NUNEZ DE ARCS, GASPAR Spanish poet, dramatist and statesman. Deputy for Valladolid in 1865, he was imprisoned at Caceres for his violent attacks on the reaction ary ministry of Narvaez, acted as secretary to the revolutionary Junta of Catalonia, and wrote the "Manifesto to the Nation" (Oct. 26, 1868). He served under Sagasta as minister for the colonies, the interior, the exchequer and education; but ill-health compelled him to resign in 1890.
Nunez de Arce first came into notice as a dramatist with such plays as La Cuenta del Zapatero (1859), and El haz de leiia (1872). But his talent was more lyrical than dramatic, and his celebrity dates from the appearance of Gritos del combate (1875), a collection of poems exhorting Spaniards to save the country from anarchy and lay aside domestic controversies. He was.main tained in popular esteem as the only possible rival of Campoamor by a series of philosophic, elegiac and symbolic poems: Raimundo Lulio, Ultima lamentacion de Lord Byron (1879) , Un Idilio y una Elegia (1879), La Selva oscura (1879) and La Visi6n de Fray Martin (1880). The old brilliance sets off the naturalistic observa tion of La Pesca (1884) and La Maruja (1886). The list of his works is completed by Poemas cortos (5895) and iSursum corda! (1900) ; Herndn el lobo, published in El Liberal (Jan. 23, 1880, and Luzbel remain unfinished. Gracious in his vision, sincere and patriotic, his weakness was sentiment and rhetorical sympathies.
(J. F.-K.) NURNBERG [NUREMBERG], the second town in Bavaria in size, and the first in commercial importance. It lies in the district of Middle Franconia in a sandy, well-cultivated plain, 124 m. by rail N.N.W. from Munich. The city stands on the Pegnitz, which is here crossed by 14 bridges.
first authentic mention of Niirnberg, which seems to have been called into existence by the foundation of the castle, occurs in a document of I °so; and about the same period it received from the emperor Henry III. permission to establish a mint and a market. It is said to have been destroyed by the
emperor Henry V. in 1105, but in 1127 the emperor Lothair took it from the duke of Swabia and assigned it to the duke of Bavaria. An imperial officer, styled the burggrave of Nurnberg, became prominent in the 12th century. This office came into the hands of the counts of Hohenzollern at the beginning of the i3th century. The town was ruled by patrician families. German mon archs frequently resided and held diets here, and in 1219 Fred erick II. conferred upon it the rights of a free imperial town.
Like Augsburg, NUrnberg attained great wealth as an inter mediary between Italy and the East on the one hand, and northern Europe on the other. Its manufactures were well known. The town gradually extended its sway over a territory nearly 500 sq.m. in eAtent, and was able to furnish the emperor Maximilian with a contingent of 6,000 troops. But perhaps the great glory of Nurnberg lies in its claim to be the principal fount of German art. Adam Krafft, Veit Stoss and Peter Vischer are famed as sculptors. In painting NUrnberg claims Wohlgemuth and Duren A large proportion of the old German furniture, silver-plate, stoves and the like was made in Nurnberg workshops. Its place in literary history it owes to Hans Sachs and the other meister sanger. The inventions of its inhabitants include watches, the air-gun, gun-locks, the terrestrial and celestial globes and the art of wire-drawing.
Nurnberg was the first imperial town to embrace Protestantism (about 1525). The first blow to its prosperity was the discovery of the sea-route to India in 1497; and the second was inflicted by the Thirty Years' War, during which Gustavus Adolphus was besieged here for ten weeks by Wallenstein. The downfall of the town was accelerated by the illiberal policy of its patrician rulers. In 1803 Nurnberg was allowed to maintain its nominal position as a free city, but in ',Boo it was annexed to Bavaria.