The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 321

NAZARITES, among the Jews people consecrated by a vow to some special religious service, generally for a definite period, but sometimes for life; during its continuance they were bound to abstain not merely from strong drink, but from all fruit of the vine, to wear their hair uncut, and forbidden to approach a dead body, long hair being the symbol of their consecration; the vow was sometimes made by their parents for them before their birth; the said vow is the symbolic a.s.sertion of the right of any and every man to consecrate himself, in disregard of every other claim, to any service which G.o.d may require of him.

NEAGH, LOUGH, the largest lake in the British Isles, lies in the NE.

of Ireland, touching the borders of five counties, is 16 m. long, and has an average breadth of 10 m. and a greatest depth of 102 ft.

NEAL, DANIEL, Nonconformist divine, born in London, and minister there; wrote a "History of the Puritans" and a "History of New England"

(1678-1743).

NEAL, JOHN MASON, hynmologist, born in London; was a zealous and advanced High Churchman, wrote a "History of the Holy Eastern Church"; is best known for his hymns, translated and original (1818-1866).

NEANDER, JOHANN AUGUST WILHELM, eminent Church historian, born at Gottingen, of Jewish parents, his father's name Mendel, which he changed into Neander (new man) on his baptism at the age of 17; studied theology under Schleiermacher at Halle, commenced his work as a teacher of theology in Heidelberg in 1811, but was two years after called to the chair of Church History in Berlin, a post he occupied with signal distinction till his death, his fame all along attracting to him students from every quarter of Christendom; he was a devout believer in historical Christianity, and had the profoundest insight into the Christian faith, both in the root of it and the development of it in the life of the Church; besides several monographs, he wrote the history of the Church from its first starting through its after expansion, and a "Life of Christ" in answer to Strauss, which for its apprehension of the spirit of Christ and His teaching has never been surpa.s.sed, while in Christian character he was, if ever man was, "without spot and blameless"

(1789-1850).

NEATH (11), a borough and river port of Glamorgans.h.i.+re, on the navigable Neath, 6 m. NE. of Swansea; is an old town, and has interesting ruins of an abbey and of a castle (burned 1231); has prosperous copper, tin, iron, and chemical works.

NEBIIM, the prophets of Israel as an organised cla.s.s, who first figure as guardians of the spiritual interests of the nation to the time of Samuel, when it was threatened with extinction piecemeal at the hands of the Philistines, and whose mission it was to recall the divided tribes to a sense of their unity as the chosen of Jehovah, and to see that they were welded into one under a single king; they lived together in communities, appeared in companies, wore a distinctive dress, and were called the sons of the prophets; while they were performing and discharging their offices they were true to their calling, but when order was established they, as is usual in such cases, became more and more lax, until first Elijah, and then another and another who were for most part not of the order, had, if they would be true to their own souls, to remind the nation of what its authorised teachers, in their unfaithfulness, were failing to do, and in consequence suffering G.o.d's cause to go to wreck.

NEBRASKA (1,058), one of the west central States of the American Union, has Dakota on its N. and Kansas and Colorado on the S., is 1 times the size of England; in the E. stretches of fertile land yield abundant crops of grain (maize chiefly), hemp, flax, sugar-beet, and tobacco, while in the W. rich prairie pastures favour a prosperous stock-raising; the Platte, Niobrarah, and Republican Rivers follow the eastward slope of the land; Omaha and Lincoln (capital) are the chief centres of the manufacturing industries; climate is dry and bracing; wolves, foxes, skunks, &c., abound, chiefly in the "Bad Lands" of the N.; Nebraska was incorporated in the American Union in 1867.

NEBULae, name given to ma.s.ses larger or smaller of misty light in the heavens caused by a group of stars too remote to be severally visible to the naked eye.

NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS, the theory that the sun and planets with their satellites in the solar system were originally one ma.s.s of nebulous matter which, gradually cooling and contracting, under violent revolution resolved itself into separate revolving orbs.

NECKER, JACQUES, celebrated financier, born at Geneva, banker in Paris; married the accomplished Susanne Curchod, the rejected of Gibbon, and became by her the father of Mme. de Stael; was a man of high repute for probity and business capacity; became in 1777 Director-General of Finance in France, tried hard and honestly, by borrowing and retrenchment, to restore the fallen public credit, but was after five years dismissed; was recalled in 1788, but though the funds rose, and he contributed to their relief two million livres of his own money, was again dismissed, to be once more recalled, only to expose his inability to cope with the crisis and to be forced to retire (1732-1804).

NECTAR, in the regard of the Greeks the drink of the G.o.ds, which, along with ambrosia, their food, nourished the ichor, their blood, and kept them ever in the bloom of immortal youth; it was not permitted to mortals to drink of it.

NEEDLE-GUN, a breech-loading gun, the cartridge of which is exploded by a needle.

NEGATIVE, in photography a picture of an object in which the lights and shadows are reversed, so that the shady part appears white and the light in it appears dark.

NEGATIVITY, the name given in philosophy to the negative element determinative or definitive of things and all ideas of things, whereby a thing is this because it is not that, and is seen to be this because it is seen not to be that, an antagonism essential to all forms of being, spiritual as well as material, and to all definite and distinct thought.

NEGRITOES, Spanish name for certain distinctive tribes of a diminutive race resembling negroes, occupying the central portions of some of the Philippine Islands, also known as Aetas or Itas; sometimes loosely used to designate Papuans and all the Melanesian peoples of Polynesia.

