Northern Harlot, Infamous (Fr. "Infâme Catin du Nord"), an appellative given to the licentious, sensual, and cruel Empress Elizabeth Petrowna of Russia (1709-1761). She caused her husband Paul to be murdered, listening in the next room, where she heard the dogs lapping up the blood of the assassinated emperor. Her shameless harlotry is notorious. She is the empress at whose court Byron's "Don Juan" becomes a great favorite, and by whom he is sent to England as ambassador. The murder of Paul is the subject of one of Landor's most dramatic “Imaginary Conversations." Northwest Territory, the territory north of the Ohio River, east of the Mississippi, south of the great lakes, and west of the States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The charters and patents to these colonies, as also to Massachusetts and Connecticut, fixed no western boundary to the grants of territory made to them respectively, which accordingly extended without limit. When the tract was surrendered by Great Britain to the United States under the treaty of 1783, there was great dispute among these States as to their right in the same, so much so that at length it was determined by all to cede their rights to the Federal government, which was done by all unconditionally except Connecticut, which, while ceding its sovereign rights, reserved proprietary rights in a substantial strip of land. (See WESTERN RESERVE.) A bill for its organization was passed by Congress in 1787, but it was not until 1799 that it was fully organized as the Northwest Territory. It was the beginning of the "Great West," completed afterwards by the Louisiana Purchase and the conquests from Mexico. The Northwest Territory comprised the whole area of what are now the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Nose. To cut off one's nose to spite one's face is a proverbial expression common to most modern nations, and meaning, roughly, to sacrifice one's own interest for the sake of revenge, or, more subtly, to do irreparable injury to one's self in order to affect a mutual interest of one's self and one's enemy. The earliest reported appearance of the saw in literature is in Tallemant des Réaux's “Historiettes" (1657–59), where it takes the literal French form, "Se couper le nez pour faire dépit à son visage." "To keep one's nose to the grindstone" is another proverb of similar uncertain origin, meaning to be forced into uncongenial, unpleasant, or menial work. "A man," says Franklin, in his "Poor Richard's Maxims,” “may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose to the grindstone." The phrase is found as far back as Heywood's "Proverbs," Part I., ch. iii. Not for Joe, or Not for Joseph, in American and English slang, is used to intimate that one does not intend or care to do, or have, anything requested. It probably originated in the refrain of a song popular in the sixties: Not for Joseph, If he knows it; but this in turn seems to have been a special application of the popular locu tion "Not if I know myself," sometimes used with the addition "and I rather think I do." This phrase is at least as old as Charles Lamb: "Not if I know myself at all" (The Old and New School-Master). Not men, but measures, a familiar phrase in the mouths of "straightout" politicians, meaning that the success of the party policy is paramount over the question of the personal fitness of the candidate. Burke, in his "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents," vol. i. p. 531 (1770), alludes scornfully to "the cant of 'not men, but measures.' Canning echoed Aim in a speech against the Addington ministry in 1801: "Away with the cant of measures, not men'!-the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures are comparatively nothing." But this, too, is mere cant, mere electioneering talk. There are undoubtedly times when measures are more important than men. Brougham came closer to the truth when he said in the House of Commons, November, 1830, "It is necessary that I should qualify the doctrine of its being not men, but measures, that I am determined to support. In a monarchy it is the duty of Parliament to look at the men as well as the measures." The phrase is found for the first time in literature in Goldsmith's "GoodNatured Man," Act ii. (1768), but it is evident that he is only repeating a current shibboleth. Not much of a shower, an American political phrase quoted derisively to an opponent who attempts to make light of a great defeat. The story in explanation of the saying is that while Noah was building his ark one of the neighbors used to come daily and jeer at him. But when the rain began, and the scoffer, with his chin just above water-level, saw the ark riding safely on the waves, he changed his tone and begged to be taken on board. Noah refused, and the man thereupon waded off, indignantly exclaiming, "Go to thunder with your old ark! I don't believe there's going to be much of a shower anyway!" Nothing is changed; there is only one Frenchman more (Fr. “Il n'y a rien de changé ; il n'y a qu'un Français de plus"), an historical phrase printed as forming part of the speech of the Comte d'Artois (afterwards Charles X.) upon the restoration of