ROUMELIA, a former name for a district which embraced ancient Thrace and a portion of Macedonia; the territory known as East Roumelia was incorporated with Bulgaria in 1885.

ROUND TABLE, THE, the name given to the knighthood of King Arthur:  a larger, from including as many as 150 knights; and a smaller, from including only 12 of the highest order.

ROUND TOWERS, ancient towers, found chiefly in Ireland, of a tall, round, more or less tapering structure, divided into storeys, and with a conical top, erected in the neighbourhood of some church or monastery, and presumably of Christian origin, and probably used as strongholds in times of danger; of these there are 118 in Ireland, and three in Scotland—­at Abernethy, Brechin, and Eglishay (Orkney).

ROUNDHEADS, the name of contempt given by the Cavaliers to the Puritans or Parliamentary party during the Civil War, on account of their wearing their hair close crept.

ROUS, FRANCIS, provost of Eton, born in Cornwall; sat in the Westminster Assembly, and was the author of the metrical version of the Psalms, as used in Presbyterian churches (1579-1659).

ROUSSEAU, JEAN BAPTISTE, French lyric poet, born in Paris, the son of a shoemaker; gave offence by certain lampoons ascribed to him which to the last he protested were forgeries, and was banished; his satires were certainly superior to his lyrics, which were cold and formal; died at Brussels in exile (1670-1741).

ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES, a celebrated French philosopher, and one or the great prose writers of French literature, born in Geneva, the son of a watchmaker and dancing-master; was apprenticed to an engraver, whose inhuman treatment drove him at the age of 16 into running away; for three years led a vagrant life, acting as footman, lackey, secretary, &c.; during this period was converted to Catholicism largely through the efforts of Madame de Warens, a spritely married lady living apart from her husband; in 1731 he took up residence in his patroness’s house, where he lived for nine years a life of ease and sentiment in the ambiguous capacity of general factotum, and subsequently of lover; supplanted in the affections of his mistress, he took himself off, and landed in Paris in 1741; supported himself by music-copying, an occupation which was his steadiest means of livelihood throughout his troubled career; formed a liaison with an illiterate dull servant-girl by whom he had five children, all of whom he callously handed over to the foundling hospital; acquaintance with Diderot brought him work on the famous Encyclopedie, but the true foundation of his literary fame was laid in 1749 by “A Discourse on Arts and Sciences,” in which he audaciously negatives the theory that morality has been favoured by the progress of science and the arts; followed this up in 1753 by a “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,” in which he makes a wholesale attack upon the cherished institutions