especially composition, and was at first obliged to gratify his desires in this respect without the knowledge of his uncle. It was at the same time with the celebrated Beethoven, his junior by two years, and a native of Bonn, that he learned the elements of the art. Various books, such as those of Marpurg, Kirnberger, Sulzer, and Mattheson, served them for guides. The first public attempts of Reicha in composition, were some Italian scenas for the concerts. These had such success, that no one at the court of Cologne would at first credit their being written by a boy. When only seventeen years of age, he produced his first symphony. In 1794 he left Bonn for Hamburg, where he remained five years, applying himself without intermission to the study of his profession. Whilst at this city he wrote the music of a French opera, in two acts, entitled "Godefroy de Monfort," for which piece the manager of the French opera there made him a very handsome offer after hearing its rehearsal. He was, however, advised to bring the work out at Paris, and accordingly arrived there in 1799, making his debut as composer by a symphony which had prodigious success. In the meantime the performance of his opera was deferred from time to time by the differences between the two theatres, Favart and Feydeau. They at length united, and Reicha's composition was just about to appear when he withdrew it, being under the obligation of quitting Paris for Vienna. It was in this city that he lived in the closest friendship with Haydn, Albrechtsberger, Salieri, and Beethoven. Amongst the numerous works which he composed and published at Vienna, were symphonies and other instrumental pieces, oratorios, a requiem, &c. He also brought out a work, entitled "Thirty-six Fugues for the Piano," dedicated to Haydn. These fugues had such success, that the edition was exhausted within a year. It is probable that Reicha would never again have quitted Vienna, but for the various political events which disturbed the peace of that capital in the first years of the present century, and rendered it an unfit residence for a man devoted to peaceful studies. Be this as it may, he returned to Paris in the year 1808, in which city he remained as one of the performers at the Conservatory, giving instructions in, and lectures on composition, at that great national establishment. Reicha was a professed admirer and follower of the great Haydn, whom he has most elegantly apostrophized in the poem prefixed to his before mentioned fugues. His merit as a theorist has been manifested to the world in a clear and comprehensive treatise on melody, and in a work entitled "Cours complet de Composition Musicale, ou Traité complet et raisonné d'Harmonie Practique," replete with the best rules of art, and invaluable to the musical student. He died on the 28th of May, 1836.—E. F. R.
* REICHENBACH, Karl, Baron von, a chemist and mechanist, but principally known as the promulgator of some original views on the subject of animal magnetism, was born at Stuttgart on 12th February, 1788. He studied at Tübingen, where he obtained the degree of doctor in philosophy. At the age of sixteen he conceived the idea of founding a new German state in the isles of the South Sea. With this project he occupied himself during three years, but an arrest and imprisonment by the French government caused him to turn his energies in another direction. He commenced the study of the application of science to the industrial arts, and visited in turn the principal factories of France and Germany. In 1821, in conjunction with the Count de Salm, he established a number of factories in Moravia, and rapidly amassed a large fortune. He received the dignity of baron from the king of Wurtemburg. As a scientific man. Von Reichenbach is known as the author of the first geological monograph which appeared in Austria—"Geological Researches in Moravia," Vienna, 1834; and as a chemical discoverer. He discovered paraffin in 1831, and creosote in 1833. He is also a great authority on meteoric bodies, of which he possesses one of the finest collections in the world. He has attracted most attention, however, although his scientific reputation has been proportionately lessened, by his supposed discovery of a new imponderable force in nature, which he calls Od. On the subject of the od force he has published several works, the principal of which was translated into English by the late Dr. William Gregory, professor of chemistry in the university of Edinburgh. Von Reichenbach describes the od force as analogous to electricity and magnetism, and as widely diffused throughout nature. To it he attributes the sympathies and antipathies which men feel towards each other, and the various objects about them. He believes that the od force may be seen in the form of an undulating light, but that there are only certain persons who are capable of perceiving it. To these he gives the name of sensitive. It is needless to say that his views have been received with distrust and ridicule by the majority of scientific men, and he has not shrunk from engaging in literary warfare in behalf of his favourite theories. Von Reichenbach has been a great scientific collector. Besides his collection of meteorites above referred to, he has in his chateau at Reisenberg the magnificent herbarium of Sieber, containing plants from all parts of the globe.—F. C. W.
REICHSTADT, Duke de. See Napoleon II.
REID, John, M.D., Chandos professor of anatomy and medicine in the university of St. Andrews, was born at Bathgate, Linlithgowshire, in 1809. He was educated at the university of Edinburgh, and having made choice of the medical profession, he spent five years in the study of the usual branches of the healing art, and in 1830 obtained the diploma of surgeon and physician. His first situation was that of clerk or assistant-physician in the clinical wards of the Edinburgh infirmary. In 1831 he repaired to Paris for the purpose of prosecuting his studies in the medical schools of that city. On his return to Scotland in 1832 he was sent to Dumfries, along with other three Edinburgh physicians, to assist in staying the frightful ravages of cholera in that town. He then became, in 1833, a partner in the school of anatomy in Old Surgeons' hall, Edinburgh, where he acquired a very high reputation as a laborious and skilful demonstrator, and published several able essays on professional subjects. His next situation was that of lecturer on physiology in the Extra-academical medical school. In 1838 he was appointed pathologist to the Royal infirmary of Edinburgh. In 1841 he was chosen professor of anatomy in the university of St. Andrews, and in addition to the duties of that chair, commenced a course of lectures on comparative anatomy and physiology, which attracted great attention. He also undertook researches into the natural history of the marine animals on the Fife coast, and in 1848 published a collection of his essays under the title of "Physiological, Anatomical, and Pathological Researches," a volume which has been said, on high authority, to contain more original matter and sound physiology than will be found in any medical work that has issued from the British press for many years. In the midst of these valuable labours. Dr. Reid was attacked by cancer in the tongue; and after a year and a half of intense suffering he died in 1849, in the fortieth year of his age. Dr. J. H. Bennet says, "As a physiologist Dr. Reid may be considered to have been unsurpassed." A most interesting biography of this accomplished and amiable man has been written by his friend Dr. George Wilson.—J. T.
REID, Thomas, a Scottish professor and celebrated philosopher, whose manner of thinking and doctrine were eminently illustrative of the sober sagacity and cautious conservatism of opinion which distinguish the national mind of Scotland. He was born among the Grampians, in the remote moorland parish of Strachan in Kincardineshire, on the 26th of April, 1710. His life—passed in its early part in the homely seclusion of the country manse, and afterwards in the academic quiet of two provincial universities—formed an important element in the course of modern thought, at a time when the results of the Cartesian and Lockian movements in speculative philosophy were exposed to the criticism of David Hume, and when faith in truths which transcend sense and worldly prudence was somehow notably in a state of decay. By birth and training, as well as by constitutional temperament, Thomas Reid was a genuine specimen of the inbred realism of a strong Scottish mind and character, with practical insight much in excess of speculative subtilty or idealizing tendencies. Through his father he was of a long presbyterian or ecclesiastical descent, and was connected by his mother with the Gregorys—the most illustrious scientific ancestry which Scotland could supply. The father of Reid was for fifty years minister of the parish of Strachan, respected in the surrounding Highlands for his piety and prudence and simplicity of manners, and not destitute of those intellectual tastes which he inherited from his ancestors and transmitted to his son. The philosopher was eminently a son of the Scottish manse. The three successive ministers of Banchory Ternan, in the period which immediately followed the Reformation, were the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Reid of Pitfoddels in Aberdeenshire; and the last of these was the great-grandfather of Thomas Reid. His mother was Margaret, daughter of David
