have sunk into scepticism. On a tour through Holland he was arrested at Leyden by the mystical reveries of Poiret (see Poiret), and afterwards when sojourning with Fénélon he was, in 1716, won over by the archbishop to the Romish church. He then became tutor to the duke of Chateau-Thierry, and afterwards to the prince of Turenne. He was also made a knight of the order of St. Lazarus—hence his title of Chevalier. James III., the Pretender, in 1724 summoned him to Rome, and placed his children under his charge, to wit, Charles Edward and Henry afterwards Cardinal York. Owing to some faction at the court of the exiled prince he soon resigned his situation, and in 1730 came over to England, was received cordially into the family of the duke of Argyll, admitted a member of the Royal Society of London, and received, through Dr. King, the degree of doctor of civil law from the university of Oxford. On his return to France he was appointed intendant to the prince of Turenne, afterwards the Duc de Bouillon, a situation which he held till his death, which took place at St. Germain-en-Laye on the 6th of May, 1743. There his remains were interred, and his heart was removed to the nunnery of St. Sacrament at Paris. Ramsay was a voluminous author, and his French is perfect. His fame rests chiefly on his "Voyages de Cyrus," a somewhat evident and tedious imitation of Fénélon's Telemaque. It has not the sprightly ease of the original, but is nevertheless an entertaining work, abounding with accurate sketches of the men and manners of the age in which its scenes are laid. His "Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de M. de Fénélon" is a good and eulogistic biography. He also wrote "Discours sur le Poème Epique," prefixed to the later editions of Telemachus; "Le Psychometre," in reply to Shaftesbury's Characteristics; "Essai Philosophique sur la Gouvernement Civil;" a "Life of Turenne," often printed both in French and English; and "On the principles of Natural and Revealed Religion," a pious treatise, in which proofs and arguments are arranged in what may be called geometrical order. Ramsay was in no sense profound, but he was ingenious and pleasing. The church which he adopted would not have accepted him as wholly orthodox. He lived in speculation, and was tainted with mysticism. It is said that when he sent some money from France as a gift to his aged father, the sturdy protestant refused it, saying, "It cam' by the beast, and let it gang to the beast." Ramsay also published a "Discourse on Free Masonry," of which order in France he was grand chancellor.—J. E.
RAMSAY, James, a literary divine, was born at Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, in 1733. He was originally educated as a surgeon, and served for a period on board a ship of war. Being disabled by an accident which fractured his thigh, he entered the church, was for some time a naval chaplain, and then got a benefice in the island of St. Kitts. On his return to England he became rector of Teston, near Maidstone, and this he held with the living of Nettlestead. He died in 1789. His chief works are—"On the duties of a Naval Officer," "On Signals," "On the treatment of Negro Slaves," and a volume of "Sea Sermons."—J. E.
RAMSBOTHAM, John, M.D., was born at Bradford, Yorkshire, June 30, 1767. On the death of his father his guardians bound him apprentice to a surgeon at Barnsley. He afterwards became a pupil of the Leeds infirmary, under Mr. Hey, for a year; and then spent three years in London at Bartholomew's and the Lock hospitals, attending the lectures at Windmill Street school, where he contracted friendships with Mr. Cruikshank, Drs. Matthew Baillie, Pearson, Osborn, and John Clarke. Having become a member of the College of Surgeons, he settled at Wakefield; but in 1799 removed to Richmond, Surrey, to wait for an opening in the metropolis. Here, under the auspices of Sir David Dundas, sergeant-surgeon to the king, he formed a good practice, but relinquished it in two years to enter into a partnership in St. James' Street. While there he took a leading part in the society which induced the legislature to pass the apothecaries' act of 1815. Seven years after he obtained his degree of M.D. from Aberdeen, and removing into the Old Jewry, in the city, offered himself as a consulting practitioner in midwifery. In 1815 he was elected physician to the Royal Maternity charity, and lecturer on midwifery at the London hospital. In 1820 he published the first, and in 1832 the second part of his "Practical Observations in Midwifery," a work eminently of a practical character. He retired from practice in 1839, and died on May 4th, 1847.—His son,
* Francis Henry Ramsbotham, M.D., F.R.C.P. was born at Richmond, Surrey, on December 9, 1800, and graduated at Edinburgh in 1822. In 1824 he began to relieve his father by giving a part of the midwifery course of lectures at the London hospital, and in a few years took the whole of it upon himself, as well as a part of the lectures on forensic medicine. In 1825 he was appointed assistant physician, and in 1827 physician to the Royal Maternity charity; and in 1840 obstetric physician to the London hospitals, an office then first instituted. He also held the appointment of physician-accoucheur both to the Eastern and Tower Hamlets dispensaries for many years. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1826, and was elected a fellow in 1844. In 1833 his lectures, as taken down in shorthand, were published in the Medical Gazette and in 1841 he brought out his work on "The Principles and Practice of Obstetric Medicine and Surgery." It rapidly went through four editions of nearly two thousand copies each. He is the author of numerous papers connected with his profession, chiefly published in the Medical Times and Gazette. He has filled the offices of president of the Hunterian and Harveian societies, and vice-president of the Pathological Society.—W. H. P. G.
