RUMBOLD, Richard, Colonel, a noted English republican, was originally an officer in the army of Cromwell. At the Restoration he became a maltster, and was the owner of the building from which the Rye-house plot took its name. He was deeply implicated in that conspiracy; but while several of his associates were executed, he succeeded in making his escape to Holland. In 1685 he joined the expedition of Argyll to Scotland, and displayed great good sense, as well as courage, throughout that mismanaged and unfortunate attempt. When the insurgents were finally dispersed, Rumbold and Colonel Ayloffe, another English exile, having been separated from their companions, were attacked by a party of militia; and after a desperate resistance, in which Rumbold was mortally wounded, they were captured and carried to Edinburgh. He was immediately brought to trial, in order that he might not prevent his public execution by his death, and was of course found guilty and condemned to be executed within a few hours. He solemnly denied as a dying man that he had conspired to assassinate the king, but vindicated the part he had taken in Argyll's insurrection. It was a sacred duty, he said, incumbent upon all freemen to resist tyranny and oppression; and he never would believe that Providence had sent the greater part of mankind into the world saddled and bridled, with some few ready-booted and spurred to ride them.—J. T.
RUMFORD, Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count, was born in 1752 at Woburn, Massachusetts. He settled as a schoolmaster in Rumford (now Concord), New Hampshire, where an advantageous marriage gave him leisure to pursue scientific studies for their own sake. On the outbreak of the Revolution he espoused the cause of the mother country, and gave valuable information to the British authorities. He was kindly received in London by Lord George Germaine, the head of the American department, who sent him back to New York to raise a regiment of dragoons, of which he was appointed lieutenant-colonel. On his return to England in 1784, he was knighted by the king. Travelling on the continent soon after, an acquaintance he formed with some members of the reigning family in Bavaria led to his appointment to an important office in Munich. He introduced many salutary reforms into the system of military administration in Bavaria, grappled boldly with the social evil of mendicity, which threatened to overgrow the entire state, and established a poor law which was at once strict and truly humane. He introduced the potato into general use in Bavaria, and promoted domestic economy among the people by the invention of stoves, and by disseminating instructions for the preparation and cooking of food. He returned to England in 1799, having been ennobled by the duke of Bavaria with the title of count. Warming and ventilation of houses continued to occupy his attention, and his improvements in chimneys and fireplaces were generally adopted throughout the United Kingdom. In 1796 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, to whom he gave £1000 in trust for the reward of any discoverer of a new scientific truth with respect to light or heat. In the course of Rumford's experiments on heat, he established for the first time the fact of the unlimited productive heat from a limited quantity of matter, by the expenditure of mechanical power in friction; a fact subversive of the long prevalent hypothesis of a "subtle fluid" as the cause of heat. The exact relation between the quantity of mechanical power expended, and the quantity of heat produced, was not ascertained until long afterwards.—(See Joule.) He took an active part in the foundation of the Royal Institution. He contributed many papers to the Philosophical Transactions; published a series of "Essays, experimental, political, economical, and philosophical," which extend to four volumes; and projected a great work "On the nature and effects of order." After the death of his American wife, he married Madame Lavoisier, the widow of the celebrated chemist, but was subsequently separated from her. He passed his last days in singular retirement at Auteuil, and died on 21st August, 1814.—R. H.
RUMOHR, Karl Friedrich von, a distinguished German amateur and art-writer, was born near Dresden in 1785. He studied painting under Fiorillo at Gottingen, and in 1804 visited Italy, where at Naples he commenced the formation of his collection of antiquities. In 1805 he returned to Germany, and first appeared as an art-writer in 1811. He revisited Italy in 1815, and at Florence commenced the researches for his very valuable and most important work, the "Italienische Forschungen," published in Berlin in 1827, in two vols., 8vo. A third volume was added in 1831, after a third visit to Italy in 1828. This is a most valuable compilation, and has secured a lasting reputation for its author. It is derived from original documents inspected in the various public buildings of Florence; and Rumohr has cleared up many obscurities in Vasari, and corrected many of that author's errors. He is the author of many other works, which are all enumerated in the notice in the supplement to the Penny Cyclopædia, from the German Kunstblatt. He died of apoplexy at Dresden, July 25, 1843, while on a journey to visit the baths of Bohemia. He had latterly purchased a house and settled at Lübeck.—R. N. W.
