works of scarcely inferior excellence may be seen among the relics, and at the shrine of Kasuga is performed a religious dance called Kagura, in which the costumes and gestures of the dancers are doubtless the same as those of twelve centuries back. Kasugano-Miya was founded in 767, and its chapels with their rough red-painted log-work afford fine examples of primitive Japanese architecture. In the temple-park are herds of tame deer; and little images of deer and trinkets from deer’s horn are the favourite charms purchased by the pilgrims. Within the enclosure stands a curious old trunk of seven plants entwined, including a camellia, cherry and wistaria. Of the great Buddhist temple Kobuku-ji, founded in 710, and burnt for the third time in 1717, there remains little save two lofty pagodas. A railway now gives access to the town, but every effort is made to preserve all the ancient features of Nara. A museum has been formed, where many antique objects of great interest are displayed, as well as works from the hands of comparatively modern artists. Nara in the days of its prosperity is said to have had a population of a quarter of a million.
NARAINGANJ, or Narayanganj, a town of India, in the
Dacca district of eastern Bengal and Assam, situated near the
junction of two rivers with the Meghna, 10 m. by rail S. of Decca
city. Pop. (1901) 24,472. As the port of Dacca, having steamer
communication with both Calcutta and Chittagong, it has
become the chief entrepot for the jute trade of eastern Bengal.
There are 73 jute-presses, employing 6000 hands, and the annual
export of jute exceeds 300,000 tons. It also ranks as the model
municipality of Bengal.
NARBONNE, a city of France, capital of an arrondissement
in the department of Aude, situated in a vine-growing plain
5 m. from the Mediterranean, on the railway from Toulouse to
Cette, 37 m. E. of Carcassonne. Pop. (1906) 23,289. The Robine
canal, a branch of the Canal du Midi, divides Narbonne into two
distinct portions, the bourg and the cité. The latter is one of the
oldest and most interesting of French towns. The former
cathedral (St Just), which consists only of a choir 130 ft. high
and transept, was begun in 1272, and the transept was still unfinished
at the end of the 15th century. The towers (194 ft. high)
at each extremity of the transept were built about 1480. Some
additions towards the west were made early in the 18th century.
An unusual effect is produced by a double row of crenellation
taking the place of balustrades on the roof of the choir chapels
and connecting the pillars of the flying buttresses. Among the
sepulchral monuments, which are the chief feature of the interior,
may be noticed the alabaster tomb of Cardinal Guillaume
Briçonnet, minister of state under Charles VIII. The chapter-house,
of the 15th century, has a vaulted roof supported on four
free pillars. The treasury preserves many interesting relics.
The apse of the cathedral was formerly joined to the fortifications
of the archiepiscopal palace, and the two buildings are still connected
by a mutilated cloister of the 14th and 15th centuries.
On the front of the palace are three square towers of unequal
height. Between the Tour des Télégraphes (1518), crenellated
and turreted at the corners, and that of St Martial (1374), machicolated
and pierced by Gothic openings, a new façade was erected
in the style of the 13th century after the plans of Viollet-le-Duc.
This portion of the building now serves as hôtel de ville, and its
upper stories are occupied by the Narbonne museum of art
and archaeology, which includes a fine collection of pottery.
The palace garden also contains many fragments of Roman work
once built into the now dismantled fortifications; and the
Musée Lapidaire in the Lamourguier buildings (formerly the
church of a Benedictine convent) has a collection of Roman
remains derived from the same source. The church of St Paul,
though partly Romanesque, is in the main striking, and for the
south of France a rare example of a building of the first half of
the 13th century in the Gothic style of the north. It possesses
some ancient Christian sarcophagi and fine Renaissance wood
carving. Narbonne has a sub-prefecture, tribunals of first
instance and of commerce, a board of trade arbitration, a chamber
of commerce, a communal college for boys and a school of
commerce and industry. It has a good trade in wine and
spirituous liquors, and is famous for its honey. The industries
include cooperage, sulphur-refining, brandy-distilling and the
manufacture of bricks and tiles and verdigris.
