of England." It was this work which first called out the abilities of James Peirce of Exeter in his celebrated Vindication of Dissenters.—P. L.
* NICHOLSON, Sir Charles, of Luddenham, New South Wales, Baronet, D.C.L., LL.D., chancellor of the university of Sydney, &c., born in 1808, and educated at the university of Edinburgh, where he obtained the degree of M.D. in 1833. In 1834 Dr. Nicholson emigrated to Sydney, New South Wales, where for several years he practised his profession with great success. His circumstances, however, enabling him to relinquish medical practice for the more congenial pursuits of literature and politics, he was in 1843 elected a member of the first legislative council of New South Wales, as representative of the district of Port-Philip, now the colony of Victoria. He subsequently became member for the county of Argyle, and was on three occasions elected to the office of speaker of the legislative council, the functions of which he discharged with a degree of dignity, impartiality, and ability, that procured for him the respect of all parties. In 1852 he received the honour of knighthood, and in 1859, on the recommendation of Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, then colonial minister, her majesty was pleased to recognize his eminent services to the colony of New South Wales, by conferring upon him the dignity of a baronet. This was the first occasion in which an Australian colonist was rewarded by elevation to such a rank. During a journey to the East in 1856-57 Sir Charles made a valuable collection of Egyptian and other antiquities, which he has presented to the university of Sydney, an institution which he was mainly instrumental in establishing, and of which he was elected chancellor. In 1857 he had the degree of LL.D. bestowed upon him by the university of Cambridge, and that of D.C.L. by the university of Oxford. Sir Charles resides chiefly at Sydney; and although holding no official position except in the university, his great sagacity and rare experience are not unfrequently made available by the government, when questions of importance to the colony are under consideration. His hospitality is unbounded, and his house and magnificent library are open to all. His attention to travellers and men of science from all quarters has always been remarkable, and has on several occasions been acknowledged by foreign governments, as well as by his own countrymen.—J. O. M'W.
NICHOLSON, Francis, painter in water colours, and lithographer, was born November 14, 1753, at Pickering in Yorkshire. Mr. Nicholson practised as a teacher of drawing at Whitby, at Knaresborough, and afterwards at Ripon, before he settled in London. His first exhibited picture was a "View of Whitby," sent to the Royal Academy in 1789. Mr. Nicholson's style would now be regarded as feeble, but it was admired then; and his pictures, and his talent as a teacher, procured him a handsome income. He was one of the founders of the Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1805, and continued a regular contributor to its exhibitions as long as he remained in actual practice. Mr. Nicholson was one of the earliest of the English artists to see the value of lithography for producing facsimiles of sketching and drawings; and he soon acquired great facility in working on the stone. He is said to have executed above eight hundred lithographs, nearly all being intended for drawing-copies. Another mode by which he sought to extend the benefits of his experience as a teacher, was by the publication of a work on "The Practice of Drawing and Painting Landscapes from Nature in Water Colours," 4to, 1820; 2nd edition, 1822. Shortly after this, having acquired a competence, he retired from professional practice: but he continued to the end of his long life to amuse himself with art, painting many pictures in oil; and with mechanical pursuits, clock-making, organ-building, &c., for which he had a great fondness. He died March 6, 1844, in his ninety-first year.—J. T—e.
