RIENZI-RIETI. in front of Baliol College, cheerful, steadfast, and consistently enduring as he had been throughout his life. He was, according to Burnet, one of the ablest of all who advanced the Reformation in England. His character is pure, elevated, and self-denying. Foxe says of him he was wise of counsel, deep of wit, benevolent in spirit.' His gentleness wins our sympathy, while his scholarly and calm intrepidity excite our admiration. RIENZI, COLA DI, the famous Roman tribune, was born at Rome in 1313. His parentage was humble, h3 father being a tavern-keeper, named Lorenzo (by abbreviation, Rienzo), and his mother swasherwoman. Until his twentieth year, he lived among the peasants of Anagni; then he returned to his native city, where he studied grammar and rhetoric, read and re-read the Latin historians, philosophers, and poets (Greek was scarcely yet known in Italy), and excited his imagination, while at the same time he coloured his speech, with the prophetic enthusiasm of the inspired writers. The assassination of his brother by a Roman noble, whom he found it impossible to bring to punishment, is considered to be the incident that finally determined him to deliver the city, as soon as he was able, from the barbarous thraldom of the barons. He assumed the significant title of consul of orphans, widows, and the poor. In 1343, he was appointed by the heads of the Guelph party spokesman or orator of a deputation sent to the papal court at Avignon to beseech Clement VI. to return to Rome in order to protect the citizens from the tyranny of their oppressors. Here he formed a close friendship with Petrarch, through whose assistance he obtained a favourable hearing from his Holiness, who appointed him notary to the City Chamber. In April 1344, R. returned home, and sought to obtain the countenance of the magistrates in his ideas of reform; but reform, he found, was impossible without revolution; yet he did not conspire, properly speaking, to the very last moment. During three years, he loudly and openly-perhaps even ostentatiously-menaced the nobles, for the enthusiasm of R. for a nobler and juster government, though sincere, was showy and vain The reason why the nobles took no steps to crush him was because they thought him mad. At last, when R. thought he could rely on the support of the citizens, he summoned them together on the 9th of May 1347, and surrounded by 100 horsemen and the papal legate, he delivered a magnificent discourse, and proposed a series of laws for the better government of the community, which he termed il buono stato, and which were unanimously approved f. The aristocratic senators were driven out of the city, and B. was invested with dictatorial power. He took the title of tribune of liberty, peace, and justice,' and chose the papal legate for his colleague, but reserved to himself the direction of affairs, after having, however, suggested the institution of a syndicate, to which he should be responsible. The pope confirmed the eloquent dictator in his authority; all Italy rejoiced in his success, and foreign lands, even warlike France (according to Petrarch), began to dread the reviving majesty of the Eternal City. A bright dream now seems to have flashed across R.'s imagination-the unity of Italy and the supremacy of Rome! Every great Italian has dreamed that dream from Dante to Mazzini. R. despatched messengers to the various Italian states, requesting them to send deputies to Rome to consult for the general interests of the Peninsula, and to devise measures for its unification. These messengers were everywhere received with enthusiasm, and on the 1st of August 1347, two hundred deputies assembled in the Lateran Church, where R. declared that the choice of an emperor of the Holy Roman Empire belonged to the Roman people, and summoned Ludvig of Bavaria and Karl of Bohemia, who were then dis putants for the dignity, to compear before him. The step was wildly impolitic. R. had no material power to enable him to give efficacy to his splendid assumption. The pope was indignant at the transference of authority from himself to his subjects: and the barons, taking advantage of certain cere monial extravagances which the dictator had committed, and which had diminished the popular regard for him, gathered together their forces, and renewed their devastations. After some ineffectual resistance, R. resigned his functions, weeping all the while, and withdrew from Rome, which was His tenure entered by the barons two days after. of power had lasted only seven months. In the solitudes of the Neapolitan Apennines, where he found refuge, R. would seem to have recovered his enthusiasni and his faith. Regarding his fall as a just chastisement of God for his love of worldly vanities, he joined an order of Franciscan hermits, and spent nearly two years in exercises of piety and penitence-all the while, however, cherishing the hope that he would one day deliver' Rome again. This ambition to play a distinguished part made him readily listen to a brother-monk, who, about the middle of 1350, declared that, according to the prophecies of Joachim of Flores, of Cyrillus, and of Merlin, R. was destined, by the help of the emperor Karl IV., to introduce a new