R.E. 



65O6 



READING 



R.E. Abbrev. for Royal En- 

 gineers, for member of the Royal 

 Society of Painter-Etchers and 

 Engravers, and also for Recon- 

 naissance Experimental. The last 

 is the name of a "type of British 

 aeroplane built at the Royal Air- 

 craft Factory, Farnborough, later 

 known as the Royal Aircraft 

 Establishment. " The machines 

 built there are distinguished by 

 letters indicating the typo followed 

 by a number showing the series. 



Re. In music: (1) The second 

 of the Guidonian syllables. In 

 Tonic Sol-fa it is the second degree 

 of the major scale, and is spelt ray. 

 (2) The name of D in France and 

 Italy. 



Re\ Island of France. It lies in 

 the Atlantic Ocean, 9 m. W. of La 

 Rochelle, and is divided into two 

 depts. of which the chief towns are 

 Saint-Martin and Ars. A light rly. 

 runs from Sablanceaux to Les 

 Fortes (22 m. ) at the N.W. of the 

 island. It is protected from the 

 sea by sea-walls and dunes, and 

 defended by four forts. There are 

 considerable salt marshes and 

 vineyards. It is about 16 m. long 

 and 3 m. broad. 



Read, CLARE SEWELR (1826- 

 1905). British agriculturist. The 

 son and descendant of Norfolk 

 farmers, he was 

 born at Ketter- 

 ingham, Nov. 6, 

 1826. Hehim- 

 self became a 

 farmer and 

 ^A I then a land 



ftt I agent in Ox- 



BL I 



EnHHfcalHH 



fordshire, after- 

 wards manag- 

 ing h i s o w n 

 f arms m Nor- 



folk. In 



Clare Sewell Read, 

 British agriculturist 



EllloUAFry 



1865 Read, already known as an 

 authority on agriculture, was re- 

 turned as Conservative M.P. to 

 Parliament, and there he became 

 the acknowledged representative 

 of the farming interest. In 1876 

 the farmers recognized his work 

 with a gift of 5,500. He remained 

 in Parliament until 1880 and was 

 returned again in 1884-85 ; from 

 1874-76 he was parliamentary 

 secretary to the local government 

 board. He was sent by the Govern- 

 ment to report on agriculture in 

 America, and was identified with 

 almost every agricultural com- 

 mittee and organization. He died 

 in London, Aug. 21, 1905. 



Reade, CHARLES (1814-84). 

 British novelist and dramatist. 

 Born at Ipsden House, Oxford- 

 shire, June 8, 1814, he was the son 

 of a landowner. Educated at Mag- 

 dalen College, Oxford, he became 

 a fellow of that society and a bar- 

 rister, but soon turned to litera- 



ture. He began with plays, of which 

 the first was put on the stage in 

 1851. The best known, perhaps, are 

 The Lost Hus- 

 band, Masks 

 and Faces, 

 1852, written 

 in collabora- 

 tion with Tom 

 Taylor, The 

 Lyons Mail, 

 The Double 

 Marriage, 

 originally a 

 novel, and 

 Drink, 1879, 

 adapted from Zola's L'Assommoir. 

 His reputation was made, how- 

 ever, with his novels, especially 

 with The Cloister and The Hearth, 

 1861, which depicts in the most 

 realistic manner the life of the 15th 

 century, and is generally regarded 

 as one of the masterpieces of his- 

 torical fiction. Of the others may 

 be mentioned Peg Woffington, 

 1852; Christie Johnstone, 1853; 

 It is Never too Late to Mend, 1856, 

 a sensational story of prison life in 

 the early days of Australian coloni- 

 sation; Hard Cash, 1863, an ex- 

 posure of the abuses of the private 

 asylum ; Griffith Gaunt, 1866 ; Foul 

 Play, 1869; Put Yourself in His 

 Place, 1870; and The Wandering 

 Heir, 1875. The Perilous Secret 

 was published after his death, 

 which took place in London, April 

 11, 1884. He dramatised several 

 of his novels, wrote some short 

 stories and a book on the violin, and 

 kept laboriously elaborately classi- 

 fied commonplace books made up 

 of extracts from books and news- 

 papers. See Charles Reade, a 

 Memoir, C. Reade and C. L. Reade, 

 1887; Charles Reade as I knew 

 him, J. Coleman, 1903. 



