OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicoll, Sir William Robertson

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​NICOLL, SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON (1851–), Scottish Nonconformist divine and man of letters, was born at Auchindoir, Aberdeenshire, on the 10th of October 1851, the son of a Free Church minister. He graduated M.A. at Aberdeen in 1870, and studied for the ministry at the Free Church College there until 1874, when he was ordained minister of the Free Church at Dufftown. Three years later he moved to Kelso, and in 1884 became editor of the Expositor. In 1886 he founded the British Weekly, a Nonconformist organ which obtained great influence over opinion in the free churches. Robertson Nicoll secured many writers of exceptional talent for his paper, to which he was himself a considerable contributor, the papers signed “Claudius Clear” being among those from his hand. He also founded and edited the Bookman (1891, &c.), and acted as chief literary adviser to the publishing firm of Hodder & Stoughton. Among his other enterprises were The Expositor’s Bible and The Theological Educator. He edited The Expositor’s Greek Testament (1897, &c.), and a series of Contemporary Writers (1894, &c.), and of Literary Lives (1904, &c.). He wrote a history of The Victorian Era in English Literature, and edited, with T. J. Wise, Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. The knighthood bestowed on him among the birthday honours in 1909 was an apt recognition of his long and able devotion to the “journeyman work” of literature.
A list of his publications is included in a monograph on Dr Nicoll by Jane T. Stoddart (“New Century Leaders,” 1903).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicomachus (painter)

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​NICOMACHUS, of Thebes, Greek painter, of the early part of the 4th century, was a contemporary of the greatest painters of Greece; Vitruvius observes that if his fame was less than theirs, it was the fault of fortune rather than of demerit. Pliny (xxxv. 108) gives a list of his works; among them a “Rape of Persephone,” “Victory in a Quadriga,” a group of Apollo and Artemis, and the “Mother of the Gods seated on a Lion.” Pliny tells us that he was a very rapid worker and used but four colours (the last seems impossible). Plutarch mentions his paintings as possessing the Homeric merit of ease and absence of effort.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicomachus (philosopher)

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​NICOMACHUS, a Neo-Pythagorean philosopher and mathematician, born at Gerasa in Arabia Petraea, flourished about A.D. 100. In his musical treatise he mentions Thrasyllus (d. 36), the astrologer and confidant of Tiberius, and his Arithmetic was translated by Apuleius, who wrote under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is the author of two extant treatises: (1) Ἀριθμητικὴ εἰσαγωγή (Introduction to Arithmetic), a metaphysical account of the theory and properties of numbers, and the first work in which arithmetic was treated quite independently of geometry. It was extremely popular, was the subject of commentaries by Iamblichus (ed. H. Pistelli, 1894) and others, was translated into Latin by Apuleius (according to Cassiodorus, the translation itself being lost) and Boëtius, and used as a schoolbook down to the Renaissance. (2) Ἐγχειρίδιον ἁρμονικῆς (Manual of Harmony), complete in one book, to which are erroneously appended as a second book some fragments probably belonging to a larger treatise On Music now lost. It is the oldest authority on the Pythagorean theory of music. Photius (cod. 187) also mentions a work by Nicomachus called Ἀριθμητικὰ θεολογούμενα (The Theology of Arithmetic), written in a spirit of Pythagorean mysticism and Oriental superstition, and setting forth the application of arithmetic, or rather of the first ten numbers, to the origin and attributes of the gods. But the extracts in Photius are now generally attributed to Iamblichus. Other works of Nicomachus were: a Life of Pythagoras and a Collection of Pythagorean Doctrines, the chief source of the life of Pythagoras and the account of his philosophy by Iamblichus.
Editions.—Introd. to Arith., by R. Hoche (1866); Manual of Harmony, by C. de Jan in Musici scriptores Graeci (1895), with account of Nicomachus and his works, and French translation, with bibliography and notes, by C. E. Ruelle (1881); Theology of Arithmetic, by F. Ast (1817); see W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (1898); M. Cantor, Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik, i. (1894) p. 400, and J. Gow, A Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884), p. 88, both of whom give summaries of the Arithmetic.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicomedes III.

