estate and honors were forfeited. The king's troops dismantled the castle of Yion-donnen, situated on an island in a bay that fronts the Isle of Sky, where he had erected his magazine. Ross was chiefly peopled by the Mackenzies and Frasers, two warlike Highland clans. There are fisheries carried on along the coast; but their chief traffic is in sheep and black cattle. The county sends a member to the imperial parliament; and Tayne and Dingwall join with Dornock, Wick, and Kirkwall, in electing a representative for these boroughs.

Ross, an ancient and populous town of Herefordshire, 115 miles from London, with a good trade, on the river Wye. It was made a free borough by Henry III. It is famous for cyder. Its market and fairs are well stored with cattle and other provisions. At the west end of it there is a fine broad causeway, constructed by Mr. John Kyrle, the celebrated Man of Ross, who also raised the spire 100 feet, and enclosed a piece of ground with a stone wall, and sunk a reservoir in its centre, for the use of the inhabitants of the town. He died in 1714, aged ninety, with the blessing of all who knew him, both rich and poor.

Ross, New, a borough town of Ireland, in the county of Wexford, and province of Leinster, on the side of a hill sixty-seven miles from Dublin. It was formerly walled, and some of the gates still remain. It lies on the Barrow, which is here very deep, and ships of burden can come up to the quay. The church is large, but the custom-house and quay are both small. It is one of the staple ports for exporting wool; beef and butter are the principal articles exported. It has a barrack for a troop of horse, and a ferry into the county of Kilkenny. Near this town is a charter-school. It was formerly fortified, and adorned with many religious houses, among which was a crowded friary, built on the summit of a hill in the town; but, one of the friars having killed a principal inhabitant, the people rose, put the friars to death and destroyed the friary; on the site of which the monastery of St. Saviour, for conventual Franciscans, was afterwards erected by Sir John Devereux; and the east end of this last building is now the parish church. A friary for Eremites, following the rule of St. Augustine, was also founded here in the reign of Edward III. This town was the scene of a very bloody battle, between the Irish rebels and the king's troops, on the 5th of June, 1798. Each party was alternately in possession of the town, and the greater part of it was burnt down during the contest. About 3000 of the rebels were killed, but each party boasted of victory. New Ross lies eleven miles north by east of Waterford, and nineteen south of Wexford.

Ross (Alexander), a very voluminous writer, who has been often confounded with the bishop of Edinburgh. His best work is his Ilavoeßea, or, A View of all Religions. Butler, in his Hudibras, refers to the number and extent of his writings,

There was an ancient sage philosopher,
Who had read Alexander Ross over.

Ross (David), a celebrated English actor, born in 1728, he was disinherited by his father for going upon the stage. He had been educated at Westminster school; and made his first appearance upon Covent Garden Theatre in 1753, where he continued till 1778, when he was left out of the engagement by the managers, and reduced to great distress; though he still had a small annuity from a mortgage on the Edinburgh Theatre, of which he was previously patentee. But one day he was agreeably surprised by receiving a bank note for £60, with an anonymous line, mentioning that it came from an old school-fellow, and directing him to a banker from whom he would receive the same sum annually. This was continued for life, but the generous donor was still unknown, till the banker's clerk inadvertently blundered out the name of admiral Barrington. In 1788 he was laid aside from the stage by breaking his leg. He had married the celebrated Fanny Murray. He died at London, September 14th, 1790. ROSSO, or MAIKE ROUX, an eminent Italian painter, born at Florence in 1496. He was entirely self taught, and acquired great skill, both in history and portrait painting. In the church of St. Salvator, at Rome, is a fine picture by him of the beheading of John the Baptist. He died in 1541, aged forty-five.

ROSSANO, a town of Naples, in Calabria Citra, situated on a rocky eminence. It is the see of an archbishop, and the environs are fertile in olives, capers, and saffron. It is said that, so lately as the sixteenth century, the inhabitants of this town (about 70,000) spoke the Greek language, and followed the rites of the Greek church. Thirty miles north-east of Cosenza, and 110 N. N. E. of Regio.

