RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, society founded in 1799 for the circulation of religious works in home and foreign parts, has published in 220 languages, and is conducted by an annually elected body, consisting of four ministers and eight laymen in London.

RELIQUARY, name given to a portable shrine or case for relics of saints or martyrs; they assumed many forms, and were often rich in material and of exquisite design.

REMBRANDT or VAN REJN, a celebrated Dutch historical and portrait painter as well as etcher, born at Leyden, where he began to practise as an etcher; removed in 1630 to Amsterdam, where he spent the rest of his life and acquired a large fortune, but lost it in 1656 after the death of his first wife, and sank into poverty and obscurity; he was a master of all that pertains to colouring and the distribution of light and shade (1608-1669).

REMIGIUS, ST., bishop and confessor of the 6th century, represented as carrying or receiving a vessel of holy oil, or as anointing Clovis, who kneels before him.

REMINGTON, PHILO, inventor of the Remington breech-loading rifle, born at Litchfield, in New York State; 25 years manager of the mechanical department in his father’s small-arms factory; Remington type-writer also the outcome of his inventive skill; retired in 1886; b. 1816.

REMONSTRANCE, THE, the name given to a list of abuses of royal power laid to the charge of Charles I. and drawn up by the House of Commons in 1641, and which with the petition that accompanied it contributed to bring matters to a crisis.

REMONSTRANTS, a name given to the Dutch Arminians who presented to the States-General of Holland a protest against the Calvinist doctrine propounded by the Synod of Dort in 1610.

REMUS, the twin-brother of Romulus, and who was slain by him because he showed his scorn of the city his brother was founding by leaping over the wall.

REMUSAT, ABEL, Orientalist, born in Paris; studied and qualified in medicine, but early devoted himself to the study of Chinese literature and in 1814 became professor of Chinese in the College of France; wrote on the language, the topography, and history of China, and founded the Asiastic Society of Paris (1788-1832).

REMUSAT, CHARLES, COMTE DE, French politician and man of letters, born in Paris; was a Liberal in politics; drew up a protest against the ordinances of Polignac, which precipitated the revolution of July; was Minister of the Interior under Thiers, was exiled after the coup d’etat, and gave himself mainly to philosophical studies thereafter (1797-1875).

RENAISSANCE, the name given to the revolution in literature and art in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, caused by the revival of the study of ancient models in the literature and art of Greece and Rome, especially the former, and to the awakening in the cultured classes of the free and broad humanity that inspired them, an epoch which marks the transition from the rigid formality of mediaeval to the enlightened freedom of modern times.