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ROUSSEAU

1639

ROYAL MILITARY COLLEGE

of the same year, and for gallantry was promoted to the rank of major-general. In November, 1863, he was appointed to command the district of Tennessee, resigning two years later. When Alaska was purchased in 1867, he was assigned there as brigadier-general in the regular army, and in the year following was transferred to the command of the department of Louisiana. He died at New Orleans, Jan. 7,1869.

Rousseau, Pierre Etienne T., a prominent landscape-painter of France, was born at Paris, April 15, 1812, the son of a tailor. A kinsman, himself a painter, saw a landscape the boy had painted when 14, and persuaded his parents to have him study art instead of engineering, as they had intended. However his best teachers were not the artists to whom he was sent, but the old masters in the Louvre, while his happiest hours were spent in sketching from nature in the country around Paris. Some of his best pictures were rejected by the Salon, and for many years he struggled against neglect and discouragement. But later his worth was acknowledged, and he was made an officer of the Legion of Honor. Among his best landscapes are The Alley of Chestnut-Trees and Early Summer-Morning. He died near Fontainebleau, Dec. 22, 1867. See D. C. Thompson's The Barbizon School.

Rowan Tree (rd'an). See ASH.

Rowland, Henry Augustus, easily first among American physicists, was born at Honesdale, Pa., on Nov. 27, 1848, and died at Baltimore, Md., April 16, 1901. He received his education — if we may speak of such a genius as having received anything in education, other than what he worked out for himself — at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, where he graduated with the degree of civil engineer in 1870. During 1871-2 he taught science at Wooster College in Ohio. From 1872 to 1875 he taught physics at his alma mater in Troy. During these three years he prepared a very important paper on some problems in magnetism which at once gave him a reputation in Europe. In 1872 he was selected by President Oilman as one of the original staff of Johns Hopkins University, He, however, was immediately given a year's leave of absence, and in 1876, at Helmholtz's laboratory in Berlin, he made one of the most important electrical discoveries of modern times: Electric charges when put into rapid motion exert magnetic forces exactly as do the equivalent electric currents. The story of his work during the next quarter-century at Johns Hopkins University is too long for recital here. Suffice it to say that within a few years his researches on the mechanical equivalent of heat; the value of the absolute unit of electrical resistance; the diffraction-grating ; the spectra of the elements; and the solar spectrum won distinction and honor for him from all the more important learned

societies of the world. Among his greatest discoveries must be mentioned the curved grating which is the essential part of the most powerful form of spectroscope known, and does not involve in its construction any lenses. His printing, multiplex telegraph, on which he was at work at his death, formed one of the most interesting exhibits at the Paris exposition and has recently been adopted by the German government.

President Oilman says of him: "He knew how to ask a difficult and far-reaching question, and he knew how to seek the answer. Extraneous considerations were excluded when he saw the point of an inquiry, and on that point he concentrated all his powers. For example, when he began the brilliant series of experiments in spec-trography, which made him peerless in this domain, he saw that the spectrum depended on the accuracy of the gratings, the gratings on the dividing-engine and the dividing-engine on the screw; so he began the study of light by devising and making a screw more exact than any screw that has ever been produced by the most accomplished makers of instruments of precision." For details of his work see sketch by Professor Ames in Astrophysical Journal, May, 1901^ and another by Prof. H. F. Reid in American Journal of Science, June, 1901.

Royal Canadian Academy, The, was founded by the Marquess of Lome and the Princess Louise in 1880, L. R. O'Brien becoming its first president. Nearly every native artist of established repute is a member, and the younger men of promise have largely been admitted as associates. Wherever exhibits of international moment have been given since its foundation, its members have been able to carry off prizes in the face of the competition of the world, notably at Chicago, Buffalo and St. Louis.

Royal Military College. During the session of the Canadian Parliament of 1874 the minister of militia, with the sanction of Premier Alexander Mackenzie, introduced a bill providing for the establishment of a military college resembling those at Sandhurst (England) and West Point (United States). Instruction in subjects bearing on military matters was to be imparted by officers from the imperial army, and the teaching staff was to include instructors in French, engineering and other subjects. From this act of Parliament has grown Canada's Royal Military College. Its buildings are picturesquely situated on the lake-shore east of Kingston (Ontario) on the same point of land as Fort Frederick. Forts Frederick and Henry give a military atmosphere to the neighborhood and serve as an object-lesson to the cadets. The college opened in 1876 with a class of 18. The first commandant was Lieutenant-Gen-eral E. O. Hewett. He remained in charge until 1886, and upon resigning was thanked