NIELLO 



"M-i- of (In- llhine. Domin- 



IIP outlook from the river is 



mania, 



erecte<l to commemorate 



lha founding of the empire m isTi. 

 8. is tin- l:h. m m, fn mod for it* 

 mineral springs ami \iiieyirds. 

 Niello (I tul. from late Lat. nty- 



rllnni. lilack enaiii'-l) In 

 gold, silver, ami l<n>n/e with a black 

 metallic alloy of silver, copper, and 

 lead, to \\hich.wlien molten, then- 

 is added powdered sulphur. Since 

 tlii-; alloy a|>|>ears in the inlay as* 

 oYcu black, silver has been the 

 chief l>a.-v on which tin- art has been 

 practised, giving the greatest con- 



I et ween inlay and base. 



The earliest extant example of 



the art is a 1st century bronze 



statue of a Roman general, in the 



British Museum. There are tine 



, examples also in the church of the 



Nierembergia. Flowers and foliage 

 ot N. rivolaris 



royal palace at Hanover, in S. 

 Sophia, Constantinople, and in 

 many churches in Italy and 

 Russia; and the art has been pop- 

 ular in India for many centuries. 

 It is said that niello first sug- 

 gested the method of printing from 

 engraved metal plates. Certainly 

 prints are in existence in the 

 British and other museums of a 

 niello portrait of the Virgin made in 

 1452, and now in the Opera del 

 Duomo, Florence. Prow. Nee-el-lo. 

 Niemen, NYEMAN. OR MEMEL. 

 River of Russia, Lithuania, and 

 East Germany. It rises in the 

 Russian govt. of Minsk, flows at 

 first N.W. to Grodno, then N., and 

 later W. past Kovno to enter the 

 Kmi-ehes Haff, an arm of the 

 I'.. i!t ir Sea. The river is navigable 

 from Grodno, except for occasional 

 obstructions in its bed ; one of 

 these, a mass of large stones railed 

 the Devil's Dam, is 15 m. above 

 Kovno. With its affluents, of 

 which the Viliya-Svyenta is t he- 

 most useful, it serves Lithuania. 

 Its length is 650 m. Area of basin, 

 35,000 Sq. m. In the Great War, the 

 Russians retreated to the Niemen 

 after their defeat at Tannenberg 



_ 5739 _ 



(</.!.), AUK., 1!>N, and in Feb., 

 1915, they were driven bad. 

 after their advance. An area of 

 l.OHOsq. m., N. of tin- Intercourse 

 of the river, wan administered by 

 the AMi'-.l 1'owera pending the de- 

 termination of the status of 

 Lithuania. See Kovno ; Meinel ; 

 Vilna ; Warsaw ; N.V. 



Niemes. Town of Bohemia, in 

 Czecho-Slovakia. It U 27 m. l-y 

 rly. from Libereo (Reichenberg), 

 and manufactures textiles, timber 

 goods, and chemicals. 



Nieppe. Name of a forest and 

 village of France, in the dept. of 

 Nora. The former lies to the N. of 

 the Lys Canal, and a few miles 8. of 

 Hazebrouck (q.v.). The forest. 

 6,171 acres in extent, was cleared 

 of the Germans by British cavalry 

 in Oct., 1914, and became of vital 

 strategic value to the British north- 

 ern army in covering the rly. 

 junction of Hazebrouck. In April, 

 1918, the Germans reached its E. 

 outskirts, but were held up by the 

 1st Australian division. The 

 German withdrawal in Aug. freed 

 it from further attack. The village 

 is slightly N.W. of Armentieres, 

 and was the scene of critical fight- 

 ing in April, 1918. See Ypres, 

 Battles of. 



Nierembergia. Genus of per- 

 ennial herbs of the natural order 

 Solanaceae, natives of S. America. 

 The stems as a rule arc more or less 

 procumbent, or even prostrate. 