ROS SOLIS, a spirituous liquor, composed of burnt brandy, sugar, cinnamon, and milk; and sometimes perfumed with a little musk. It had its name from being at first prepared from the juice of the plant ros solis, or drosera.

ROSTOV, a town of European Russia, in the government of Jaroslav, on the lake Nero. It is divided into the town and suburb, and is above five miles in circumference. It contains an ancient cathedral, an archiepiscopal palace, a seminary, and five churches; and carries on an intercourse with Astracan, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. Of the lower classes a number are gardeners, and some of them go to Poland for employment. Inhabitants 5000. Forty miles S. $. W. of Jaroslav.

Rosrov, a fortified town of the south-east of European Russia, on the Don, between Azov and Tscherkask.

ROSTRATED, adj. Lat. rostratus. Adorned with beaks of ships.

He brought to Italy an hundred and ten rostrated galleys of the fleet of Mithridates. Arbuthnot.

ROS'TRUM, n. s. Lat. rostrum. The scaffold whence orators anciently harangued.

Vespasian erected a column in Rome, upon whose top was the prow of a ship, in Latin rostrum, which gave name to the common pleading place in Rome, where orations were made, being built of the prows of those ships of Antium which the Romans overthrew. Peacham on Drawing.

Myself shall mount the rostrum in his favour, And strive to gain his pardon from the people.

Addison.

ROSTRUM, the beak, an important part of the ancient ships of war, called by the Greeks μẞolov, made of wood, fortified with brass, and fastened to the prow so as to strike the enemy's vessels and sink them. The first rostra were long and high, but afterwards they were made short and strong by the contrivance of Aristo, a Corinthian and placed so low that they could pierce the enemy's ships under water. Also a part of the Roman forum, wherein orations, pleadings, funeral harangues, &c., were delivered. The rostrum was a kind of chapel, furnished with a suggestum, or eminence, where the orator stood to speak. It was so called because at first adorned with the rostra or beaks of the ships taken from the Antialæ in the first naval victory obtained by the Romans.

ROT, v. n., v. a., & n. s. ROT'TEN, adj.

ROT TENNESS, n. s.

Saxon, notan ; Belg. and Swed. rotten. To putrefy; lose the cohesion of parts: make patrid: putridity; a disease among sheep: rotten and rottenness corresponding in sense.

Who brass as rotten wood; and steel no more
Regards than weeds.
Sandys's Paraphrase.
They were left moiled with dirt and mire, by rea-
son of the deepness of the rotten way.

Knolles's History of the Turks.
Shakspeare.

A man may rot even here.
From hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot. Id.
Trust not to rotten planks.
Id.

O bliss-breeding sun, drawn from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb Infect the air.

Diseased ventures,

Id. Timon.

Temple.

Frowning Auster seeks the southern sphere, And rots, with endless rain, the' unwholesome year. Dryden.

They serewood from the rotten hedges took, And seeds of latent fire from flints provoke. Id. Brandy scarce prevents the sudden rot Of freezing nose and quick decaying feet. Philips. Being more nearly exposed to the air and weather, the bodies of the animals would suddenly corrupt and rot; the bones would likewise all rot in time, except those which were secured by the extraordinary strength of their parts. Woodward.

If the matter stink and be oily, it is a certain sign of rottenness. Wiseman's Surgery.

Ror, a well known disease in the liver of sheep, and other domestic animals, producing general marasmus, and generally evinced by the existence of large quantities of the liver fluke, or fasciola hepatica, in this organ. It has been ascribed to a variety of causes: yet the real cause is still doubtful. See SHEEP.

ROTA, a town in Andalusia, Spain, situated on the north side of Cadiz Bay. It has a castle and monastery, but is most remarkable for the wine which is produced on the hills around. It is called in England tent, and is considered one of the best kinds produced in the peninsula. Inhabitants 6000. Seven miles N. N. W. of Cadiz.

