463 



NELSON, ROBERT. 



NEMESIUS. 



454 



British killed and mortally wounded were 350; and the wounded 850. 

 The Danish loss was estimated at between 1600 and 1800 men killed 

 and wounded : of the eighteen floating batteries, thirteen were taken 

 or destroyed. 



Amicable relations having been restored between England and the 

 northern powers, Lord Nelson returned in command of the squadron 

 to England (Sir Hyde Parker having been recalled), when the thanks 

 of parliament were voted to him for Copenhagen. To allay the public 

 alarm excited by Bonaparte's proposed invasion, Nelson took the com- 

 mand of the shores, reconnoitred Boulogne iu the Medusa frigate, 

 attacked the flotilla in the mouth of the harbour, and withdrew with a 

 loss of 172 men, having gained no advantage. From this time he lived 

 in retirement in Surrey, till he was called on to assume the Mediterra- 

 nean command. He hoUted his flag iu the Victory, on war breaking 

 out in 1803. His chief employment was watching the French iu 

 Toulon. On the 17th of January 1805, the French fleet put to sea 

 under vice-admiral Villeneuve, but was driven back by heavy gales. 

 Villeneuve sailed again on the 29th of March, received a reinforcement 

 at Cadiz, and made for Martinique with seventeen sail of the line, seven 

 frigates, and four sloops. On the 12th of May Lord Nelson sailed for 

 the West Indies in pursuit of Villeneuve with ten ships of the line and 

 three frigates, and arrived at Barbadoes ou the 4th of June, on which 

 day Admiral Villeneuve sailed from Martinique, and having effected 

 nothing except the re-capture of the Diamoud rock, and made prizes 

 of a convoy of fifteen sail of West India-men, returned to Europe, aud 

 arrived off Cape Finisterre July 9th. Lord Nelson quitted Antigua 

 June 18tb, and made Cape St. Vincent on the 17th of July, having 

 been absent sixty-six days. Thus frustrated in his plans, he judged 

 best to reinforce the Channel equadron, lest the enemy should bear 

 down ou Brest. 



With this view he joined AJmiral Cornwallis off Uehant, and leav- 

 ing his fleet there, he went home, and struck his flag. He hoisted it 

 again in the Victory on the 15th of September, 1805, and arrived off 

 Cadiz on the 29th (his birth-day), to take command of the Mediter- 

 ranean fleet The force under him consisted of twenty-seven sail of 

 the line, aud four frigates, which he withdrew from the vicinity of 

 Cadiz to a btation sixteen or eighteen leagues to the westward, in the 

 hope of inducing the enemy to put to eea. On October -l.-t, at 

 day-break, the combined French and Spanish fleets, consisting of 

 thirty-three sail of the line aud seven frigates, were seen a- head 

 twelve miles to leeward. At lib. 40m., while bearing down iu two 

 lines ou the enemy, whose position was in the form of a crescent, 

 concave towards the British, Lord Nel-on hoisted the celebrated tele- 

 graphic signal, ' England expects every man to do his duty.' At ten 

 minutes past noon Collingwood, in the Royal Sovereign, commenced 

 the action on the part of the British. At one KM. the Victory passed 

 under the strrn of the Bucentaur. In the heat of the action, about j 

 Ib. 25m., while in the act of turning in his walk on the quarter deck, 

 Lord N'el-on received his death-wound by a musket-ball fired from the 

 Redoubtable, which entered his left shoulder, aud lodged iu the spine, 

 lie expired in three hour* and a half, but not before be knew that the 

 victory was complete. The total British loss was 450 killed, 1250 

 wounded. Seventeen French and Spanish chips were captured, and 

 one burnt Admiral Duuianoir escaped to the southward with four 

 tail, which were shortly after taken by Sir R. Strachan. Admiral 

 Graviua, with the remaining eleven ships, got into Cadiz. 