era of happiness into the world. R. betook himself at once to Prague, and announced to the emperor that in a year and a half a new hierarchy would be established in the Church, and under a new pope, Karl would reign in the West, and R. in the East. Karl, not knowing very well what to say in reply to such language, thought it safest to put the prophet' in prison, and then wrote to inform his friend the pope of the matter. In July 1351, R. was transferred to Avignon, where proceedings were opened against him in reference to his exercise of tribunitial power. He was condemned to death, but his life was spared at the earnest entreaties of Petrarch and others; and the next two years were spent in an easy confinement in the French papal city. Meanwhile the state of matters at Rome had become worse than ever. The great families were even more factious, more anarchical, more desperately fond of spilling blood than formerly; and at last Innocent VI. sent Cardinal Athornoz to re-establish order. R. was also released from prison, and accompanied the cardinal. A residence was assigned him at Perugia; but in August 1354, having borrowed money, and raised a small body of soldiers, he made a sort of triumphal entry into Rome, and was received with universal acclamations. But misfortune had impaired and debased his character; he abandoned himself to good living, and his once generous sentiments had given place to a hard, mistrustful, and cruel disposition. The barons refused to recognise his government, and fortified themselves in their castles. The war against them necessitated the contraction of heavy expenses; the people grumbled; R. only grew more severe and capricious in his exactions and punishments. In two months his rule had become intolerable, and on the 8th of October, an infuriated crowd surrounded him in the Capitol, and put him to death with ferocious indignities. RIE'SENGEBIRGE (giant mountains), a mountain range about 23 miles long by about 12 miles broad, between Bohemia and Prussian Silesia. See BOHEMIA. RIE'TI (ancient, Reate), a city of Central Italy, RIFF RIFLED ARMS. in the province of Perugia in Umbria, is situated at the foot of a hill, on the banks of the Velino, 45 miles north-east of Rome. It is walled, its streets are regular, and it has a fine cathedral, and many benevolent institutions. It is the seat of an archbishop. R. was a noted city of the Sabines. Pop. 14,224. RIFF, THE, a portion of the coast of Morocco which extends from Tangier on the west to near the western frontier of Algiers, having a length of about 210 miles, with a breadth of 58. The name, in the Berber language, which is that of the inhabitants, signifies a mountainous and rugged coast. The Riff mountains, which stretch along near and parallel to the coast, are green and wooded, and are here and there intersected transversely by fertile valleys or deep ravines, each of them possess ing its brook or rivulet, which descends to the Mediterranean. The R. region is separated from the parallel mountain chain south of it by an extensive, fertile, and well-watered plain, in which stands the city of Fez. The inhabitants of the R. are almost wholly Berbers, who are employed in feeding and breeding cattle, fishing, and occasional piracy. On account of the injuries inflicted by them on merchant vessels, most of the maritime states of Europe agreed to pay an annual sum as quit-money. However, in 1828, Austria declined further payment of the tax. A Venetian vessel was seized by the pirates, in the harbour of Rabat, but the arrival of an Austrian fleet off the port produced restitution of the ship and its cargo, as well as the formal renunciation of all further claims. France followed the same course by declaring war against the Sultan of Morocco, and obtained compensation, in 1844, since which period piracy has much diminished. Its example was followed by the Spaniards in 1859. The sultan, however, had always discountenanced piracy, but his authority in the R. was too weak to compel obedience. especially when fired at a long range, and arose from the following causes: First, The ball nerer fitted tightly, and, in consequence of this, its centr was below the centre of the bore. A portion of the explosive force of the powder escaped over the top of the bullet, and was not only wasted, but exer cised a downward pressure on the ball, tending to squeeze it into the under side of the barrel, and so great was this pressure, that in guns of soft metal, as brass, a perceptible dint was produced after a few rounds. Another and more important ense quence of the looseness of the ball was, that the action of the powder on it was necessarily irregular and its resulting motion along the barrel was series of oblique impacts, now against one side, Dow against the other, and the direction of its moton after expulsion was necessarily not in line with the axis of the barrel, and depended upon the sale of the barrel with which it was last in contat Secondly, Balls can never be perfectly homogeneous and the violent and sudden pressure of the exploded powder produces a slight change of shape; consequently, the centre of gravity can never accurately coincide with the centre of the sphere, the air resists its forward