emerging only in 1909, first to attack Mr Lloyd Ge0rge's budget in the country as a “revolution,” and then-to the general surprise-to condemn the House of Lords in debate for rejecting it; and in 1910 (see Parliament) he appeared once more to be coming to the front, by the resolutions he carried in regard to the remodelling of the Upper Chamber, when the death of King Edward VII. caused a temporary postponement of the constitutional crisis. In September 1910 he acted as head of the special mission sent to the Austrian court by George V. to announce his accession to the throne,—a selection peculiarly appropriate, and cordially welcomed as such, because of his well-known Austrian sympathies. Indeed, in the East European crisis of 1909 Lord Rosebery had taken a somewhat isolated part in vindicating the attitude of Austria and her right to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina, in opposition to the criticisms generally passed in the English press.
After his retirement from active politics Lord Rosebery continually displayed his great qualities as a public speaker by eloquent and witty addresses on miscellaneous subjects. No public man of his time was more fitted to act as unofficial national orator; none more happy in the touches with which he could adorn a social or literary topic and charm a non-political audience; and on occasion he wrote as well as he spoke. His Pitt has already been mentioned; his Appreciations and Addresses and his Peel (containing a remarkable comment on the position of an English prime minister) were published in 1899; his Napoleon: the Last Phase—an ingenious, if paradoxical, attempt to justify Napoleon's conduct in exile at St Helena-in 1900; his Cromwell in the same year. In 1906 he published an appreciation of his old friend Lord Randolph Churchill, inspired by the publication of Mr Winston Churchill's Life of his father. In its detached yet intimate way, this is a model of the art by which a good judge of men, possessed at the same time of a just historical sense, may, from the point of view of a contemporary on the opposite side in politics, correct the perspective of an official biography written under the limitations of filial obligation, and give tone and value to the picture of an interesting personality.
Lord Rosebery's family consisted of two sons and two daughters. His eldest son, Lord Dalmeny (b. Jan. 1882), who in 1909 married a daughter of Lord Henry Grosvenor, 3rd son of the 1st duke of Westminster, entered parliament in 1906 as Liberal member for Mid Lothian, but retired in 1910; he was well known as a cricketer, captaining the Surrey eleven in 1905 and 1906. The younger son, the Hon. Neil Primrose (b. Dec. 1882), took more actively than his brother to a political career, and in January 1910 was returned as a Liberal for the Wisbech division of Cambridgeshire. The elder daughter, Lady Sybil, in 1903 married Captain Charles Grant; the younger, Lady Margaret, in 1899 married the 1st earl of Crewe. (H. Ch.)
ROSECRANS, WILLIAM STARKE (1819–1898), American
soldier, was born in Kingston, Ohio, on the 6th of September
1819, and graduated in 1842 from the U.S. Military Academy,
being appointed to the engineers. After serving (1843–47) as
assistant professor at West Point, and in fort construction,
he resigned (April 1854) from the army and went into business
in Cincinnati. On the outbreak of the Civil War Rosecrans
volunteered for service under McClellan and helped raise the Ohio
“Home Guards,” with which he served in the West Virginian
operations of 1861 in the rank of brigadier-general. He was second
in command to McClellan during this campaign, and succeeded
to the command when that officer was called to Washington.
In the latter part of 1861 Rosecrans conducted further operations
in the same region with great skill and success, and early
in 1862 he was transferred to the West as a major-general of
volunteers. He took part in the operations against Corinth,
and when General John Pope was ordered to Virginia, Rosecrans
took over command of the Army of the Mississippi with which
he fought the successful battles of Iuka and Corinth. Soon afterwards
he was ordered to replace D. C. Buell in command of the
forces, renamed the Army of the Cumberland about the same time.
In December he advanced against General Braxton Bragg, and
on the 31st of December to the 3rd of January was fought the
bloody and indecisive battle of Stone River (Murfreesboro), after
which Bragg withdrew his army to the southward. In 1863
Rosecrans, refusing to advance until the isolation of Vicksburg
(farther west) was assured, did not take the offensive until
late in June. The operations thus begun were most skilfully
conducted, and Bragg was forced back to Chattanooga (q.v.),
whence he had to retire on being once more outmanœuvred.
