RAYNOUARD, FRANCOIS, French litterateur and philologist, born in Provence; was of the Girondist party at the time of the Revolution, and imprisoned; wrote poems and tragedies, but eventually gave himself up to the study of the language and literature of Provence (1761-1836).

RE, ISLE OF (16), small island, 18 m. by 3, off the French coast, opposite La Rochelle; salt manufacturing chief industry; also oysters and wine are exported.  Chief town, St. Martin (2).

READE, CHARLES, English novelist, born at Ipsden, in Oxfordshire; studied at Oxford; became a Fellow of Magdalen College, and was called to the bar in 1842; began his literary life by play-writing; studied the art of fiction for 15 years, and first made his mark as novelist in 1852, when he was nearly 40, by the publication of “Peg Woffington,” which was followed in 1856 by “It is Never too Late to Mend,” and in 1861 by “The Cloister and the Hearth,” the last his best and the most popular; several of his later novels are written with a purpose, such as “Hard Cash” and “Foul Play”; his most popular plays are “Masks and Faces” and “Drink” (1814-1884).

READING (61), capital of Berkshire, on the Kennet, 36 m.  N. of London; a town of considerable historic interest; was ravaged by the Danes; has imposing ruins of a 12th-century Benedictine abbey, &c.; was besieged and taken by Essex in the Civil War (1643); birthplace of Archbishop Laud; has an important agricultural produce-market, and its manufactures include iron-ware, paper, sauce, and biscuits.

READING (79), capital of Berks Co., Pennsylvania, on the Schuylkill River, 58 m.  NW. of Philadelphia; has flourishing iron and steel works; population includes a large German settlement.

REAL, an old Spanish silver coin still in use in Spain, Mexico, and some other of the old Spanish colonies, also is a money of account in Portugal; equals one-fourth of the peseta, and varies in value from 21/2 d. to 5d. with the rise and fall of exchange.

REAL, a legal term in English law applied to property of a permanent or immovable kind, e. g. land, to distinguish it from personal or movable property.

REAL PRESENCE, the assumed presence, really and substantially, in the bread and wine of the Eucharist of the body and blood, the soul and divinity, of Christ, a doctrine of the Romish and certain other Churches.

REALISM, as opposed to Nominalism, is the belief that general terms denote real things and are not mere names or answerable to the mere conception of them, and as opposed to idealism, is in philosophy the belief that we have an immediate cognition of things external to us, and that they are as they seem.  In art and literature it is the tendency to conceive and represent things as they are, however unsightly and immoral they may be, without any respect to the beautiful, the true, or the good.  In Ruskin’s teaching mere realism is not art; according to him art is concerned with the rendering and portrayal of ideals.