motion unequally, and true thight precluded. Thirdly, As a consequence of the friction of the ball against the sides of the barrel, it acquires a rotatory motion, the direction of its rotation arter expulsion being determined by the particular pint of the muzzle with which it was last in contact. Thus, if it finally touched the top or bottom of the muzzle, the plane of rotation of the anterior surace of the ball would be in line with its progress. Te motion, and the rotation would be in an upward or downward direction; if it last rebounded from the right side, the plane of rotation would be in line with its path, and the rotation of the anterior surface from left to right, and so on. The is in its rapid flight, compresses the air in front, and produces a vacuum behind; the denser, because more compressed, air in front, attempts to rush round the sides of the ball to fill up the vacuum. Now (see fig. 1), let us suppose that the ball, while in rapid advance, zontal plane, and from left is also revolving in a hori to right, the side A, whose rotation conspires with the motion of translation, resists, by its friction, the attempt of the air to reach the vacuum by that side; while the side B, whose rotation is against the motion of translation, conspires to aid the air in reaching the vacuum. It follows from this, that the air is denser in front of A than in front of B; its resistance on the side A is greater than that on other Australian bird. The upper parts are velvety quence, is deflected towards the side on which the B, and the ball, in conseblack, tinged with purples the under parts velvety resistance is least (towards the right in this inblack, diversified with olive-green. The crown of stance). If the ball struck the top of the muzzle, the head and the throat are covered with innumer- its revolution would be in a vertical plane in line able little specks of emerald green, of most brilliant with the barrel, and in an upward direction, under lustre. The tail is black, the two central feathers which circumstances the ball would tend, first, rich metallic green. downwards from the first reason, and then upwards RIFLED ARMS were invented for the purpose from the third; while, if it struck the bottom of of remedying certain defecta essentially connected the muzzle, the contrary would be the case. with cylindrical amooth-bore guns Theso defects, These aberrations of the ball from its true theor which are chiefly owing to alpheric resistance, as was evident to artillerists, could ahewed themselves in the era of the ball, lly annihilated while su oott-borus RIFLE-BIRD (Ptiloris Paradiseus), a bird of the family Upupide, with a long curved bill, and in size about equal to a large pigeon. It inhabits the south-eastern districts of Australia, and is found only in very thick bush.' The male is regarded as more splendid in plumage than any Fig. 1. Horizontal section of spherical bi et the of transion, and e RIFLED ARMS. were used, and they set themselves to discover how they might be counteracted. It occurred to them that this could best be managed by securing that the plane of rotation of the ball should be at right angles to its motion of translation, as the irregularities in its structure, which produce aberrations of the first and second kind, would thus act equally in all directions, producing an exact counterbalance, while the aberration from the ball's rotation would wholly disappear; and the constancy of the vertical transverse position of the plane of the ball's rotation was obtained by making one or more spiral grooves along the interior of the barrel. As early as 1498, the citizens of Leipzig possessed the germ of the future rifle, for their arms had a grooved bore, but the grooves were straight. Not many years after, in 1520, Augustin Kutter (or Koster) of Nürnberg was celebrated for his rose or star-grooved barrels, in which the grooves had a spiral form. It took its name from the rose-like shape of the bore at the muzzle; and, setting aside superiority of workmanship subsequently developed, Katter's arm was the veritable rifle, and to him, therefore, so far as history shews, is due the invention of this terrible weapon, which reduces the flight of the projectile to a question of the individual skill of the marksman. The spiral groove gives to the bullet, if it fits into the grooves, a rotation rapid in proportion to the force of the explosion and the sharpness of the twist in the spiral. This revolution of the bullet on its own axis keeps that axis, gravity excepted, in the line in which it leaves the piece. În 1628, Arnold Rotsiphen patented a new way of 'makeing gonnes,' which, from a subsequent patent granted him in 1635, appears to have consisted, among other improvements, in rifling the barrels. It would be tedious to enumerate the various principles of riting which were tried during the two centuries following Rotsiphen-suffice it to say, that scarcely a form of rifling now prevails but had its prototype among the old inventions. The difficulty of mechanical appliances making the rifling true, deferred, however, their general introduction, and the cost of rifled arms limited their use to the purposes of the chase. The revolutionary government of France