Long before the Roman invasion of Gaul Narbonne was a flourishing city, being capital of the Volcae Tectosages. It was there that the Romans in 118 B.C. founded their first colony in Gaul, which bore the name of Narbo Martius; they constructed great works to protect the city from inundation and to improve its port, situated on a lake now filled up but at that time communicating with the sea. Capital of Gallia Narbonensis, the seat of a proconsul and a station for the Roman fleet, Narbo Martius became the rival of Massilia. But in A.D. 150 it suffered greatly from a conflagration, and the division of Gallia Narbonensis into two provinces lessened its importance as a capital. Alans, Suevi, Vandals, each held the city for a brief space, and at last, in 413, it was occupied by the Visigoths, whose capital it afterwards became. In 719, after a siege of two years, it was captured by the Saracens, and by them its fortifications were restored and extended. Charles Martel, after the battle of Poitiers, and Pippin the Short, in 752, were both repulsed from its walls; but on a new attempt, after an investment of seven years, and by aid of a traitor, the Franks managed again to force their way into Narbonne. Charlemagne made the city the capital of the duchy of Gothia, and divided it into three lordships—one for the bishop, another for a Frankish lord, and the third for the Jews, who, occupying their own quarter, possessed schools, synagogues and a university famous in the middle ages. The viscounts who succeeded the Frankish lord sometimes acknowledged the authority of the counts of Toulouse, sometimes that of the counts of Barcelona. In the 13th century the crusade against the Albigenses spared the city, but the archbishopric, was seized by the pope’s legate, Arnaud Amaury, who took the title of viscount of Narbonne. Simon de Montfort, however, deprived him of this dignity, receiving from Philip Augustus the duchy of Narbonne along with the county of Toulouse. By his expulsion of the Jews Philip the Fair hastened the decay of the city; and about the same period the Aude, which had formerly been diverted by the Romans, ceased to flow towards Narbonne and the harbour was silted up, to the further disadvantage of the place. In 1642 Henri Marquis de Cinq-Mars was arrested at Narbonne for conspiring against Richelieu. United to the French crown in 1507, Narbonne was enclosed by a new line of walls under Francis I., but having ceased to be a garrison town it had the last portions of its ramparts demolished in 1870. The archbishopric was founded about the middle of the 3rd century, its first holder being Sergius Paulus; it was suppressed in 1790.
NARBONNE-LARA, LOUIS MARIE JACQUES AMALRIC, Comte de (1755–1813), French soldier and diplomatist, was born at Colorno, in the duchy of Parma, on the 24th of August 1755. He was the son of one of the ladies-in-waiting of Elizabeth, duchess of Parma, and his father was either a Spanish nobleman or—as has been alleged—Louis XV. himself. He was brought up at Versailles with the princesses of France, and was made
colonel at the age of twenty-five. He became maréchal-de-camp
in 1791, and, through the influence of Madame de Stael,
was appointed minister of war. But he showed incapacity in
this post, gave in his resignation, and joined the Army of the
North. Incurring suspicion as a Feuillant and also by his policy
at the war office, he emigrated after the 10th of August 1792,
visited England, Switzerland and Germany, and returned to
France in 1801. In 1809 he re-entered the army as general of
division, and was subsequently minister plenipotentiary at
Munich and aide de camp to Napoleon. In 1813 he was appointed
French ambassador at Vienna, where he was engaged in an unequal
diplomatic duel with Metternich (q.v.) during the fateful
months that witnessed the defection of Austria from the cause
of Napoleon to that of the Allies. He died at Torgau, in Saxony,
on the 17th of November 1813.
See A. F. Villemain, Souvenirs contemporains (Paris, 1854).
NARBOROUGH, SIR JOHN (d. 1688), English naval commander, was descended from an old Norfolk family. He received his commission in 1664, and in 1666 was promoted lieutenant
for gallantry in the action with the Dutch fleet off the Downs
in June of that year. After the peace he was chosen to conduct
a voyage of exploration in the South Seas. He set sail from
Deptford on the 26th of November 1669, and entered the Straits
of Magellan in October of the following year, but returned home
in June 1671 without accomplishing his original purpose. A
narrative of the expedition was published at London in 1694
under the title An Account of several late Voyages and Discoveries
to the South and North. During the second Dutch War Narborough
was second captain of the lord high-admiral’s ship the