Reade, WILLIAM WINWOOD 

 (1838-75). British novelist and 

 traveller. Born Dec. 26, 1838, and 

 a nephew of Charles Reade, he was 

 educated at Hyde House School, 

 Winchester, and Magdalen College, 

 Oxford. He travelled in W. Africa, 

 making a number of geographical 

 and scientific discoveries, studied 

 medicine at S. Mary's Hospital, 

 London, and was special corre- 

 spondent of The Times during the 

 Ashanti War, 1873. He died 

 April 24, 1875. In addition to 

 Savage Africa, 1863 ; African 

 Sketch Book, 1873 ; and The 

 Story of the Ashanti Campaign, 

 1874 ; he wrote The Veil of Isis, or 

 the Mysteries of the Druids, 1861 ; 

 The Martyrdom of Man, 1872, 18th 

 ed. 1910 ; and The Outcast, 1875. 

 A powerful and promising writer, 

 his views were rationalistic. 



Reader. In universities, term 

 applied to certain classes of 

 teachers or lecturers. In some cases 



readers assist the professors in their 

 duties, in others they teach sub- 

 jects for which there is no profes- 

 sorial chair in existence. In the 

 Inns of Court, the reader was ori- 

 ginally one who lectured on legal 

 questions to his inn ; readings on 

 statutes, etc., are extant from the 

 time of Edward I, and are of im- 

 portance in legal history. The office 

 still survives. See Inns of Court. 



Reader, PRINTER'S.;. One who 

 corrects proofs taken from type 

 before the type is passed for the 

 press. He is also known as a proof- 

 reader, and the London society 

 founded to promote his interests is 

 called the Association of Correctors 

 of the Press. A Readers' Pension 

 Committee was founded in London 

 in 1891. Allied later with the 

 Printers' Pensions Corporation, in 

 1921 it controlled 13 pensions, 

 founded partly by self-help and 

 partly by subscriptions raised in 

 connexion with the annual dinners 

 in London. There is a notable 

 picture of a printer's reader in the 

 1st Viscount Goschen's Life of his 

 grandfather, but the modern 

 printer's reader leads a much more 

 strenuous and exacting life than 

 that led by J. G. Seume. See 

 Proof -Reading. 



Reading. In general, the act of 

 perusing and interpreting written 

 characters. The psychological pro- 

 cesses involved in reading natur- 

 ally differ with the type of charac- 

 ters used to signify the thoughts or 

 ideas to be conveyed ; hieroglyphic 

 or picture writings represent 

 different mental actions from those 

 used in, for example, the European 

 languages. 



Methods of teaching the art of 

 reading, on which the communica- 

 tion of human thought largely de- 

 pends, have likewise varied. The 

 old alphabetic method insisted on 

 the learner mastering the names, 

 not the sounds, of separate letters, 

 and combining these in syllables, 

 words, and sentences. Valentine 

 Ickelsamer, a German teacher, in- 

 sisted in 1530 on the primary im- 

 portance of the sound of letters, 

 and the Bavarian, Stephani (d. 

 1850), made important phonetic 

 advances. Jean Joseph Jacotot 

 (1770-1840), a French pedagogue, 

 elaborated an analytic-synthetic 

 method, taking first the sentence, 

 reducing it to words for the pupils, 

 then to syllables and letters, and 

 then rebuilding the complete sen 

 tence. A general modern tendency 

 is to use the sentence or phrase as 

 the unit for teaching rather than 

 the isolated alphabetic letter. See 

 '> Alphabet ; Phonetics ; Writing ; 

 consult also The Psychology and 

 Pedagogy of Reading, E. B. 

 Huey, 1908. 



