The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 203

FOLKESTONE (24), a seaport and watering-place on the coast of Kent, 7 m. SW. of Dover; has a fine harbour and esplanade; is much engaged in the herring and mackerel fisheries, and is steam-packet station for Boulogne; a fine railway viaduct spans the valley in which the old town lies.

FONBLANQUE, ALBANY WILLIAM, journalistic editor, after serving on the staff of the _Times_ and the _Morning Chronicle_ became editor of the _Examiner_, which he conducted successfully from 1830 to 1847; Carlyle was introduced to him on his visit to London in 1831, and describes him as "a tall, loose, lank-haired, wrinkly, wintry, vehement-looking flail of a man," but "the best of the Fourth Estate" then extant; "I rather like the man," he adds, "has the air of a true-hearted Radical"

(1793-1872).

FONTAINEBLEAU, a town on the left bank of the Seine, 35 m. SE. of Paris, and famous for a chateau or palace of the kings of France, and the forest that surrounds it. This chateau, founded towards the end of the 10th century, was enlarged and embellished by successive kings, beginning with Francis I., and was the place where Napoleon signed his abdication in 1814.

FONTANES, LOUIS, MARQUIS DE, poet and man of letters, born at Niort, Poitou; came to Paris and achieved some celebrity by his poems and translations from Pope and Gray; changing from the Royalist side, he, during the Revolution, edited two journals in the Republican interest, and held the post of professor of Literature at the College of the Four Nations; was for some time a refugee in England, but afterwards returned and became a zealous supporter of Napoleon, on the downfall of whom he embraced the Bourbon cause, and was raised to the peerage (1757-1821).

FONTENELLE, BERNARD LE BOVIER DE, a miscellaneous French writer, born at Rouen, a nephew of Corneille, whose Life he wrote; was designed for the bar, but under his uncle's patronage embarked on a literary career in Paris; he vehemently upheld the moderns in the famous literary quarrel of Moderns _versus_ Ancients, and brought upon himself the satirical attacks of Boileau and Racine; became Secretary and then President of the Academie des Sciences; died in his hundredth year; his vigorous and versatile nature found vent in a wide variety of writings--literary, scientific, and historical; author of "Dialogues of the Dead," in imitation of Lucian, and "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds"; is credited with the saying, "A man may have his hand full of truth, and yet only care to open his little finger," and this other, "No man was ever written down but by himself" (1657-1757).

FONTENOY, a village in Belgium, 5 m. SW. of Tournay, where Marshal Saxe beat the English, Dutch, and Austrians under the Duke of c.u.mberland in 1745.

FOOCHOW (630), a Chinese city, the capital of the province of Fu-chien, situated on the Min, 125 m. NE. of Amoy. Ma.s.sive walls 30 ft.

high enclose the original town, but the extensive suburbs reach down to the river, which is bridged, and is a convenient waterway for trading with the interior; it was made a free port in 1842, and is the centre of a busy trade in tea, timber, and textiles.

FOOLS, FEAST OF, a festival of wild mirth in the Middle Ages, held on 1st January, in which the a.s.s of Scripture celebrity played a chief part, and in which many of the rites and ceremonies of the Church were travestied.

FOOT-POUND, the name given in mechanics to the force required to raise 1 lb. through 1 foot, the unit of work.

FOOTE, SAMUEL, a celebrated English actor and playwright, born at Truro, Cornwall, of a good family; was educated at Oxford, and studied law, but ruined himself by gaming, and took to the stage; he became the successful lessee of Haymarket Theatre in 1747, where, by his inimitable powers of mimicry and clever comedies, he firmly established himself in popular favour (1720-1777).

FORBES, ARCHIBALD, a noted war-correspondent, born in Morays.h.i.+re; was educated at Aberdeen University; served in a cavalry regiment, acted as war-correspondent for the _Daily News_ during the Franco-German war, and has since been the brilliant chronicler of war news in all parts of the globe; has published several volumes; _b_. 1838.

