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RON treated by the ancient writers universally as a historic personage, Romulus, along with some at least of the other monarchs of regal Rome, is now admitted to belong to the mythical region of pre-historic poetry and legend. Various opinions have been held as to the import of his name and story. By some it has been plausibly maintained that he merely represents the force and violence by which Rome was founded, from (strength), as Numa may be considered typical of (law). The accepted doctrine, however, is that Romulus and Remus are merely names coined from that of Rome itself, and that Romulus is a poetic fiction of the early age of Rome, impersonating the unknown but venerated founder of the Eternal City. Referring the student to the works of Niebuhr and Mommsen for fuller information, we can here only repeat the legend of Romulus as commonly given by the ancient authors:—He was the son of the god Mars and of Rhea Sylvia, the daughter of Numitor, one of the kings of Alba, who were believed to be descended from the Trojan hero Æneas. Numitor, however, had been dethroned by his brother Amulius, and Rhea Sylvia was compelled to take on herself the vows of a vestal virgin. Being violated by the god Mars, she was, on the birth of her twin sons, Romulus and Remus, condemned to be buried alive, while the children were cast into the Tiber. Being, however, rescued miraculously from the stream, and suckled for a time by a she-wolf, they were taken home and brought up by a compassionate shepherd. When they came to man's estate and learnt their history, they slew King Amulius and laid the foundations of a new city on the Palatine hill; but a quarrel arising between them, Remus was killed by his brother. To stock his new city, in addition to the shepherds and countrymen he had brought with him, Romulus found it convenient to offer an asylum to all comers, most of whom were robbers and outlaws. To obtain wives for his miscellaneous subjects, he contrived the celebrated rape of the Sabine women. A war ensued, but the Sabines were at length peaceably united with the Romans under Romulus as king. After a reign of thirty-seven years, he perished either by assassination or by a stroke of lightning. He was subsequently worshipped as a god under the name of Quirinus.—G.  RONDELET,, French architect, was born at Lyons, June 4, 1743. After completing his general education in the college of the Jesuits, he became the scholar and afterwards assistant to the court architect Soufflot. He was superintending the erection of the church of St. Géneviève for Soufflot at the death of the latter in 1781, and he was intrusted with its completion. The dome is attributed entirely to Rondelet, and he published a memoir on its construction; but the weight of the dome caused a sinking in the building, and Rondelet had to alter materially the internal arrangements of the church. In 1783, during a suspension of the works, Rondelet visited Italy under the auspices of his government. He stayed there two years, and digested his studies and investigations into a "Traité Théorique et Pratique de l'art de Bâtir," 5 vols. 4to, Paris 1802-17—a work which was speedily accepted as an authority, and of which a seventh edition was called for in 1834. In 1794 Rondelet was appointed superintendent of the royal buildings, and in that capacity directed most of the public works executed during the next two years. Rondelet was engaged in the formation of the École polytechnique, and organized the arrangements for the study of civil engineering, and schools of applied sciences. He was one of the members of the École des beaux-arts, nominated at the remodelling of the Institute in 1816. He became quite blind some years before his death, which occurred on the 27th of September, 1829. Besides the work above mentioned, Rondelet contributed many articles on architecture to the Encyclopédie Méthodique, and wrote various professional memoirs.—J. T—e.  * RONGE,, was born at Bishopswalde in Silesia on the 16th of October, 1813. He was the son of a farmer, who cultivated a small estate of his own. Though he does not seem to have felt any of those irresistible impulses which constitute a vocation, yet he was educated as a priest of the Roman catholic church. In various situations which he occupied he displayed much zeal and devotedness, and inspired strong attachment. But the more popular he was with those to whom he ministered, the more he displeased his ecclesiastical superiors. After he had, by preaching, by writing, by every influence public and private, assailed what he deemed wrong in the Roman catholic church, he was in the beginning of 1843 suspended from the office, at Grottkau, which he then held. He ceased from that moment to be a Roman catholic priest. A movement not long before in the protestant church, had led to the formation of so-called free congregations. In the Roman catholic church a similar movement began. It first found active expression in a letter of Ronge in October, 1844, to Bishop Arnoldi, who had been the chief promoter of the pilgrimage to the holy coat at Treves. About this time John Czerski, a priest with liberal ideas, had withdrawn from the Roman catholic communion. Ronge and Czerski entered into close relations, with vigorous reforming purposes. What has been named the German catholic church sprang into existence. For a season all was hope and triumph. Hundreds of German catholic congregations were organized, rejecting much, retaining much of the old Romanist system. But difficulties and divisions came. Czerski and his fellows wished to give the religious body which had just been created a fixed constitution and position. Ronge aspired to bring it into harmony with whatsoever was most progressive in the age. The thunder of the February revolution had a profound reverberation in Germany. Ronge took part in the political agitation. When the reaction set in, it smote both the protestant free congregations and the German catholic congregations, which were alike accused of political turbulence. The governments persecuted and tried to justify themselves by calumnies still more cruel than the persecutions. Ronge in 1850, along with other brave men, sought an asylum in England. His life in England was one of comparative obscurity; but he omitted no opportunity of keeping alive or of rekindling the interest in those great principles to which he had consecrated his career. A subject on which he had bestowed deep attention was the education of the young, and in London he was indefatigable in diffusing ideas and founding institutions, kindred to the Pestalozzian. Ronge made a practical protest against the celibacy of priests by marrying. A more liberal spirit having recently prevailed in Prussian counsels, Ronge has returned to his native Silesia. The last of his productions which we have seen, is one on the cause of his banishment. We are afraid that, while in England, Ronge was not appreciated, and that there was a disposition to compare him to Luther to his disadvantage. But it is questionable whether even Luther himself could, in the present circumstances of Germany, achieve more than Ronge achieved.—W. M—l.  RONSARD,, a French poet, was born in 1524 at the chateau of La Poissonniere in the Vendômois. While yet a boy he was made page to King James of Scotland, who had arrived in Paris to many Mary of Lorraine. Accompanying that prince to Scotland he remained there three years, and on his return to Paris was attached for a second time to the household of the duke of Orleans, who employed the poet on various missions abroad. His premature activity and exertions brought on him the loss of hearing, and rendered him unfit for court life. He applied himself diligently to study under Jean Damat, and having written poems and translated the Plutus of Aristophanes into French verse, he was crowned at the floral games of Toulouse with a crown of massive silver, and returned to court, after an absence of seven years, to receive the authoritative decree of Francis I., by which he was styled "the poet of France." The genius of Ronsard scarcely justifies the title. His merits, as a writer, consist mainly in labouring to raise poetry from the frivolity into which it had fallen. The best minds were then expressing themselves in Latin. Ronsard attempted to make the French muse scholarly, and offended his immediate posterity by the number of words he introduced from Latin and Greek. He was, however, something better than a pedant, and it is to his credit that he made a style of his own, and became an innovator rather than an imitator. He appears to have entered into some order of ecclesiastics, and received substantial proofs of the friendship of King Charles IX., whose rhymed epistles to Ronsard are favourable specimens of royal authorship. The poet died at his priory of St. Como, near Tours, on the 27th December, 1585, in a most christian frame of mind.—R. H.  ROOKE,, a gallant naval commander, was the eldest son of Sir William Rooke, and was born in 1650. He entered the navy as a volunteer, and attained the rank of post-captain in 1680. King William promoted him to the rank of rear-admiral of the red in 1689 for his services on the Irish coast. Three years later he was advanced to the rank of vice-admiral of the blue, and contributed largely to the gaining of the battle of La Hogue on the 22nd of May, 1692. On this occasion by a bold and masterly plan he burned ten of the 