ROSS 



ROSSETTI 



cially in his later years Sir George won a wide 

 reputation as a lecturer, particularly in favor 

 of temperance reform and prohibition. He also 

 found time to write several books, including the 

 Life and Times of Alexander Mackenzie; The 

 Universities of Canada; The School System of 

 Ontario; The Senate of Canada, and a volume 

 of reminiscences, Getting into Parliament and 

 After. 



ROSS, SIR JAMES CLARK (1800-1862), an 

 English explorer, born in London. In 1818, and 

 again in 1829-4833, he accompanied his uncle, 

 Sir John Ross, on expeditions in search of the 

 Northwest Passage, and on the second of these 

 excursions distinguished himself by discovering 

 the location of the north magnetic pole. In the 

 interval between these two voyages with his 

 uncle he made four Arctic expeditions under 

 Parry. His most noteworthy service to science, 

 however, was his expedition, in 1839, with the 

 Erebus and Terror, to the Antarctic seas. He 

 discovered a great body of land which he 

 named Victoria Land, several islands, and an 

 active volcano which he called Erebus. The 

 latitude reached by him, 78 10' S.. established 

 a record which was not broken until 1900. On 

 his return Ross was knighted. In 1848 he 

 headed an unsuccessful expedition in search of 

 Sir John Franklin, and in 1856 became a rear- 

 admiral. An account of his Antarctic journey 

 is contained in A Narrative of a Voyage in 

 Antarctic Regions. 



For comparison of his voyages in Antarctic 

 regions with others which followed, see AMUND- 

 SEN, ROALD ; SCOTT, ROBERT F. ; SHACKLETON, 

 ERNEST. See, also, POLAR EXPLORATION. 



ROSSETTI, roset'i, CHRISTINA GEORGINA 

 (1830-1894), an English poet, the sister of 

 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (see below). She was 

 bora in London, educated in her home with her 

 brothers and sisters, and lived a quiet, retiring 

 life. Her interests were two religion and po- 

 etry; and naturally all her writings show clearly 

 h. r religious, mystic tendency. They are, how- 

 ever, almost as noteworthy for the delight 

 winch they reveal in the simple physical beauty 

 of the world. Critics agree in ranking Chris- 

 tini Rossetti next to Mrs. Browning among 

 English women writers of the nineteenth 

 fury, and some of her short lyrics stand among 

 tin hr.-f things ever produced in English. Gob- 

 ':ct and Other Poems, The Prince's 

 Progress and Other Poems and A Pageant and 

 Other Poems contain the most of her work, 

 bably the best known and best 

 loved of her poems. 



ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL (1828-1882), an 

 English poet and painter, one of the prominent 

 leaders in a movement to bring back to paint- 

 ing the purity and simplicity which had char- 

 acterized it in the Middle Ages He and his 

 companions in this movement organized the 

 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848,and founded 

 a periodical called The Germ for the exposi- 

 tion of their views (see PRE-RAPHAELJTES). 

 In this paper was published one of Rossetti's 

 earliest and loveliest poems, The Blessed 

 Damozel, whose opening lines suggest the 

 idealism and spirituality of all the Pre-Raphael- 

 ite art and literature : 



The blessed damozel leaned out 

 From the gold bar of Heaven ; 



Her eyes were deeper than the depth 

 Of waters stilled at even ; 



She had three lilies in her hand, 



And the stars in her hair were seven. 



Rossetti was the eldest son of an Italian 

 painter and writer who was exiled for taking 

 part in the revolution of 1820. Dante Gabriel 

 was born in London, where his father settled in 

 1824. The boy grew up under literary and ar- 

 tistic influences, and was well educated, study- 

 ing at King's College School and at the Royal 

 Academy of Art. The influence of Ford Madox 

 Brown, who became his art teacher when 

 Rossetti was twenty, was also far-reaching. 

 Rossetti was married in 1860 to a beautiful girl 

 who furnished the inspiration for the best of 

 his paintings and of his poetry, and when she 

 died, two years after their marriage, his grief 

 was so intense that he placed in her coffin all of 

 his writings then unpublished. In 1870, yielding 

 to the demands of his friends, he permitted 

 them to be exhumed and published. This col- 

 ion, a volume of Ballads and Sonnets (1881) 

 and a series of translations of early Italian 

 poets (1874) constitute his entire poetical out- 

 put. Of his sonnets, the most notable are 

 found in a series entitled The House of Life, a 

 collection of beautiful love poems of which his 

 was tin inspiration. He also wrote Hand 

 and Soul, a delicately imaginative story in 



Rossetti's paintings are remarkable chiefly for 



tin ir spiritual quality and mysticism. He 



found his themes in Biblical subjects, in the 



ind work of Dante, and in his own imagina- 



tion. These themes are represented by Girl- 



hood of Mary Virgin; Dante's Dream and 



Bcata Beatrix; and The Blessed Damozel and 



'a. Just as his paintings express tin 



idealism that chui his poetry, so hi* 



