RHABDOMANCY 



RHAMPSINITUS 



683 



and untried combinations of pigments, with the 

 result that even in his own lifetime his works 

 deteriorated, especially in their flesh-tints. 



Personally Reynolds was a man of fine and 

 varied culture, and he was distinguished by an 

 exquisite urbanity, the expression of a most 

 amiable and equable disposition, which was 

 exceptionally fitted to win and retain friendship. 

 His dignified gentleness, his mild reasonableness, 

 tamed even the fierceness of Dr Johnson ; and 

 there was more of truth than is usual in poetic 

 panegyric in the lines of Goldsmith which speak 

 of this painter as 



Still born to improve us in every part, 

 His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. 



The first great collection of the works of Reynolds 

 was brought together by the British Institution in 

 1813, and numbered 142 pictures ; another gathering 

 was formed by the same body in 1823 ; 154 examples 

 of his art were included in the South Kensington 

 Portrait Exhibition of 1867 ; and 231 were exhibited 

 in the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883-84. His authentic 

 works have been estimated by Taylor to number 

 between two and three thousand ; and from these 

 some 700 engravings have been executed, some 

 of them such as the mezzotints of J. R. Smith, 

 John Dixon, William Dickinson, Valentine Green, 

 and James M'Ardell ranking among the finest 

 examples of the art. 



See Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knvjht, <tc., 

 by James Northcote, R.A. (1813); The Literary Work* 

 of Sir Joshua R*uiu>l<lt: with Memoir of the Author, 

 <te., by William Beechey, R.A. (1835); Life and Times 

 of Sir Joshua Reynolds, by C. R. Leslie, R.A., and Tom 

 Taylor (2 vols. 1865); A Catalogue Raisonne of the En- 

 graved Work* of Sir Joshua Reynolds, by Edward 

 Hamilton, M.D. (2d ed. 1884); W. M. Conway, Artistic 

 Development of Reynolds and Gainnboroui/h (1886); 

 and the monograph by Claude Phillips ( 1894 j. 



Rliabdoinancy. See DIVINATION, DIVINING 

 ROD. 



RliadumniltllllS. in Greek Mythology, the 

 Mm of Zeus ami Europa, and brother of Minos of 

 Crete. He settled in Bu-otia, where he married 

 Alcmene. So great was his reputation during life 

 for the exercise of justice that after death he was 

 appointed a judge in the under-world, along with 

 Minus and JKacaa. 



It h:r t i<i. an ancient Roman province embracing 

 a large part of the Alpine tract between the basins 

 of the Po and the Danube, now included in the 

 Grisons and the Austrian Tyrol. Its inhabitants 

 were brave and turbulent, and were only subdued 

 by Drusus and Tiberius after a desperate resist- 

 ance. The province was then formed, to which 

 Vindelicia was soon added ; but later Rha?tia was 

 sulnlivided into Rluetia Prima and Kli.'t'tia Secunda 

 (Vindelicia). The only important town in Rhretia 

 was Tridentinnm (Trent); the colony of Augusta 

 Vindelicorum (Augsburg} was in its northern part. 

 For Rluetic Beds, see TRIASSIC SYSTEM. 



Itliaimiari-a- (Buckthorns), a natural order of 

 exogenous plants, consisting of trees or shrubs ; 

 often spiny ; with simple, generally alternate 

 leaves, anA stipules minute or wanting. This 

 order contains alwnit 250 known species, natives 

 of .temperate and tropical countries, and very 

 generally distributed over the globe. The prevail- 

 ing principle in the buckthorns is a bitter extrac- 

 tive which is acrid or astringent, tonic and anti- 

 febrile. Some of them are used in dyeing (see 

 BUCKTHOISN, and FRENCH BERRIES), some in medi- 

 cine (see RED HOOT), and the fruit of some is 

 pleasant (see JUJUBE); whilst Hoveniet dulris, a 

 native of China and Japan, is remarkable for the 

 thickening of its flower-stalks after flowering, so 

 M to form a succulent sweet red pulp, with a 



flavour resembling that of a pear. The lotus of 

 the ancient Lotophagi, celebrated by Homer, is 

 the fruit of Zizyphus lotus, a small shrub abundant 

 in Spain, Sicily, Barbary, Tunis (see LOTUS). The 

 wood of Rhamnus frangula yields a superior char- 

 coal for the manufacture of gunpowder. 



