Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/72

Rh 60 R U N R U N RUNCTMAN, ALEXANDER (1736-1785), historical painter, was born in Edinburgh in 1736. He studied at the Foulis's Academy, Glasgow, and at the age of thirty proceeded to Rome where he spent five years. It was at this time that he became acquainted with Fuseli, a kindred spirit, between whose productions and those of Runciman there is a marked similarity. The painter's earliest efforts had been in landscape; "other artists," it was said of him, "talked meat and drink, but he talked landscape." He soon, however, turned to historical and imaginative subjects, exhibiting his Nausicaa at Play with her Maidens in 1767 at the Free Society of British Artists, Edinburgh. On his return from Italy, after a brief residence in London, where in 1772 he exhibited in the Royal Academy, he settled in Edinburgh, and was appointed master of the Trustees' Academy. He was patronized by Sir James Clerk, whose hall at Penicuik House he decorated with a series of subjects from Ossian. He also executed various religious paintings and an altarpiece in the Oowgate Episcopal Church, Edinburgh, and easel pictures of Cymon and Iphigenia, Sigismunda Weeping over the Heart of Tancred, and Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus. He died in Edinburgh on October 4, 1785. His works, while they show high intention and considerable imagination, are frequently defective in form and extravagant in gesture. RUNCIMAN, JOHN (1744-1766), historical painter, a younger brother of the above, accompanied him to Rome, and died at Naples in 1766. He was an artist of great promise. His Flight into Egypt, in the National Gallery of Scotland, is remarkable for the precision of its execution and the mellow richness of its colouring. RUNCORN, a market-town and seaport of Cheshire, is pleasantly situated on the south side of the Mersey and near the terminus in that river of the Bridge water, the Mersey and Irwell, and the Trent and Mersey Canals, 15 miles S.E. of Liverpool and 15 N.E. of Chester. The Mersey, which here contracts to 400 yards at high water, is crossed by a wrought-iron railway bridge 1500 feet in length. The modern prosperity of the town dates from the completion in 1773 of the Bridgewater Canal, which here descends into the Mersey by a succession of locks. The town was made an independent landing port in 1847, and within recent years large additions have been made to the docks and warehouses. The town possesses ship- building yards, iron foundries, rope works, tanneries, and soap and alkali works. The population of the urban sani- tary district (area 1490 acres) in 1871 was 12,443, and in 1881 it was 15,126. Owing to the Mersey being here fonlable at low water, the place was in early times of considerable military importance. On a rock which formerly jutted some distance farther into the Mersey Ethelfleda erected a castle in 916, but of the building there are now no remains. She is also said to have founded a town, but probably it soon afterwards fell into decay, as it is not noticed in Domesday. The ferry is noticed in a charter in the 12th century. RUNE. See ALPHABET, vol. i. pp. 607, 612, and SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES. RUNEBERG, JOHAN LUDWIG (1804-1877), Swedish poet, was born at Jakobstad, in Finland, on the 5th of February 1804. Brought up by an uncle at Uleaborg, he entered the university of Abo in the autumn term of 1822, and in 1826 began to contribute verses to the local news- papers. In the spring of 1827 he received the degree of doctor of philosophy, and shared in the calamity which, in September of the same year, destroyed the city and uni- versity of Abo with fire. Runeberg accepted a tutorship at Saarijiirvi, in the interior of Finland, where he remained for three years, studying hard and writing actively. The university had been removed after the great fire to Hel- singfors, and in 1830 the young poet returned thither, as amanuensis to the council of the university. In the same year he published his first volume of Dikier (Poems), and a collection of Servian folksongs translated into Swedish. In LS.'U his verse romance d'i '/<> u i Jrrho (The Grave in Perrho) received the small gold medal of the Swedish Academy, and the poet married the daughter of Dr Teng- strom, archbishop of Finland. For a tractate on the Medea of Euripides he was in the same year appointed university lecturer on Roman literature. In 1832 he leaped at one bound to the foremost place among Swedish poets with his beautiful little epic Elyskyltarne (The Elk-Hunters) ; and in 1833 he published a second collection of lyrical poems. His comedy Friaren fran Landet (The Country Lover) was not a success in 1834. He returned to more characteristic fields in 1836, when he published the charming idyl in hexameters called Hanna. In 1837 Runeberg accepted the chair of Latin at Borga College, and resided in that little town for the rest of his life. From Borga he continued to pour forth volumes of verse, and he was now recognized in his remote Finland retirement as second only to Tegner among the poets of Sweden. In 1841 he published Nadeschda, a romance of Russian life, and Julqudllen (Christmas Eve), an idyl. The third volume of his lyrical pieces bears the date 1 843, and the noble cycle of unrhymed verse romances called Kung Fjalar was published in 1844. Finally, in 1848, he achieved a great popular success by his splendid series of poems about the war of independence in 1808, a series which bears the name of Fdnri.k Stals Sdgner (Ensign Steel's Stories) ; a second series of these appeared in 1860. From 1847 to 1850 the poet was rector of Borga College, a post which he laid down to take the only journey out of Finland which he ever accomplished, a visit to Sweden in 1851. His later writings may be briefly mentioned. In 1853 he collected his prose essays into a volume entitled Smtirre Berdttelser. In the same year he was made president of a committee for the preparation of a national Psalter, which issued, in 1857, a Psalm-Book largely contributed by Runeberg for public use. He once more attempted comedy in his Kan ej (Can't) in 1862, and tragedy, with infinitely more success, in his stately Kungarne pa Salamis (The Kings at Salamis) in 1863. He collected his writings in six volumes in 1873-74. Runeberg died at Borga on the 6th of May 1877. The poems of Runeberg show the influence of the Greeks and of Goethe upon his mind ; but he possesses a great originality. In an age of conventionality he was boldly realistic, yet never to the sacrifice of artistic beauty. Less known to the rest of Europe than Tegner, he yet is now generally considered to excel him as a poet, and to mark the highest attainment hitherto reached by imaginative literature in Sweden. The life of Johan Ludvij? Kuncberp: Iia8 not yet been written in detail, although it is said to be in preparation. The fullest account of his life and works is that which forms the introduction to the Siimlade Skrifter of 1873. It was written by Prof. Nyblom. A minute criticism of Rnncberg's principal poems, with ti-mslittions, occupies pp. K8-133 of Gosse's Studies in the Literature of Xortlicrn Europe, 1879. A selection of his lyrical pieces was published in an Knglish translation by Messrs Mnpnusson and Palmer in 1878. RUNNING. In this mode of progression the step is lighter and gait more rapid than in walking, from which it differs in consisting of a succession of springs from toe to toe, instead of a series of steps from toe to heel. As an athletic exercise, it has been in vogue from the earliest times, and the simple foot race, Spo/xos, run straight from starting point to goal, was a game of the Greek pent- athlon. It was diversified with the SiauXoSpo/xos, in which a distance mark was rounded and the starting and winning points were the same, and also by the Spo'/xos oTrAtroV, which might be compared to the modern heavy marching order race. In ancient Italy running was practised in circus exhibitions, as described by Virgil (sEn. v. 286 sq.). In modern times it has been developed almost into a science by the Anglo-Saxon race in Great Britain and North America, till the distances recently covered appear almost