-arena, the noble Corinthian
"Maison Carree," a mausoleum, baths, &c.; textiles (silk, cotton, &c.),
wines, and brandy are the chief articles of manufacture; it declared for
the Reformation in 1559, and suffered cruelly on the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes.

NIMROD, an early king of Assyria or Babylonia, characterised in
Scripture (Gen. x. 9) as "a mighty hunter before the Lord"; a name now
applied to a distinguished hunter.

NINEVEH, an exceeding great city, capital of ancient Assyria, which
stood on the left bank of the Tigris, opposite the modern town of Mosul,
said to have been included within a wall 60 m. long, 100 ft. high, the
breadth of three chariots in width, and defended by 1500 towers each 200
ft. in height.

NINIAN ST., early apostle of Christianity to the southern Picts of
Scotland, born on the shores of the Solway, of noble descent; went to
Rome, was consecrated by the Pope, visited St. Martin at Tours on his way
back; had founded a church at Whithorn, Wigtownshire, which he dedicated
to the latter on his return, where he died, "perfect in life and full of
years," in 432.

NINUS, a legendary king of Assyria, a celebrated conqueror, to whom
tradition assigns the founding of Nineveh.

NIOBE, in the Greek mythology the daughter of Tantalus, and wife of
Amphion, king of Thebes, to whom she bore six sons and six daughters, in
her pride of whom she rated herself above Leto, who had given birth to
only two children, Apollo and Artemis, whereupon they, indignant at this
insult to their mother, gave themselves for nine days to the slaughter of
Niobe's offspring, and on the tenth the gods buried them; Niobe, in her
grief, retired to Mount Sipylos, in Lydia, where her body became cold and
rigid as stone, but not her tears, which, ever as the summer months
returned, burst forth anew.

NIRVANA, the name given to the consummation of bliss in the Hindu,
but especially the Buddhist, religions, synonymous with extinction, which
in the Hindu creed means the extinction of individuality by absorption in
the Divine Being, and in Buddhism, not, as some presume, the extinction
of existence, but the extinction of agitation of mind through the
crucifixion of all passion and desire, the attainment of self-centred,
self-sufficient quiescence of being, or rest and peace of soul.

NISUS, a Trojan youth who accompanied AEneas into Italy, and whose
friendship for Euryulus is so pathetically immortalised by Vir