RUMPH or RUMPHIUS, a distinguished Dutch botanist, was born at Hanau about the middle of the seventeenth century, and died at Amboyna in 1706. He went as a medical man to Amboyna, and acquired great influence there. He became chief magistrate and president of the Mercantile Association. He paid great attention to the plants of the Spice Islands. He published "Herbarium Amboinense," containing an account of the plants of Amboyna and the adjacent islands. A genus of plants is named Rumphia.—J. H. B.
RUNCIMAN, Alexander, was born at Edinburgh in 1736, and was taught landscape painting there by John Norris; but failing to sell his pictures, Runciman in 1760 turned his attention to historical painting; and in 1766 visited Italy, where in Rome he made the acquaintance of Fuseli the Swiss scholar and painter, and of a somewhat kindred spirit with Runciman. He returned to Scotland in 1771, and succeeded Pavillion as director of the Edinburgh academy, with a salary of £120 a year. In 1772 he visited London, and lodged with Hogarth's widow, then in poor circumstances. He died suddenly before his own door on the 21st of October, 1785, aged only forty-eight. Runciman's best works are his sketches, a class of work in which rigid exactness of proportion is not required. He had considerable powers of invention and composition, but was incorrect and extravagant in his execution, his figures being very disagreeably elongated. His chief work is the Ossian series of twelve large pictures for Sir J. Clerk of Pennycuick, of which the "Death of Agandecca" has found its admirers; but all the compositions are extravagant and conspicuous for defects of style.—(Allan Cunningham, Lives of Eminent British Painters, &c.)—R. N. W.
* RUNEBERG, Johan Ludvig, the greatest living Swedish poet, was born at Jacobstad in Finland in 1804. In his eighteenth year he became a student at the university of Abo, and when the university seat was changed to Helsingfors, continued to prosecute his studies there, being for some years also the editor of a newspaper. In 1837 he was appointed to a post in the gymnasium at Borgå, where he has since lived in comparative retirement, loved as a man and poet, and honoured with a pension from the Russian government, and with both Swedish and Danish orders of knighthood. Runeberg, although borrowing alike from the classic and romantic schools, is unquestionably entitled to the appellation of an original poet. His "Madeschda" and "Kung Fialar" are noble productions; and his "Fänrik Ståls Sägner" (Stories of Ensign Stål), a series of ballad poetry on the last Finland war, awakened universal admiration.—J. J.
RUNGE, Otto Philipp, a celebrated German painter, was born at Wolgast in Neu Verpommern in 1776. He studied at Hamburg, whence he proceeded in 1798 to Copenhagen, where he particularly distinguished himself. In 1801 he went to Dresden, where he executed numerous designs—among others several from the poems of Göthe, which were greatly admired by Tieck and by the poet himself. One of his best oil paintings, "The Triumph of Love," was painted at the suggestion of Tieck. Runge returned to Hamburg in 1804, and there, among other things, produced a series of designs illustrative of the Seasons, which attracted considerable attention, and on account of their obscurity called forth some witticisms—amongst others from Göthe. Runge announced his intention of publishing a poetical commentary on them, but it did not appear during his life. He died December 2, 1810. He wrote a treatise on the Relations of Colours, "Farbenkugel," 1810. His "Writings and Letters" were published at Hamburg in 2 vols. 8vo, 1841.—J. T—e.
RUNJEET SINGH, ruler of Lahore and Cashmere, the founder of the Sikh power in India, was born on the 2nd of November, 1780. His father was a distinguished commander of one of the twelve "missuls," or associations of Sikh chiefs, who in a wild way governed the Punjaub and the country eastward, as far as the Jumna. Runjeet's father died when he was