had rifles issued to portions of their troops, but they met with so indifferent a success that Napoleon recalled them soon after he came to power. In the Peninsula, however, picked companies of sharpshooters practised with rifles with deadly effect on both the English and French sides. During the American war, 1812–1814, the Americans demonstrated incontestably the value of rifles in warfare; but many years were yet to elapse before they were definitively placed in the hands of soldiers, many of those of every nation in the Crimea having fought with the ineffective and almost ridiculous 'Brown Bess.' Soon after the French invaded Algeria, they had armed the Chasseurs d'Orleans with rifles, to counteract the superior range of the Arab guns. The inutility of the old musket was shewn in a battle during the Kaffir war, where our men discharged 80,000 cartridges, and the loss of the enemy was 25 men struck. After experiments with the old musket, it was found that its aim had no certainty whatever beyond 100 yards. It was soon discovered that a spherical ball was not the best mile; one in which the longer axis coincided with thes of the gun flying truer the relative length of the va and the shape of the head being matters put. The first war-rifle was that of Captain , proposed in 1826, and adopted for a few thench army; but this still included the pan of forcing the leaden ball through by blows of the ramrod, it being of # Fig. 2.-Minié Bullet. course requisite that the projectile should occupy the grooves tightly. In 1842 Colonel Thouvenin invented a carabine à tige, in which the breech had a small pillar screwed into it, round which the powder lay, and on the end of which the bullet rested, its base being flattened out by the force of the ramrod. Colonel Delvigne added a conical bullet to this rifle, and the combined invention was issued to the Chasseurs d'Afrique in 1846. But the tige, or pillar, became bent by usage, and was found otherwise objectionable. It was superseded by using with a grooved barrel the Minié bullet, which, being made smaller than the bore of the piece, could be almost dropped into the barrel. It was of lead, and in its base it contained a conical recess, to receive the apex of a smaller iron cup (A). The force of the explosion drove this cup into the bullet, causing the lead to expand into the grooves of the barrel. (It is right, however, to state that this contrivance is claimed for a Mr Greener as early as 1836.) The Prussians, meanwhile, had armed their troops with the needle-rifle (Zündnadelgewehr), which is still in use. In England, however, no improvement took place until 1851, when 28,000 rifled muskets to fire the Minié bullet were ordered to be issued. Notwithstanding the many advantages of the Minié system, it was found defective in practice. The rifle fouled quickly, and sometimes the iron cup went beyond expanding the lead, by being driven completely through it, leaving the bullet a mere distorted tube, which sometimes remained firmly fixed in the barrel. Experiments were set on foot in all directions, and resulted in 1853 in the production of the Enfield rifle, which had three grooves, taking one complete turn in 78 inches, and fired a bullet resembling the Minié, except that a wooden cup was substituted for one of iron. This rifle Fig. 3.-Section of the is stronger than its predecessor, while its weight with 60 cartridges is 3 lbs. less, a matter of no small moment to the soldier. Its diameter is 577 of an inch, its bullet weighs 530 grains, and ranges with great accuracy for 800 yards, and fairly up to 1100. Since 1853, this has been the weapon of the British army; and although beaten in execution by the Whitworth, Lancaster, and some other rifles, it is incontestably the best for precision of fire with which any army has to this time been equipped; but its system of rifling is only the system long in use. The vast manufactory at Enfield (see SMALL ARMS FACTORY) enables many thousand rifles to be turned out annually, so exactly made in all their parts as to be absolutely interchangeable. As, however, the results were not entirely satisfactory, government confided to Mr Whitworth, a very celebrated mechanician, the task of arriving, by inductive reasoning, at the best form of rifling. After protracted and most careful experiments, he concluded to dispense entirely with the old grooves and lands, and substituting for this a polygonal bore, with a twist towards the muzzle. He selected the hexagon as the most suitable polygon, and reduced the bore to 451; used a projectile fitting mechanically to the bore; took one turn for his spiral in 20 inches; and, as a result, reduced the height of the trajectory to 8 feet Enfield Rifle. a, groove; b, land. RIFLED ARMS-RIFLEMEN. instead of 11 in the Enfield, while he obtained a canister, which would destroy the grooves. In the steady and accurate flight of 2000 yards and Whitworth, the shot is constructed to pass freig upwards. Mr Lancaster, by other reasoning, had through the spiral hexagonal bore, windage bang previously abandoned grooves for a uniform elliptical bore with a spiral (see LANCASTER RIFLE). Various other systems have from time to time been proposed by Mr Westley Richards, Mr