The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 324

NICARAGUA (313, mostly mulattoes and negroes), the largest and richest of five republics occupying Central America, stretches across the isthmus from the Pacific to the Caribbean Sea, between Honduras (N.) and Costa Rica (S.); the Cordilleras traverse the heart of the country, and the immense valleys of the W. are remarkable for the two great southern lakes, Nicaragua and Managua, which are studded with volcanic islands; rich in gold, silver, copper, and coal, with vast forests of mahogany, rosewood, &c., splendid pastures and a fertile soil; the country has through misgovernment and a bad climate remained in a backward state; in recent times more has been done; hides, bananas, coffee, and india-rubber are the chief exports, and a considerable deal of mining goes on; the great ship-ca.n.a.l from the Pacific to the Caribbean, begun in 1889 by a U.S. company, is not yet completed; Managua (18) is the capital; a.s.serted its independence from Spain in 1821, and has since been rent by countless revolutions; a president and a congress of 48 administer its affairs.

NICE or NICaeA, an ancient city of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, celebrated as the seat of two oec.u.menical councils of the Church, the first, presided over by Constantine in 325, which condemned Arianism, and the second, under the Empress Irene in 787, which deliberated on image-worship.

NICE (74), capital of the department Alpes-Maritimes, France, charmingly situated on the Mediterranean coast near the Italian border, terraced hills shelter it on the N., and its genial and equable climate make it a favourite winter resort for invalids; the Paglione, a small stream, divides the old and modern portion; Castle Hill, with ruins and pleasure gardens, the cathedral, art-gallery, &c., are features of interest; olive-oil is the chief export, and artistic pottery, perfumery, &c., are manufactured.

NICENE CREED, a creed established as orthodox at NICE (q. v.), which affirmed as against Arianism that Christ as Son of G.o.d was not merely of _like_ substance, but of the _same_ substance with the Father.

NICHOLAS, the name of five popes: N. I., ST., surnamed the Great, Pope from 858 to 867, a.s.serted the supremacy of the papal see, Festival, Nov. 13; N. II., pope from 1058 to 1061; N. III., Pope from 1277 to 1280; N. IV., pope from 1288 to 1292; N. V., Pope from 1447 to 1456, after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, took the exiled Greek scholars under his protection, fostered the learning of the East, and laid the foundation of the Vatican Library by the collection of over 5000 Greek and Latin MSS.

NICHOLAS, ST., the patron saint of boys, of sailors, of Russia and Aberdeen, as well as other towns; was bishop of Myra, persecuted under Diocletian; is generally represented in bishop's robes, and has either three purses or three children as his attributes; the three children and the three purses refer to one and the same story: St. Nicholas, on learning that a father who had three daughters was tempted by extreme poverty to expose them to a life of dishonour, went by night and threw into the window of the house three bags of money which served as a marriage portion for each, and thus rescued them from a life of shame.

NICHOLAS I., czar of Russia, born at St. Petersburg, third son of Paul I., ascended the throne in 1825 in succession to Alexander I., his eldest brother; suppressed with rigour and not a little severity a formidable conspiracy which took form on his accession; took up arms against Persia and wrested Erivan from its sway, struggled against both the Poles and the Turks till his overbearing policy against the latter provoked a coalition of France, England, and Sardinia to their defence in the Crimean War, which was still going on when he died; in 1848 he aided Austria in the suppression of the Hungarian insurrection (1796-1855).

NICHOLAS II., czar of Russia, born in St. Petersburg, son of Alexander III., and his successor in Nov. 1894; was married on the month of his accession to Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt and granddaughter of Queen Victoria through the Princess Alice, while his mother is a sister of the Princess of Wales; his education under his father was conducted expressly with a view to what might be required of him on his accession to the throne; his ministers are in sympathy with himself, and he has already (1899) distinguished himself by putting his finger on the sore which is festering at the heart and is sucking up as a vampire the life's blood of Europe; _b_. May 18, 1868.

NICHOLSON, JOHN, an Indian officer, born in Dublin, son of a physician; served in the Sikh Wars, and at the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857 in the Punjab crushed it in the bud; led the attack at the siege of Delhi, Sept. 14, but fell mortally wounded as the storming party were entering the Cabul Gate (1821-1857).

NICOBAR ISLANDS (7), a group of picturesque islands in the Indian Ocean, S. of the Andaman Islands and midway between Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula; 14 of the 20 islands are inhabited, chiefly by indigenous Indians and Malays; after being in the hands of Denmark for upwards of 100 years, they were annexed by Britain in 1869; trade is carried on with India in cocoa-nuts, ambergris, tortoise-sh.e.l.l, &c.

