of the Brit. Mus., vol. ii. p. 584 seq.; A. Sprenger's Oudh Cat., p. 489;
Sir Gore Ouseley, Notices of Persian Poets, p. 112 seq.; H. Ethé, in
Morgenländische Studien (Leipzig, 1870), p. 95 seq., and in Geiger
and Kuhn's Grundriss der iranischen Philologie (Stuttgart, 1896-1904),
vol. ii. pp. 287-292. Selections from Jalāl-uddīn's diwan
(often styled Dīwān-i-Shams-i-Tabrīz) are translated in German
verse by V. von Rosenzweig (Vienna, 1838); into English by R. A.
Nicholson (2nd ed., 1898) and W. Hastie (1903).
(H. E.)
RUMINANTIA, a term employed by Cuvier to include all the existing artiodactyle ruminating ungulate mammals now classed under the groups Pecora, Tylopoda and Tragulina. By Professor Max Weber it is employed as a collective designation for these groups, together with the extinct Anthracotheroidea and Dichobunoidea; but its use seems best restricted to a general term rather than a definite systematic group. (See Artiodactyla, Pecora, Tylopoda.)
RÜMKER, CARL LUDWIG CHRISTIAN (1788-1862), German astronomer, was born in Mecklenburg on the 28th of May 1788. He served in the British navy from 1807 until 1817, and was director of the school of navigation at Hamburg from 1819 till 1820. In 1821 he went to New South Wales as astronomer at the observatory built at Parramatta by Sir Thomas Brisbane. He returned to Europe in 1830 and took charge of the observatory at Hamburg. His chief work was concerned with the cataloguing of stars: a preliminary catalogue of the stars of the S. hemisphere was published in 1832 at Hamburg, and in 1846-52 he published his great catalogue of 12,000 stars. In 1857 he went to reside at Lisbon, where he died on the 21st of December 1862.
His son, George Friedrich Wilhelm (1832-1900), born on the 31st of December 1832, at Hamburg, was astronomer at the observatory at Durham, England, from 1853 to 1856. He then became assistant at the Hamburg observatory, and in 1862 was appointed director of the same institution. From 1884 he was the Hamburg delegate for the International Earth Measurement. He died on the 3rd of March 1900.
RUNCIMAN, ALEXANDER (1736-1785), Scottish historical painter, was born in Edinburgh in 1736. He studied at Foulis's Academy, Glasgow, and at the age of thirty proceeded to Rome, where he spent five years. It was at this time that he became acquainted with Fuseli. The painter's earliest efforts had been in landscape; he soon, however, turned to historical and imaginative subjects, exhibiting his “Nausicaa at Play with her Maidens” in 1767 at the Free Society of British Artists, Edinburgh. On his return from Italy, after a brief residence in London, where in 1772 he exhibited in the Royal Academy, he settled in Edinburgh, and was appointed master of the Trustees' Academy. He was patronized by Sir James Clerk, whose hall at Penicuik House he decorated with a series of subjects from Ossian. He also executed various religious paintings and an altar-piece in the Cowgate Episcopal Church, Edinburgh, and easel pictures of “Cymon and Iphigenia,” “Sigismunda weeping over the Heart of Tancred,” and “Agrippina landing with the Ashes of Germanicus.” He died in Edinburgh on the 4th of October 1785. His works, while they show high intention and considerable imagination, are frequently defective in form and extravagant in gesture. His younger brother, John Runciman (1744-1766), who accompanied him to Rome, and died at Naples in 1766, was an artist of great promise. His “Flight into Egypt,” in the National Gallery of Scotland, is remarkable for the precision of its execution and the mellow richness of its colouring.