Terry, and other eminent gunmakers; but the Enfield grooves, the Whitworth polygon, and the Lancaster ellipse, will probably remain the representative guns of the different classes, and between them the ultimate victory will probably lie. WHITWORTH LANCASTER. Fig. 4. the principic.) FRENCH. As with small-arms, so with cannon, rifling is no new discovery. In the Museum at St Petersburg is a cannon which was rifled in nine grooves as early as 1613. In 1661, the Prussians experimented with a guu rifled in 13 shallow grooves. By 1696, the From thence Germans had tried elliptical bores. till 1833, many attempts were made to rifle cannon, with more or less success; but although the firing of smooth-bore guns was as aberrant as that of smooth-bore muskets, and from greater range even more so, yet, since the gunners were safe from musketry-fire at 200 yards, and the cannon could be (The Ellipse of the bore in the Lancaster is exaggerated to directed against masses of men with tolerable certainty up to 600, there was no special inducement to improve their powers. But the introduction of rifled small-arms changed the relative advantages; for an Enfield rifle might pick off the gunners of a smooth-bore cannon before their weapon could come into effective play. In 1833 and 1836, Monsieur Montigny of Brussels tried rifled guns with considerable success. In 1845, Colonel Cavalli of the Sardinian service commenced experiments with his rifled cannon: two Swedish officers-Baron Wahrendorf and Lieutenant Engstroem-next produced rifled cannon; but none of these systems were permanently adopted. The Crimean war set inventors vigorously at work, and many admirable guns have resulted from their attempts, the great difficulty of the day being to decide which is most effectual. The first point was the metal; and here cast-iron was found quite useless, being incapable of resisting the explosion of the large charges necessary to force closely fitting projectiles through rifled barrels, Several plans were resorted to. Sir William Armstrong welds coils of wrought-iron round a mandrel into one homogeneous mass of extraordinary tenacity, which he again strengthens by similar rings round the breech. Mr Whitworth forces rings of wrought iron over the barrel by hydraulic pressure: Captain Blakely strengthens a barrel of longitudinal bars welded together by shrinking wrought-iron bands over it. The French rifle brass guns and use small charges; having also guns of wrought-iron. The Austrians have made a new bronze alloy, which has proved extremely strong; the Belgians have tried Bessemer's steel. The system of rifling was the next important matter. Mr Lancaster adhered to his oval bore; Sir William Armstrong produced a bore rifled in a great number of small sharp grooves (this gun was adopted by the British government); Mr Whitworth retained a hexagonal bore; and the French government adopted a bore with two, and subsequently three rather deep spiral grooves. After careful experiments, the Austrian, Spanish, Duten, and Italian governments have concurred in the French system. These several bores are shewn below in section. In the Armstrong, the rotation is communicated to the projectile by the latter being cased with lead, which the explosion forces into the grooves. The numerous fine grooves impart a very correct centering to the shot, and give extreme accuracy of range; but they render the gun a delicate weapon, and they preclude the occasional firing of round shot or prevented by a greased wad, which is said to fog, the piece considerably. Lancaster's shot are el. pt. any to correspond with the bore; they are simple and accurate; but there is some danger that they wi jam in the gun, and cause it to burst. The French projectiles have ribs of projecting metal to corr spond to the grooves, and are very effect ve, the system having the concomitant advantage of being able to fire ordinary shot without material injury to the gun. To sum up: the Armstrong gun is the m st accurate, that and the Whitworth have the longest range, each having attained 5 miles; the Lancaster fouls least; the French is simplest, and can are ordinary cannon-balls, canister, or case. Although the Armstrong gun was officia adopted into the British service in 1859, as the best weapon then known, the competition is still open. and it is uncertain at this moment (1865) whet, er it may not be superseded by the Whitworth. 1864, Mr Mackay of Liverpool produced a ga on quite a new principle, called his windage-gun,' the effects of which, as regards range, precis on, and penetration, have been very remarkable. His he is rifled with small grooves, but the projectil is t made to fit into the grooves, a rapid revolt a being imparted to it by the rush of is through the grooves, and therefore around its circumference during the explosion. The projectiles used with the various guns will be described under SHELL and SHOT. RIFLEMEN are troops armed with rites, and employed more or less as sharpshooters. The same now has nearly lost all meaning, for the infantry are now riflemen; but a few years a i. e., as late as 1854, the riflemen were quite the exception, the army generally having the smothe bore Brown Bess. There were at that time y two