NICOLAITANS, a sect of heretics that arose in the Apostolic Church, presumed to have been a party of professing Christians of Gentile descent, who, after their profession, continued to take part in the heathen festivals, and to have contributed to break down the distinction between the Church and the world, so essential to the very existence of the faith they professed, founded, as it is, no less absolutely on No to the world than on Yea to G.o.d. See EVERLASTING NO and EVERLASTING YEA.

NICOLE, PIERRE, French divine and moralist, born at Chartres, a PORT-ROYALIST (q. v.), friend of Arnauld and Pascal; was along with the former author of the famous "Port Royal Logic" (1625-1695).

NICOTINE, a poisonous alkaloid extracted from the leaves of the tobacco plant, is a colourless, oily liquid, readily soluble in water, and has a pungent odour.

NIEBUHR, BARTHOLD GEORG, distinguished historian, born at Copenhagen, son of the succeeding; studied at Kiel, and for a time at London and Edinburgh; after various civil appointments in Denmark, entered the civil service of Prussia in 1806; on the establishment of the university of Berlin in 1810 gave in connection with it a course of lectures on Roman history, by which he established his reputation as a historian, several of the conclusions of which he afterwards confirmed during his residence as amba.s.sador at the Papal Court at Rome from 1816 to 1823; the revolution of the three days of July 1830 in Paris threatening, as he thought, a recurrence of the horrors of the first, gave him such a shock that he sickened of it and died; by his treatment of the history of Rome he introduced a new era in the treatment of history generally, which consisted in expiscating all the fabulous from the story and working on the residuum of authenticated fact, without, however, as would appear, taking due account of the influence of the faith of the people on the fable, and the effect of the latter on the life and destiny of the nation whose history it was his purpose to relate (1776-1830).

NIEBUHR, KARSTEN, a celebrated traveller, born in Hanover; joined a Danish expedition in exploration of Arabia, and alone of the members of it returned home, which he did by way of Persia, Palestine, and Cyprus, and wrote an account of the results of his researches (1733-1815).

NIEL, ADOLPHE, French marshal, born at Muret; entered the Engineers 1825, served in the Algerine War in 1835, before Rome in 1849, at Bomarsund in 1854, at Sebastopol in 1856, as well as at Magenta and Solferino, and finally became Minister of War (1802-1869).

NIEPEE, JOSEPH NICePh.o.r.e, French chemist, born at Chalons-sur-Saone; inventor of photography, the method of effecting which he achieved after long brooding in 1824, and afterwards communicated to Daguerre, with whom he entered into partnership, and who made it known after his death (1765-1833).

NIFLHEIM or MISTHOME, in the Norse mythology the primeval northern region of cold and darkness, in contrast with Muspelheim, or Brighthome, the primeval southern region of warmth and light, the two poles, as it were, of the Norse world.

NIGER, a great river of Western Africa, whose head-waters rise amid the Kong Mountains behind Sierra Leone; flowing NE. as far as Timbuctoo (2 m. from the river), it there bends gradually southward, receives from the E. its great affluent the Benue, and about 100 m. from the coast begins to form a wide forest and jungle-covered delta (larger than that of the Nile), and finally flows into the Gulf of Guinea by 22 mouths after a course of some 2600 m. Forms, with the Benue, an invaluable highway into the heart of the country; its upper and middle parts, under the names Joliba, &c., are within the French sphere, and the lower portion below Say is under English authority.

NIGHTINGALE, FLORENCE, a famous philanthropic nurse, born at Florence, of wealthy English parentage; at the age of 22 entered the inst.i.tution of Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserswerth to be trained as a nurse, and afterwards studied the methods of nursing and hospital management with the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, Paris; after thoroughly reorganising Harley Street Hospital, London, she in 1854 volunteered to organise a staff of nurses to tend the wounded soldiers in the Crimea; arriving at Scutari on the eve of Inkermann she, during the terrible winter of 1854-55, ministered with unwearied devotion to the suffering soldiers; on her return in 1856 she, with public support, established a training college for nurses at St. Thomas's and at King's College Hospital; she is author of "Notes on Nursing," "Notes on Hospitals," &c.; _b_. in 1820.

NIHILISM, the principles of a movement on the part of the educated cla.s.ses in Russia which repudiates the existing creed and organisation of society, and insists on a root and branch wholesale abolition of them and a reconstruction of them on communistic principles, and for the purely secular and everyday ends of common life, subordinating everything in the first place to the feeding, clothing, and lodging of human beings in a manner worthy of their rank in the scale of being. The term Nihilism is also applied to those philosophical systems which sweep the course clear of all incredibilities and irrationalities, but leave us bare of all our inherited spiritual possessions.

NIJNI-NOVGOROD (73), capital of a Russian government of the same name, situated at the confluence of the Oka with the Volga, 274 m. E. of Moscow, is the seat of Peter-Paul's Fair, the greatest in the world, which lasts from July to September, attracting merchants from Asia and Europe, and during which the population of the town swells to six or seven times its normal dimensions; as much as 20,000,000 worth of goods are said to be sold during the fair.

