RHODOTAHNIC ACID. 



RIBBON MANUFACTURE. 



76 



It U voluble In water or alcohol, and forms, neutral or add salt* with 



RHOOOTANN'ir ACin. [T \ ins.] 



KHO.M1I. HHUMIU'S. RHOMBOID. These term* have been used 

 in various significations by different writers, and the second ami third 

 have been sometime* distinguished from each other in meaning. It is 

 not worth while to do more than state, that when cither of them is 

 now used, it signifies an equilateral oblique parallelogram. The Latin 

 dictionaries denne rhml>idel to be a parallelogram, and rhombus an 

 equilateral parallelogram. 



lUiriiAlUt [RHn-M.1 



BHUBABBAtuC ACID. [CunYsoriiAMc ACID.] 



ItlirUAHItAltlN. lCiinis,,|.|iANU ACID.] 



Rill-Mil. [Ht-HB.] 



KHYMK. Johnson derive* this word from the Greek rhythmu 

 . Others derive it from the Swedish and Danish rim. the 

 rym, and the German rn'm. All the principal European nations 

 the same word to signify the same thing. Thus, the French have 

 rime, the Italian* rima. and the Spaniards rliaa. The Greek and 

 Roman poets did not use rhyme, and the word rythmus was applied by 

 both, in its poetical meaning, to the metrical arrangement, of syllables, 

 ami not to the correspondence of sound in their terminations. Rhyme 

 wan not ued either by the Celtic or by the early Scandinavian nations. 

 Thus the IrUh and Erse poems on which Macpherson founded his 

 'Poems of Ossian' are without rhymes, as is also the Scandinavian 

 poem of the ' Lodbrokar Quida ' (Lodbroc's Death-Song). Rhyme, as 

 an accompaniment of verse, cannot be traced farther back among 

 Kurv'imn nations than to the rymourt of Normandy, the tnmbadours 

 of Provence, the minnntmjfrt of Germany, and the monks, who, after 

 the fall of the Roman empire, added rhyming terminations to the 

 latin metres which were chanted or sung in the church service. 

 Rhyme was early employed by the Italian poets. The ' Divina Corn- 

 media ' of Dante, the oldest of the great Italian poems, is in alternate 

 rhymes. The early Spanish ballads sometimes have rhymes, some- 

 time* only assonances [ASSONANCE], and sometimes, as in the old 

 Spanish romance of ' The (.'id,' are without either rhyme or assonance. 

 The early Anglo-Saxon poetry is without rhyme, but it is sometimes 

 used in the later. All the old English poetry has rhymes, which are 

 rude and imperfect, like the versification, but they are obviously an 

 adjunct to the verse which could not bo omitted. 



Perfect rhymes arise from the identity of sound with which different 

 word* terminate the identity, not the similarity. In monosyllables, 

 or words which have the accent on the last syllable, to constitute a 

 peitect rhyme it is necessary that the sound of the last accented vo\\ > ! 

 and of any letters which may follow it should be exactly the same as 

 those of the word with which it rhymes. The sounds which precede 

 the last accented vowel must be different in the two words. The 

 pelting U of no consequence ; the rhyme is in the sounds, not in the 

 conventional signs by which the sounds are expressed. Thus no 

 rhymes to jo, but not to tlo, which rhymes to too or t>cn ; great rhymes 

 to hale, but not to heat, which rhymes to fat ; and so on. If the 

 sounds of the hut vowels, or of any of the following consonants., differ 

 in any degree, however small, the rhyme is go far imperfect ; thus, 

 Ion and mure form an imperfect rhyme, the sound of the o in love 

 being not only shorter than that of the o in move, but to a certain 

 extent different. These monosyllable or last-syllable rhymes are called 

 male rhyme*. 



Another class of rhymes is formed from words in which the accent 

 is on the last syllable but one. In this class it is requisite that the 

 sounds of the last vowel in the last syllable but one and of all the 

 following letters should be the same as those with which they rhyme 

 Thus, desiring and rapiriaif, dttemdtd and extended, are perfect rhymes 

 of this clan. These are called female rhymes. 



The principle of rhyming, once understood, the application is easy in 

 all cues. Thus, if the accent is on the last syllable but two, the 

 sound of the last vowel of the last syllable but two, and of all the 

 following letters, must be the same. Thus, trnsiblc and <xtetible are 

 perfect rhyme* of this class, but dittolute and reiolute are imperfect 

 rhymes, the vowels in the last syllable but two of both words having 

 different Bounds. 



The *me principle of rhyming applies to all the modern languages, 

 a* well aa to the English. Imperfect rhymes are more or less freely 

 uaed in all of them, according to circumstances. The English and 

 German languages, which abound in consonants, and have for the most 



C consonant terminations, are more deficient in rhymes than the 

 an and Spanish, which abound in vowels, and have for the most 

 part vowel termination*. 



RHYTHM ('PuMt, mtamrt, proportion), in Music, is Time; first 

 in a limited sense, a* in the relative proportions of notes in a single 

 bar; and, secondly, in a more general sense, as in the relative propor- 

 tion of a number of bars in any given portion of a composition, as in 

 either half of a minuet or of a march. Khythin i the most im- 

 portant constituent of music ; without it inarticulate sounds are 

 unproductive of any musical effect. [Music.] In melody, that is, a 

 iurcewiim of measured sound*, note* are the component parts of a bar, 

 and bars are the component part* of a strain, or musical pt i 

 phrase. The due relative proportion of all theso is absolutely 

 MccMary in the formation of a good musical composition ; without it, 



<mys one who seems to have possessed a most discriminating and refined 

 taste in the art, 



11 How sour sweet music is 

 When time IB broke, and no proportion kept ! " 



Kithard II. 