But Rosecrans sustained a great defeat at the battle of Chickamauga
(q.v.), and was soon besieged in Chattanooga. He was
then relieved from his command. Later he did good service
in Missouri, and in March 1865 he was made brevet major-general
U.S.A. He resigned in 1867, and in the following
year became minister to Mexico. Subsequently he was engaged
in many railway and industrial enterprises in that country,
as also in California. He was a representative in Congress from
California, 1881–85, and register of the treasury, 1885–93.
Under an act of Congress he was on the 2nd of March 1889
restored to the rank of brigadier-general, and retired. He
died near Redondo, Cal., on the 11th of March 1898. On the
17th of May 1902 his body was reinterred with military honours
in the National Cemetery at Arlington, in the presence of
President Roosevelt, members of the cabinet and many of his
campaigning comrades.
ROSEGGER, PETER (1843– ), Austrian poet and novelist,
known down to 1894 under the pseudonym Petri Kettenfeier,
was born at Alpl near Krieglach in Upper Styria, on the 31st
of July 1843, the son of a peasant. Until his seventeenth year
he was employed as a farm hand and received no regular school
education, though he learnt reading and writing from a retired
schoolmaster who lived near. Unfit, owing to physical weakness,
for the hard labour of agriculture, he was apprenticed to a
journeyman tailor, and on his wanderings employed his leisure
hours in educating himself. He soon composed poems and
wrote stories. Some of these productions he sent in 1864 to
Dr Svoboda, the editor of the Graz Tagespost, who,
recognizing Rosegger's extraordinary talent, interested himself
in the young author, and with the assistance of friends enabled
him to study (from 1865–69) at the Handelsakademie of Graz.
In 1869, encouraged by Robert Hamerling, Rosegger published
his first work, a volume of poems in Styrian dialect, Zither und
Hackbrett, which immediately established his reputation. As
a result, the provincial diet of Styria accorded him a substantial
stipendium (scholarship) for three years, which enabled him
to supplement his studies by foreign travel. He now devoted
himself entirely to authorship, and in 1876 founded the monthly
periodical Der Heimgarten. On the occasion of the centenary
of its reorganization the University of Heidelberg conferred
upon him, in 1903, the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy.
Rosegger is one of the most fertile authors of recent times. His fresh natural style, sound judgment and his fascinating descriptions of Alpine scenery and the life of its inhabitants have made him one of the most popular authors of Austria and Germany. These characteristics are displayed to great advantage in Die Schriften des Waldschulmeisters (1875), Aus meinem Handwerkerleben (1880), Alpengeschichten (1896), Als ich noch jung war (1895), and in the love-story Mann und Weib (1879), while his simple religious mind is shown in Mein Himmelreich (1901), Erdsegen (1900) and Das ewige Licht (1897), and his attachment to friends in Gute Kameraden (1893) and Persönliche Erinnerungen an Robert Hamerling (1891). Among his other works may be mentioned a volume of poems, Gedichte (1891), a popular play, Am Tage des Gerichts (1892), two books for boys, Waldferien (188) and Waldjugend (1900), and the stories Das Sünderglöckl (1904), Wildlinge (1906) and I.N.R.I. Frohe Botschaft eines armen Sünders (1905), which has also been translated into English. He has also written several works which are autobiographical in character, such as Waldheimat (1873) and Mein Weltleben (1898).
Rosegger’s Ausgewählte Schriften appeared in thirty volumes (1881–94); a popular edition (1895–1900); his Schriften in steirischer Mundart (3 vols., 1894–96). See also A. V. Svoboda, P. K. Rosegger (1886); A. Stern, Studien zur Literatur der Gegenwart (1895); and H. Mobius, P. Rosegger (1903).
ROSELLINI, IPPOLITO (1800–1843), Italian Egyptologist, was born at Pisa. He studied under Mezzofanti at Bologna, and
