eol.ii. par. 13). See MEDIA. This is probably I he fact which the apocryphal writer of Judith had in his mind
when he spoke ofArphaxad as having been captured at Ragau. When Darius Codomannus fled from Alexander. intending to make a final stand in Bactria, he must have passed through Rages on his way to the ( laspian Gates; and so we find thai Alexander arrived there, in pursuit of his enemy, on the eleventh day after he quitted Ecba- tana | Arrian, Exp. Alex. iii. 20). In the troubles which followed the death of Alexander, Rages appears to have gone to decay, bul ii was soon after rebuilt by Seleucus I (Nicator), who gave ii the name of Europus iSirah. - m. ph. Byz. ad VOC '. When I he I'arthians took it. ikes called it Arsacia, after the Vxsaces of the day: hut it soon afterwards recovered its ancient ap- pellation, as wi see bj Strabo and [sidore. That appel- lation it ha- ever since retained, with only a Bligl
raption, tie- nun- being -till known by the name of Rhey. These ruins lie about five miles south-east of Teheran, and cover a 3pace 1500 yards long by 3500
yards broad. The wall- are well marked, and are ..I
prodigious thickness; they appear to have been flanked
by si rone; tower-, and are connect! d w it h B loftj citadel
at their north-eastern angle. The importance ol the
place consisted in its vicinity to the Caspian Crate.-. which, in a certain sense, it guarded. Owing to the barren and desolate character "t the -real salt desert of Iran, every army which seeks t" pas- from Bactria, India, and Afghanistan to Media and Mesopotamia, or via versa, must skirt the range of mountains which runs alone; the southern Bhore of the Caspian. These mountains .-end out a rugged and precipitous .-pur in about long. 52 '-'.".' I'., from Greenwich, which runs far into the desert, and can only he rounded with the ex- tremest difficulty. Across this spur is a single pass the Pylae Caspian of the ancients— and of this pass the pos- sessors of Rhagea must have at all times held the keys. The modern Teheran, built out of its ruins, ha- now superseded Rhey; and it i- perhaps mainly from the importance of iis position that it ha- become the Pi r- sian capital. For an account of the ruins of Rhey, sic Kcr Porter, Travels, i. 357 364; ami compare Fraser, Khorassan, p. 286. Smith.
Ragged Schools i- the \ opular name for a volun- tary agency providing education for destitute children, and so preventing tin m from falling into vagrancy and crime. Vagrant children, and those guilty of slight offences, are provided for in the English Certified
Industrial School; but the two institutions are in
Croat Britain frequently combined. See [kdustmai
Schools. The movement which established ragged schools was almost simultaneous with that which insti- tuted reformatories. John Borgia, an unlettered labor- ing mason, established a "ragged school" towards the close <>f the la-i ci ntun . composed of thievish and va- grant children gathered from the streets and by-ways of Rome. A few years later, John rounds, an unedu- cated cobbler, for twenty years, till his death in 1839, gathered into his shop the most destitute and degradi d children of Portsmouth, and thus instituted the tir.-t ragged school in England. Both wrought miracles among the juvenile gamins of the street The mental, industrial, moral, and religious training which tin \ im- parted to the juvenile generation of their time was a work most appropriately honored a- •■the beginning of the greatest of all social problems." It saved thousands of children from beggary and vice, and raisi d multitudes from the verge of infamy to the rank of a useful and honored life. The first school in which education was accompanied by oiler of food was opened bj Sheriff Watson in Aberdeen in 1841, and from thenci feeding-schools spread over all the country. London had a ragged Sunday-school in 1838, which eventually
became a freeday-scl 1. Field Lane followed in 1843.
The Ragged School Union of London in 1864 numbered •_'ni day-schools, with 17,983 scholars (of these, 28 19 w< re industrial i : lso Sunday -schools, with 23,360 scholars; and 205 night-schools, with 8325 scholars. The number of schools throughout the country cannot he ascertained, as they arc not officially known. A Privy-council min- ute of 1856 allowed a capitation -ram ,,f £2 I1'.-, to every child fed in the schools. This was withdrawn in 1859, as was al-o the -rani of one third the cost of material used in industrial training. ,Man\ of the existing
scl Is certified under the Act of 1857, a- in Scotland
under Mr. Dunlop's Act of 1854 : km tin -e act- operated \ en slightly in changing the eharacti r of the schi ols, though introducing the principle of compulsorj deten- tion, more full\ worked out under recent acts. In the present code of government education, ragged schools arc left out. The\ ci htain grants en tin same con- ditions as other schools conditions t" them often diffi- cull and unnecessary. For industrial teaching, 1 1 1 < \ receive nothing. The ragged school joined t titled industrial is precluded from aid from any quarter. There are -till, it i- estimated, '.'.''.nun ragged childn n in the -tieets of London. School- for the instruction of poor colored children were established bj the Friends of Philadelphia as early as i77n. and their benevolent