FORBES, DUNCAN, of Culloden, a distinguished lawyer and patriotic politician, born at Bunchrew; was trained at Edinburgh and Leyden, and called to the Scotch bar in 1709; took an active part in putting down the rebellion of 1715, and in 1722 entered Parliament; three years later he was appointed Lord Advocate and Lord President of the Court of Session; succeeded his brother in the estates of Culloden and Bunchrew; during the 1745 rebellion he was active in the Hanoverian interest, and did much to quell the uprising; Forbes was a devoted Scot, and unweariedly strove to allay the Jacobite discontent and to establish the country in peace, and used his great influence and wealth to further these ends, services which, in the end, impoverished him, and received little or no recognition at the hands of Government (1685-1747).

FORBES, EDWARD, a noted naturalist, born at Douglas, in the Isle of Man; studied medicine at Edinburgh, where he became smitten with the love of natural science, to which he devoted his life; in 1841 he accompanied the _Beacon_ as naturalist, and returning in 1843 found himself elected to the chair of Botany in King's College, London; various geological appointments followed, and in 1852 he became President of the Geological Society, and two years later received the chair of Natural History in Edinburgh; Forbes was a prolific author, and his writings cover the whole field of natural science, to every section of which he has made contributions of great value (1815-1854).

FORBES, JAMES DAVID, physicist, born at Edinburgh, the grandson of Sir William, and the son of the first lady-love of Sir Walter Scott, and very like her; was called to the bar in 1830; physical science, however, was his ruling pa.s.sion, and in 1833 he became professor of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh University, from which he was called in 1859 to the Princ.i.p.als.h.i.+p of the United College, St. Andrews, in which he succeeded Sir David Brewster, whom he had defeated in obtaining the Edinburgh chair; he made some valuable contributions to natural science, including discoveries in the polarisation of heat and in regard to the motion of glaciers, to investigate which he travelled in Norway and in the Alps (1809-1868).

FORBES, SIR JOHN, physician, born at Cuttlebrae, Banffs.h.i.+re; entered the navy as a.s.sistant-surgeon in 1807, and became M.D. of Edinburgh ten years later; practised at Penzance and Chichester, but finally settled at London in 1840, where he became physician to the Queen; was for twelve years editor of the _British and Foreign Medical Review_, which he founded in 1836, and was joint-author of the "Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine"; first to use the stethoscope in England (1787-1861).

FORBES, SIR WILLIAM, an eminent banker, son of a Scotch advocate and baronet, born in Edinburgh; became partner in the banking firm of Messrs.

John Coutts & Co.; two years later a new company was formed, of which he rose to be manager, and which in 1830 became the Union Bank of Scotland; he is author of a Life of his friend Beattie, the Scottish poet, and of "Memoirs of a Banking-House" (1739-1806).

FORD, JOHN, dramatist, born at Islington, North Devon; studied at Oxford, and entered the Middle Temple in 1602, but was never called to the bar; in 1606 appeared his first poetic work "Fame's Memorial," an elegy on the death of the Earl of Devons.h.i.+re, and for the next 33 years he was a prolific writer of plays, chiefly tragedies, collaborating in some cases with Dekker and Webster; "The Broken Heart" was greatly admired by Charles Lamb, and "Perkin Warbeck" is considered by Stopford Brooke the best historical drama after Shakespeare; there is little of the lighter graces about his work, and he is p.r.o.ne to go beyond the bounds of nature in his treatment of the tragic, but his grip on the greater human pa.s.sions, and his power of moving presentment, are undoubted (1586-1639).

FORDUN, JOHN OF, a Scottish chronicler; lived in the 14th century; was a canon of Aberdeen Cathedral, and wrote a chronicle of Scottish history, bringing the story up to 1153; materials for further volumes, which he left, were utilised by Walter Bower, an abbot of Inchcolm, in the Forth, who extended the account to 1437, but often tampered with Fordun's narrative; the work is the chief authority in Scottish history up to the time it treats of.

FORELAND, NORTH AND SOUTH, two rocky promontories on the E. coast of Kent, which lie 16 m. apart; have the Downs and Goodwin Sands between them; they are well marked with lighthouses.

FORENSIC MEDICINE, or MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE, a branch of legal science in which the principles of medicine are applied to the purposes of the law, and originating out of the frequency with which medical points arise in the administration of justice, e. g. in murder trials and in cases where insanity is involved.