ROTA ARISTOTELICA, or Aristotle's Wheel, chanics concerning the motion or rotation of a a name given to a celebrated problem in mewheel about its axis; so called because first noticed by Aristotle. The difficulty is this: while a circle makes a revolution on its centre, advancing at the same time in a right line along a plane, it describes, on that plane, a right line which is equal to its circumference. Now, if this circle, which may be called the deferent, carry with it another smaller circle, concentric with it, like the nave of a coach wheel; then this little circle, or nave, will describe a line in the time of the revolution which shall be equal to that of the large wheel or circumference itself; because its centre advances in a right line as fast as that of the wheel does, being in reality the same with it. The solution given by Aristotle is no more than a good explication of the difficulty. The great Galileo next attempted it, but failed, as did also Tacquet, with no better success. After the fruitless attempts of so many great men, M. Dortous de Meyran, a French gentleman, sent a solution to the Academy of Louville and Soulmon appointed for that purSciences; which being examined by Messrs de pose, they made their report that it was satisfactory. The solution, is to this effect: the wheel of a coach is only acted on, or drawn in a right line; its rotation or circular motion arises purely from the resistance of the ground upon which it is applied. Now this resistance is equal to the force which draws the wheel in the right line, inasmuch as it defeats that direction; of consequence the causes of the two motions, the one right and the other circular, are equal. And hence the wheel describes a right line on the ground equal to its circumference. As for the nave of the wheel, the case is otherwise. It is

drawn in a right line by the same force as the wheel; but it only turns round because the wheel does so, and can only turn in the same time with it. Hence it follows, that its circular velocity is less than that of the wheel, in the ratio of the two circumferences; and, therefore, its circular motion is less than the rectilinear one. Since then it necessarily describes a right line equal to that of the wheel, it can only do it partly by sliding, and partly by revolving, the sliding part being more or less as the nave itself is smaller or larger.

ROTALA, in botany; a genus of the monc gynia order and triandria class of plants: CAL tridentate: COR. none: CAPS. trilocular and poly

spermous. Species one only; an annual of the East Indies.

ROTARI (Peter), an eminent Italian painter of history and portraits, born at Verona about 1727. In 1756 he went to Petersburg, where he painted the empress Catharine II. and others of the imperial family. ROTARY, adj. ROTATION, n. s. ROTATOR. gives a circular motion.

Lat. rota. Whirling as a wheel the act or state of whirling: that which

Of this kind is some disposition of bodies to rotation from east to west; as the main float and refloat of the sea, by consent of the universe as part of the diurnal motion. Bacon.

By a kind of circulation or rotation, arts have their successive invention, perfection, and traduction from one people to another. Hale.

The axle-trees of chariots take fire by the rapid rotation of the wheels. Newton's Optics. This articulation is strengthened by strong muscles; on the inside by the triceps and the four little

rotators.

Wiseman.

In fond rotation spread the spotted wing, And shiver every feather with desire. Thomson. ROTATION is a term which expresses the motion of the different parts of a solid body round an axis, and distinct from the progressive motion which it may have in its revolution round a distant point. The earth has a rotation round its axis, which produces the vicissitudes of day and night; while its revolution round the sun, combined with the obliquity of the equator, produces the varieties of summer and winter. The mechanism of this kind of motion, or the relation which subsists between the intensity of the moving forces, modified as it may be by the manner of application and the velocity of rotation, is highly interesting, both to the speculative philosopher and to the practical engineer. The precession of the equinoxes, and many other astronomical problems of great importance and difficulty, receive their solutions from this quarter: and the actual performance of our most valuable machines cannot be ascertained by the mere principles of equilibrium, but require a previous acquaintance with certain general propositions of rotatory motion. When a solid body turns round an axis, retaining its shape and dimensions, every particle is actually describing a circle round this axis, and the axis passes through the centre of the circle, and is perpendicular to its plane. In any instant of the motion, the particle is moving at right angles with the radius vector, or line joining it with its centre of rotation. This subject is by no means a speculation of mere curiosity, interesting to none but mathematicians: one of the noblest arts practised by man is capable of receiving very great improvement from a complete knowledge of it; we mean the art of Seamanship. The consideration of it, therefore, might be pursued to a considerable extent-but few professional seamen have the preparatory knowledge accessary for the purpose.

