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 he was magnanimous and disinterested, simple and honest. He had a kindling sympathy with everything lofty and generous, and framed his own conduct upon the highest principles. His chief defect was an over-sensitiveness, leading to peevish and unreasonable behaviour in his private and official relations, to hasty and unbalanced judgments of persons and things that had given him annoyance, and to a despondency and discouragement which frustrated the great good he might have effected as a philosophic critic of public affairs.

NIEBUHR, KARSTEN (1733–1815), German traveller, was born at Lüdingworth, Lauenburg, on the southern border of Holstein, on the 17th of March 1733, the son of a small farmer. He had little education, and for several years of his youth had to do the work of a peasant. His bent was towards mathematics, and he managed to obtain some lessons in surveying. It was while he was working at this subject that one of his teachers, in 1760, proposed to him to join the expedition which was being sent out by Frederick V. of Denmark for the scientific exploration of Egypt, Arabia and Syria. To qualify himself for the work of surveyor and geographer, he studied hard at mathematics for a year and a half before the expedition set out, and also managed to acquire some knowledge of Arabic. The expedition sailed in January 1761, and, landing at Alexandria, ascended the Nile. Proceeding to Suez, Niebuhr made a visit to Mount Sinai, and in October 1762 the expedition sailed from Suez to Jeddah, journeying thence overland to Mocha. Here in May 1763 the philologist of the expedition, van Haven, died, and was followed shortly after by the naturalist Forskål. Sana, the capital of Yemen, was visited, but the remaining members of the expedition suffered so much from the climate or from the mode of life that they returned to Mocha. Niebuhr seems to have saved his own life and restored his health by adopting the native habits as to dress and food. From Mocha the ship was taken to Bombay, the artist of the expedition dying on the passage, and the surgeon soon after landing. Niebuhr was now the only surviving member of the expedition. He stayed fourteen months at Bombay, and then returned home by Muscat, Bushire, Shiraz and Persepolis, visited the ruins of Babylon, and thence went to Bagdad, Mosul and Aleppo. After a visit to Cyprus he made a tour through Palestine, crossing Mount Taurus to Brussa, reaching Constantinople in February 1767 and Copenhagen in the following November. He married in 1773, and for some years held a post in the Danish military service which enabled him to reside at Copenhagen. In 1778, however, he accepted a position in the civil service of Holstein, and went to reside at Meldorf, where he died on the 26th of April 1815.

Niebuhr was an accurate and careful observer, had the instincts of the scholar, was animated by a high moral purpose, and was rigorously conscientious and anxiously truthful in recording the results of his observation. His works have long been classics on the geography, the people, the antiquities and the archaeology of much of the district of Arabia which he traversed. His first volume, Beschreibung von Arabien, was published at Copenhagen in 1772, the Danish government defraying the expenses of the abundant illustrations. This was followed in 1774–1778 by two other volumes, Reisebeschreibung von Arabien und anderen umliegenden Ländern. The fourth volume was not published till 1837, long after his death, under the editorship of Niebuhr’s daughter. He also undertook the task of bringing out the work of his friend Forskål, the naturalist of the expedition, under the titles of Descriptiones animalium, Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, and Icones rerum naturalium (Copenhagen, 1775–1776). To a German periodical, the Deutsches Museum, Niebuhr contributed papers on the interior of Africa, the political and military condition of the Turkish empire, and other subjects.

NIEDERBRONN, a town of Germany, in the imperial province Alsace-Lorraine, on the Falkensteiner Bach, situated under the eastern slope of the Vosges, 12 m. N.W. from Hagenau by rail. Pop. (1905) 3120. It contains an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, a convent of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer, and a high-grade and other schools. Niederbronn is one of the best-known watering-places in the Vosges. Its brine springs, with a hydropathic establishment attached, are specific in cases of gout, obesity and liver disorders. Here, on the 26th of July 1870, the first engagement between the Germans and the French in the Franco-German war took place. There are several ruined castles in the neighbourhood, the most noteworthy of which is one on the Wesenburg (1415 ft. high) erected in the 14th century. Various Celtic and Roman antiquities have been found around Niederbronn.

NIEDERLAHNSTEIN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, situated on the right bank of the Rhine at the confluence of Lahn, 3 m. S.E. from Coblenz by the railway to Ems, and at the junction of lines to Hochheim and Cologne. Pop. (1905) 4351. It has two Roman Catholic churches. The chief industries are the making of machinery and shipbuilding. Niederlahnstein obtained civic rights in 1332, and was until 1803 on the territory of the electors of Trier. Here on the 1st of January 1814 a part of the Russian army crossed the Rhine. In the vicinity are the Johanniskirche, a Romanesque church restored in 1857, and the Allerheiligenberg, whereon stands a chapel, once a famous place of pilgrimage.

NIEDER-SELTERS, a village of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, situated in a well-wooded country on the Ems, 12 m. S.E. from Limburg by the railway to Frankfort-on-Main. Pop. (1900) 1339. Here are the springs of the famous Selters or Seltzer water, employed as specific in cases of catarrh of the respiratory organs, the stomach and bladder. Until 1866 the springs belonged to the duke of Nassau; since this date they have been the property of Prussia. They became famous in the earlier part of the 19th century, although they had been known many years previously.

NIEDERWALD, a broad hill in Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, on the right bank of the Rhine, between that river and the Wisper, opposite Bingen, forming the south-western apex of the Taunus range. Its summit is clothed with dense forests of oak and beech, while its southern and western sides, which descend sharply to Rüdesheim and Assmannshausen on the Rhine, are covered with vineyards, and produce some of the finest wines of the district. At the edge of the forest, on the crest of the hill above Rüdesheim, stands the gigantic “Germania” statue, the national monument of the war of 1870–71, which was unveiled on the 28th of September 1883 by the emperor William I., in the presence of all the rulers in Germany or their representatives. It was designed by Johannes Schilling, and the bronze figure of Germania is 33 ft. high; the