806 



RALPH RAMMOHUN ROY. 



time of the passage over which it is written, is to 

 be gradually retarded. 



II A I. I'll, JAMES, a native of Philadelphia, in 

 North America, came to England as a literary ad- 

 venturer in 1725, in company with Benjamin Frank- 

 lin. In 1728, Ralph published a poem, entitled 

 Night," to which Pope thus alludes in the Dun- 

 ciad: 



" Silence, ye wolves while Ralph to Cynthia howls, 

 Making ni^ht hideous, answer him. ye owls!" 



lie afterwards attempted the drama, but without 

 MU -cess; and having produced a tragedy, a comedy, 

 an opera, and a farce, he took up the employment 

 H' a party writer. In 1742, he published an 

 A n^wer to the Memoirs of Sarah, Duchess of Marl- 

 borough ; and in 1744, appeared his History of Eng- 

 land, during the reigns of Charles II., James II., 

 William III, &c., (2 vols., folio), which, as a work 

 of research, is by no means destitute of merit. He 

 was at length connected with the politicians and li- 

 terary men who were attached to the service of 

 Frederic, prince of Wales ; in consequence of which, 

 Ralph is said to have become possessed of a manu- 

 script written by the prince, or under his direction, 

 to which so much importance was attributed, that a 

 gratuity or a pension was bestowed on the holder, 

 as a compensation for surrendering it. He obtained 

 a pension after the accession of George III., but 

 he did not long enjoy it, as his death took place in 

 1762. Besides the works mentioned, he published 

 a treatise on the Use and Abuse of Parliaments (2 

 vols., 8vo.) ; the Case of Authors by Profession 

 (8vo.); and a number of political pamphlets. 



RAM, BATTERING. See Battering Ram. 



RAMBERG, JOHN HENRY, distinguished for his 

 paintings and etchings, was born in 1767, in Han- 

 over. He first showed his talent by drawings of 

 scenes in the Hartz mountains. These drawings 

 liecame known to the king of England, his sove- 

 reign, as elector of Hanover, who induced him to 

 come to London, where he provided for him. 

 He remained there nine years, and perfected 

 himself under Reynolds. Murphy, Bartolozzi, and 

 other engravers of the first rank in England, en- 

 graved drawings of his. In 1788, the king sent 

 liim to Italy, whence he returned to Hanover, where 

 he was appointed painter to the court. Few pain- 

 ters and designers have produced so many works 

 as he has; but this rapidity prevented the full de- 

 velopment of his talent. Ramberg distinguished 

 himself particularly in the humorous caricature. 

 The drawings to the magnificent edition of Wie- 

 land's works are all by him : some he etched him- 

 self. 



RAMBOUILLET, a village of France, thirty 

 miles south-west of Paris, and near the extensive 

 forest of the same name. Here is situated a royal 

 castle, with extensive grounds, and several large 

 buildings connected with it. The castle has a fine 

 library, and there is a celebrated breed of merino 

 sheep here, introduced by Louis XVI. in 1786. 

 Kambouillet was bought by that prince in 1778. 

 and was one of his favourite residences. It was al- 

 so the favourite resort of Charles X. for hunting, 

 and here he retired when obliged to abandon St. 

 Cloud, after the revolution of 1830. He was, how- 

 ever, forced to quit Rambouillet for Cherbourg, by 

 the approach of a Parisian force on the night of 

 August 3d. 



RAMEAU, JEAN PHILLIPPE, an able French 

 theorist in the science of music, was a native of Di- 

 jon, and born in 1683. Having, at an early age, 

 acquired some skill in music, he joined a strolling 

 company of performers, by whose assistance a mu- 



sical entertainment of his composition was repre- 

 sented at Avignon, in the eighteenth year of his age. 

 He was afterwards appointed organist in Cler- 

 mont cathedral, applied himself to the study of 

 the principles of his profession, and, in 1722, 

 printed the first fruits of his investigation in a 

 treatise, entitled Traits de I' Harmonic. Four 

 years after appeared his Nouveau Systems de 

 Musique Theorique, which was followed by his 

 itineration Harmonique. In 1750, he published his 

 celebrated Dissertation sur le Principe de V Harmo- 

 nic, in which he reduces harmony to one single 

 principle the fundamental bass, on which he proves 

 all the rest to depend. This work procured him an 

 invitation from the court to superintend the opera 

 at Paris. He possessed a great facility in adapting 

 words to music, and piqued himself so much upon 

 this talent, that he is said to have declared he would 

 set a Dutch gazette, if it was required of him. His 

 remaining theoretical works are, Remarks on the 

 Demonstration of the Principles of Harmony ; Re- 

 ply to a Letter of M. Euler (both printed in 1752) ; 

 On the Instinctive Love of Music in Man (1754) ; 

 On the Mistakes of the Encyclopaedia with Respect 

 to Music (1755) ; and a Practical Code of Music 

 (1760). He was also the author of six operas, Hip* 

 polyte et Arid, Castor et Pollux, Dardanus, Sam- 

 son, Pygmalion, and Zoroaster, besides a great 

 variety of ballets and other minor pieces. Louis 

 XV. acknowledged his merits by the grant of a 

 patent of nobility, and the order of St Michael. 

 Rameau's theory is formed on the base of M. 

 D'Alembert's celebrated treatise on music in which 

 all the laws of harmony are derived from the rela- 

 tions of the three subordinate tones heard along with 

 any musical tone, i. e. the octave, twelfth, and 

 seventeenth major. Rameau died at Paris, in 1764. 



RAMILLIES ; a village of Belgium, in South 

 Brabant, thirteen miles north of Namur, and twenty- 

 six south-east of Brussels. May 23, 1706, the duke 

 of Marlborough (see Churchill) gained here a signal 

 victory over the French under marshal Villeroyand 

 the duke of Bavaria. The numbers were about 

 60,000 on each side : the loss of the allies was 4000 

 men, that of the French 15,000. The consequence 

 of the battle was the immediate evacuation of Flan- 

 ders by the French. 



RAMLER, CHARLES WILLIAM, a German lyric 

 poet, translator, and critic, was born at Colberg, in 

 1725, studied at Halle, and was appointed a pro- 

 fessor in the royal military school for young noblemen 

 in Berlin, in 1748. In 1790, he became co-director of 

 the theatre of Berlin. He died in 1798. Ramler 

 appeared at a period poor in poets, and attached 

 his fame to that of Frederic the Great, whom he 

 celebrated as Horace did Augustus, From this 

 circumstance, and from his occasional imitations of 

 Horace, he has been called th German Horace, 

 but is greatly below his model. Ramler had little 

 poetical genius, but he did much to polish German 

 versification. His ideas respecting German prosody 

 were, however, very deficient. He translated many 

 of the classics. His poetical works appeared in two 

 volumes (Berlin, 1800, 4to and 8vo.) ; a pocket 

 edition, in the same place (1825, 2 vols., 12mo.) 

 Ramler wrote also in prose. The words to Graun's 

 celebrated oratorio (the Death of Jesus) are by him. 



RAMMELSBERG. See Hartz. 



RAMMER is a cylindrical block of wood nearly 

 fitting the bore of a cannon, and fastened on a 

 wooden staff, or on a stiff rope well served with 

 spun yarn. It is used to drive the charge of a 

 cannon home, or to the innermost part of it. The 

 rope-rammers are most general in ships of war. 



RAMMOHUN ROY, an Indian rajah; who dis- 



