NASH, THOMAS. 



NASMITH, DAVID. 



434 



the general prosperity. During the height of his power lie travelled 

 in a chariot with six horses, outriders, footmen, and French horns, 

 and this although he was still without any ostensible means of support^ 

 ing the expense. From such a man it would scarcely be expected that 

 much attention would be paid to morality, but Nash had some virtues. 

 It is aaid that in many cases he took pains to warn thoughtless young 

 men against gambling; he was particularly sedulous in preventing 

 young women from becoming the prey of adventurers ; moreover, he 

 was charitable even to profusion. Anstey, a severe satirist of the 

 follies of the time, in his ' Bath Guide,' has noticed these honourable 

 points of his character. 



To him and Dr. Oliver, with the assistance of Mr. Allen (the 

 Allworthy of Fielding), Bath Hospital owes its foundation. His 

 reign was long and without a rival. But gaming was suppressed by 

 act of parliament; he grew old, poor, and peevish; his popularity 

 gradually waned, until revived by his death on February 3, 1761, 

 when he was honoured by a public funeral, as the patron and bene- 

 factor of the city. Of his benevolence and wit many anecdotes are 

 told, but they are not well authenticated, and his audacity and arro- 

 gance must have often offended many. Smollett, in his ' Roderick 

 Random,' has introduced him as displaying his conversational powers 

 to one of hia characters, a lady, whom he asks " if she could inform 

 him of the name of Tobit's dog?" and she answers "His name was 

 Nab, and an impudent dog he was." Probably the question was an 

 unfair representation of Nush's wit, but the answer clearly implies 

 Smollett's estimate of hia character. 



NASH, THOMAS, was born in the year 1558, at Lowestoft, in 

 Suffolk, and closed a calamitous life of authorship in his forty-third 

 year. Dr. Beloe has given a list of bis works, and Mr. Disraeli an 

 account of his privations and miseries. As a wit and a satirist, he was 

 perhaps superior to all his contemporaries ; but as a dramatic poet, 

 much below most of them. He liai left only one dramatic perform- 

 ance entirely of his own composition, 'Summer's Last Will and 

 Testament,' which is not to be regarded so much in the light of a 

 play as of a spectacle. It was exhibited before Queen Elizabeth at 

 Nonsuch in the autumn of the year 1592, but not printed till eight 

 years afterwards. Nash was concerned with Marlow in writing 'Dido, 

 Queen of Carthage,' 1594, which was also acted before the queen by 

 the children of her chapel. 



He had a vigorous understanding, well stored with learning, and 

 was capable of giving powerful descriptions of things and striking 

 characters of persons, as will be found by hia ' Supplication of Pierce 

 Penniless to the Devil,' 1592 : this latter work was followed up, though 

 with less effect, by his ' Christ's Tears over Jerusalem,' 1593. 'Sum- 

 mer's Last Will and Testament* has been reprinted in the last edition 

 of Dodbley's ' Old Plays.' It has no pretension to diversity of character 

 in the persons, nor to interest in the plot, the only part that approaches 

 to anything like individuality being that of Will Summers (or So turners), 

 thejester of Henry VIII. ; the piece depends upon a sort of pun between 

 the name of the jester and the division of the year which corresponds 

 with that name. 



NASIR-ED-DIN, MOHAMMED-BEN-HUSSEIN-AL-THUSSI, a 

 Persian and an astronomer, who died in 1276, aged about seventy. 

 Having met with some slight from Al-Mustassem, the kalif, he left his 

 country and went into Tartary. Here he obtained the friendship of 

 Hulaku (commonly written Holagu), surnamed Ilkhan, the brother of 

 the reigning prince. It is said that Hulaku, being on the point of 

 leading an army against Constantinople, was deterred by Nasir-ed-din, 

 and induced to prefer an invasion of Persia. D'Herbelot treats this 

 as a fiction so far as the astronomer is concerned ; but whether this 

 be so or not, Hulaku overran Persia, put Mustassem to death, and fixed 

 his seat of government at Maragha in Azerbijan, where he collected 

 men of science, built an observatory, and placed Nasir-ed-din at the 

 head of both. The instruments there used are described by Delambre, 

 from an Arabic manuscript, in the ' Hist, de 1'Attron. du Moyeu Age,' 

 page 1 99, Ac. The tables made at this observatory are called the 

 llchai.ic Tables, from the name of their author's patron. They 

 enjoyed great reputation in the East, and are known in Europe from 

 trio ' Synopsis Tabul. Astron. PerMcarum ' of George Chrysococca, 

 printed by Bouillaud in 1645, and the Commentary of a Persian, 

 whose LatinUed name ia Shah Chclgius, printed by Greaves in 1642. 

 The Ilchanic Tables, according to Delambre, differ from those of 

 Ptolemy only in the correction of some of the mean motions. 



Nanir-ed-din also wrote a work on geography, which was printed by 

 VH in 1652, and which we believe was loiig the authority for 

 many Asiatic longitudes and latitudes ; alao a work on ethic.', and 

 several other writings. 



NASMITH, DAVID, was born in Glasgow, on the 21st of March 

 1799, of respectable parents, who educated him with a view to his 

 entering upon a course of college study at the university of that city. 

