The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 320

NAPOLEON, VICTOR, son of Prince Napoleon; claimed to be head of the house of Bonaparte in 1891, though his younger brother, Prince Louis, a colonel in the Russian Imperial Guard, is preferred to him by many Bonapartists; _b_. 1862.

NAPOLEON D'OR, a French gold coin worth 20 francs, named after the Emperor Napoleon I.

NARAKA, among the Hindus and the Buddhists the place of penal suffering after death.

NARCISSUS, a self-satisfied youth who disdained the addresses of Echo, in consequence of which she pined away and died, and who, by way of penalty, was doomed to fall in love with his own image, which he kept beholding in the mirror of a fountain till he too pined away and died, his corpse being metamorphosed into the flower that bears his name.

NARROWS, THE, name given to the section of the St. Lawrence River which extends between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.

Na.r.s.eS, a statesman and general of the old Roman empire, rose from being a slave to be keeper of the imperial privy-purse; was successful against the Goths, whom he drove out of Rome; _d_. 573.

NARTHEX, a s.p.a.ce in early churches railed off from the rest for catechumens and penitents.

NASEBY, a village in Northampton, where the Royalists under Charles I. and Prince Rupert were defeated, "shivered utterly to ruin," by the Parliamentary forces under Fairfax and Cromwell in June 1645, the "Ironsides" bearing the brunt of the battle and winning the honours of the day.

NASH, JOHN, English architect, born in London; besides designing plans for some of the chief streets in the city and the buildings in them, was the architect of Buckingham Palace and the Pavilion at Brighton (1752-1835).

NASH, RICHARD, known as "Beau Nash," born at Swansea; installed himself as master of the ceremonies at Bath, and ruler of the a.s.semblies of fashion in that resort; was a charitable man as well as gay; died in poverty, but was honoured with a public funeral (1674-1761).

NASH, THOMAS, English satirist, born at Lowestoft, a Cambridge University wit; wrote plays, as well as pamphlets, bearing on the MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY (q. v.) (1567-1601).

NASHVILLE (81), capital of Tennessee, U.S., on the c.u.mberland River, 185 m. SW. of Louisville; a suspension bridge and railway drawbridge joins it with Edgefield suburb; it is an important railway and educational centre, the seat of the Fisk, Vanderbilt, and Nashville universities, and is actively engaged in the manufacture of cotton, tobacco, flour, paper, oil, &c.

NASMITH, ALEXANDER, Scottish landscape painter, born in Edinburgh; did portraits also, and one of Burns in particular, deemed the best likeness we have of the poet (1757-1843).

NASMITH, JAMES, mechanician, son of the preceding, born in Edinburgh; invented the steam-hammer and a steam pile-driver (1808-1890).

Na.s.sAU, till 1866 a duchy of Germany, now included in the Prussian province of HESSE-Na.s.sAU (q. v.).

NATAL (544, of which 47 are whites), British colony in SE. Africa, somewhat larger than Denmark, fronts the Indian Ocean on the E., having a foresh.o.r.e of 180 m., between Zululand on the N. and Kaffraria on the S.; the Dragensberg Mountains form its western boundary; enjoys a fine salubrious climate, and possesses abundance of fertile land, watered by some 140 inches of rainfall; along the coast the sugar-cane is largely cultivated, as also some tea, coffee, tobacco, &c., while all kinds of fruits flourish in its sub-tropical climate; the rising ground inland produces good cereals, and large numbers of sheep and cattle find excellent pasturage on the plains and mountain slopes on the W.; excellent coal is mined in large quant.i.ties, and iron and copper promise well; wool, sugar, hides, feathers, and ivory are the chief exports, and are shipped mainly at Durban, the chief port; the colony now enjoys the advantages of good railways, schools, representative government, and a legal code based on old Dutch law; PIETERMARITZBURG (q. v.) is the capital; Natal was discovered in 1497 by Vasco da Gama, and after being annexed to Cape Colony in 1844, was declared, 11 years later, a separate colony.

NATHAN, a Jewish prophet who had the courage to charge King David to his face with a heinous crime he had committed and convict him of his guilt, to his humiliation in the dust.

NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS, Napoleon Bonaparte's contemptuous name for the English.

NATIONAL ANTHEM, its authorship has been long matter of controversy, and it is uncertain to this day; it has been ascribed to H. Carey and to Dr. John Bull.

NATIONAL CONVENTION, the revolutionary a.s.sembly of France, consisting of 749 members chosen by universal suffrage, which on 22nd September 1792 supplanted the Legislative a.s.sembly, proclaimed the Republic, and condemned Louis XVI. to the guillotine; in spite of its perplexities and internal discords, it was successful in suppressing the Royalists in La Vendee and the south, and repelling the rest of Europe leagued against it, not only in arms, but in the field of diplomacy; it laid the foundation of several of the academic inst.i.tutions of the country, which have since contributed to its glory as well as welfare, and collected them together in the world-famous Inst.i.tute; its work done, "weary of its own existence, and all men sensibly weary of it," it willingly deceased in an act of self-dissolution in favour of a Directory of Five on 20th October 1795.

NATIONAL COVENANT. See COVENANT.

NATIONAL GUARD, THE, a militia of citizens organised in the munic.i.p.ality of Paris in 1790, with Lafayette as commandant, but suppressed in 1827, and again suppressed in 1872, after two revivals, in consequence of their taking part with the Commune of the latter date.

NATURAL SELECTION, name given by Darwin to the survival of certain plants and animals that are fitted, and the decease contemporaneously of certain others that are not fitted, to a new environment.

NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM, Carlyle's name in "Sartor" for the supernatural found latent in the natural, and manifesting itself in it, or of the miraculous in the common and everyday course of things; name of a chapter which, says Dr. Stirling, "contains the very first word of a higher philosophy as yet spoken in Great Britain, the very first English word towards the restoration and rehabilitation of the dethroned Upper Powers"; recognition at bottom, as the Hegelian philosophy teaches, and the life of Christ certifies, of the finiting of the infinite in the transitory forms of s.p.a.ce and time.

NATURALISM, a philosophical term used to denote the resolution of the supernatural into the natural, and its obliteration; the reference of everything to merely natural laws, and the denial of all supernatural interference with them.

NATURE WORSHIP, the worship of the forces of nature conceived of as personal deities.

NAUSICAA, the daughter of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, who gave welcome to Ulysses when shipwrecked on the sh.o.r.e, and whom Homer represents as, along with her maidens, washing the clothes of the hero and his companions.

NAUVOO, a village in Illinois, on the Mississippi, where the Mormons first settled in 1840, and from which they were expelled in 1846.

NAVARINO, a bay on the SW. coast of the Morea, the scene of the naval victory of the Athenians over the Spartans 425 B.C., and of the annihilation of the Turkish and Egyptian navies by the combined fleets of England, France, and Russia, under Codrington, 20th October 1827.

NAVARRE (304), one of the 49 provinces of Spain, comprising by far the greater portion of the old kingdom of Navarre, which lasted up to 1512, the other part of which now forms French Ba.s.ses-Pyrenees; the Spanish province lies on the SW. border of France, is very varied in surface and climate; in the N. the people are chiefly Basques, and are much more energetic than the southern Spaniards; maize, wheat, and red wine are the chief products.

NAWAB, a viceroy of a province in the Mogul empire, applied also to a Mohammedan chief in India, and, spelt Nabob, to a man who has made his wealth in India.

NAXOS (14), an island of the Cyclades, in the aegean Sea, famed for its marble, and exports salt and emery powder.

NAYLER, JAMES, a fanatical Quaker in the time of the Commonwealth, with a following as fanatical as himself, who escorted him through Bristol on his release from prison after the manner of Christ's entry into Jerusalem; was very cruelly punished for blasphemy in fancying or seeming to fancy himself a new incarnation of Christ.

NAZARETH (7), a town in a hollow of the hills on the N. of the Plain of Esdraelon, 67 m. N. of Jerusalem and 11 m. W. of the Sea of Galilee, celebrated over Christendom as the home of the Holy Family.