Ross, William Charles, Sir, an English minia- ture-painter, was born in London, June, 1794. In 1837 he was appointed miniature-painter to the queen. In 1843 he gained a prize of one hundred pounds for a picture of The An;jel Haphael Discoursing ivith Adam. His death occurred in 1860.
Ross, William Z., a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in Licking County, O., April 24, 1823. At the age of sixteen he professed faith in Christ and united with the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was licensed as a local preacher, and was admitted on trial in the Ohio Conference in 1853. In 1865 he was appointed missionary to Tennessee and stationed at Shelbyville, where he died, Oct. 11, 1866. His preaching was marked by extraordinary force and pun- gency of a])plication. See Minutes of Annual Confer- ences, 1867, p. 259.
Rosshirt, Coniiad E'tgen Fuanz, a Roman Cath- olic divine, was born in 1793 at Oherscheinfeld, in Fran- conia. He studied at Landshut and Erlargen, and in 1817 he was already professor of canon-law in the latter place. He was one of the oldest professors of canon- law in Germany, and died .June 4, 1873, at Heidelberg. He wrote, Leiirburh des Kirchenrechts (3d ed. Schaff- hausen, 1858): — Von den ftlsrhen Decretalen u. von einif/en neuen in hamhei-rj entdeckten Handschriften der falschen Decretalen (Heldelb. 1846) -.—Zu den kirchen-
rechtlichen Quellen des ersten Jahrfausends und zu den pseudoisidorischen Decretalen (ibid. 1849) : — Canonisches liecht (Schaflfhausen, 1857) : — Manuale Latinitutis Juris Canonici, Rerum Morulium et Theolorjicarum, Brevissi- mis A nnotationibus Instructum, quo Lexici Juris Canonici Lineamenta Froponere Studuit (ibid. 1862): — Beitrdfje zuin Kirchenrecht (Heidelb. 1863). See Zuchold, Bibl, Theol. p. 1088 ; Literar. llandweiser, 1873, p. 300. (B. P.)
Rossi, Azaiiah (ben-Mosks) de, a Jewish schol- ar of the celebrated family called in Hebrew Mln ha- Adomiin, was born in IMantua about 1514. Naturally endowed with extraordinary powers of mind, keenness of perception, refinement of taste, and with an insatiable desire for the acquisition of knowledge, De Rossi de- voted himself with unwearied assiduity and zeal to the study of Hebrew literature, arch:«ology, history, the writings of ancient Greece and i;ome, and even the fathers, which knowledge was of great use to him af- terwards, when he devoted himself more especially to the criticism of the Hebrew language and the sacred text. Having prosecuted his studies in Mantua, Fer- rara, Ancona, Sabionetta, Bologna, etc., he went back to Ferrara with the accumulated learning of more than half a century, the results of which he now communi- cated to the world in his celebrated work entitled D";;"!? -I'lXTS, The Liijht of the Eyes (Mantua, 1574-75). The work consists of three parts, subdivided into chap- ters as follows :
Pai-t I, which is entitled C"^ll"bx bip, The Voice o/God (republished at Vienna in 182'.'), which was occiisioued by the terrible earthquake at Feirara, Nov. IS, 157(i, and which De Rossi himself witnessed, con tains, in easy style, a graph- ic description of the event. He believes it a duty to lelate to posterity how the power of the Creator had manifested itself. He dilates on the subject, to prove that he does not altogether agiee with Greek philosophers, who attribute sudden disasters to natural causes, but argues forcibly and (quoting also Scriptural and Rabbinical authorities) con- cludes that the invisil)le hand of God uses natiue— its own creation — to mete out men's deserts. He then branches out to comment scientifically on narratives in sacred and secular works relative to earthquakes, and remarks that what luippeiied to his wife would have coufouuded an JEi>- culapitis and a Hippocrates. She had moved into her daughter's room shortly before the roof of the house fell, by a sudden shock, into her own chambers. The fright occasioned turned the color of her skin into a deep yel- low, and from that moment she craved for nothimr but salt. Bread and salt became to her a most delicious food. Yet thai morbid desire he holds to have been her cure. Without taking any medicine, it gradually decreased, and her natural color returned. Thereupon De Rossi reasons at)out our ignorance of the wonders of natin-e, and sug- gests the possibility that the auantity of pure salt his wife ate destroyed the effect of the saline and sulphuric parti- cles which may have entered her system at the upheaving of the earth.
Part n, which is entitled D"'2|5T T'l'iri, The Stonj of the Aged (republished at Vienna in 1S29), contains an ac- count of the Sept. version of the Bible, chiefly from the let- ter of Arisleas, a confidential friend of king Ptolemy Phila- delphus, commnnicated to his brother Phylocrates. De Rossi accepted it as true in all its details. Modern criti- cism has seen where it is at fatilt, and declared it spurions. That a Greek translation of the Pentateuch — not of the whole Bible— was made under the auspices of king Ptole- my cannot be doubted. Besides Josephns, Philo, and the fathers of the Christian Church, the Talmud has recorded the incident, somewhat hyperbolically, in the treatise Me- gillah. But that the so-called Sept. version of the entire Scriptures should have had the origin related above is im- possible. See Skptcaoint.
Part III, which is divided into two divisions, respec- tively called n3'^2 ''T''2X, Word of Understanding, and 051" '^'2% Chronolngy, c()nsists of four sections, subdivid- ed again into sixty chapters. The first division, with its two sections (a^"l?2X^), treats, in ch. i-xiii, of the use of the fathers ; the heathen writings ; Philo : the Jewish sects, es- pecially the Essenes; the Sept. and the Aramaic versions; file history of the Jews in Alexandria and Cyrene ; the Bar Kochba revolts : the Ten Tribes ; the Taltnudic story about Alesiinder the Great's entry into Jerusalem; and of the Talmndic theory of natme. The second section, enibrac- iuK ch. xiv-xxviii, contains treatises on the explanation of Scriptme by ancient sages: nn the Midrash and Ha- gadic exegesis ; ou suudry striking differences between