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​NICOMEDES III., Philopator, king of Bithynia, 91–74 B.C., was the son and successor of Nicomedes II. His brother Socrates, assisted by Mithradates, drove him out, but he was reinstated by the Romans (90). He was again expelled by Mithradates, who defeated him on the river Amneus (or Amnias) in Paphlagonia. This led to the first Mithradatic War, as the result of which Nicomedes was again restored (84). At his death he bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans, a legacy which subsequently brought about the third Mithradatic War.
Justin xxxvii. 4, xxxviii. 1, 2; Appian, Mithrad. 7, 10-20, 57, 60; Memnon in C. Müller, Frag. hist. Graec. iii. 541; Plutarch, Sulla, 22, 24; Eutropius vi. 6.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicomedia

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​NICOMEDIA [mod. Ismid], an ancient town at the head of the Gulf of Astacus, which opens on the Propontis, was built in 264 B.C. by Nicomedes I. of Bithynia, and has ever since been one of the chief towns in this part of Asia Minor. It was the metropolis of Bithynia under the Roman empire (see Nicaea), and ​Diocletian made it the chief city of the East. Owing to its position at the convergence of the Asiatic roads to the new capital, Nicomedia retained its importance even after the foundation of Constantinople and its own capture by the Turks (1338).
See C. Texier, Asie mineure (Paris, 1839); V. Cuenet, Turquie d’Asie (Paris, 1894).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicolls, Richard

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​NICOLLS, RICHARD (1624–1672), American colonial governor, was born probably at Ampthill, Bedfordshire, England, in 1624. He commanded a royalist troop of horse during the Civil War, and on the defeat of the king went into exile. Soon after the Restoration he became groom of the bedchamber to the duke of ​York, through whose influence he was appointed in 1664 on a commission with Sir Robert Carr (d. 1667), George Cartwright and Samuel Maverick, to conquer New Netherland from the Dutch and to regulate the affairs of the New England colonies and settle disputes among them. The expedition set sail from Portsmouth on the 25th of May 1664, and New Amsterdam was surrendered to Nicolls on the 8th of September. Under authority of a commission from the duke of York, Nicolls assumed the position of deputy-governor of New Netherland (New York). His policy was vigorous but tactful, and the transition to the new regime was made smoothly and with due regard to the interests of the conquered people. They were guaranteed in the possession of their property rights, their laws of inheritance, and the enjoyment of religious freedom. The English system of law and administration was at once introduced into Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester, where the English element already predominated, but the change was made much more slowly in the Dutch sections. A code of laws, known as the “Duke’s Laws,” drafted by the governor with the help of his secretary, Matthias Nicolls (c. 1650–1687), and dated the 12th of March, was proclaimed at Hempstead, Long Island, on the 1st of March 1665 and continued in force until 1683; the code was compiled from the codes of the New England colonies, and it provided for trial by jury, for proportional taxation on property, for the issuance of new patents for land and for land tenure only by licence from the duke. Nicolls returned to England in the summer of 1668 and continued in the service of the duke of York. He was killed in the naval battle of Southwold Bay on the 28th of May 1672.
See J. R. Brodhead, History of the State of New York (2 vols., rev. ed., 1872). For the “Duke’s Laws” see Laws of Colonial New York, i. 6-100.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicolson, William

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​NICOLSON, WILLIAM (1655–1727), English divine and antiquary, was educated at Queen’s College, Oxford (M.A., 1679; fellow, 1679–1682). After visiting Leipzig to learn German he was made prebendary of Carlisle in 1681, archdeacon in 1682. Twenty years later he was appointed bishop of the same diocese, where he remained until his translation to Derry in 1718. In 1727 he was nominated archbishop of Cashel and Emly, but died before he could assume charge. Nicolson is remembered by the impulsiveness of his temperament, which led him into a good deal of strife as a bishop, and more happily by his zeal in collecting and guarding manuscripts and other official documents. For this purpose he had special rooms built at Derry. His chief works were the Historical Library (English, 1696–97–99; Scottish, 1702; Irish, 1724; complete later editions, 1732 and 1776), and Leges Marchiarum or Border Laws (1705, new ed., 1747).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicoll, Robert