 Finding however that he was averse to the study of the learned 

 languages, this intention was abandoned, and he was early placed in a 

 mercantile establishment. In 1813 he commenced the efforts by 

 which he subsequently became distinguished, by taking an active part 

 in the formation of a Youths' Bible Association at Glasgow, of which 

 he became secretary ; and having at the ago of sixteen joined the 

 church of the late Rev. Greville Kwing, he shortly afterwards made 

 great exertions to prepare himself for the Christian ministry. His 



8700. DIV. TOI.. IV. 



friends did not however encourage the attempt, and lie returned to 

 secular employment, but engaged with much zeal in Sunday-school 

 teaching, in the establishment of adult-schools, the religious instruction 

 of prisoners, and other philanthropic efforts. In the autumn of 1821 

 an event occurred which, by affording enlarged scope for his benevo- 

 lent desires for the religious and temporal welfare of his fellow-men, 

 led to the fuller development of a character which, for disinterested 

 devotedness, has been rarely equalled. "The conductors of the 

 various religious and benevolent societies in Glasgow," observes 

 Nasmith's biographer, " with a view to concentration, economy, and 

 efficiency, had procured a large and commodious edifice, which was 

 divided into rooms and offices, suitable to their respective objects ; " 

 and the completion of their plan required the services of an active 

 secretary, who should be common to them all. Nasmith was elected 

 to this office at the low salary, for the first year, of 601., though the 

 interests of twenty-three societies thus devolved upon him. lu this 

 office he was brought into frequent communication with committees 

 composed of ministers and laymen of all sects and parties in religion 

 and politics, and he gained the personal esteem of many of the most 

 eminent men of Glasgow ; and the remarkable course of mental 

 training thus afforded had the effect of fitting him for the singular 

 career he was subsequently to pursue. Not only did he become 

 unusually familiar with the conduct of religious and benevolent 

 societies, and the direction of committees, but he obtained also a 

 remarkable insight into the actual condition of city society, and thus 

 discovered its wants, as well as the amount and character of the 

 agency required for the supply of those want*. 



While faithfully discharging his onerous duties in connection with 

 the existing philanthropic societies of Glasgow, Nasmith applied him- 

 self also to the formation of such new associations as appeared needful 

 for the moral and religious welfare of that and other populous places. 

 Young Men's Societies, or associations for promoting the religious 

 interests of young men, for protecting them from th temptations 

 incident to a residence in large towns, and for directing their uuited 

 energies into channels of benevolent exertion, occupied then, as in 

 his later years, a large share of his attention ; and in a letter upon the 

 subject addressed by him to Professor Buchanan in February 1826, 

 he states that he had been the means of forming about seventy such 

 societies in the United Kingdom, France, and America, since the closa 

 of the year 1823. A still more important project, and cue which has 

 proved far more extensively successful in practice, was the formation 

 of city and town missions, or societies for carrying religious instruc- 

 tion, by means of lay agents wholly devoted to the work, into the 

 homes of the neglected poor, and eveu into the very haunts of vice 

 and dissipation. Attempts had been previously made in a few 

 instance-", and on a small scale, to" accomplish this object ; but the 

 difficulties of the task, especially those arising from the mutual 

 jealousies of various sections of the Christian Church, had impeded 

 their success. In spite of such difficulties, Nasinith succeeded in 

 establishing, at the commencement of 1826, the " Glasgow City 

 Mission," which, though comrmnoed by the congregation to which he 

 belonged, was constituted on so catholic a footing that, before the end 

 of its first year, eight evangelical denominations of Christians were 

 united in its management, and eight missionaries were employed. The 

 success of this society encouraged Nasmith to print and circulate widely, 

 not only in the British Islands and America, but also in France aud 

 other parts of the continent of Europe, a brief account of its design, 

 with testimonials of its usefulness. In the same year Nasmith married 

 Miss Hartridge, a native of Kent, who was then residing in Glasgow, 

 and who became a most valuable coadjutor in his benevolent designs. 



In ] 828, his health being impaired by the arduous duties of his 

 office, Nasmith resigned his connection with the Institution House at 

 Glasgow, and from that time until his death he devoted himself 

 wholly to the exercise of what he deemed his peculiar vocation, that 

 of a kind of moral agent or missionary, travelling from place to place 

 to promote the establishment of city and town missions, young men's 

 societies, and other kindred associations. The self denial aud moral 

 courage necessary for such an undertaking was of no ordinary charac- 

 ter, since it involved the relinquishmeut of any settled means of 

 obtaining a livelihood, and of all prospect of attaining a station to 

 which his talents entitled him ; while he had no property on which 

 to rely even for travelling expenses, nor any society on which to fall 

 buck for support. His first removal was to Dublin, where he suo- 

 ceeeded in establishing a prosperous city mission. On a second visit 

 to Dublin, he formed a society for promoting the establishment of 

 local missions in Ireland; and thence, in 1829, he proceeded on a tour 

 through the south of Ireland, establishing missions in Cork, Limerick, 

 \Vaterford, and several other places. In the following year ho per- 

 formed a similar journey, with the like results, in the north of Ireland, 

 after which he returned to Glasgow, and prepared for a voyage to the 

 United States on the same benevolent errand. Arriving at New York 

 in September 1830, he formed a city mission there, and performed a 

 journey of about three mouths' duration, visiting and establishing 

 similar societies at many towns in the United States, after which he 

 returned to New York, sailed to New Orleans, made some stay in Phila- 

 delphia, and afterwards, pausing for a third time at New York, pro- 

 ceeded to Canada, How completely disiuterested Nasmith was in these 

 travels may be sten from the fact that while his necessary expenses from 



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