in 1847–1848, served as district judge in 1852–1857, and in 1857–1861 was a representative in Congress. His political views were determined by the ultra-democratic influence of Andrew Jackson and the state-sovereignty philosophy of John C. Calhoun. In 1861 he was a member of the Texas secession convention, served in the Confederate provisional Congress, and on the 6th of March was appointed postmaster-general in President Davis's cabinet. He served in this capacity throughout the war, and for a short time before its close was also acting secretary of the treasury. He was captured with the Davis party on the 10th of May 1865, and was imprisoned in Fort Warren, Boston Harbour, until the following October. While in prison he wrote the “ Fort Warren letter ” (August 11th), in which he urged the people of Texas to recognize their defeat, grant civil rights to the freedmen, and try to conciliate the North. From 1875 to 1887, when he entered the U.S. Senate, he was again a representative in Congress, and from 1877 almost continuously to the close of his service he was chairman of the Committee on Commerce, in which capacity he had a prominent part in securing the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. He was a member of the state constitutional convention of 1876. In state politics his sympathies were with the Radicals. In 1891, believing that his first duty was to his state, he resigned from the Senate to accept the chairmanship of the newly established state railway commission. In 1901 he retired from public service. From 1899 until his death he was president of the Texas State Historical Association. He died at his home, near Palestine, Texas, on the 6th of March 1905.
See his Memoirs; with Special Reference to Secession and the Civil War (New York, 1906), edited by W. F. McCaleb.
REALGAR, a mineral species consisting of arsenic mono sulphide (AsS) and occurring as mono clinic crystals of a bright red colour. There is a perfect cleavage parallel to the plane of symmetry (r in fig.). The lustre is resinous, and the streak has the same colour as -the crystals, namely, orange-red to aurora-red. The hardness is 112–2 and the specific gravity 3.55. On exposure to light the crystals crumble to a yellow powder. The name realgar is of Arabic origin, and was used by the alchemists; the substance was known to Theophrastus under the name Σανδαράκη, and to Pliny as Sandaracha.
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The mineral usually occurs in association with the yellow arsenic sulphide, orpiment. Good crystals are found with ores of silver and lead in the mineral veins of Felsobanya, near Nagy-Banya, Kapnik-Banya and Nagyag, near Déva, in Hungary; with blende in the white crystalline dolomite of the Binnenthal in Switzerland; and in a bed of sandy clay at Mercur in Utah. It is deposited by the solfataras near Naples and by the hot springs of the Yellowstone National Park. Realgar has been used as a pigment and in pyrotechny for producing a brilliant white fire; but it is now replaced by the artificially prepared compound.
The other native arsenic sulphide, As2S3, known as orpiment (Lat. auripigmentum, meaning “golden paint”), occurs as foliated masses of a lemon-yellow colour, the foliation being parallel to a direction of perfect cleavage. It is sectile and soft (H.=112–2), and has a specific gravity 3.4. Distinctly developed crystals are rare; they have usually been considered to be orthorhombic and isomorphous with stibnite (Sb2S3), but it is probable that they are really mono clinic. Orpiment is extensively mined near Julamerk in Asiatic Turkey. (L. J. S.)
REALISM (from Low Lat. realis, appertaining to res, things,
as opposed to ideas and imaginations), a philosophical term used
in two opposite senses. The older of these is the scholastic
doctrine, traceable back to Socrates, that universals have
a more “ real ” existence than things. Universals are, in
scholastic language, ante res, in rebus and post res. Behind all
numerous types of chairs there is in the mind the ideal chair of
which particular chairs are mere copies. In the most extreme
form realism denies that anything exists in any sense except
universals. It is opposed to nominalism (q.v.) and conceptualism
(q.v.). For the history of the doctrine, see Scholasticism.
Realism in this sense has been called “ an assertion of the
rights of the subject ” (cf. the Protagonean maxim, “ Man is
the measure of all things ”). The modern application of the
term is to the opposing doctrine that there is a reality apart from
its presentation to consciousness. In this sense it is opposed
to idealism (q.v.), whether the purely subjective or that more
comprehensive idealism which makes subject and object
mutually interdependent. In its crude form it is known as
“ Natural ” or “ Naive ” Realism. It appears, however, in
more complex forms, e.g. as Ideal Realism (or Real Idealism),
which combines epistemological idealism with realism in metaphysics.
Again, Kant distinguishes “ empirical” realism,
which maintains the existence of things in space independent of
consciousness, from “ transcendental ” realism, which ascribes
absolute reality to time and space.
In literature and art “ realism ” again is opposed to “ idealism ” in various senses. The realist is (1) he who deliberately declines to select his subjects from the beautiful or harmonious, and, more especially, describes ugly things and brings out details of an unsavoury sort; (2) he who deals with individuals, not types; (3) most properly, he who strives to represent the facts exactly as they are.
REALM, the dominions of a king, a kingdom. The O.Fr.
reaume (mod. royaume) was the form first adopted in English,
and the modern spelling does not appear fixed till the beginning
of the 17th century. The word must be referred to a
supposed Med. Lat. regalimen, from regalis, of or belonging to
a rex, king.
REAL PROPERTY. The land law of England and of countries whose law is based upon that of England stands in peculiar position, which can be understood only by an outline of its history.
History.—Such terms as “fee” or “homage” carry us back into feudal times. Rights of common and distress are based upon still older institutions, forming the very basis of primitive law. The conception of tenure is the fundamental ground of distinction between real and personal estate, the former only being strictly entitled to the name of estate (q.v.). The division into real and personal is coincident to a great extent with that into immovable and movable, generally used by systems of law founded on the Roman (see Personal Property.) That it is not entirely coincident is due to the influence of the Roman law itself. The Greeks and the Romans of the republic were essentially nations of citizens; the Teutons were essentially a nation of land-folk; the Roman empire bridged the gulf between the two. It is probable that the English land law was produced by the action of the policy adopted in the lower empire, finally developed into feudalism, upon the previously existing course of Teutonic custom. The distinguishing features of the Teutonic system were enjoyment in common and the absence of private ownership, except to a limited extent. The principal features of the old English land law before the Conquest, from which the modern law has developed, were (1) liberty of alienation, either by will or inter vivos, of such land as could be alienated, chiefly, if not entirely, bocland, subject always to the limits fixed by the boc; (2) publicity of transfer by enrolment in the shire-book or church-book; (3) equal partition of the estate of a deceased among the sons, and failing sons among the daughters; (4) cultivation to a great extent by persons in various degrees of serfdom, owing money or labour rents; (5) variety of custom, tending to become uniform, through the application of the same principles in the local courts; (6) subjection of land to the trinoda necessitas, a burden imposed for the purpose of defence of the realm. The rudiments of the conceptions of tenure and of the crown as lord paramount were found in the old English system, and lænland was an anticipation of the limited interests which afterwards became of such importance.[1] The connexion of political privileges with the ownership
- ↑ The name has not remained as in Germany and Denmark. A fief is still Lehen in Germany, Lehn in Denmark.