" The death of Nelson," says South ty, " was felt in England as a 

 public calamity ; yet he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely 

 whose work was done, nor ought he to be lamented who died so full of 

 honours aud at the height of human fame." On the 9tb of Jauuary 

 1806, the body of Nelson was buried at St. Paul's. His brother, the 

 Rev. William Nelson, was created an earl, with a grant of 60002. per j 

 annum; 10,0001. were voted to each of bis sisters, and 100,0001. for 

 the purchase of an estate. The unhappy Lady Hamilton, and his 

 'adopted child' Horatia, whom he had "left as a legacy to his 

 couutry," both with his dying words, and in a codicil to his will 

 which codicil was mostjmproperly concealed by his brother William till 

 the parliamentary grant to himself was completed (see Pettigrew's 

 Memoirs of Nelson, ii. 624-5) remained without the smallest provision. 

 Lady Hamilton died a few years later in extreme poverty at Calais. 

 Horatia Nelson married a clergyman, and within the last few years a 

 sense of the wrong done in lavishing almost the whole of the large 

 parliamentary grant upon Nelson's very undeserving brother has 

 caused an attempt to be made iu some measure to atone for the 

 original neglect by rendering easier the outset in life of Horatia 

 Nelson's children. 



Nelson's Despatches and Letter*, edited by Sir Harris Nicolas, were 

 published in 1144 in 7 vols. 8vo. 



NKLSOX, BOUEHT, author of various works in practical divinity, 

 which have long been held in very high estimation by serious and 

 pious persona, was born June 22, 1650. He was the grandson of 

 Lewis Roberts, a merchant of London, who is believed to be the 

 person of that name who wrote ' The Merchant's Map of Commerce,' 



S-ioted in 1638, and whoso descendants, the Roberto, Nelson, and 

 angers, were very extensively engaged in the trade to the Levant. 

 How far he was him&elf conuected with commerce does not appear; 

 but he was of Trinity College, Cambridge, aud while a young man 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was intimate with Halley, 



with whom he travelled in France and Italy. While at Rome he met 

 with, and married in 1682, Lady Theophila Lucy, widow of a baronet 

 and daughter of the earl of Berkeley. This lady some time after their 

 marriage became a Roman Catholic, to his great grief ; his mind hav- 

 ing been much occupied with the consideration of both the practical 

 and controversial points in divinity, and his chief friends being 

 eminent divines in the English Church, particularly Bull, Hickes, 

 Lloyd, and Tillotson the last especially was his intimate friend. 

 Nelson not only employed his own powers of persuasion, both verbal 

 and literary, but called in the aid of his friend Dr. Tillotson ; both 

 were however unsuccessful, the lady continuing in the Romish com- 

 munion till her death. His first work ' Transubstautiation contrary to 

 Scripture : or the Protestant's Answer to the Seeker's Kequest,' 1688, 

 appears to be the substance of his considerations on this subject. 



At the Revolution he scrupled to take the oaths to king William, 

 and remained a non-juror till the year 1709, wheu on the death of Dr. 

 Lloyd, the last survivor of the deprived non-juring bishops, except Dr. 

 Keen, he, by Dr. Keen's advice, returned to the Church of England 

 as then established. He died January 16, 1715, at Kensington, and 

 was buried iu the cemetery of St. George the Martyr, by the Foundling 

 Hospital. 



The following are his principal works : 'Practice of True Devotion, 

 in relation to the End as well as to the Means of Religion ; ' ' Com- 

 panion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England ;' ' Great 

 Duty of frequenting the Christian Sacrifice;' 'An Account of the 

 Life and Writings of William Kettlewell ; ' ' Letters to Dr. Clarke ou 

 the Trinity ; ' ' Whole Duty of a Christian,' &c. He also published 

 the English works of Bishop Bull, who had beeu his tutor, with au 

 account of his life and writings. He is also remarkable for having 

 been a bountiful contributor, both during his life and at his death, to 

 institutions for the education of the poor aud the diffusion of Christian 

 knowledge. 