NICHOLSON, John, Brigadier-general, one of the heroes of the capture of Delhi, was the eldest son of a physician who practised at Vergemont, county Down, where he was born on the 11th December, 1822. Through his maternal uncle. Sir J. W. Hogg, chairman of the East India Company, he received a direct appointment to India, where he landed in July, 1839, the year of the first Affghan war. He was in Ghuznee under Colonel Palmer when it was besieged by the Affghans, and distinguished himself highly in the defence of that stronghold. He was actively employed in the two Sikh wars, in services both military and civil, though strictly speaking he was a political personage, and at the commencement of the second Sikh war he was assistant to the resident at Lahore. At the breaking out of the mutiny of 1857, Nicholson was deputy-commissioner of Peshawur, and when news of the outbreak was received, it was he who proposed the formation of the movable column which repressed mutiny in the Punjaub, and was of the greatest service at the siege of Delhi. In the middle of June he was appointed to the command of the column; and having received the orders of the chief commissioner of the Punjaub to retake Delhi, he reached the British camp before the city of the Mogul on the 8th of August. On the 25th he was sent with a picked force to attack a strong body of rebels despatched from Delhi to intercept the British siege train, on the safe arrival of which so much depended. Nicholson was completely successful, and his gallantry in the engagement was signal. At the assault on Delhi, 14th September, 1857, he claimed the post of honour and danger, and was shot down leading on his soldiers. He died on the 23rd of September. There are some interesting notices of him in the Rev. J. Cave Brown's Punjaub and Delhi, 1859. To show the veneration in which Nicholson was held by the inhabitants of the district over which he had jurisdiction, Mr. Brown says that "a brotherhood of fakeers in Huzara abandoned all forms of Asiatic monachism and commenced the worship of Nikul Seyn (Nicholson), which," he adds, "they still continue."—F. E.
NICHOLSON, William, D.D., a learned prelate of the Church of England, was born in 1655 at Orton, near Carlisle, where his father was rector, and was educated at Queen's college, Oxford, where he became a fellow in 1679. In 1678 he had been sent by the secretary of state to study the northern languages at Leipsic, and he drew up a description of Poland, Denmark, and Germany, which appeared in Pitt's Atlas in 1680-81. On his return from his travels he was made chaplain to the bishop of Carlisle, who gave him a prebend and an archdeaconry with a vicarage in his diocese. In 1702 he succeeded to the same bishopric, in which he continued till 1718, when he was translated to the see of Londonderry. In 1727 he was nominated archbishop of Cashel, but died in the same month at Londonderry. He was devoted to antiquarian and historical pursuits, of which the principal fruits were the "English Historical Library," 1714, folio; the "Scottish Historical Library," 1702; and the "Irish Historical Library," 1724. The three works were republished together in a corrected and augmented form in 1736, along with his letter to Dr. Kennet in reply to Atterbury's work on the Rights, Powers, and Privileges of an English Convocation, in which the latter had brought divers "unmannerly and slanderous objections against the English Historical Library." These works were intended to give a short account and character of all the histories of the three kingdoms which are extant either in print or manuscript, and they bear the reputation of useful though not very accurate compends. He published besides "Leges Marchiarum, or Border Laws, with a preface and an appendix of charters and records." He left also a MS. history of Cumberland, from which large materials were derived for Nicholson and Burn's History and Antiquities of that county, published in 1778. The bishop's controversy with Atterbury occasioned him much vexation, especially when the latter obtained the deanery of Carlisle during his episcopate: for the old literary feud not having been forgotten on either side, the bishop made use of his power as visitor of the chapter to curb the turbulence of Atterbury, while Atterbury protested against the visitorial powers of the bishop upon the ground of the alleged invalidity of Henry VIII.'s statutes of the chapter—a quarrel which at length put the whole bench of bishops and both houses of parliament in motion. Archbishop Tenison wrote a circular on the subject to all his suffragans, reflecting on "the evil generation of men who make it their business to search into little flaws in ancient charters and statutes," and soon afterwards parliament passed an act establishing the validity of the local statutes given by Henry VIII. to his new cathedral foundations.—P. L.
NICHOLSON, William, an ingenious mathematician, chemist, and mechanic, was born in London in 1752. In early life he went to India. He published a large number of books on physics, natural philosophy, &c., and was for many years conductor of the Philosophical Journal. For a time he was agent on the continent for Mr. Wedgewood. He then became a teacher of mathematics in London, where he died after a lingering illness in circumstances of comparative indigence, in 1815. His scientific attainments brought many people to him for consultation on the propriety of embarking in various enterprises, and as his judgment was generally calm and dispassionate, the soundness
