twelve, and he was left to the care of his mother, who to retain her power did all she could to corrupt him. At seventeen he was suspected of having poisoned his profligate and unpopular mother. He assumed the reins of power, and began his long and successful career of aggression and aggrandizement, which was favoured by the weakness and quarrels of his neighbours. After the evacuation of the Punjaub by Zemaun Shah, he bestowed the investiture of the province of Lahore on the friendly Runjeet, who proceeded to organize the Sikhs into a united power. As he extended his conquests he might have come into collision with the British, but his sagacity taught him to avoid this danger. In 1809 he signed a treaty with them; his relations with the Anglo-Indian government were almost always amicable, and he directed the course of his ambition to the west and south. From the English he first learned the value of European discipline, which he introduced into his army, and in 1819 he was master of Cashmere, assuming the title of Maharajah. The secure consolidation of his rule was partly due to the exertions of four officers of the Napoleonic school, Avitabile, Ventura, Court, and Aleard, whom he took into his service, and who made his army a really formidable force. He was to have aided the English in the war with Affghanistan; but before his sincerity could be thoroughly tested he died, worn out by excesses, in the June of 1839. Runjeet Singh was the Mehemet Ali of the Punjaub—sagacious, energetic, unscrupulous. There are some lively notices of him and his court in the late Sir Henry Lawrence's Adventures of an Officer in the Service of Runjeet Singh.—F. E.
RUNNINGTON, Charles, an English lawyer and writer, was born in 1751, was called to the bar in 1778, and in 1787 was made a sergeant-at-law. In 1815 he was appointed commissioner for the relief of insolvent debtors, an office which he held for four years. He died in 1821. Sergeant Runnington published editions of Hale's History of the Common Law; Gilbert's Law of Ejectments; Ruffhead's Statutes at Large; History of the Legal Remedy by Ejectment, and the Resisting Action for Mesne Process.—J. T.
RUPERT, Robert, Prince of Bavaria, was born in 1619. He was the son of the Princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of James I. and of Frederick V., the unfortunate elector palatine, who lost his electorate, in a fruitless attempt to obtain the crown of Bohemia. An exile from his youth, the prince seems to have been very imperfectly educated; and as he was of an active, roving disposition, and had a taste for military pursuits, he offered his services, when he was scarcely of age, to his uncle, Charles I., on the breaking out of the civil war, and at once obtained the command of a regiment of cavalry. He soon distinguished himself by his courage, activity, and daring impetuosity. He was engaged in the battles of Worcester, Edgehill, Chalgrove, and Newbury, and took Hereford, Lichfield, and Cirencester; but his rashness, hot and impatient temper, and want of judgment, combined with his severity and rapine, not unfrequently neutralized his successes. The king, however, unfortunately for himself, placed unbounded confidence in his nephew; and the more to attach him to his service, created him Duke of Cumberland, and made him a knight of the garter. In 1643 he carried Bristol by storm, but displayed such arrogance and factious temper in the arrangements for the government of his conquest, as to give deep offence to the marquis of Hertford and other loyal and powerful nobles. In the campaign of 1644 Prince Rupert relieved Newport—one of the most brilliant exploits of the kind performed in the whole war—captured Stockport, Bolton, and Liverpool, and raised the siege of Lathomhouse; but he met with a signal defeat at Marston Moor, where his indiscretion in giving battle to the enemy, and his rashness and thoughtlessness in the fight, inflicted a terrible blow on the royal cause. His conduct on this occasion, however, did not forfeit the confidence of the king, who soon after made him commander of all the royal forces. He took Leicester after a gallant defence; but this was his last success, for a few days after the decisive battle of Naseby was fought, in which the rashness and headlong impetuosity of the prince, as usual, proved the ruin of his army. He then hastened to Bristol, to prepare that city to resist an assault. It was strongly garrisoned and well provisioned, and the prince had promised the king to hold it for four months at least: but he surrendered it almost at the first attack. The astonishment and indignation of the king at this pusillanimous behaviour was extreme, and he immediately revoked all the prince's commissions, and commanded