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NOR named ministry he overturned. As a judge he acquitted himself well in the court of chancery, while his nullity in the house of lords preserved him in office. He had once, however, the disagreeable duty of announcing in an appeal case a majority of the peers against his own decisions in chancery. He was created Baron Henley in 1760 to enable him to preside as lord high steward at the trial of Earl Ferrers. His sentence on that nobleman is given by Lord Campbell as a striking composition, v. 196. Created Earl of Northington in 1761, he had again to preside at the trial of a peer for murder—the trial of Lord Byron for killing Mr. Chaworth. In 1766 he resigned the seal, and was made president of the council. He retired from public life the following year; being a great sufferer from gout, the consequence of his convivial habits. He died on the 14th January, 1772, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. His stories and witty sayings were long current in Westminster hall, although not all of them suited to a very refined or fastidious state of society.—R. H.  NORTHUMBERLAND,, Duke of, a patron of science, and specially of botany, was born on 20th April, 1785, and died at Alnwick castle on 11th February, 1847. He prosecuted his studies at Eton and at St. John's college, Cambridge, and took his degree of A.M. in 1805, and that of LL.D. in 1809. In 1812 he was called to the house of lords by the title of Baron Percy, and in 1817 he succeeded his father in the dukedom. He devoted attention to botany, astronomy, and mechanics. His garden at Syon was famous for the plants which it produced. Many rare plants flowered there, and many excellent foreign fruits were ripened. The duke employed collectors in foreign countries, who transmitted from time to time valuable plants. He became a fellow of the Linnæan Society in 1833, and he was long a trustee of the British museum.—J. H. B.  NORTON,, an American theological writer of eminence, was born in 1786 at Hingham, near Boston, Massachusetts, and was educated at the American university of Cambridge, where he received the B.A. degree in 1804. Though a student of theology, he never became a regular clergyman. After being tutor for a time in Bowdoin college, he was appointed in 1811 tutor and librarian in Harvard university, where two years later he succeeded Dr. Channing as lecturer on biblical criticism. In 1819 he was made first dexter professor of sacred literature, which office he retained till compelled by ill health to resign it in 1830. His reputation rests chiefly upon his "Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels," the fruits of prolonged study and deliberation. The first volume appeared in 1837, eight years after its commencement, and the second and third in 1844. A second edition of the whole was published in 1846. The work comprises, in refutation of certain German critics, historical proofs that the gospels were written by their accredited authors. The internal evidence of the same truth was discussed in a fourth volume which appeared in an unfinished state in 1855. Copious learning, sound judgment, and close, clear reasoning characterize this work. In 1833 Mr. Norton had published "Reasons for not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians concerning the Nature of God and the Person of Christ." His "Tracts concerning Christianity" appeared in 1852. In a dissertation on the Old Testament Mr. Norton has maintained that Christianity is not responsible for the genuineness, authenticity, and moral teaching of the old Jewish writers. Mr. Norton is also the author of various contributions to periodicals, and of a few poems of great merit.—R. H.  * NORTON,, was born in 1808. The second of the three daughters of the late Thomas Sheridan, son of the Sheridan, Mrs. Norton is thus the sister of the present duchess of Somerset, and of the Dowager Lady Dufferin. She lost her father early, and sharing in her brother's studies, received an education more varied than usually falls to the lot of Englishwomen. In 1829 she married the Honourable George Chapple Norton, brother and heir of the present Lord Grantley, recorder of Guildford, which he represented in the house of commons from 1826 to 1830, and who since 1831 has been magistrate of Lambeth Street police office. As the world knows too well, the marriage was not a happy one. Mr. and Mrs. Norton separated in 1836. A poetess from early youth, she had published previously to her marriage a volume of verse, "The Sorrows of Rosalie," 1829, and after her marriage appeared (1831) her poem, "The Undying One," followed in 1840 by "The Dream, and other Poems," and in 1845 by "The Child of the Islands," a touching