Louis XVIII., April 12, 1814. But he never really uttered it. He had only murmured some nearly unintelligible and quite insignificant words. That evening Talleyrand assembled a brilliant company at his hôtel. "What did the prince say?" was his natural inquiry. The general answer was, "Nothing at all." "Oh, but he must have said something!" cried the wily diplomat. And turning to M. Beugnot, Minister of the Interior, he continued, "Beugnot, you are a bel-esprit: go into my closet and make a mot." Beugnot obeyed, and came back three times. But his wit was at fault; the product did not please the company. On his fourth return he triumphantly produced the now famous saying. There was a hearty round of applause. "That will do," cried Talleyrand; and on the morrow it appeared in the Moniteur as a part of the count's speech. The count himself, more candid than Talleyrand would have been under similar circumstances, declared that he did not remember having said anything of the kind. But he was reminded that the words were in print, that the newspaper could not very well have made a mistake, and was ultimately reduced to silence by the congratulations of his friends. The mot won instant popularity. It was bandied about, admired, sneered at, parodied. When the first giraffe arrived in Paris a medal was struck bearing the words "Il n'y a qu'un bête de plus" ("There is only one animal more;" but the word bête means fool as well as animal, and so had a sarcastic fling at the Bourbons). When Francis I. of Austria died in 1835 the current phrase was, "Nothing is changed; there is only one Austrian less.' And when Talleyrand was appointed vice-grandelector of the Empire, Fouché said, "Among so many officers it will not count; it is only one vice more." Nothing new and nothing true. In his "Representative Men," essay on Montaigne, Emerson, considering the materialist view of life, complains that "the inconvenience of this way of thinking is that it runs into indiffer. entism and then into disgust. 'Ah,' said my languid gentleman at Oxford, 'there's nothing new or true-and no matter."" But in truth the utterance does not seem to be original at Oxford. It is a common proverb, of unknown date, found in Cornwall and other portions of southwesterly England in the form, "There's nothing new, and there's nothing true, and it don't signify." Nous avons changé tout cela (Fr., "We have changed all that"), the famous phrase of Sganarelle, in Molière's "Le Médecin malgré Lui," Act ii., Sc. 7. Sganarelle, forced to play the doctor against his will, at last enters into the spirit of the thing, gives an absurd diagnosis of the patient's disease, and speaks learnedly of vapors passing from the liver on the left side to the heart on the right. "It could not, doubtless, be better reasoned," says Géronte. "There is only one thing which surprised me,-the position of the heart and liver. It seems to me that you placed them differently from where they are; that the heart is on the left side and the liver on the right." "Yes," replies Sganarelle, loftily, "it used to be that way, but nous avons changé tout cela, and we practise medicine now in quite a different manner." The phrase has become proverbial to ridicule any absurd and pretentious claim put forward by ignorance. Now, An eternal. In "The Doctor," Southey asks, "One of our poets -which is it?-speaks of an everlasting now. If such a condition of existence were offered to us in this world, and it were put to the vote whether we should accept the offer and fix all things immutably as they are, who are they whose voices would be given in the affirmative?" The poet in question is Cowley: Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, Davideis, Book i. Now I lay me down to sleep, the first line of a familiar childish prayer, whose succeeding lines run as follows: Bartlett ascribes the quatrain to the "New England Primer." It may be found there, indeed, credited to one "Mr. Rogers, the martyr, whose wife and ten small children are so well known," but it is far older than the "Primer" or even than Mr. Rogers. Rev. Thomas Hastings, in the "Mothers' Nursery Songs" (1848), ascribes it to Watts; but, a fortiori, it is older than Watts, and, furthermore, the nearest that Watts came to it is in the following lines: I lay my body down to sleep, Let angels guard my head, And through the hours of darkness keep Their watch around my bed. With cheerful heart I close my eyes, Since thou wilt not remove; And in the morning let me rise In medieval times the prayer appears to have been known as the White Paternoster, being so styled in the "Enchiridion Papæ Leonis, MCLX.” Ady's "Candle in the Dark” (1655) quotes it in the following form: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I lay me down to rest me And pray the Lord to bless me ; Chaucer, in his "Night Spell," alludes to it: Lord Jhesu Crist and Seynte Benedyht A more modern variant runs as follows: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John! Four angels round me spread! My soul asleep! And should I die before I wake, 823 It is evident that Protestantism gradually rejected the saints and angels from the invocation, and remodelled the lines into the