ROSICRUCIANS, a fraternity who, in the beginning of the 15th century, affected an intimate acquaintance with the secrets of nature, and pretended by the study of alchemy and other occult sciences to be possessed of sundry wonder-working powers.

ROSINANTE, the celebrated steed of Don Quixote, reckoned by him superior to the Bucephalus of Alexander and the Bavieca of the Cid.

ROSLIN, a pretty little village of Midlothian, by the wooded side of the North Esk, 61/2 m.  S. of Edinburgh; has ruins of a 14th-century castle, and a small chapel of rare architectural beauty, built in the 16th century as the choir of a projected collegiate church.

ROSMINI, ANTONIO ROSMINI-SERBATI, distinguished Italian philosopher, born at Rovereto, entered the priesthood, devoted himself to the study of philosophy, founded a system and an institute called the “Institute of the Brethren of Charity” at Stresa, W. of Lake Maggiore, on a pietistic religious basis, which, though sanctioned by the Pope, has encountered much opposition at the hands of the obscurantist party in the Church (1797-1865).

ROSS, SIR JOHN, Arctic explorer, born in Wigtownshire; made three voyages, the first in 1811 under Parry; the second in 1829, which he commanded; and a third in 1850, in an unsuccessful search for Franklin, publishing on his return from them accounts of the first two, in both of which he made important discoveries (1777-1856).

ROSSANO (19), a town of Southern Italy, in Calabria, 2 m. from the SW. shore of the Gulf of Taranto; has a fine cathedral and castle; valuable quarries of marble and alabaster are wrought in the vicinity.

ROSSBACH, a village in Prussian Saxony, 9 m.  SW. of Merseburg, where Frederick the Great gained in 1767 a brilliant victory with 22,000 men over the combined arms of France and Austria with 60,000.

ROSSE, WILLIAM PARSONS, THIRD EARL OF, born in York; devoted to the study of astronomy; constructed reflecting telescopes, and a monster one at the cost of L30,000 at Parsonstown, his seat in Ireland, by means of which important discoveries were made, specially in the resolution of nebulae (1800-1867).

ROSSETTI, CHARLES DANTE GABRIEL, poet and painter, born in London, the son of Gabriele Rossetti; was as a painter one of the PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD (q. v.), and is characterised by Ruskin as “the chief intellectual force in the establishment of the modern romantic school in England,... as regarding the external world as a singer of the Romaunts would have regarded it in the Middle Ages, and as Scott, Burns, Byron, and Tennyson have regarded it in modern times,” and as a poet was leader of the romantic school of poetry, which, as Stopford Brooke remarks, “found their chief subjects in ancient Rome and Greece, in stories and lyrics of passion, in mediaeval romance, in Norse legends, in the old English of Chaucer, and in Italy” (1828-1882).