seine a little above Rouen, and having passed by a tunnel under the higher quarters of the city reaches a station on the north at a distance of 87 miles from Paris and 55 from Havre. Another station at Martainville is the terminus of the line from Rouen to Amiens ; and at St Sever are those of the lines to Paris and to Orleans by Elbeuf. Since 1 about 1860 wide streets have been driven through the old town, and tramway lines now traverse the whole city and its environs. Rouen, which is 78 miles from the sea, stands fourth in the list of French ports, coming next to Marseilles, Havre, and Bordeaux. Em- bankments constructed along the lower Seine have forced the river to deepen its own channel, and the land thus reclaimed has more than repaid the expenses incurred. The port is now accessible to vessels drawing 21 feet of water, and by means of easy dredgings this will be increased to from 25 feet to 28 according to the tide. The expansion of the traffic as the improvements have advanced is shown by the following returns: whereas in 1856 the number of vessels entered and cleared Avas 6220, with an aggregate burden of 570,314 tons, the corresponding figures were 4511 and 748,076 in 1876, and 5189 and 1,438,055 in 1880. What is now wanted is an increased amount of quay accom- modation, the old line of quays scarcely exceeding 1 mile in length. The building of new quays and repairing-docks for large vessels is in active progress ; the port is being dredged and deepened; and schemes are under considera- tion for a slip, a petroleum dock, and corn elevators. 1 Rouen has regular steamboat communication with Bor- deaux, Spain, Algeria, London, Hull, Goole, Plymouth, Bristol, and Canada. A sunken chain allows boats to be towed up to Paris and beyond. The population of the six cantons of Rouen in 1881 was 105,906, but if the suburbs are included the figure may be stated at about 150,000. The imports landed at Rouen include cottons, wheat, maize, and petroleum from America ; coal and iron from England; marble, oils, wines, and dried fruits from Italy; wines, wools, ores, and metals from Spain ; grain and wool from the Black Sea ; grapes from the Levant ; rice from India ; coffee from the French colonies ; oil seeds, timber, dyewoods, foreign textile fabrics, Dutch cheese, &c. The articles of export comprise grain, table fruits, oil-seeds and oilcake, sugar, olive oil, palm oil, timber, hemp, linen, and wool, marble, granite, hewn stone, plaster and building materials, sulphur, coal, pig-iron, steel, copper, lead, zinc, salt, dyestuffs and other chemical products, wines, brandy, ciders, earthenware and glass- ware, machinery, packing-paper, &c. Cotton spinning and weaving are carried on in the town, and especially the manufacture of roucnneries (cotton fabrics woven with dyed yarn). In this connexion the department of Seine Inferieure gives employment to 200,000 workmen, most of them in Rouen and 1 See De Coene, Congres de V Association JFrang aise pour Vavance- ment des sciences, Rouen, 1883.