ROMANOFF, the name of an old Russian family from which sprung the
reigning dynasty of Russia, and the first Czar of which was Michael
Fedorovitch (1613-1645).

ROMANS (17), a town in the dep. Drome, France, on the Isere, 12 m.
NE. of Valence; a 9th-century bridge spans the river to the opposite town
Peage; has a 9th-century abbey; manufactures silk, &c.

ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE, an epistle written from Corinth, in the year
59, by St. Paul to the Church at Rome to correct particularly two errors
which he had learned the Church there had fallen into, on the part, on
the one hand, of the Jewish Christians, that the Gentiles as such were
not entitled to the same privileges as themselves, and, on the other
hand, of the Gentile Christians, that the Jews by their rejection of
Christ had excluded themselves from God's kingdom; and he wrote this
epistle to show that the one had no more right to the grace of God than
the other, and that this grace contemplates the final conversion of the
Jews as well as the Gentiles. The great theme of this epistle is that
faith in Christ is the one way of salvation for all mankind, Jew as well
as Gentile, and its significance is this, that it contains if not the
whole teaching of Paul, that essential part of it which presents and
emphasises the all-sufficiency of this faith.

ROMANTICISM, the name of the reactionary movement in literature and
art at the close of last century and at the beginning of this against the
cold and spiritless formalism and pseudo-classicism that then prevailed,
and was more regardful of correctness of expression than truth of feeling
and the claims of the emotional nature; has been defined as the
"reproduction in modern art and literature of the life and thought of the
Middle Ages."

ROME (423), since 1871 capital of the modern kingdom of Italy (q. v.),
on the Tiber, 16 m. from its entrance into the Tyrrhenian Sea;
legend ascribes its foundation to Romulus in 753 B.C., and the story of
its progress, first as the chief city of a little Italian kingdom, then
of a powerful and expanding republic (510 B.C. to 30 B.C.), and finally
of a vast empire, together with its decline and fall in the 5th century
(476 A.D.), before the advancing barbarian hordes, forms the most
impressive chapter in the history of nations; as the mother-city of
Christendom in the Middle Ages, and the later capital of the PAPAL
STATES (q. v.) and seat of the Popes, it acquired fresh glory