form that is now familiar to us. In the original form, or something like it, the White Paternoster occurs in the popular hymnology of every country. Thus, Quenot, "Statistique de la Charente," gives it as follows: Dieu l'a fait, je la dit, J'ai trouvé quatre anges couchés à mon lit, De quoi puis-je avoir peur? Le bon Dieu est mon père, La Vierge ma mère, Le bon Dieu m'a dit, Lève-toi, couche-toi, Ne crains rien; le feu, l'orage et la tempête Ne peuvent rien contre toi; Saint-Jean, Saint-Marc, Saint-Luc et Saint-Matthieu, Qui met les âmes en repos, Mettez-y la mienne si Dieu le veut. Anghelu de Deu, Custodia meu! Custa nott' illuminame, Guarda e defenda me Ca eo mi incommando a Tie. Other forms may be found in other parts of France and Italy, in Germany, and elsewhere. Nulla dies sine linea (L., "No day without a line"). Pliny, in his "Natural History," Book xxxv., Sec. 84, refers this proverb to Apelles: "It was a custom with Apelles, to which he most tenaciously adhered, never to let any day pass, however busy he might be, without exercising himself by tracing some outline or other, a practice which has now passed into a proverb." Erasmus, in his "Adagia," gives the proverb as "Nulla dies abeat, The far superior modern version seems to have quin linea ducta supersit." See, also, DAY, I HAVE LOst a. been a gradual evolution. But I do lay claim to whatever merit should be accorded to me for persevering diligence in my profession. And I make the claim, not with a view to my own glory, but for the benefit of those who may read these pages, and, when young, may intend to follow the same career. Nulla dies sine linea. Let that be their motto. And let their work be to them as is his common work to the common laborer.-ANTHONY TROLLOPE: Autobiography. Nullification, Doctrine of. In the constitutional history of the United States this doctrine was that held by the ultra strict-constructionists (see LOOSE-CONSTRUCTIONIST). According to them, the Federal Union was a mere league of States, to which certain limited governmental powers had been delegated, ultimate sovereignty and all powers not expressly delegated remaining with the separate States; so that these latter might repudiate, each for itself, any general act of Congress which in its judgment exceeded the limits of the delegated powers strictly construed in favor of the States. An attempt was made in 1832 by the Legislature of South Carolina to "nullify" the United States tariff, held to be oppressive to the State and unconstitutional in that it went beyond the powers given to Congress to raise revenue by a tariff on imports, and embodied protective features in the interests of the manufacturing States and against those of the purely agricultural communities. Andrew Jackson's energetic measures, however, soon caused the repeal of the act of the South Carolina Legislature. He pronounced the act treasonable, and sent General Scott to Charleston to maintain the authority of the Federal government and aid the officials in enforcing the provisions of the act of Congress. Numbers, Curiosities of. If it be true that figures won't lie, that they won't even equivocate, that two and two exhibit an unbending determination to make four and nothing but four, at least figures do often play strange pranks. They abound in paradoxes, and though a paradox is rightly defined as a truth that only appears to be a lie, yet the stern moralist, who hates even the appearance of evil, looks with scant favor upon a paradox. Luckily, we are not all so stern in our morality. Most of us welcome a little ingenious trifling, an amiable coquetting with the truth; we are willing that Mr. Gradgrind shall have the monopoly of hard facts; we like to find romance even in our arithmetic. And we don't have far to look. There is the number nine. It is a most romantic number, and a most persistent, self-willed, and obstinate one. You cannot multiply it away or get rid of it anyhow. Whatever you do, it is sure to turn up again, as did the body of Eugene Aram's victim. Mr. W. Green, who died in 1794, is said to have first called attention to the fact that all through the multiplication table the product of nine comes to nine. Multiply by any figure you like, and the sum of the resultant digits will invariably add up as nine. Thus, twice 9 is 18; add the digits together, and I and 8 make 9. Three times 9 is 27; and 2 and 7 is 9. So it goes on up to 11 times 9, which gives 99. Very good. Add the digits together, 9 and 9 is 18, and 8 and 1 is 9. Go on to any extent, and you will find it impossible to get away from the figure 9. Take an example at random. Nine times 339 is 3051; add the digits together, and they make 9. Or again, 9 times 2127 is 19,134; add the digits together, they make 18, and 8 and 1 is 9. Or still again, 9 times 5071 is 45,639; the sum of these digits is 27; and 2 and 7 is 9. This seems startling enough. Yet there are other queer examples of the same form of persistence. It was M. de Maivan who discovered that if you take any row of figures, and, reversing their order, make a subtraction sum of obverse and reverse, the final result of adding up the digits of the answer will always be 9. As, for example: |