ROTE, n. s. Sax. ɲor, merry; old Fr. rote. A harp; a lyre. Obsolete: Fr. routine seems to be the origin of rote, mere memory.

Wele couth he sing, and playen on a rote.

Chaucer.

ROTHENBURG ON THE TAUBER, an old town of Bavarian Franconia, on a mountain near the Tauber. It has a high school and a public library, said to contain valuable manuscripts. It contains, also, a square and several public buildings: the water in the fountains is raised by machinery from the river. Population 5700. Twenty-eight miles S. S. E. of Wurzburg.

ROTHERAM, or ROTHERHAM, a markettown and parish of the West Riding of York, situated near the conflux of the Rother and Don, six miles north-east of Sheffield and 158 from London. The principal manufactures are those of iron and steel, and there is a very extensive brewery. At the village of Masborough, sepapated from this town by a bridge, there are very extensive manufactories of all kinds of cast and wrought iron, and also of tinned plates and steel goods. The coal and iron are chiefly sup plied from mines in the neighbourhood. The trade of Rotherham is materially assisted by the navigation of the Don. The streets are narrow and irregular and the church is a large building in the form of a cross. It had formerly an ancient chapel on the bridge over the Don. In the town are also two chapels for dissenters, a charityschool, and the Rotherham Independent Academy, for the education of young men proposing to become independent clergymen. Rotherham market is one of the most considerable in Yorkshire for fat cattle and sheep. Here is a commercial bank. Market on Monday.

ROTHERAM, or ROTHERHAM (John), M. D., a celebrated English physician, the son of a dissenting clergyman, tutor of an academy at Kendal, where he was born in 1719. Under his father's instructions he acquired classical learning, and a very general knowledge of the sciences. In 1740 he was sent to the University of Edinburgh, where professor M'Laurin, observing his talents, advised him to give a course of lectures on experimental philosophy. These lectures were well attended; and the profits were devoted to the Royal Infirmary, then building in that city. After this he went to London, studied under Dr. Smellie; and then began practice at Hexham; but soon after settled at Newcastle, where he was highly respected. In 1770 be published a work, entitled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Nature and Properties of Water, wherein he gave an analysis of the Newcastle and many other waters. He married Catharine, daughter of Nicholas Roberts, Esq., of Hexham, whom he left a widow with seven children, dying on the 18th of March, 1787, aged sixtyeight.

ROTHESAY, or ROTHSAY, a royal borough of Scotland, capital of the island and county of Bute. It is well built, and excellently situated for commerce, having a good harbour with a safe anchorage at the bottom of an extensive bay, on the north-west side of the island; opposite to Loch Steven in Cowal. It was erected into a royal borough in 1400, by king Robert III., when its castle was the royal residence. It was then a considerable town, but afterwards declined greatly; so that in 1762 many of the houses were in ruins, and it had only one decked vessel, of no great burden. But under the auspices of the earls of Bute it has rapidly improved. A large cotton mill was erected in 1778. This horough unites with Ayr, Irvine, Inverary, and Campbelton, in electing a representative in the imperial parliament. Duke of Rothesay was anciently a title of the prince of Scotland, and was accompanied with suitable revenues, powers, and privileges; and is still one of the titles of the prince of Wales. The only relic of antiquity in this borough is the castle, the remains of which are so completely covered with ivy that its walls are hardly visible. The natives still point out the banqueting rooms and bed-chambers of king Robert II. and III. who inhabited it. It afterwards became the chief residence of the Stuarts till 1685, when it was burnt by the duke of Argyle. It lies seventy miles west of Edinburgh.

