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 NORTHCOTE, JAMES (1746–1831), English painter, was born at Plymouth on the 22nd of October 1746. He was apprenticed to his father, a poor watchmaker of the town, and during his spare hours was diligent with brush and pencil. In 1769 he left his father and started as a portrait-painter. Four years later he went to London and was admitted as a pupil into the studio and house of Reynolds. At the same time he attended the Academy schools. In 1775 he left Reynolds, and about two years later, having acquired the requisite funds by portrait-painting in Devonshire, he went to study in Italy. On his return to England, three years later, he revisited his native county, and then settled in London, where Opie and Fuseli were his rivals. He was elected associate of the Academy in 1786, and full academician in the following spring. The “Young Princes murdered in the Tower,” his first important historical work, dates from 1786, and it was followed by the “Burial of the Princes in the Tower,” both paintings, along with seven others, being executed for Boydell’s Shakespeare gallery,. The “Death of Wat Tyler,” now in the Guildhall, was exhibited in 1787; and shortly afterwards Northcote began a set of ten subjects, entitled “The Modest Girl and the Wanton,” which were completed and engraved in 1796. Among the productions of Northcote’s later years are the “Entombment” and the “Agony in the Garden,” besides many portraits, and several animal subjects, like the “Leopards,” the “Dog and Heron,” and the “Lion”; these latter were more successful than the artist’s efforts in the higher departments of art, as was indicated by Fuseli’s caustic remark on examining the “Angel opposing Balaam”—Northcote, you are an angel at an ass, but an ass at an angel.” The works of the artist number about two thousand, and he made a fortune of £40,000. He died on the 13th of July 1831.

 NORTH DAKOTA, one of the North Central states of the American Union, between 45° 55′ and 49° N., and 96° 25′ and 104° 3′ W. It is bounded N. by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, S. by South Dakota, W. by Montana and E. by Minnesota, from which it is separated by the Red river (or Red river of the North). North Dakota has an extreme length, E. and W., of 360 m., an extreme width, N. and S., of 210 m., and a total area of 70,837 sq. m., of which 654 sq. m. are water surface.

Topography.—North Dakota lies in the Prairie Plains and Great Plains physiographic provinces. The escarpment of the Coteau du Missouri is the dividing line, that portion to the N. and E. lying in the Prairie Plains, that to the S.W. in the Great Plains. The surface presents few striking topographic features, and may be subdivided into three vast plains or prairie tablelands rising one above the other from E. to W., the two easternmost together constituting the Prairie Plains portion of the state. The lowest of these plains is the valley of the Red river, and this valley extends along the eastern edge of the state and varies in width from 25 to 70 m. Its elevation is 965 ft. at