(Robert), the celebrated designer and engraver to the cabinet of Lewis XIV. was born at Reims in 1630. Though his father was but a petty shopkeeper, he gave his son a liberal education; who, having a taste for drawing, cultivated it with such success, that he became the admiration of the whole town; but marrying young, and not being able to maintain his family, he took a journey to Paris, where he made his talents known by a stratagem.—Seeing several abbés at the door of an eating-house, he asked the mistress for an ecclesiastic of Reims, whose name he had forgot, but that she might easily know him by a picture of him which he shewed: the abbés crowding round, were so charmed with it, that he seized the opportunity of offering to draw any of their pictures for a small matter. Customers came so fast that he soon raised his price, and brought his family to Paris, where his reputation was quickly established. He applied himself particularly to taking portraits in crayons, which he afterward engraved for the use of academical theses; and in this way he did the portrait of the king, and afterward engraved it as big as the life; a thing never before attempted. The king was so pleased with it, that he created the place of designer and engraver to the cabinet for him, with a pension of 1000 livres. He died in 1678; and an entire collection of his prints amounts to upwards of 240.

NAPÆA, in botany; a genus of the polygynia order, belonging to the monadelphia class of plants. There are two species; both of them with perennial roots, composed of many thick fleshy fibres, which strike deep into the ground, and are connected at the top into large heads; the stalks grow to seven or eight feet high, producing white flowers, tubulous at bottom, but spreading open at top, and dividing into five obtuse segments. Both these plants are natives of Virginia and other parts of North America; from the bark of some of the Indian kinds a sort of fine hemp might be procured, capable of being woven into very strong cloth. They are easily propagated by seed, which will thrive in any situation.