Musical Rhythm, in its limited sense, divides a bar into 2, 4, 8, &c. 

 or 8, 8, 12, ftc. equal parts ; the former is binary measure, the latter 

 ternary. In its more general sense it divides a strain, a phrase, or by 

 whatever name the subdivisions of a composition may be designated, 

 into equal portions of 2 or 4, Sic. or 3, (i, &c. bars, or measures : anil 

 some writers have admitted a rhythmus of five bars. An intimate 

 acquaintance with the nature of rhythm, whether considered in its 

 relation to music or poetry, is essential to the accomplished composer ; 

 without a full knowledge of this he is perplexed by doubts, and guilty 

 of errors which have too often brought reproaches on the art, when 

 they ought to have fallen on the pseudo-artist. Our limits however 

 will not allow us to extend this article; and we refer the reader, 

 particularly the professional one, to a learned and able disquisition on 

 rhythm in Burney's 'Hist.', vol. i., p. 71; to Callootts 'Musical 

 Grammar,' where much practical information from Riepel and other 

 German writers is to be found ; to Kollman on ' Harmony ; ' and 

 more especially to Reicha's ' Traite 1 de Melodic.' [PHRASE ; TIME.] 



RIBBON MANUFACTURE. Ribbon, or riband, signifies a long 

 narrow web of silk worn for ornament or use. Ribbons of linen, 

 worsted, gold, or silver thread were formerly included in the term, 

 but the designation is now generally confined to those made of silk. 

 Ribbon, in German, is band; Danish, baand ; Swedish, band; French, 

 ruban ; Dutch, lint; Russian, lenta; Spanish, crate; Portuguese, fita 

 di seta, from the Latin i-itta ; Italian, del nastro, fettiiccia. 



Silk was early wrought into ribbons. They formed a branch of the 

 silk manufacture during its progress from Greece to Sicily, and from 

 thence to Italy and Spain ; but the ribbon trade seems first to have as- 

 sumed distinct importance in France. Paris, Tours, Lyon, and Avignon 

 were the chief seats of the trade ; the two last cities were rivals until 

 the year 1723, when, partly owing to the regulations which the jealous 

 Lyonnese had prevailed upon the government to make in their favour, 

 and partly to a plague of two years' continuance, the trade of Avignon 

 was ruined, and in great measure transferred to Lyou. Figured 

 ribbons were made chiefly at Paris. About the year 1680, there was 

 a rage for ribbons yanffris, or embossed, on account of their novelty. 

 The stamping was performed by hot plates of steel, on which a pattern 

 was engraved, being applied successively along the piece. A master- 

 weaver named Chandelier, tired of this slow process, contih 

 machine which would save his labour. He engraved his figures on 

 two cylinders of steel, between which, when heated, the ribbon was 

 01 un pressed and drawn rapidly by simple machinery : so that a piece 

 of ribbon was embossed in less time than his brother workmen con- 

 sumed over a single ell. , The ribbons called double lisse (double warp), 

 which were considered the richest and best, were made at Tours. 

 Before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the ribbon-looms of 

 Tours amounted to 3000 ; but this measure, which banished the 

 Protestants, banished with them their trade, and both Tours and Lyon 

 suffered severely from its effects ; the trade of Lyon afterwards revived. 

 Savary, inspector-general of French manufactures, in his ' Dictionary,' 

 published in 1 723, says, that the trade in ribbons was much diminished 

 in his time ; but it became very large in the next generation. In tho 

 enumeration of the different kinds of ribbon, a double satin is men- 

 tioned, that is, one alike on both sides in texture, although sometimes 

 of diHerent colours. 



Coventry is the head-quarters of the English ribbon-trade. The 

 weaving is done on several systems. The undertaking system applies 

 now only to the single-hand trade in the country districts Bedworth, 

 Nuneaton, Hartshill, &c. : it is the same that the French have employed 

 since the clays of Colbert. According to this plan, the undertaker, or 

 master-weaver, receives the silk dyed in the hank from the manu- 

 facturer, and returns it in finished ribbons to his order; all the inter- 

 mediate operations being included in the price of weaving, two-thirds 

 of which are paid to the journey-hand for his labour. Three-fourths of 

 the single-hand weavers are women, and nearly one-half of the remainder 

 are youths under 20. Boys and girls are considered competent weavers 

 at 16 or 17. On the journey work system, by which the great proportion 

 of the engine-looms in Coventry and its neighbourhood are worked, the 

 manufacturer gives the silk, already wound and warped, to the first- 

 hand journeyman, who is also the owner of the looms. The shoot -silk 

 is given in hank, for the winding of which the manufacturer allows !</. 

 per oz., besides the price for weaving, in which is included the filling, 

 or the winding of the shoot on the small revolving pins within the 

 shuttles. About one-fourth of the hands employed on this system are 

 women. On the Itand-faclory system the manufacturer is the owner 

 "i the looms. The journey-hands work them in the loom-shop of 

 the proprietor, who gets the winding and warping done at his own 

 charge, leaving only the filling to the weaver, which is included in the 

 price of his work, and is often done by very young children. This plan 

 i< adopted by many inanulocturers of small capital, who, by personally 

 superintending the work, and becoming in fact their own under- 

 takers, are enabled to economise to tho utmost in the cost of pro- 

 duction ; while their hands are all reduced to the lowest condition of 