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​NICOLL, ROBERT (1814–1837), Scottish poet, was born on the 7th of January, 1814, at the farm of Little Tullybeltane, in the parish of Auchtergaven, Perthshire. When Robert was five years old his father was reduced to poverty. He became a day-labourer, and was only able to give his son a very slight education. At sixteen the boy was apprenticed to a grocer and wine-merchant at Perth. In 1833 he began to contribute to Johnstone’s Magazine (afterwards Tait’s Magazine), and in the next year his apprenticeship was cancelled. He visited Edinburgh, and was kindly received there, but obtained no employment. He opened a circulating library at Dundee, but in 1836 he became editor of the Leeds Times. He held pronounced Radical opinions, and overtaxed his slender physical resources in electioneering work for Sir William Molesworth in the summer of 1837. He was obliged to resign his editorship, and died at the house of his friend William Tait, at Trinity, near Edinburgh, on the 7th of December 1837, in his twenty-fourth year. He had published a volume of Poems in 1835; and in 1844 appeared a further volume, Poems and Lyrics, with an anonymous memoir of the author by Mrs C. I. Johnstone. The best of his lyrics are those written in the Scottish dialect. They are simple in feeling and expression, genuine folk-songs.
An eloquent appreciation of his character and his poetry was included in Charles Kingsley’s article on “Burns and his School” in the North British Review for November 1851. See also P. R. Drummond, Life of Robert Nicoll, Poet (1884).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicomedes II.

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​NICOMEDES II., Epiphanes, king of Bithynia, 149–91 B.C., fourth in descent from Nicomedes I., was the son of Prusias II. He was so popular with the people that his father sent him to Rome. Here he was so much favoured by the senate that Prusias sent an emissary to Rome with secret orders to assassinate him. But the emissary revealed the plot, and persuaded the prince to rebel against his father. Supported by Attalus II., king of Pergamum, he was completely successful, and ordered his father to be put to death at Nicomedia. During his long reign Nicomedes adhered steadily to the Roman alliance, and assisted them against Aristonicus of Pergamum. He made himself for a time master of Paphlagonia, and in order to have a claim on Cappadocia married Laodice (the widow of Ariarathes VI.), who had fled to him when Mithradates the Great endeavoured to annex the country. When her two sons died, Nicomedes brought forward an impostor as a claimant to the throne; but the plot was detected. The Romans refused to recognize the claim, and required Nicomedes to give up all pretensions to Cappadocia and to abandon Paphlagonia.
Appian, Mithrad. 4-7; Strabo xiii. 624, 646; Diod. Sic. xxxii. 20, 21; Justin xxxiv. 4, xxxvii. 4, xxxviii. 1, 2.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Platoon

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​PLATOON (Fr. peloton, from Fr. pelote, a ball or pellet; cf. Ger. Haufe, heap), a small group of soldiers. In the early 17th century it was a definite tactical unit of infantry, corresponding to the modern section or half company. In the 18th century the battalion, irrespective of its organization into companies, was told off on parade into six, eight or ten platoons of equal strength. "Platoon fire" was the systematic and regulated fire of platoon volleys, the platoons firing one after the other. Hence a "platoon" sometimes means a volley. The fire of a long line of infantry was as a rule conducted on the same principles, each battalion of the front line employing platoon fire, which is often picturesquely described as a "rolling platoon fire," or "rolling volleys." The word is obsolete in the British army, but is used in the United States, and, in various forms, in the armies of France and other Latin nations.
# Washing the Ethiopian White

Perry index 393; also known as The Aethiop and The Blackamoor
* "The Washing of a Blackmore", part of "Fable CLIX and CLX", translated by Roger L'Estrange, in Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists (1692)
* "The Æthiop", translated by George Fyler Townsend, in Three Hundred Æsop's Fables (1887)
* "The Blackamoor", translated by Vernon Stanley Jones, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, in Æsop's fables: A New Translation (1912)
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Musgrave, Samuel