NEMESI'ANUS, MARCUS AURELIUS OLYMPIUS, a Latin 

 poet, said to have been a native of Carthage, lived towards the close 

 of the 3rd century, under the reigns of Carus and his sons Cariuus 

 and Numerianus. Nothing more is known of the particulars of his 

 life. He wrote a poem on hunting, ' De Veuatioue,' which he dedi- 

 cated to Cariuus and Numerianus, and which has come down to us 

 unfinished. He also wrote four eclogues, which have considerable 

 poetical merit, aud have beeu repeatedly published, together with the 

 eclogues of his contemporary Calpurnius. Mairault has made a 

 French translation of Nemesianus's eclogues, with copious notes, 8vo, 

 1 744. The writings of Ncmesiauus have been inserted iu the collection 

 ' Poetic Rei Venaticx,' with notes, by G. Kempher, Leyden, 1741; the 

 best edition of them is that of Stern, Hal. Sax , 8vo, 1832. 



NESIE'SIUS, Bishop of Emesa in Syria, and one of the ;ible.-t of 

 the ancient Christian philosophers. Of his life very few particulars 

 are known; and even the time when he lived is uncertain, though 

 this is generally supposed to have been during the reign of Theodosius 

 the Great, towards the end of the 4th century. He has been accused 

 of holding tome of Origen's erroneous opinions, but has been defended 

 by Bishop Fell (' Anuot,' p. 20, ed. Oxon. 1671), who however con- 

 fesses, with regard to the prc-existeuce of souls, that ho "differed 

 from the commonly received opinion of the Church." But it is as a 

 philosopher and physiologist that Nernesius is best known, and his 

 work ' De Natura Homiuis ' is one of the most accurate treatises of 

 antiquity. Some persons (among whom we may mention Bishop Fell, 

 iu edit. Oxon.; Fabiicius, 'Biblioth. Gr.;' and Brucker, 'Hist. Philos.') 

 have even supposed that he was acquaint -d with the circulation of the 

 blood ; but in the opinion of Freind (' Hist, of Physic '), Haller 

 (' Bibliotb. Anat'), and Sprengel (' Hist, de la Me"decine '), he has no 

 right whatever to be considered as the author of this discovery. Still 

 the passage which has given rise to the discussion is certainly remark- 

 ably : " The motion of the pulse," Buys be, " takes its riae from the 

 heart, and chiefly from the left ventricle of it; the artery is with 

 great vehemence dilated and contracted, by a sort of constant har- 

 mony aud order. While it is dilated, it draws with force the thinner 

 part of the blood from the next veins, the exhalation or vapour of 

 which blood is made the aliment for the vital spirit. But while it. is 

 contracted it exhales whatever fumes it has through the whole body 

 and by secret passages, as the heart thro .vs out whatever is fuliginous 

 through the mouth and nose by expiration " (cap. 24, p. 242, ed. 

 Matth.). There is another passage equally curious respecting the bile, 

 which is constituted, he says, "not only for itself, but also for other 

 purposes ; for it helps digestion, aud contributes to the expulsion of 

 the excrements, and therefore it is in a manner one of the nourishing 

 powers ; besides, as a vital faculty, it imparts a sort of heat to the 

 body. For these reasons therefore it seems to be made for itself ; but 

 because it purges the blood it seems to bo made partly for the sake of 

 the blood" (cap. 28, p. 260, ed. Mattlu). From this pas-age Nemesius 

 has been supposed to have known all that Sylvius afterwards dis- 

 covered with respect to the functions of the bile ; but his claim in 

 this case is no better than iu the former, and indeed Haller and 

 Sprengel both say that his physiology is not at all more perfect than 

 that of Galen. But even if we cannot allow Nemesius all the credit 

 that haa been claimed for him, still from his general knowledge of 

 anatomy and physiology (which is quite equal to that of the pro- 

 fessional men of his time), his acuteness in exposing tho errors of the 