ROTHMAN (Christopher), a learned German astronomer of the sixteenth century. He became astronomer to the landgrave of Hesse. He wrote A Treatise on Comets; and Letters on Astronomy to Tycho Brahe. He died in 1592.

ROTSCHEN-SALM, a sea-port of the Gulf of Finland, at the mouth of the Kymmene, eleven miles W. S. W. of Fredericksham. It has a harbour capable of containing the whole fleet of Russian galleys, and forty ships of the line, and is defended by two forts.

ROTTENSTONE, a mineral found in Derbyshire and used by mechanics for all sorts of finer grinding and polishing, and sometimes for cutting of stones. It is a species of tripoli.

ROTTERDAM, an important commercial city of Holland, on the Maese, which here resembles an arm of the sea. Its plan is triangular, the longest side (above a mile and a half in extent), stretching along the bank of the Maese, at about twenty miles from its mouth. The town is surrounded by a moat, and entered by six gates towards the land, and four towards the water, but has no fortifications. It is also traversed from north to west by the Rotte, a river, or broad canal, which here joins the Maese, and which seems to give name to the city. It is further intersected more than most other towns in Holland, by canals, which divide the half of the town near the river into several insulated spots connected by bridges. Thus, the first stately row of houses facing the Maese, and called the Boomtjes, has behind it a broad and deep canal, parallel to the river. This section is succeeded by a triangular, and next by an oblong division, each containing several streets and quays. Large vessels unload in two great inlets from the Maese, one stretching to the west, and

the other to the north. South-east of the town are two canals, with a basin and dock for the repair of shipping.

The canals are almost all bordered with trees. Next to the Boomtjes comes the Haring-vliet. The other streets are in general long and narrow, and several of them so similar that a stranger has much difficulty in distinguishing them. The houses are convenient, and the peculiar style of Dutch architecture is here usually prevalent. In many the ground floor is not inhabited, but serves with its gate and arched passage as an entrance to the warehouses. The principal public buildings are the exchange (finished in 1736), the church of St. Lawrence, from the top of which may be seen the Hague to the northwest, Leyden to the north, and Dort to the south-east; the old town-house, the admiralty, the academy, the theatre, and the extensive buildings of the East India Company. Rotterdam contains also several commodious marketplaces, an English Episcopal and a Scotch Presbyterian church. Of scientific collections, it has a cabinet of antiquities, a cabinet of natural history, and a public library. It has also an academy of sciences, instituted in 1771. Rotterdam, as a commercial city, has superior accommodation to Amsterdam, the Maese being open, and the passage free from ice, earlier than in the Zuyder Zee, and a single tide sufficing to carry vessels to the German Ocean. It became a privileged town, and was surrounded with walls, as early as the thirteenth century, owing, like other towns in Holland and Flanders, its increase to the facility of communicating by water not only with the sea, but with the interior. The time of its greatest prosperity was the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but after 1795 the invasion of the French, and the war with England suspended the commerce of Holland. It had begun to recover in 1802, when it was again rapidly depressed by the renewal of war; but has recently revived once more. The following is a list of the ports from which most of the vessels arrived in 1817:

Addison.

The cross figure of the Christian temples is more proper for spacious buildings than the rotund of the heathen the eye is much better filled at first entering the rotund, but such as are built in the form of a cross give us a greater variety. Rotundity is an emblem of eternity, that has neither beginning nor end. Id. on Medals. ROVE, v. n. & v. a. I Danish roffver, to RO'VER, n. s. range for plunder. To ramble; range; wander: wander over: a rover is, a wanderer; a robber; pirate: at rover is an obsolete phrase for at random, without particular aim. Thou'st years upon thee, and thou art too full Of the wars surfeits, to go rove with one That's yet unbruised.

Shakspeare. Coriolanus. This is the case of rovers by land, as some cantons in Arabia. Bacon's Holy War. Roving the field, I chanced A goodly tree far distant to behold, Loaden with fruit of fairest colors.