 The tubular flowers vary from 

 some pale tint of violet to blue or 

 white. Several species are culti- 

 vated, of which N. frutescen* is 

 shrubby, with slender leaves and 

 pale blue flowers. A', calycina is a 

 downy plant with roundish leaves 

 and white flowers, with yellow tube. 

 N. rivularin has matted, creeping 

 stems and oblong or spoon-shaped 

 leaves; the flowers are white, tinged 

 with yellow or rose. 



Nierstein. Village of Germany, 

 in Hesse- Darmstadt. It stands on 

 the left bank of the Rhine, 9 m. 

 S.E. of Mainz, trades in malt. 

 maize, and dairy produce, and is 

 noted for its Rhine wine. Near 

 the village are sulphur springs and 

 baths. Pop. 4,600. 



Nietzsche, FKIEDRICH (1844- 

 1900). German philosopher. Born 

 at Rockcn. in Prussian Saxonv, 

 Oct 15, 1844. 

 son of a pastor 

 of remote 

 Polish extrac- 

 tion. he was 

 educated a t 

 Naumburg 

 g r a ra m a r 

 school, at the 

 famous school 



Friedrich Nietxsche. o 

 German philosopher at 



and 



NIETZSCHE 



Leipzig univermtiei. After a year's 



OOfnpWMfJ service in the artillery, 



he returned in IS8 to Leipzig. 



<1 his degree, and at the age 



of 2A WM ap[M.iht! professor of 

 olaiwical philology at the university 

 of Basel Here he lectured with 

 success until in IsT'J, ill health 

 compelled him to resign. The uni- 

 versity granted him a pension of 

 120 a year, and with this and small 

 private resources be lived at 

 various places, mostly in Italy and 

 Swit/.erhuid, until an apoplectic 

 tit in 1KKH was followed by in- 

 minify. II. >!i. ! in his sister's house 

 at Weimar on Aug. 2.1, 1900. 



At an early age he became more 

 attentive to the nature of the 

 Greek genius than to the technical- 

 ities of Greek literature. He con- 

 cluded, in The Birth of Tragedy. 

 1872 that the original genius of 

 Greece, and the proper idea of 

 mankind, was an instinctive and 

 joyous creativeness the Diony- 

 siao element which was later 

 ruined by intellcctualism and fixed 

 moral rules the Apollinist ele- 

 ment. Hence his early zeal for 

 Wagner and his fierce attacks upon 

 contemporary Philistines. 



Essentially a poet, Nietzsche 

 never framed a philosophy, or 

 systematically arranged his re- 

 flections on life, but his early ideal 

 steadily developed. Against the 

 prevailing intellectualism he pas- 

 sionately pleaded for strength, will, 

 impulse. He knew little of science, 

 and when Darwinism spread, he 

 sujx-rlicially acclaimed it as the 

 gospel of eternal struggle, of the 

 triumph of the strong. This mis- 

 understanding of science is one of 

 his fundamental errors. 



He heatedly attacked pity and 

 humanitarianism, and, on the 

 ground that it had introduced these 

 things into Europe, bitterly as- 

 sailed Christianity. Few under- 

 stood or appreciated his works, 

 and he imagined a group of 

 " free spirits,' sharing his ideas, 

 who might one day exist. These 

 become, in his writings, the 

 Beyond-Men or Supermen. The 

 code of morals of these " master 

 spirits " must differ from the 

 prevailing " slave-morality," and 

 his later works were almost entirely 

 devoted to a " transvaluation of 

 values," or a reconsideration of 

 moral standards. Those are the 

 main ideas of his chief works, 

 Human, Ail-Too Human, 1876-80 ; 

 The Joyou* Wisdom, 1882; Thus 

 Spake Zarathustra, 1883-84; Be- 

 yond Good and Evil. 1886; and 

 The Genealogy of Morals, 1887. 



A fierce apostle of the rights of 

 the individual Nietzsche scorned 

 both democracy and bureaucracy. 

 German nationalism of the type 



