office of affection. His last words, before his soul drifted out to the great unknown, were: “Kiss me, Hardy!”
The flagship brought the news of the victory home, but its flags were at half-mast. England's bravest and best-beloved hero was laid away in St. Paul's, London, under a splendid monument. In 1905 the centennial of Trafalgar was made a Nelson year throughout the empire. In the press and in public addresses he was never spoken of as Lord Nelson the admiral, but as “Our Nel.” Tennyson, in his Ode on The Death of the Duke of Wellington, addressed Nelson as the “greatest seaman since our world began,” saying, as Wellington was laid beside Nelson: “Mighty sailor, this is he was great by land as thou by sea.” See Life of Nelson by Robert Southey the poet.
Nem′esis, said by Hesiod to be the daughter of Night, was at first the embodiment of righteous moral feelings or of the conscience. Later, Nemesis was regarded as the power which balanced the fortunes of people and taught them to reverence the immortal gods. From this was evolved the latest conception, that of the avenger of wrong. She was at first represented as a young virgin, and later as clothed in a tunic, sometimes with sword in hand and a wheel at her feet, or in a chariot drawn by griffins. Several fragments of Pheidias’ statue of Nemesis were discovered in 1890, in the famous temple of Nemesis at Rhamnus, Africa.
Ne′on. See Argon.
Nep′tune, the Roman god of the sea, was like all the other gods of mythology, merely a name. This was derived from Nethunus, the sea-god of the Etruscans. He is also identified with the Greek sea-god Poseidon. The figure of a bearded man standing in a shell drawn over the sea and holding a three-pronged spear or trident is his usual pictorial representation.
Nep′tune. See Planets.
Nerbud′da or Narba′da, an Indian river of about 800 miles, with a drainage of 36,400 square miles, rises on the Amorkantak plateau, 3,493 feet above sea-level, and flows west through the central provinces and the great channel between the Vindhya and Satpura Mountains into the Gulf of Cambay. It is navigable for only about 80 miles from its mouth. The Hindus consider it a sacred river and look upon a foot-journey from mouth to source and back as a meritorious act.
Ne′ro, the last of the Cæsars and emperor of Rome from 54 to 68 A. D., was born at Antium, Dec. 15, 37. His mother became the wife of the Emperor Claudius, who adopted him, and on the emperor's death he was declared emperor by the Prætorian Guards instead of Claudius' own son, and this choice was ratified by the senate and provinces in 54. His reign, although opening well and moderately, soon became one of crime, debauchery and tyranny. He caused Britannicus, Claudius' son, to be poisoned, brought about the murder of his own mother, and finally divorced and murdered his wife. All this was accompanied by wars and insurrections,—in 61 A. D. an uprising in Britain, which was suppressed, and in 62 the war with the Parthians and Armenia. In 64 a great fire destroyed nearly two thirds of Rome, and historians say that Nero applied the torch and sat far away admiring the scene. Nero used the Christians as scapegoats, and had many of them put to death. Through the high-handed imposition of taxes he rebuilt Rome and erected the “golden house” for himself on the Palatine. A conspiracy against him in 65 failed and caused the death of Seneca and others. He kicked his second wife to death and afterward offered his hand to Antonia, the daughter of Claudius, who, upon refusing him, was put to death, as was also the husband of Statilia Messalina, whom he thereupon married. His inordinate vanity caused him to believe that he was everything brilliant, as is witnessed by his last words: “What an artist is lost in me!” In 68 the Prætorian Guards rose against him and, in conjunction with the Gallic and Spanish legions, proclaimed Galba emperor. Nero fled from Rome, was declared an enemy of his country, and to save himself from execution committed suicide. See W. Wolfe Capes' Early Roman Empire and Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire.
Nerves, the fibers of white nervous matter connecting the different parts of the body with the central nervous system. Two kinds of nervous tissue are recognized,— the white and gray. The white is composed of fibers, the gray is largely made of nerve cells located in centers. The nerves are merely conductors of the nervous impulses that arise within the nerve-cells. Nerves make their first appearance in the animal kingdom among the jellyfish as parts of the primitive nervous system. They at first are strands of protoplasm connected with the nerve-cells from which they grow. They become associated in bundles, bound together by connective tissue, and thus form the white cords that run amongst the muscles and other parts of the body. In the human body there are twelve pairs of cranial nerves connected with the head and thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves connected with the spinal cord. Those of the head are much more complex than those of the spinal cord, but are believed to be derived from a simpler condition in which they were equivalent to them. They are now so much modified that it is difficult to understand them. The thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves come from two roots closely joined to the spinal cord. These are called sensory and motor roots, respectively, because those at the back contain sensory fibers and those in front motor