Rhampsini'tus, a Grecised form of the Egyp- 

 tian name Ramses, apparently Ramses III., the 

 builder of the pavilion of Medinet Abu at Thebes. 

 Brugsch makes Rhampsinitos a Greek form of 

 Ramessu pa nuter ( ' Ramses the God ' ) ; Maspero, 

 Ramsis-si-nit ('Ramses, son of Neith"), a title 

 never borne by the Theban kings, but first used by 

 the Saitic princes, which fixes the date of the tale 

 to the period of Psammetichus and his dynasty. 

 Of him Herodotus (II., 121 et sea.) relates a story 

 substantially the same as one or the most wide- 

 spread folk-tales of the Aryan world. The king 

 acquired an enormous treasure, and to secure it 

 built a treasury of stone. The architect left one 

 stone loose, so nicely adjusted as to be unnoticed, 

 yet capable of being taken out and replaced with- 

 out difficulty. Before death he entrusts the secret 

 to his two sons, who from time to time plunder the 

 king's treasure at their will, until at length the 

 elder is caught in a snare set by the king. Accord- 

 ing to his desire, the younger brother cuts off and 

 carries away his head, so that he may remain un- 

 known. The king now orders the headless body 

 to be exposed nntmried, protected by a guard of 

 soldiers, but the younger brother lades an ass with 

 skins of wine, allows some of it to run out, and is 

 relieved in his distress by the soldiers, to whom in 

 gratitude he gives his wine so freely that they all 

 sink into a drunken sleep. Thereupon he shaves 

 the right half of all their beards, and carries his 

 brother's body to his mother. The king next sends 

 his daughter to find out the clever thief. She pro- 

 mises her love to those who reveal to her the most 

 extraordinary things that have ever happened to 

 them, and when the young man in his turn relates 

 the strange passages of his life she seizes him ; but 

 he cunningly slips bis brother's dead hand into hers, 

 and so escapes. The king is so much struck with 

 wonder ana admiration that he promises the clever 

 thief his daughter in marriage, since he surpassed 

 all mankind in knowledge ; for, while the Egyptians 

 surpassed all the world, he surpassed the Egyp- 

 tians. 



Such is the oldest recorded version of Asbjorns- 

 sen's ' Master-thief ' and Campbell's ' Shifty-lad,' 

 Dr Barbu Constantinescu's Roumanian gypsy story 

 of ' The Two Thieves," a variant of the story of 

 Trophonios and Agamedes in the treasury of 

 Hyrieus at Hyria (Paus. ix. 37), of Augeias in 

 Elis, and of Hermes ( dpxos <fni\riTwi' ), as well as 

 of the Hindu legend of Karpara and Gata, or that 

 of AH Baba and the Forty Thieves in the Arabian 

 Nights. The story occurs in the oldest version 

 (12th century) of the romance of the 'Seven Wise 

 Masters,' the Dolopathos, sive de Rege et Septem 

 Sapientibus, from which Ser Giovanni probably 

 derived the story as found in his Pecorone (written 

 circa 1378), where it is related of an architect 

 named Bindo who stole a golden vase from the 

 treasury of the Doge of Venice. It will be found, 

 more or less perfect, in every collection of European 

 folk-tales, whether Norse, Gaelic, modern Greek, 

 French, Breton, Albanian, Sicilian, Hungarian, 

 Dutch, Tyrolese, Danish, or Russian, as well as 

 Kabyl, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Singhalese. 



Maspero defends the story as fundamentally 

 Egyptian, or at least Egyptianised long before 

 Herodotus, in spite of the Greek dress in which 

 the historian has clothed it. It has been objected 

 by some that the idea of a movable stone is not 

 Egyptian, and is but ill adapted to the size of the 

 stones used in building ; but at Dendera have 