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​MUSGRAVE, SAMUEL (1732–1780), English classical scholar and physician, was born at Washfield, in Devonshire, on the 29th of September 1732. Educated at Oxford and elected to a Radcliffe travelling fellowship, he spent several years abroad. In 1766 he settled at Exeter, but not meeting with professional success removed to Plymouth. He ruined his prospects, however, by the publication of a pamphlet in the form of an address to the people of Devonshire, in which he accused certain members of the English ministry of having been bribed by the French government to conclude the peace of 1763, and declared that the Chevalier d’Eon de Beaumont, French minister plenipotentiary to England, had in his possession documents which would prove the truth of his assertion. De Beaumont repudiated all knowledge of any such transaction and of Musgrave himself, and the House of Commons in 1770 decided that the charge was unsubstantiated. Thus discredited, Musgrave gained a precarious living in London by his pen until his death, in reduced circumstances, on the 5th of July 1780. He wrote several medical works, now forgotten; and his edition of Euripides (1778) was a considerable advance on that of Joshua Barnes.
See W. Munk, Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, ii. (1878).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Musk

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​MUSK (Med. Lat. muscus, late Gr. μόσχος, possibly Pers. mushk, from Sansk. mushka, the scrotum), the name originally given to a perfume obtained from the strong-smelling substance secreted in a gland by the musk-deer (q.v.), and hence applied to other animals, and also to plants, possessing a similar odour. The variety which appears in commerce is a secretion of the musk-deer; but the odour is also emitted by the musk-ox and musk-rat of India and Europe, by the musk-duck (Biziura lobata) of West Australia, the musk-shrew, the musk-beetle (Calichroma moschata), the alligator of Central America, and by several other animals. In the vegetable kingdom it is present in the common musk (Mimulus moschatus), the musk-wood of the Guianas and West Indies (Guarea, spp.), and in the seeds of Hibiscus Abelmoschus (musk-seeds). To obtain the perfume from the musk-deer the animal is killed and the gland completely removed, and dried, either in the sun, on a hot stone, or by immersion in hot oil. It appears in commerce as “musk in pod,” i.e. the glands are entire, or as “musk in grain,” in which the perfume has been extracted from its receptacle. Three kinds are recognized: (1) Tong-king, Chinese or Tibetan, imported from China, the most valued; (2) Assam or Nepal, less valuable; and (3) Karbardin or Russian (Siberian), imported from Central Asia by way of Russia, the least valuable and hardly admitting of adulteration. The Tong-king musk is exported in small, gaudily decorated caddies with tin or lead linings, wherein the perfume is sealed down; it is now usually transmitted direct by parcel post to the merchant.
Good musk is of a dark purplish colour, dry, smooth and unctuous to the touch, and bitter in taste. It dissolves in boiling water to the extent of about one-half; alcohol takes up one-third of the substance, and ether and chloroform dissolve still less. A grain of musk will distinctly scent millions of cubic feet of air without any appreciable loss of weight, and its scent is not only more penetrating but more persistent than that of any other known substance. In addition to its odoriferous principle, it contains ammonia, cholesterin, fatty matter, a bitter resinous substance, and other animal principles. As a material in perfumery it is of the first importance, its powerful and enduring odour giving strength and permanency to the vegetable essences, so that it is an ingredient in many compounded perfumes.
Artificial musk is a synthetic product, having a similar odour to natural musk. It was obtained) by Baur in 1888 by condensing toluene with isobutyl bromide in the presence of aluminium chloride, and nitrating the product. It is a symtrinitro-ψ-butyl toluene. Many similar preparations have been made, and it appears that the odour depends upon the symmetry of the three nitro groups.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mush

