Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/360

346 N E R N E R 41 N. lat., 89 41 E. long., and after a westward course of 800 miles through the Central Provinces and Guzerat, falls into the sea in 21 38 N. lat., 72 30" E. long., in the Bombay district of Broach. During its passage through the Central Provinces several falls interrupt its course, the principal of which are a series of glittering cascades and rapids for some hundreds of feet down the heights of Amarkantak, and the well-known falls of the " Marble rocks " 9 miles below Jabalpur. After leaving the Central Provinces, the river widens out in the fertile district of Broach, with an average breadth of from half a mile to a mile. Below Broach city it forms an estuary which is 13 miles broad where it enters the Gulf of Cambay. The Nerbudda is nowhere utilized for irrigation, and navigation is confined to the lower section. In the rainy season boats of considerable size sail about 60 miles above Broach city. Sea-going ships of about 70 tons frequent the port of Broach, but they are entirely dependent on the tide. In sanctity the Nerbudda ranks only second to the Ganges among the rivers of India, and along its whole course are special places of pilgrimage. The most meritorious act that a pilgrim can perform is to walk from the sea to the source of the river and back along the opposite bank. This pilgrimage is chiefly undertaken by devotees from Guzerat and the Deccan, and takes from one to two years to accomplish. NEREUS, the old man of the sea, as his name (comp. vaw, modern Greek vepo, water) denotes, was described in Greek legend as full of wisdom and knowledge, friendly to men, but requiring compulsion before he reveals to them all that he knows. The struggle in which Heracles wrestles and overcomes him is a favourite subject of early Greek art; Heracles, the representative of toiling active man, bends to do his will even the power of the sea, aAtos yepwv. The fifty daughters of Nereus, the Nereids, are personifications of the smiling, quiet sea with all the gifts which it offers to men. None of the Nereids have any individual character except Thetis, Amphitrite, and Galatea. Thetis and Amphitrite are the queen or mistress of the sea in the legend of different localities; Galatea is a Sicilian figure, who plays with and deludes her rustic lover of the shore, Polyphemus. It is impossible to treat in brief of the religious conceptions on which the mythology of Nereus is founded, or of the connexion between the early representations of Nereus and Heracles and similar subjects in pre-Hellenic art. NERI, PHILIP (1515-1595). Filippo Neri, one of the most remarkable and individual figures amongst the ecclesiastics of the 16th century, was born at Florence, July 21, 1515, the youngest child of Francesco Neri, a lawyer of that city, and his wife Lucrezia Soldi, a woman of higher birth than her husband, and descended from a family whose members had held important public offices in the time of the republic. They were both devout persons, and Francesco was accustomed to intercourse with the monastic bodies in Florence, notably with the Dominicans. The child was carefully brought up, and displayed from infancy a winning, gentle, intelligent, playful, and yet obedient disposition, which earned him the title of the " good Pippo " (bon Pippo) amongst his young com panions. He received almost his earliest teachings from the friars at San Marco, the famous Dominican monastery in Florence, and was accustomed in after life to ascribe most of his progress to the teaching of two amongst them, Zenobio de Medici and Servanzio Mini. When he was about sixteen years old, a fire destroyed nearly all his father s property, and it became therefore expedient to seek some means of recruiting the family fortunes. His father s brother Romolo, a merchant at San Germano, a Neapolitan town in the Terra di Lavoro, near the base of Monte Cassino, was wealthy and childless, and to him Philip was sent in 1531, to assist him in his business, and with the hope that he might inherit his possessions. So far as gaining Romolo s confidence and affection, the plan was entirely successful, but it was thwarted by Philip s own resolve to adopt the ecclesiastical calling, a determination at which he arrived in the course of frequent visits to s solitary chapel on a rock overlooking the Bay of Gaeta. In 1533 he left San Germano, and betook himself to Rome, where he found shelter, food, and protection in the house of a Florentine gentleman named Galeotto Caccia, to whose two children he became tutor, continuing in that post for several years, and pursuing his own studies independently, while also practising habitual austerities, and beginning those labours amongst the sick and poor which gained him in later life the title of "Apostle of Rome," besides paying nightly visits for prayer and medita tions to the basilican churches of the city, and to the catacombs. In 1538 he entered on that course of home mission work which was the distinguishing characteristic of his life, and which bears in much of its method a curious resemblance to the manner in which Socrates was accustomed to set the Athenians thinking, in that he traversed the city, seizing opportunities of entering into conversation with persons of all ranks, and of leading them on, now with playful irony, now with searching questions, and again with words of wise and kindly counsel, to consider the topics he desired to set before them. In 1548 he founded the celebrated confraternity of the Santissima Trinita de Pellegrini e de Convalescente, whose primary object is to minister to the needs of the thousands of poor pilgrims accustomed to flock to Rome, especially in years of jubilee, and also to relieve the patients discharged from hospitals, but still too weak for labour. In 1551 he passed through all the minor orders, and was ordained deacon, and finally priest on May 23. He settled down, with some companions, at the hospital of San Girolamo della Carita, and while there tentatively began, in 1556, the institute with which his name is more especially connected, that of the Oratory, after a plan he had formed of proceeding as a missionary to India was abandoned at the instance of shrewd advisers, who saw that there was abundant work to be done in Rome, and that he was the man to do it. The scheme of the Oratory at first was no more than a series of evening meetings in his own room, at which there were prayers, hymns, readings from Scripture, from the fathers, and from the Martyrology, followed by a lecture, or by discussion of some religious question proposed for consideration. It afterwards was developed further, and the members of the society were employed in various kinds of mission work throughout Rome, notably in preaching sermons in different churches every evening, a wholly novel agency at that time. In 1.564 the Florentines, who regarded themselves as having a special claim upon him as their fellow-citizen, requested him to leave San Girolamo, and to take the oversight of their peculiar church in Rome, San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, then newly built. He was at first reluctant, but the pope (Pius IV.) was induced to enjoin him to accept, permitting him, however, to retain the charge of San Girolamo, where the exercises of the Oratory were still kept up. At this time the new society included amongst its members Csesar Baronius the ecclesiastical historian, Tarrugi, afterwards archbishop of Avignon, and Paravicini, all three subse quently cardinals, and also Gallonius, author of a well- known work on the Sufferings of the Martyrs, Ancina, Bordoni, and other men of ability and distinction. The Florentines, however, built in 1574 a large oratory or mission-room for the society contiguous to San Giovanni, in order to save them the fatigue of the daily