NILE, the longest river of Africa, and one of the most noted in the world's history; the Shimiyu, Isanga, and other streams which flow into Victoria Nyanza from the S. are regarded as its ultimate head-waters; from Victoria Nyanza, the Victoria Nile or Somerset River holds a north-westerly course to Albert Nyanza, whence it issues under the name of the Bahr-el-Jebel, swelled by the waters of the Semliki from Albert Edward Nyanza; about 650 m. N. it is joined by the Bahr-el-Ghazal from the W., and bending to the E., now under the name White Nile, receives on that side the Sobat, and as a sluggish navigable stream flows past Fashoda on to Khartoum, where it is met by the Bahr-al-Azrak or Blue Nile; 200 m. lower it receives the Atbara or Black Nile. Through Egypt the river's course is confined to a valley some 10 m. broad, which owes its great fertility to the alluvial deposits left by the river during it annual overflow (July to October, caused by seasonal rains in Abyssinia, &c.). From Khartoum to a.s.souan occur the cataracts; below this the stream is navigable. A few miles N. of Cairo begins the delta which lies within the Rosetta and Damietta--two main branches of the divided river--and is some 150 m. broad at its base. From Victoria Nyanza to the coast the river measures about 3400 m.

NILSSON, CHRISTINE, an operatic singer, born in Sweden, daughter of a peasant, and one of the foremost sopranos of her day; distinguished for her dramatic talent no less than by her powers as a vocalist (1843-1882).

NIMEGUEN (34), an interesting old Dutch town in Guelderland, on the Waal, 73 m. E. of Rotterdam; has a fine 13th-century Gothic church and other notable buildings; its prosperous manufactures include tobacco, perfume, beer, &c.; here, in 1678-79, France effected famous peace treaties with Holland, Spain, and Austria.

NiMES or NISMES (68), capital of the department of Gard, S. of France, lies surrounded by the Cevennes in the fertile valley of the Vistre, 31 m. E. of Montpellier; has unique Roman remains, including an imposing amphitheatre, now used as a bull-arena, the n.o.ble Corinthian "Maison Carree," a mausoleum, baths, &c.; textiles (silk, cotton, &c.), wines, and brandy are the chief articles of manufacture; it declared for the Reformation in 1559, and suffered cruelly on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

NIMROD, an early king of a.s.syria or Babylonia, characterised in Scripture (Gen. x. 9) as "a mighty hunter before the Lord"; a name now applied to a distinguished hunter.

NINEVEH, an exceeding great city, capital of ancient a.s.syria, which stood on the left bank of the Tigris, opposite the modern town of Mosul, said to have been included within a wall 60 m. long, 100 ft. high, the breadth of three chariots in width, and defended by 1500 towers each 200 ft. in height.

NINIAN ST., early apostle of Christianity to the southern Picts of Scotland, born on the sh.o.r.es of the Solway, of n.o.ble descent; went to Rome, was consecrated by the Pope, visited St. Martin at Tours on his way back; had founded a church at Whithorn, Wigtownshire, which he dedicated to the latter on his return, where he died, "perfect in life and full of years," in 432.

NINUS, a legendary king of a.s.syria, a celebrated conqueror, to whom tradition a.s.signs the founding of Nineveh.

NIOBE, in the Greek mythology the daughter of Tantalus, and wife of Amphion, king of Thebes, to whom she bore six sons and six daughters, in her pride of whom she rated herself above Leto, who had given birth to only two children, Apollo and Artemis, whereupon they, indignant at this insult to their mother, gave themselves for nine days to the slaughter of Niobe's offspring, and on the tenth the G.o.ds buried them; Niobe, in her grief, retired to Mount Sipylos, in Lydia, where her body became cold and rigid as stone, but not her tears, which, ever as the summer months returned, burst forth anew.

NIRVaNA, the name given to the consummation of bliss in the Hindu, but especially the Buddhist, religions, synonymous with extinction, which in the Hindu creed means the extinction of individuality by absorption in the Divine Being, and in Buddhism, not, as some presume, the extinction of existence, but the extinction of agitation of mind through the crucifixion of all pa.s.sion and desire, the attainment of self-centred, self-sufficient quiescence of being, or rest and peace of soul.

NISUS, a Trojan youth who accompanied aeneas into Italy, and whose friendship for Euryulus is so pathetically immortalised by Virgil in the ninth book of the "aeneid."

NITHSDALE, WILLIAM MAXWELL, EARL OF, a noted Catholic, who took part in the Jacobite rising of 1715, was captured at Preston, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to death; the night before the day appointed for his execution (24th February 1786) he effected an escape from the Tower by exchanging clothes with his daring and devoted countess, who had been admitted to his room; he fled to Rome, where he lived in happiness with his wife until her death (1676-1744).