RUSH 



RUSKIN 



27 



and statesman, was minister to England in 1817-25, 

 where he negotiated the important Fisheries and 

 North-eastern Boundary Treaties, and was Secre- 

 tary of the Treasury from 1825 to 1829. In 1828 

 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the vice- 

 presidency of the United States ; and in 1836-38 

 he secured for his country the whole of the legacy 

 which James Smithson had left to found the 

 Smithsonian Institution. 



Rush, a seaport of Ireland, 16 miles by rail NE. 

 of Dublin. Pop. 1071. 



Rush (Jtincus), a genus of plants of the natural 

 order Juncese, having a glume-like (not coloured) 

 perianth, smooth filaments, and a many-seeded, 

 generally three-celled capsule. The species are 

 numerous, mostly natives of wet or marshy places 

 in the colder parts of the world ; some are found 

 in tropical regions. Some are absolutely destitute 

 of leaves, but have barren scapes ( flower-stems ) re- 

 sembling leaves ; some have leafy stems, the leaves 

 rounded or somewhat compressed, and usually 

 jointed internally ; some have plane or grooved 

 leaves on the stems ; some have very narrow 

 leaves, all from the root. The name Rush perhaps 

 properly belongs to those species which have no 

 proper leaves ; the round stems of which, bearing 

 or not hearing small lateral heads of flowers, are 

 popularly known as Rushes. 

 The Soft Rush (/. effumts) is 

 a native of Japan as well as 

 of Britain, and is cultivated 

 in Japan for making mats. 

 The Common Rush (J. con- 

 glotneratus) and the Sufi 

 fUMb are largely used for the 

 bottoms of chairs and for 

 mats, and in ruder times, 

 when carpets were little 

 known, they were much used 

 for covering the floors of 

 rooms ; to this many allusions 

 will be found in early English 

 writers. The stems of the 

 true rushes contain a large 

 pith or soft central substance, 

 which is sometimes used for 

 wicks to small candles, called 

 rushlights. There are twenty 

 or twenty-two British species 

 of rush, some of which are 

 very rare, some found only 

 on the highest mountains, but 

 Common Rwh(J uncut some are among the most 

 conglomeratut). common of plants. They are 

 often very troublesome weeds 



to the farmer. Thorough drainage is the best 

 means of getting rid of them. Lime, dry ashes, 

 road scrapings, &c. are also useful. Tufts of rushes 

 in pasture are a sure sign of insufficient drainage. 

 Many marshy and boggy places alxmnd in some of 

 the species having leafy stems and the leaves jointed 

 internally, popularly called Sprats or Sprits, as ./. 

 unit,/!,,,-,'*, ./. /// ni/ ,// -a i / 1 ii v, and J. ootitsifloms. 

 They afford very little nourishment to cattle ; bat 

 are useful for making coarse ropes for ricks, iV<-., 

 which are stronger than those made of hay. Rush- 

 lights or candles with rush-wicks were anciently 

 much in use, and Gilbert White tells us how, by 

 carefully dipping the rush in grease with a little wax 

 added, the poor man might enjoy five and a half 

 hours of comfortable light for a farthing. Rushes, 

 with a few sweet herbs, were used to strew the 

 floors before carpets came into use, and, as they 

 were seldom entirely renewed, the insanitary con- 

 sequences may be imagined. The stage was also 

 strewed with rushes in Shakespeare's time, as well 

 as the churches with rushes or straw according to 



the season of the year a custom still honoured at 

 the Hull Trinity House and anciently rushes were 

 scattered in the way where processions were to pass. 

 To order fresh rushes was a sincere mark of honour 

 to a guest. The strewing of the churches grew 

 into a religious festival conducted with much pomp 

 and circumstance. This ceremonious rush-bearing 

 lingered long in the northern counties, and has 

 been occasionally revived in modern times, as at 

 Grasmere in 1884, &c. 



Rush-nut ( Cyperus esculentus ). See CYPERUS. 



Rlishworth, JOHN, whose Historical Collec- 

 tions of Private Passages of State, Weighty Matters 

 of Law, Remarkable Proceedings in Five Parlia- 

 ments, is an important contribution to our know- 

 ledge of the Civil War, and the events that led to 

 it, belonged to an ancient family in Northumber- 

 land, and was lx>rn there about 1607. He studied 

 at Oxford, and settled in London as a barrister. 

 He appears to have spent a great deal of his time 

 for many years in attending the Star Chamber, the 

 Court of Honour, the Exchequer Chamber, Parlia- 

 ment, \r., and in taking down shorthand notes of 

 the proceedings. When the Long Parliament met 

 in 1640 he was appointed assistant to Henry 

 Elsyngne, clerk of the House of Commons. He 

 sat in parliament as memlier for Berwick ; was in 

 1645 secretary to Sir Thomas Fairfax, and in 1677 

 to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. In 1684 he 

 was flung into the King's Bench for debt, and here 

 he died, 12th May 1690. Rush worth's Historical Col- 

 lections cover the period 1618-48, and were published 

 in four instalments in 1659, 1680, 1692, and 1701. 

 The whole was republished in 1721 in 7 vols. Rush- 

 worth had the instinct of perpetuity, for lie seta 

 forth as the motive for his labour ' the impossibility 

 for any man in after ages to ground a true History, 

 by relying on the printed pamphlets of our days, 

 which passed the press while it was without con- 

 trol.' The work has been blamed by royalist 

 authors as unfair, and Carlyle often rails on ite 

 worthy author as a Dryasdust. 



Ruskin. JOHN, the most eloquent and original 

 of all writers upon art, and a strenuous preacher of 

 righteousness, was born in London, 8th February 

 1819. He was an only child ; his father ( 1785- 

 1864 ), a wealthy wine-merchant, was an Edinburgh 

 man settled in London. He was educated in his 

 father's house, first in London and afterwards at 

 Denmark-hill, till he went, as a gentleman commoner 

 of Christ Church, to Oxford. There he gained the 

 Newdigate prize for English poetry by a poem on 

 Salsette and Elcjiliantit in 1839, and took his 

 degree in 1842. He studied painting under Copley 

 Fielding and Harding ; but his masters in the art 

 were, he says, Rubens and Rembrandt. The story 

 of the earlier years of his life has been told by 

 Ruskin himself very fully in his Prceterita, one of 

 the most charming autobiographies in the lan- 

 guage. In 1843 appeared the first volume of liis 

 Modern Painters, the primary design of which ( in 

 reply to a criticism of Turner in Blackwooifs 

 Magazine) was to prove the superiority of modern 

 lanilscape-painters, and more especially of Turner, 

 to the Old Masters ; but in the later volumes (the 

 fifth and last was published in 1860) the work 

 expanded into a vast discursive treatise on the 

 principles of art, interspersed with artistic and 

 symbolical descriptions of nature, more elaborate 

 and imaginative than any writer, prose or poetic, 

 had ever tefore attempted. Modern Painters was 

 essentially revolutionary in its spirit and aim, 

 many of the most distinguished landscape-painters, 

 both of old and new schools, being summarily dealt 

 with and condemned; and the work naturally 

 excited the aversion and hostility of the conserva- 

 tives in art. But the unequalled splendour of ita 



