[Nelson], 1, a Prosperous manufacturing borough of Lancashire (23), 3½ 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 midshipman 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 God, 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 goddess, the allayer of pain and the soother of sorrows, or the impersonation of stern retributive justice.