FOREST LAWS, laws enacted in ancient times for the purpose of guarding the royal forest lands as hunting preserves, and which were up to the time of Henry III. of excessive harshness, death being a not infrequent penalty for infringement. The privileges of forest (at one time the sole prerogative of the sovereign, but by him capable of being vested in another), which might include the right to the wild animals in the forests lying in the domains of a private estate, have now fallen into abeyance, as also the special Forest Courts, while many of the royal forests, which in Henry VIII.'s time numbered 69, have been disafforested.

FORFAR (13), the county town of Forfars.h.i.+re, 14 m. NE. of Dundee; manufactures linen; was once an important royal residence, and was made a royal burgh by David I.

FORFARs.h.i.+RE or ANGUS (278), a maritime county on the E. side of Scotland, lying N. of the Firth of Tay; Strathmore and the Ca.r.s.e of Gowrie are fertile valleys, where agriculture and cattle-rearing flourish, and which, with the Braes of Angus in the N. and the Sidlaw Hills to the S., make up a finely diversified county; jute and linen are the most important articles of manufacture, of which Dundee and Arbroath are centres; Forfars.h.i.+re is a county particularly rich in antiquities--Roman remains, castles, priories, &c.

FORMOSA (3,500), a large island off the coast of China, from which it is separated by the f.u.kien Channel, 90 m. broad. Formosa was ceded to j.a.pan by the Chinese in 1895; it is an island of much natural beauty, and is traversed N. and S. by a fine range of hills; is famed for its bamboos, and exports coal, rice, tea, &c. Name also of a large territory in the Argentine.

FORNARINA, a Roman lady of great beauty, a friend of Raphael's, and who frequently posed as a model to him.

FORRES (3), a royal burgh in Elgins.h.i.+re, on the Findhorn, 2 m. from the sea and 10 m. SW. of Elgin by railway; has ruins of a castle--once a royal residence--and a famous "Stan'in Stane," Sueno's Stone, 25 ft.

high, placed in the year 900.

FORREST, EDWIN, a celebrated American actor, born in Philadelphia; went on the stage at 14, and from the provinces made his way to New York, where his rendering of Oth.e.l.lo at the age of 20 raised him to the front rank among actors; he made three tours in England, but during his last in 1845 he entirely lost the popular favour through his conduct in an embittered quarrel with Macready; after his final appearance on the stage in 1871 he continued for a short while to give Shakespearian readings; he was a tragedian of the highest order, and in his profession ama.s.sed a large fortune (1806-1872).

FORS CLAVIGERA, the name given by Ruskin to a series of letters to workmen, written during the seventies of this century, and employed by him to designate three great powers which go to fas.h.i.+on human destiny, viz., _Force_, wearing, as it were, (_clava_) the club of Hercules; _For_t.i.tude, wearing, as it were, (_clavis_) the key of Ulysses; and _For_tune, wearing, as it were, (_clavus_) the nail of Lycurgus; that is to say, Faculty waiting on the right moment, and then striking in. See Shakespeare's "Time and tide in the affairs of men," &c., the "flood" in which is the "Third Fors." The letters are represented as written at the dictation of the Third Fors, or, as it seems to the author, the right moment, or the occurrence of it.

FoRSTER, ERNST, an art critic, brother of succeeding, author of a number of elaborate and important works bearing on the history of art in Germany and Italy; was the son-in-law of Jean Paul, whose works he edited, and to whose biography he made contributions of great value (1800-1885).

FoRSTER, FRIEDRICH CHRISTOPH, German poet and historian; his poetic gifts were first called into exercise during the war of liberation, in which he served as a volunteer, and the series of spirited war-songs he then wrote procured him a wide-spread fame; afterwards he lived in Berlin, teaching in the school of artillery, and subsequently becoming custodian of the Royal Art Museum; besides poems he wrote several historical and biographical works (1791-1868).

FORSTER, JOHANN GEORGE ADAM, naturalist, son of the succeeding; accompanied his father in the voyage with Cook, and contributed to the literature anent the expedition; subsequently became professor of Natural History at Ca.s.sel and at Wilna, and eventually librarian to the Elector of Mayence in 1788; his works are published in 9 vols. (1754-1794).

FORSTER, JOHANN REINHOLD, a German naturalist and traveller, born in Prussia; accompanied Captain Cook as a naturalist on his second expedition to the South Seas, and in connection with which he wrote a volume of observations; died professor of Natural History and Mineralogy at Halle (1729-1798).