RAMSDEN, Jesse, an eminent British optician, was born at Halifax in Yorkshire in 1735, and died at Brighton on the 5th of November, 1800. He was the son of a cloth manufacturer, and was bred to his father's business, which, however, he quitted on the expiry of his apprenticeship, to practise the art of engraving in London. In the course of that occupation his attention was drawn to the construction of mathematical and optical instruments, which he finally adopted as his business in 1764, having a short time previously married the daughter of his great predecessor, Dollond. His great scientific ability and practical skill soon placed him at the head of his profession. His most important invention was the now well known "dividing engine," by means of which the limbs of instruments for measuring angles were graduated with an accuracy and rapidity previously unknown. He perfected that machine in 1773, after ten years of labour, and published a description of it in 1777. He was the first to combine the altitude and azimuth circles in the theodolite. He made important improvements in the micrometer, and in many of the details of astronomical instruments, most of which are described in papers read by him to the Royal Society (of which he was a fellow), and published in the Philosophical Transactions from 1779 to 1793.—W. J. M. R.
RAMUS, Peter (Pierre de la Ramée), was born in Picardy, according to one account in 1502, according to another account in 1515. His parents were very poor; his grandfather, who belonged to Liege, having lost all his property in the wars of the period. The boy was set to tend sheep, but he ran off to Paris and entered the college of Navarre as a servant. With but little assistance the precocious youth made great advancement in his studies, ceased to be a servant, and became a regular student. On taking his degree, he held a disputation against the authority of Aristotle, confounding and baffling his examiners. This anti-Aristotelian passion became the inspiration of his life. In 1543, having lectured for a time against the Stagyrite, he published his "Aristotelicæ Animadversiones," a vehement, and not on all points an enlightened assault; and also "Institutiones Dialecticæ," his own logical organon. He soon felt the penalty of his attempt to cast the world's idol from its pedestal, and all manner of abuse was heaped upon him. Church and truth, law and learning, were declared alike to be in danger. An irregular tribunal condemned him, his works were suppressed by royal mandate, and he was forbidden on pain of corporal punishment to speak or write against Aristotle. During his compulsory leisure he turned to the study of mathematics, and prepared an edition of Euclid. In 1544 the plague having dispersed and cut off many of the students and professors, particularly those of the collège de Presles, Ramus began to lecture in it, and was soon named its principal. The Sorbonne endeavoured, but in vain, to enforce the royal decree against him, and the decree itself was at length annulled through the influence of the Cardinal de Lorraine, to whom he had dedicated his edition of Euclid. In 1551 King Henry II. made him professor of philosophy and eloquence in the college of France. The next year began the famous dispute about the pronunciation of the letter Q in the Latin alphabet, the divines of the Sorbonne being in the habit of pronouncing quisquis as kiskis. A decree of parliament was required to settle the matter. He published during the next ten years a variety of works, including grammars of Latin, Greek, and French, with treatises on mathematics, rhetoric, and logic. About 1562 he declared his attachment to protestantism, and his doom was