plaidoyer for the neglected and suffering among the children of England. In 1847 was published her solitary prose novel, "Stuart of Dunleath." Her latest poem, "The Lady of La Garaye," belongs to 1862. Mrs. Norton is understood to be engaged on a work to be entitled "Lives of the Sheridans." Her own peculiar position led her to sympathize with and to study the wrongs, as she considered them, inflicted on married women by male legislation, both as regarded divorce and the possession of property. The most notable exposition of her views on these matters was her plain spoken and indignant "Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth's Marriage and Divorce Bill," 1855, which perhaps contributed to hasten recent legislation on the subject.—F. E.  NORTON,, the coadjutor of Lord Buckhurst in the composition of Gorboduc, the first regular tragedy written in English, was a native of Sharpenhoe, Bedfordshire. Wood says he was a barrister, and a forward and busy Calvinist. Strype says he was a clergyman, a puritan, a man of parts and learning, well-known to Secretary Cecil and Archbishop Parker. As he is also said to have been patronized by Somerset, and to have translated into English an epistle addressed to the Protector by Peter Martyr, 1550, it is possible that two Nortons of the same name have been confounded. The metrical version of the Psalms published by Sternhold and Hopkins, contains twenty-eight psalms translated by Norton. He is supposed to have died about 1584, when his name disappears from the registers of the Stationers' Company to which he acted as counsel.—(Warton's History of Poetry.)—R. H.  NORWOOD,, an English mathematician, lived about the middle of the seventeenth century. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and contributed various papers to their Transactions. He was also the author of a treatise on trigonometry. His most important scientific undertaking was the measurement of an arc of the meridian between London and York. He found the difference of latitude, or amplitude of the arc, by taking the meridian altitudes of the sun at its two ends at the summer solstice, with a sextant of five feet radius. The distance was measured along the high road, partly by chaining and partly by pacing, the bearings and inclinations of the several straight lines measured being noted and allowed for in the calculation. The result was correct to about one two-hundredth part of the truth, as subsequent investigations have shown; being a wonderfully small error, when the rudeness of the means of measurement employed is considered.—W. J. M. R.  NOSTRADAMUS or NOTRE-DAME,, one of the most singular personages of the sixteenth century, was born at St. Rémy, in the diocese of Avignon, on the 14th December, 1503. His family was noble; and his paternal and maternal grandfathers were astronomers and physicians of some note. He studied philosophy at Avignon and medicine at Montpellier, where he took the degree of doctor of medicine in 1529. During subsequent years he acquired considerable celebrity by his peculiar method of treating the plague, which was generally successful. When that appalling disease broke out at Aix in 1546, a deputation of the inhabitants invited him hither, and his services as a physician were so much valued that he received a pension from the town as recompense. In other places, and on other occasions, his aid was eagerly sought and willingly appreciated. It was at this period that he first advanced his notorious claim to divine inspiration and the gift of prophecy. His predictions were written in verse in the form of quatrains, and arranged in "centuries;" and the extraordinary fulfilment of some of these vaticinations soon made his name famous. Many, indeed, considered him an impostor, but an equal number believed him to be truly inspired either by God or Satan; and among the latter class were the chief kings, princes, and nobles of the age. Favoured with honours and rewards by not a few of those credulous dignitaries, Nostradamus died 2nd July, 1566, and was buried at Salon in the church of the Cordeliers. Some of his predictions, such as those of the death of Charles I. of England, and of the first French revolution, are certainly remarkable enough, and it is difficult to account for their exact fulfilment on the ordinary hypothesis of mere coincidence.—(See the work by Théodore Bouys, Paris, 1806, on this curious subject.)—J. J.  NOTRE,, a famous French artist and designer of gardens, was born at Paris in 1613. His father, who was superintendent of the gardens of the Tuileries, intended him for a painter, and placed him in the atelier of Simon Vouet. He is said to have displayed a great talent for painting, and to have <section end="596Zcontin" />