Milton.

Nature shoots not at rovers; even inanimates, though they know not their perfection, yet are they not carried on by a blind unguided impetus; but that which directs them knows it. Glanville's Scepsis.

Providence never shoots at rovers: there is an arrow that flies by night as well as by day, and God is the person that shoots it.

South's Sermons.

Men of great reading shew their talents on the meanest subjects; this is a kind of shooting at rovers. Addison.

Cloacina, as the town she roved
A mortal scavenger she saw, she loved.

Gay.

ROUBILLIAC (Louis Francis), an eminent modern sculptor, a native of France, who settled in England in the reign of George I.; and long stood at the head of his profession. He executed a statue of Handel for Vauxhall, and another of Sir Isaac Newton for Trinity College, Cambridge; but was chiefly employed on sepulchral monuments, among which may be mentioned that of John duke of Argyle in Westminsterabbey; of George I., and of the duke of Somerset, in the senate-house at Cambridge; and his monuments for the duke and duchess of Montagu, at Warkton, in Northamptonshire. Lord Chesterfield said, Roubilliac was our only statuary, and that other artists were mere stonecutters.

He had some talent for poetry, and wrote some tolerable French satires. His death took place January 11, 1762, at his residence in St. Martin's Lane.

ROUEN, a large and populous city in the north of France, once the capital of Normandy, at present of the department of the Lower Seine (see NORMANDY), is situated on the right bank of the Seine, in a fertile and pleasant country. Its form is an irregular oval, two miles in general straight, are very narrow, so that here in length and in one breadth. The streets, though is no room for foot pavement; and, as the French have not yet adopted the plan of underground sewers, the eye is constantly offended with a stream of filth running along the middle of the street. A number of houses are of wood, builtin an antiquated style, the walls often projecting as they ascend. The most agreeable part of the town is that which adjoins the Seine, the quays being spacious, and bordered with good houses, while the river and its islands, with the beautiful 'Cours,' a walk extending along the opposite bank, the esplanade, and the neighbouring hill of St. Catherine, about 400 feet high, form an assemblage of pleasant objects. The squares are small and insignificant; the one called the Marche aux Veaux contains the statue of the warlike maid of Orleans, who was burned here by the English, as a sorceress, in 1430. The ramparts, being levelled and lined with trees, coning to Paris, Havre, and other places, are bordered tain pleasant walks; and the public roads leadwith trees. The objects of antiquarian research in this city have engaged our attention in the article already referred to. The town-house, or municipality, is the chief civil edifice worth notice; and the barracks are large and commodious. The great hospital is a handsome modern building; and in public markets Rouen is not inferior to any city of France. Of the curiosities of the place, the most interesting, perhaps, is the bridge of boats over the Seine. Rouen is celebrated for its cotton manufactures, but here, as in other parts of France, the goods are less remarkable for taste in the pattern than durability. Rouen has likewise manufactures of woollens, linens, and, to a smaller extent, of paper, iron ware, hats, pottery, wax cloth; also sugar refineries. Dyeing both of woollen and cotton is also conducted with care and success. The whole of its manufacturing industry is computed to give employment to 50,000 persons, young and old. The great disadvantages of Rouen are the want of fuel, and the dearness of provisions: at the distance of 100 miles to the westward the family of a workman can be supported at a reduction of thirty per cent. But, during the exclusion of British commerce under Buonaparte, it flourished largely; particularly considering its further disadvantage in point of navigation. It is forty-five miles east of Havre, and eighty W. N. W. of Paris.

ROVEREDO, a large and fine town of the Tyrol, Austria, on the left bank of the Adige, was once subject to Venice; but since 1509 it has been under the protection of the empire, and enjoyed privileges which soon made it a staple for the silk manufacture. This branch of industry was at its height about the middle of the eighteenth century. The environs produce tobacco, which, as well as the leather of the town, forms an article of export. There are no