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​MUSH, the chief town of a sanjak of the same name of the Bitlis vilayet of Asiatic Turkey, and an important military station. It is situated at the mouth of a gorge in the mountains on the south side of the plain, the surrounding hills being covered with vineyards and some oak scrub. There are few good houses; the streets are ill-paved and winding, while the place and its surroundings are extremely dirty. The castle, of which there are some remains, is said to have been built by Mushig, an Armenian king of the province Daron, who founded the town. A khan, with two stone lions (Arab or Seljuk) in bas-relief, deserves notice, but the bazaar is poor, although pretty embroidered caps are produced. Good roads lead to Erzerum and Bitlis. There are 1400 inhabitants, consisting of Kurds and Armenians, about equally divided. The climate is healthy but cold in winter, with a heavy snow fall. Mush is the seat of the Gregorian and Roman Catholic Armenian bishops and some American mission schools. Some miles to the west at the edge of the plain is the celebrated monastery of Surp Garabed or St John the Baptist, an important place of Armenian pilgrimage.
Mush plain, 35 m. long by 12 broad, is very fertile, growing wheat and tobacco, and is dotted with many thriving Armenian villages. The Murad or eastern Euphrates traverses the western end of the plain and disappears into a narrow mountain gorge there. Vineyards are numerous and a fair wine is produced. ​Wood is scarce and the usual fuel is tezek or dried cow-dung. There are several sulphur springs, and earthquakes are frequent and sometimes severe. It was on the plain of Mush that Xenophon first made acquaintance with Armenian houses, which have little changed since his day.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Reusch, Franz Heinrich

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​REUSCH, FRANZ HEINRICH (1823–1900), Old Catholic theologian, was born at Brilon, in Westphalia, on 4th December 1823. He studied general literature at Paderborn, and theology at Bonn, Tübingen and Munich. The friend and pupil of Döllinger, he took his degree of Doctor in Theology at Munich, the university of which Döllinger was so long an ornament. He was ordained priest in 1849, and was immediately afterwards made chaplain at Cologne. In 1854, he became Privatdozent in the exegesis of the Old Testament in the Catholic Theological Faculty at Bonn; in 1858 he was made extraordinary, and in 1861 ordinary, professor of theology in the same university. From 1866 to 1877 he was editor of the Bonner Theologisches Literaturblatt. In the controversies on the Infallibility of the Pope, Reusch attached himself to Döllinger’s party, and he and his colleagues Hilgers, Knoodt and Langen were interdicted by the archbishop of Cologne in 1871 from pursuing their courses of lectures. In 1872 he was excommunicated. For many years after this he held the post of Old Catholic curé of Bonn, as well as the position of vicar general to the Old Catholic Bishop Reinkens, but resigned both in 1878, when, with Döllinger, he disapproved of the permission to marry granted by the Old Catholic Church in Germany to its clergy. From that time he retired into lay communion, ​but continued to give lectures as usual in the Old Catholic Faculty of Theology in the university of Bonn, and to write on theological subjects. He was made rector of that university in 1873. In 1874 and 1875 he was the official reporter of the memorable Reunion Conferences held at Bonn in those years and attended by many distinguished theologians of the Oriental and Anglican communions.
Reusch was a profound scholar, an untiring worker and a man of lovable character. Among his voluminous works were contributions to the Revue Internationale de théologie, a review started at Bern at the instance of the Old Catholic Congress at Lucerne. He wrote also works on the Old Testament; a pamphlet on Die Deutschen Bischöfe und der Aberglaube; and another on the falsifications to be found in the treatise of Aquinas against the Greeks; as well as essays on the history of the Jesuit Order, and a book of prayers. But his fame will mainly rest on the works which he and Döllinger published jointly. These consisted of a work on the Autobiography of Cardinal Bellarmine, the Geschichte der Moralstreitigen in der Römisch-Katholischen Kirche seit dem XVI. Jahrhundert, and the Erörterungen über Leben and Schriften des hl. Lignori. During the last few years of his life he was smitten with paralysis. He died on the 3rd of March 1900, leaving behind him in manuscript a collection of letters to Bunsen about Roman cardinals and prelates, which has since been published. (J. J. L. *)