Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/472

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452
ROUMELIA
ROUSSEAU

on which occasion there were disturbances. The prime minister, Prince Ghika, was obliged to resign for not preventing them, and Prince Charles himself would have resigned if the people had not urged him to remain. Persecutions of the Jews, who are obnoxious to the poorer classes on account of their great success in trade, led to remonstrances from abroad, and in 1874 municipal rights were granted them, on condition of having attained the grade of under officer in the army, or of producing a diploma of a Roumanian or foreign university, or of owning a manufactory employing not fewer than 50 persons ; but as hardly any of the Jews can comply with these conditions, the rights conferred are purely nominal. Roumania pays an annual tribute to Turkey, which in 1874-'5 amounted to $181,825, of which $118,650 was for Wallachia, and the rest for Moldavia ; but in most other respects the country is virtually independent. Yet in 1875 the sultan and his allies contested with Prince Charles the right of concluding commercial treaties, and Roumania, though diplomatic and consular agents are accredited at Bucharest, is not permitted to appoint ministers at foreign courts. The relations with the Porte are extremely delicate. The relationship of Prince Charles with the emperor of Germany imposes a certain restraint upon the sultan ; and while the latter is jealous of maintaining his suzerainty, the Roumanians avail themselves of every opportunity to claim and to exercise sovereign power.


ROUMELIA, Rumelia, or Romania (Turk. Rumili, Roman land), the name formerly applied by the Turks to the largest of their European provinces, comprising their most important possessions in Greece and N. of it as far as the northern ridges of the Balkan, and subsequently applied by them to a territory comprising portions of Albania and Macedonia (capital, Monastir or Bitolia), now embraced in the vilayets of Prisrend and Salonica. By occidental writers the name is generally used to designate the provinces known to the ancients aa Macedonia and Thrace, and in a more limited sense to Thrace alone. In this limited sense Roumelia is bounded N. by the Balkan, E. by the Black sea, 8. E. and 8. by the Bosporus, the sea of Marmora, and the Grecian archipelago, and "W. by the range of the Despoto Dagh; it is watered by the Maritza and its affluents the Tundja and Erkeneh, and contains among others the cities of Constantinople, Adrianople, Philippopoli, Rodosto, Gallipoli, and Enos. This country, corresponding to the modern vilayet of Adrianopole or Edirneh, which, however, does not embrace Constantinople and the adjoining territory, is the most important portion of the Turkish empire in Europe, although it is principally occupied by Bulgarians and Greeks, and the number of Ottomans is comparatively small. (See THRACE.)


ROUND WORMS. See ENTOZOA, vol. vi., p. 668.


ROUSE’S POINT, a village in the town of Champlain, Clinton co., New York, on the W. shore of Lake Champlain, at the head of the Richelieu river, m. 8. of the Canada line, and 21 m. N. by E. of Plattsburgh ; pop. in 1870, 1,266. It is at the terminus of a branch of the Grand Trunk railway, and the Central Vermont railroad here crosses the lake on a bridge 1 m. long. There are about 2,000 arrivals and departures of vessels annually. About seven eighths of the revenues of the district of Champlain are collected here, the receipts amounting to $500,000 a year. Fort Montgomery, guarding the outlet of the lake, is a mile distant. The village contains an extensive publishing house.


ROUSSEAU, Jean Baptiste, a French poet, born in Paris, April 6, 1670, died in Brussels, March 17, 1741. His first play was performed in 1694 with little success, and his last, Le capricieux, in 1700, was still less successful. Ascribing his failure to jealous authors, he satirized them with great virulence, and made many enemies ; while his contempt for his father because he was a shoemaker gave riso to the poem Le merite personnel, by La Motte, the son of a hatter, who was elected to the academy instead of Rousseau. In 1712 he was sentenced for licentious and slanderous writing, though perhaps unjustly, to perpetual banishment, and went to Switzerland, and subsequently settled in Brussels. He made a fortune by publishing his works in England, but lost it, and was suppported by the duke of Arenenberg, who gave him a pension and rooms in his palace. His complete works were published by Amar-Durivier (5 vols., Paris, 1820). The most recent edition of his (Euvres lyriquet is by Manuel (1852).


ROUSSEAU, Jean Jacques, a French author, born in Geneva, June 28, 1712, died at Ermenonville, near Paris, July 2, 1778. Ho was descended from a family of Paris booksellers and Protestant refugees. His mother, the daughter of a clergyman, died when he was born, and he afterward mourned her death as the first of his woes. From his father, a watchmaker, he inherited a visionary, restless disposition, and a great fondness for works of fiction. Before he was nine years old he had spent whole nights with him in reading novels and Plutarch's " Lives." He was a sickly boy, and his life was saved only through the care of an aunt. After his father's departure from Geneva he was sent to school in the neighboring village of Boissy; and he afterward lived for several years in the house of his uncle, an engineer in Geneva, and acquired some knowledge of drawing and mathematics. After serving in the office of a lawyer, who dismissed him, he was apprenticed to an engraver, from whom he ran away in 1728. While wandering about penniless, he was relieved from starvation by the proselytizing priest Pontverre of Confignon in Savoy, who presented him to Mme. de Warens at Annecy, a recent convert to