| 194 | RAM | RAMIE |
months. His only political work now remembered is an octavo volume in answer to the duchess of Marlborough's "Account of her Conduct," in which he defended the memory of Queen Mary and Queen Anne. He continued anonymously Guthrie's history, under the title of a "History of England during the Reigns of King William, Queen Anne, and George I."
RAM, Battering. See Battering Ram.
RAM, Water. See Hydraulic Ram.
RAMADAN, or Ramazan (the hot month, from Arab. ramida, to glow with heat), the ninth month of the Mohammedan year, during the whole of which a rigorous fast is commanded by the Koran, in commemoration of the first divine revelations received by the prophet. No one is allowed food or drink from sunrise until the appearance of the stars; and those who are unable to observe the ordinance on account of sickness, must fast during the month immediately succeeding their recovery. The Moslems compensate themselves for this rigor during the day by feasting at its close; and Ramadan is succeeded by three days of feasting called the little Bairam, the two corresponding to the Christian Lent and Easter. (See Bairam.)
RAMAYANA. See India, Religions and Religious Literature of, vol. ix., p. 223.
RAMBOUILLET, a town of France, in the department of Seine-et-Oise, 30 m. S. W. of Paris; pop. in 1872, 4,725. It contains a palace built in the shape of a horse shoe, protected by ditches and flanked with five strong towers, in one of which Francis I. died. It is sursounded by beautiful gardens planned by Le Nôtre and a large park. The extensive forest adjoining was the favorite sporting ground of Charles X., who after the triumph of the revolution of July, 1830, in Paris, made an ineffectual show of resistance here. A school for daughters of officers was established in the palace in 1852.
RAMBOUILLET, Catherine de Vivonne, marchioness de, a French leader of society, born in Rome in 1588, died in Paris, Dec. 2, 1665. Her father was Jean de Vivonne, marquis of Pisani, French ambassador in Rome, and her mother was a Roman lady. At an early age she married Charles d'Angennes, afterward marquis de Rambouillet. After arriving in Paris she was shocked by the immorality and puerility of the court circles, gathered round her a select society, and fitted up the hôtel Rambouillet with a special view to its convenience for literary reunions. Here she dispensed generous hospitality for half a century alike to authors, wits, and persons of rank, who now for the first time met on a footing of equality. Her daughter Julie, afterward duchess de Montausier, was the idol of her guests, of whom the women were called les précieuses, and assumed classical and romantic names. The conversational brilliancy which ever afterward distinguished the great saloons of Paris originated here, and the French academy took its rise from one of the literary reunions which grew out of those at the hotel Rambouillet. Voiture, one of the original members of the academy, was the most assiduous and popular habitué of the house; Corneille and Bossuet first came into notice here; Descartes found here warm admirers; Balzac, La Rochefoucault, Malherbe, Mme. de Sévigné, and hosts of other distinguished persons were among the visitors. During the first half of the 17th century these gatherings exerted a noble influence on the French language and literature, but subsequently declined, chiefly owing to the mannerism of Mlle. de Scudéry and other ladies, and never recovered from the effect of Molière's comedy Les précieuses ridicules (1659), though this was aimed particularly against numerous extravagant offshoots of the hôtel Rambouillet.—See Mémoires pour sertir à l'histoire de la société polie en France pendant le dix-septième siècle, by Roederer (Paris, 1835), and Précieux et précieuses, by Charles Livet (1859).
RAMEAU, Jean Philippe, a French composer, born in Dijon, Oct. 25, 1683, died in Paris, Sept. 12, 1764. He was the son of an organist, and was educated for the bar, but at the age of 18 went to Italy as a violinist. He returned to Paris in 1717, and was organist in several churches. He composed anthems, cantatas, and pieces for the organ and the harpsichord, published a Traité de l'harmonie (1722) and Nouveau système de musique théorique (1726), and composed the music for several of Piron's and Voltaire's comedies and other pieces, the best being that to Pellegrin's Hippolyte et Aricie (1733). His numerous operas and theoretical writings are now obsolete.
RAMESES, or Ramses, the name of 14 or 15 Egyptian kings of the 19th and 20th dynasties, called collectively the Ramessids. Rameses I. was the first monarch of the 19th dynasty, beginning, according to Mariette, about 1460 B. C. He was succeeded by Seti I. Rameses II., son of Seti I., was one of the greatest of Egyptian kings, and a detailed account of his reign, as well as of that of Rameses III., in many respects an equally eminent ruler, is given in the article Egypt, vol. vi., p. 462. Very little is known of the reigns of the others.
RAMIE, one of the East Indian names, and the one generally adopted in this country, for the plant producing the fibre called China grass. Its botanical name is Bœhmeria nivea, and it is found either cultivated or wild throughout the greater part of tropical and eastern Asia; the genus (named after G. R. Böhmer, a Wittenberg botanist of the last century) belongs to the urticnceæ or nettle family, and is nearly related to the true nettles; but the plants are not armed with stings, and the fertile flowers, instead of a two- to five-parted calyx (see Nettle), have a tubular calyx, which closely surrounds the small nut-like fruit; one species, a coarse nettle-like weed (B. cylindria), is very common in moist shady places