NEGROES, the dark race of tropical Africa, distinguished by their dark woolly hair, their black eyes, their flat noses, and their thick lips; they occupy rather a low level in the scale of humanity, and are lacking in those mental and moral qualities which have impressed the stamp of greatness on the other races that have distinguished themselves in the history of the world.

NEHEMIAH, a Jew of the captivity, of royal degree and in high favour, being king's cup-bearer at the court of Artaxerxes, the Persian king; received a commission from the king to repair to Jerusalem and restore the Jewish wors.h.i.+p, and ruled over it for 12 years, till he saw the walls of the city amid much opposition restored; returned afterwards to superintend the reform of the wors.h.i.+p, of which the book of the Old Testament named after him relates the story.

NEHUSHTAN (a piece of bra.s.s), the name given in contempt to what was alleged to be the "Serpent in the Wilderness," which had become an object of wors.h.i.+p among the Jews, and was destroyed by King Hezekiah among other idolatrous relics (2 Kings xviii. 4).

NEILGHERRY HILLS, a bracing mountain district in South India, forming a triangular-shaped and somewhat isolated ma.s.s of elevated country, peaks of which attain an alt.i.tude of close upon 9000 ft.; gra.s.sy slopes alternate with thick ma.s.ses of forest, amid which several small native wild tribes still dwell; Ootacamund is the chief station of the many Europeans who frequent the district as a health resort.

NELSON, 1, a Prosperous manufacturing borough of Lancas.h.i.+re (23), 3 m. NE. of Burnley. 2, Capital of a district in the N. end of South Island, New Zealand (11); has a busy harbour in Blind Bay, and manufactures cloth, leather, soap, &c.

NELSON, HORATIO, LORD, great English admiral, born at Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk; entered the navy as a mids.h.i.+pman in 1770, and after voyages to the West Indies, the Arctic regions, and the East Indies, was promoted to a lieutenancy in 1777; three years later he headed the expedition against San Juan, was invalided home, and in 1781 acted under Lord Hood in American waters; in command of the _Boreas_ on the Leeward Islands station, here he involved himself in trouble through his severe and arbitrary enforcement of the Navigation Act against American traders, and there also he met and married in 1787 the widow of Dr. Nesbit; returning home he lived for five years in retirement, but on the eve of the French Revolutionary war he was again summoned to active service, and in command of the _Agamemnon_, advanced his reputation by gallant conduct in the Mediterranean operations of Lord Hood, losing his right eye during the storming of Calvi, in Corsica; conspicuous bravery at the engagement with the Spaniards off Cape St. Vincent (1797) brought him promotion to the rank of rear-admiral; in the same year he lost his right arm at Santa Cruz, and in the following year, with an inferior force, annihilated the French fleet in the Bay of Aboukir, for which he was raised to the peerage as Baron Nelson, and created Duke of Bronte by the King of Naples; at this time began his lifelong _liaison_ with LADY HAMILTON (q. v.); involving himself in Neapolitan affairs, he went beyond his commission in suppressing the rebel Jacobins, and especially in executing their leader Caracciolo; in 1800 he returned home, his never robust strength considerably impaired; as vice-admiral nominally under Sir Hugh Parker, he in 1801 sailed for the Baltic and inflicted a signal defeat on the Danish fleet off Copenhagen; for this he was made Viscount and commander-in-chief; during the scare of a Napoleonic invasion he kept a vigilant watch in the Channel, and on the resumption of war he on October 21, 1805, crowned his great career by a memorable victory off Trafalgar over the French fleet commanded by Villeneuve, but was himself mortally wounded at the very height of the battle (1758-1805).

NEMEAN GAMES, one of the four great national festivals of Greece, and celebrated every other year.

NEMEAN LION, a monstrous lion in Nemea, a valley of Argolis, which Hercules slew by throttling it with his hands, clothing himself ever after with its skin.

NEMESIS, in the Greek imagination, the executioner of divine vengeance on evil-doers, conceived of as incarnated in the fear which precedes and the remorse which accompanies a guilty action.

NENNIUS, the reputed author of a chronicle of early British history, who appears to have lived not later perhaps than the 9th century.

NEOLOGY, the name given to the rationalist theology of Germany or the rationalisation of the Christian religion.

NEO-PLATONISM, a system of philosophy that originated in Alexandria at the beginning of the 3rd century, which resolved the absolute, or G.o.d, into the incarnation thereof in the Logos, or reason of man, and which aimed at "demonstrating the graduated transition from the absolute object to the personality of man"; it was a concretion of European thought and Oriental.

NEPAL (about 2,500), an independent native State in North India, occupying a narrow mountainous territory along and including the southern slopes of the Himalayas, which separate it from Thibet; consists mainly of valleys and intervening mountain ridges, among which dwell various hill tribes, the dominant race being the hardy GOORKHAS (q. v.).

NEPENTHE, an imaginary G.o.ddess, the allayer of pain and the soother of sorrows, or the impersonation of stern retributive justice.

NEPOS, CORNELIUS, Roman historian, born at Pavia; was a contemporary and friend of Cicero; was the author of several historical works, no longer extant, and the one still extant ascribed to him, ent.i.tled "De Viris Ill.u.s.tribus," is believed to be an abridgment of an earlier work by him.

NEPTUNE, the chief marine deity of the Romans, and identified with the Poseidon of the Greeks, is represented with a trident in his hand as his sceptre.