him to quit the country. Rupert, however, succeeded in pacifying his uncle, ever too easily influenced by the claims of natural affection, and he obtained in 1648 the command of that portion of the fleet which still adhered to the king. But Blake, with the parliamentary squadron, was soon upon him, and pursued him to Kinsale, to Lisbon, and to Carthagena, and having burnt and destroyed almost his whole fleet, compelled him to take refuge with the remainder in the West Indies, where he for some time supported himself by piracy. He ultimately contrived to return to France with two or three ships, which he sold on behalf of Charles II. to the French government. At the Restoration Prince Rupert once more repaired to the English court, and was repeatedly appointed to a command in the navy, but accomplished nothing worthy of notice. He obtained the office of governor of Windsor, and there he spent his leisure in painting and engraving, and in mechanical and chemical experiments. The invention of mezzotinto has frequently but incorrectly been ascribed to him. He is believed, however, to have been the inventor of pinchbeck or princes metal, and of those curious glass bubbles known as "Rupert's drops." The prince died in 1682. He left several illegitimate children, but he was never married.—J. T.
RURIK, the founder of the Russian empire, flourished about the middle of the ninth century. He belonged to a Scandinavian race named the Varages or Varangians, who had established themselves upon the eastern shores of the Baltic. The Slavonic and Finnish tribes who inhabited that district were harassed by their more warlike neighbours; and having called in the assistance of the Varangians under Rurik and his two brothers, these unscrupulous allies conquered the people whom they had come to defend. Rurik built a town near the Volkhof, where Old Ladoga now stands, and made it the seat of his government, about 862. The original inhabitants, however, took up arms in defence of their rights under the leadership of Vadim, a brave and skilful chief. But after a fierce engagement, about 865, in which Vadim and several other chiefs fell, the intruders proved victorious. Emboldened by this success, Rurik removed the seat of his government to Novgorod, the capital of the Slavi, which was even then a large and wealthy city. On the death of his two brothers without issue, he became sole ruler of the conquered territory, over which he reigned peacefully during the remainder of his life. He died in 879, leaving one son, Igor, only four years of age. The government devolved upon his kinsman, Oleg.—J. T.
RUSH, Benjamin, an American physician of eminence, was born in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia in December, 1745. His father, who united the occupations of farmer and gunsmith, died during the son's childhood. His mother, however, gave him a liberal education. He was five years at a grammar-school, and was afterwards placed at college at Princeton, where at the age of fifteen he obtained the degree of B.A. He then commenced medical study under Dr. Redman, a practitioner of Philadelphia. Whilst a pupil he translated the Aphorisms of Hippocrates from the Greek into English; and during the prevalence of yellow fever in Philadelphia he made notes of the epidemic, which were said to form a record of no small value. At the age of twenty-one he crossed the Atlantic, and took residence at Edinburgh. He there studied under Monro, Gregory, Cullen, and Black. After a two years' attendance at the university, he graduated M.D. The inaugural thesis he presented on the occasion was on the subject of digestion, and contained an account of original experiments, some of which were made by himself, and some by a fellow-student. After visiting London and Paris for the purposes of medical study, he returned to Philadelphia in the spring of 1769. He commenced practice, and was elected to fill the chair of chemistry, and subsequently that of the theory and practice of physic. On the union of the college of Philadelphia with the university of Pennsylvania in 1791, he became professor of the institutes of medicine; and during the latter years of his life he filled the chair of the theory and practice of medicine, and of clinical medicine. His popularity as a physician was only equalled by the reputation he conferred on the Pennsylvanian school. He was also distinguished as a public man. In the congress of 1776 he represented his native state, and signed the Declaration of independence. He was appointed physician-general to the military hospital of the middle department in 1777, and was subsequently elected a member of the convention for the adoption of the federal constitution. For the last fourteen years of his life he
