Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/242

230 N A K N A E the bourg and the cite. The latter is one of the oldest and most interesting of French towns. The cathedral (St Just) is the third on the site, and dates from the close of the 13th century, when the choir (130 feet high) was built. Two towers were added in the 15th century. An unusual effect is produced by a double row of crenella- tion taking the place of balustrades on the roof of the choir chapels and connecting the pillars of the flying- buttresses. Among the sepulchral monuments in the chancel may be noticed the alabaster tomb of Cardinal de Brigonnet, minister of state under Charles VIII. The chapter-house, of the 15th century, has a vaulted roof supported on four free pillars. From the top of the towers, 194 feet high, a magnificent view is obtained over the Narbonne plain, the valley of the Aude, the Montague Noire, the Cevennes, the hills of La Clape, which lie between the city and the sea, the Canigou, and the Corbieres. The apse of the cathedral was formerly joined to the fortifications of the archiepiscopal palace, and the two buildings are still connected by a mutilated cloister of the 14th and 15th centuries. On the front of the palace are. three square towers of unequal height. Between the Tour des Telegraphes (1318), crenellated and turreted at the corners, and that of St Martial (1380), machicolated and pierced by Gothic openings, a new fagade was erected in the style of the 15th century after the plans of Viollet- le-Duc. This portion of the building now serves as hotel de ville, and its upper stories are occupied by the X 1 arbonne museum, one of the best outside of Paris, containing pictures, pottery, nearly three thousand medals, and (in the old guard-room) a rich variety of Greek, Carthaginian, and Roman antiquities. The palace garden also contains many fragments of Roman work once built into the now dismantled fortifications ; and the Musee Lapidaire in the Larnourguier buildings (formerly a Benedictine convent) has six hundred and twenty bas-reliefs and three hundred and twenty-three ancient inscriptions. The church of St Paul, though partly Romanesque, is in the main a striking and for the south of France a rare example of a building of the first half of the 13th century in the Gothic style of the north. It possesses some ancient Christian sarco- phaguses and fine Renaissance wood carving. Narbonne has a good trade, especially in wine and spirituous liquors, the surrounding country growing (at the rate of 120 gallons per acre) strong alcoholic wines, largely in demand for "fortifying" weaker vintages. As a matter of course this gives employment to large numbers of coopers; and besides there are in the town several verdigris factories, a sulphur refinery, and tanneries. The honey of Narbonne is famed throughout Europe. The population in 1881 was 28,134. Long before the Roman invasion of Gaul Narbonne was a flourishing city. It was there that the Romans in 118 B.C. founded their first colony in Gaul ; and they constructed great works to protect the city from inundation and to improve its port. The seat of a proconsul and a station for the Roman fleet, Narbo Martius became the rival of Massilia. But in 150 A.D. it suffered greatly from a conflagration, and the division of Gallia Narbonensis into two provinces lessened its importance as a capital. Alans, Suevi, Vandals, each held the city for a brief space, and at last, in 413, it was more permanently occupied by the Visigoths. In 719, after a siege of two years, it was captured by the Saracens, and by them its fortifications were restored and extended. Charles ilartel, after the battle of Poitiers, and Pippin the Short, in 752, were both repulsed from its walls ; but on a new attempt, after an investment of seven years, and by aid of a traitor, the Franks managed again to force their way into Narbonne. Charlemagne made the city the capital of the duchy of Gothia, and divided it into three lordships one for the bishop, another for a Frankish lord, and the third for the Jews, who, occupying their own quarter, possessed schools, synagogues, and a university famous in the Middle Ages. The viscounts who succeeded the Frankish lord sometimes acknowledged the authority of the counts of Toulouse, sometimes that of the counts of Barcelona. In the 13th century the crusade against the Albigenses spared the city, but the arch bishopric was seized by the pope s legate Amaury, who took the title of duke of Narbonne. Simon de Montfort, however, deprived him of this dignity, receiving from Philip Augustus the duchy of Narboune along with the county of Toulouse. By his expulsion of the Jews Philip the Fair hastened the decay of the city ; and about the same period the Aude, which had formerly been diverted by the Romans, ceased to flow towards Narbonne and the harbour was silted up, to the further disadvantage of the place. United to the French crown in 1507, Narbonne was enclosed by a new line of walls under Francis I. , but having ceased to be a garrison town it had the last portions of its ramparts demolished in 1870. NARBOROUGH, SIB JOHN (ob. 1688), naval com mander, was descended from an old Norfolk family. He received his commission in 1664, and in 1666 was promoted lieutenant for gallantry in the action with the Dutch fleet off the Downs in June of that year. After the peace he was chosen to conduct a voyage of exploration in the South Seas. He set sail from Deptford on the 26th November 1669, and entered the Straits of Magellan in October of the following year, but returned home in June 1671 without accomplishing his original purpose. A narrative of the expedition was published at London in 1694 under the title An Account of several late Voyages and Discoveries to the Smith and North. During the second Dutch war Narborough was second captain of the lord high-admiral s ship the "Prince," and conducted himself with such conspicuous valour at the battle of Solebay (Southwold Bay) in May 1672 that he won special appro bation, and shortly afterwards was made rear-admiral and knighted. In 1675 he was sent to suppress the Tripoline piracies, and by the bold expedient of despatching gun boats into the harbour of Tripoli at midnight and burning the ships he induced the dey to agree to a treaty. Shortly after his return he undertook a similar expedition against the Algerines. In 1680 he was appointed commissioner of the navy, an office he held till his death in 1688. He was buried at Knowlton church, Kent, where a beautiful marble monument has been erected to his memory. NARCISSUS, a genus of bulbous plants belonging to the family Amaryllidacex. There are twenty or thirty wild forms, natives of central Europe and the Mediterranean region, while one extends through Asia to Japan. From these, or rather from some of these, by cultivation and hybridization, have arisen the very numerous forms which adorn our gardens in spring (see vol. xii. p. 257). The most interesting feature botanically is the "corona," or " cup," which springs from the base of the flower-segments. This gives the special character to the flower, and the members of the genus are classified according to the length of this organ as compared with that of the segments. Much has been written as to the real nature of this cup, but the most probable supposition is that it does not, as once supposed, represent one or more rows of modified stamens, but is simply an excrescence or "enation" from the mouth of the flower-tube, and probably is in some way connected with the fertilization of the flowers by insect agency. NARCOTICS are substances having the physiological action, in a healthy animal, of producing lethargy or stupor, which may pass into a state of profound coma or uncon sciousness along with complete paralysis, terminating in death. Certain substances of this class are used in medicine for the relief of pain, and are then called anodynes, whilst another group produce profound sleep, and are consequently known as hypnotics. In one sense, anaesthetics, such as chloroform and ether, may be held to be narcotics, but, as they are usually volatile substances causing unconsciousness for a comparatively short time, they are conveniently separated from the true narcotics, the effects of which are much more lasting. These dis tinctions are to a great extent artificial, as it is evident that a substance capable of producing partial insensibility