line regiments of Rifles, the 60th and toe EBrigade, with 2 colonial regiments of infantry (Canadian Rifles and Ceylon Rifles), and one Hottentot regiment of mounted infantry (the Ca • The establishment of R Mounted Rifles). regiments was taught to the British by the Americans and French, from the sharpshooters of both of which nations our armies suffered severa During the French war, the 60th and 95ta h S were armed as riflemen, taught le ments infantry drill, and clothed in dark green, to be as invisible as possible. The 95th became the Ete Brigade. Experiment has since shewn that gray a RIGA-RIGGING. less conspicuous than green as a uniform, whence its adoption by many Volunteer corps. The Volunteer riflemen of Great Britain will be described under VOLUNTEERS. or X repetition, the corresponding ropes, &c., on each mast bear the same numbers, and in the key, the name of such rope per se is only given. To RIGA, a most important seaport of Russia, capital find the full title of of Livonia, and the centre of administration for a rope, it is necessary the three Baltic Provinces, stands mainly on the to prefix (unless it right bank of the Dwina, 5 miles from the mouth pertain to the bowof that river, in the Gulf of Riga. It is 376 miles sprit or gaff) the south-west of St Petersburg, and is the terminus name of the mast of a railway to Moscow, not yet (1865) com- (mizzen, main, pleted. From the steeple of St Peter's Church, fore) to which it said to be the highest in the empire, a full view of belongs. For exthe situation of the city is obtained. R. contains a ample, the spars number of striking and handsome public buildings, marked D are, countof which the castle, or Dom, built in 1204, now ing from the left, the residence of the governor-general of the three called respectively Baltic Provinces, is the chief. The Dwina is mizzen- royal - mast, crossed by a bridge of boats, 800 paces long, of main-royal-mast, and which the boats in the middle are movable, to fore-royal-mast; the allow of the passage of vessels, and which is standing ropes entirely removed in winter. The old town is dark marked Iv., are the and gloomy, and shews all the main features of a mizzen-stay, mainGerman town of the middle ages; but the exten- stay, and fore-stay; sive suburbs are modern and handsome, and the and the runningwhole is defended by ramparts, bastions, and ropes bearing other fortified works. R. is the second trading figure 5, are mizzentown in Russia. It contains numerous soap, candle, braces, main-braces, glass, and iron works; cloth, leather, sugar, and and fore-braces. tobacco factories, and rope-walks. Shipbuilding is extensively carried on in the town and vicinity. The principal articles of export are flax, hemp, linseed, corn, timber, tallow, and tobacco. In 1863, the exports amounted to £3,348,550, and of this sum the chief items were: flax, £1,380,000; hemp, £600,000; and linseed, £420,000. The imports do not exceed £853,000, the principal articles being fish and salt. In 1863, the value of the export trade to Great Britain was £1,812,705, being considerably more than half the entire export trade. The import trade from Great Britain, in 1863, valued £293,250, or a third of the whole imports. Of the 3506 vessels, of 570,170 tons, that entered and cleared the port in 1863, 726 vessels, of 148,690 tons, were British. Pop. 73,953. R. was founded in the beginning of the 13th c. by Albert Buckshoevden, Bishop of Livonia, and soon became a first-rate commercial town, and member of the Hanseatic League. The Teutonic Knights possessed it in the 16th century. In 1621, R. was taken by Gustavus Adolphus, and held under Swedish dominion till 1710, but was finally annexed to Russia in 1721. RIGA, GULF OF, an inlet in the north-east of the Baltic Sea, washes the shores of the three Baltic Provinces, Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia. It 13 over 100 miles in length from north to south, and is about 70 miles in breadth. The islands of Oesel, Dagö, Mohn, and Worms stand in the entrance to it, and narrow the mouth of the gulf to a passage about 20 miles in width. The chief river which falls into the gulf is the Dwina. Sandbanks render navigation in some parts dangerous. RIGGING, in a ship, is a combination of very numerous ropes to afford stability to the masts, and to lower and hoist the sails. Notwithstanding the complication which the cordage of a rigged ship presents at first sight to the eye, the arrangement is remarkably simple. In all substantial points, the rig of each mast is the same; to understand one is, consequently, to understand all. In the accompanying diagrams, the same notation is observed throughout, spars being shewn by capital letters; sails, by talic letters; standing rigging, by Roman numerals; and running rigging, by Arabic numerals. the Rigging is either Standing or Running. The former is employed in maintaining, in fixed position, the masts and bowsprit; the latter runs Fig. 1. freely through numerous blocks, and its functions are to raise and lower the upper masts and the yards, to trim the sails, to K B 12 12 A Fig. 2. To hoist the signals and other flags, and occasionally void a confusing number of symbols and needless to furl the sails. |