RUNCORN, a market town and river-port in the Northwich parliamentary division of Cheshire, England, on the S. of the estuary of the Mersey 16 m. above Liverpool. Pop. of urban district (1901) 16,491. It is served by the London & North-Western railway, and has extensive communications by canal. The modern prosperity of the town dates from the completion in 1773 of the Bridgewater Canal, which here descends into the Mersey by a flight of locks. Runcorn is a sub-port of Manchester, with which it is connected by the Manchester Ship Canal, and has extensive wharfage and warehouse accommodation. The chief exports are coal, salt and pitch; but there is also a large traffic in potters' materials. A transporter bridge between Runcorn and Widnes, with a suspended car worked by electricity to convey passengers and vehicles (the first bridge of the kind in England) was constructed in 1902. The town possesses shipbuilding yards, iron foundries, rope works, tanneries, and soap and alkali works.
Owing to the Mersey being here fordable at low water, Runcorn was in early times of considerable military importance. On a rock which formerly jutted into the Mersey Æthelfleda erected a castle in 916, but of the building there are now no remains; while the rock was removed to further the cutting of the ship canal. Æthelfleda is also said to have founded a town, but it is not noticed in Domesday. The ferry is noticed in a charter in the 12th century.
RUNDALE (apparently from “to run” and “dale,” valley, originally something separated off, cf. “deal”), the name of a form of occupation of land, somewhat resembling the English “common field” system. The land is divided into discontinuous plots, and cultivated and occupied by a number of tenants to whom it is leased jointly. The system was common in Ireland, especially in the western counties. In Scotland, where the system also existed, it was termed “run-rig” (from “run,” and “rig” or “ridge”).
RUNEBERG, JOHAN LUDVIG (1804-1877), Swedish poet, son of a sea-captain, was born at Jakobstad, in Finland, on the 5th of February 1804. He was brought up by an uncle at Uleåborg, and entered the university of Åbo in the autumn term of 1822. In 1823 he broke off his studies to act as tutor in two quiet Finnish villages, Saarijärvi and Ruovesi, where he gained a thorough knowledge of the popular life and poetry, and on his return to Åbo he began to contribute verses to the local newspapers. In the spring of 1827 he received the degree of doctor of philosophy. The university had been removed after the great fire of 1827 to Helsingfors, where Runeberg became, in 1830, amanuensis to the council of the university. In the same year he published at Helsingfors his first volume of Dikter (Poems), and a collection of Serbiska folksånger (Servian folk songs) translated into Swedish. In 1831 his verse romance of Finnish life, Grafven i Perrho (The Grave in Perrho), received the small gold medal of the Swedish Academy, and the poet married Fredrika Charlotta Tengström, daughter of the archbishop of Finland. In the same year he was appointed university lecturer on Roman literature. In 1832 he published his beautiful little idyll, Elgskyttarne (The Elk-Hunters); and in 1833 a second collection of lyrical poems. He founded in 1832 the Helsingfors Morgonblad, a paper which dealt chiefly with aesthetic and literary questions, and exercised great influence both in Sweden and Finland. In it appeared many of his own poems and tales. His comedy, Friaren från Landet (The Country Lover, 1834), was not a success, but in 1836 he published Hanna, a charming idyll of Finnish country life, written in hexameters. In 1837 Runeberg accepted the chair of Latin at Borgå College, and resided in that little town for the rest of his life.
He was now recognized in his remote Finland retirement as second only to Tegnér among the poets of Sweden. In 1841 he published Nadeschda, a romance of modern Russian life, and Julqvällen (Christmas Eve), another idyll of Finnish life. The third volume of his Dikter bears the date 1843, and the noble cycle of unrhymed verse romances called Kung Fjalor, the setting of which is taken from old Scandinavian legend, was published in 1844. Finally, in 1848, he achieved a great popular success by his splendid series of poems on the war of independence in 1808, when Swedes and Finns fought side by side. The series bears the name of Fänrik Ståls Sägner (Ensign Steel's Stories); a second series appeared in 1860. From 1847 to 1850 the poet was rector of Borgå College, a post which he resigned to take the only journey out of Finland which he ever accomplished, a visit to Sweden in 1851. In 1854 he collected his prose essays into a volume entitled Smärre Berättelser. In the same year he was made president of a committee for the preparation of a national Psalter, which
