Chapter XV: Part 15

Foscari's reign bore out Mocenigo's warning and was full of wars on the _terra ferma_, and through the doge's influence Venice joined the Florentines in their campaign against Milan, which was carried on with varying success for eight years. In 1430 an attempt was made on Foscari's life by a noble to whom he had refused an appointment; and three years later a conspiracy of young bloods to secure the various offices for themselves by illicit intrigues was discovered. These events, as well as the long and expensive wars and the unsatisfactory state of Venetian finances, induced Foscari to ask permission to abdicate, which was, however, refused. In 1444 began that long domestic tragedy by which the name of Foscari has become famous. The doge's son Jacopo, a cultivated and intelligent but frivolous and irresponsible youth, was in that year accused of the serious crime of having accepted presents from various citizens and foreign princes who either desired government appointments or wished to influence the policy of the republic. Jacopo escaped, but was tried in contumacy before the Council of Ten and condemned to be exiled to Napoli di Romania (Nauplia) and to have his property confiscated. But the execution of the sentence was delayed, as he was lying ill at Trieste, and eventually the penalty was commuted to banishment at Treviso (1446). Four years later Ermolao Donato, a distinguished official who had been a member of the Ten at the time of the trial, was assassinated and Jacopo Foscari was suspected of complicity in the deed. After a long inquiry he was brought to trial for the second time, and although all the evidence clearly pointed to his guilt the judges could not obtain a confession from the accused, and so merely banished him to Candia for the rest of his life, with a pension of two hundred ducats a year. In 1456 the council received information from the rector (governor) of Candia to the effect that Jacopo Foscari had been in treasonable correspondence with the duke of Milan and the sultan of Turkey. He was summoned to Venice, tried and condemned to a year's imprisonment, to be followed by a return to his place of exile. His aged father was allowed to see him while in prison, and to Jacopo's entreaties that he should obtain a full pardon for him, he replied advising him to bear his punishment without protest. When the year was up Jacopo returned to Candia, where he died in January 1457. The doge was overwhelmed with grief at this bereavement and became quite incapable of attending to business. Consequently the council decided to ask him to abdicate; at first he refused, but was finally obliged to conform to their wishes and retired on a yearly pension of 1500 ducats. Within a week Pasquale Malipiero was elected in his place and two days later (1st of November 1457) Francesco Foscari was dead.

The story is a very sad and pathetic one, but legend has added many
picturesque though quite apocryphal details, most of them tending to
show the iniquity and harshness of Jacopo's judges and accusers,
whereas, as we have shown, he was treated with exceptional leniency.
The most accurate account is contained in S. Romanin's _Storia
documentata di Venezia_, lib. x. cap. iv. vii. and x. (Venice, 1855);
where the original authorities are quoted; see also Berlan, _I due
Foscari_ (Turin, 1852). Among the poetical works on the subject
Byron's tragedy is the most famous (1821), and Roger's poem _Italy_
(1821); Giuseppe Verdi composed an opera on the subject entitled _I
due Foscari_. (L. V.*)

FOSCOLO, UGO (1778-1827), Italian writer, was born at Zante in the Ionian Isles on the 26th of January 1778. On the death of his father, a physician at Spalatro, in Dalmatia, the family removed to Venice, and in the University of Padua Foscolo prosecuted the studies begun in the Dalmatian grammar school. The fact that amongst his Paduan masters was the abbe Cesarotti, whose version of Ossian had made that work highly popular in Italy, was not without influence on Foscolo's literary tastes, and his early knowledge of modern facilitated his studies in ancient Greek. His literary ambition revealed itself by the appearance in 1797 of his tragedy _Tieste_--a production which obtained a certain degree of success. Foscolo, who, from causes not clearly explained, had changed his Christian name Niccolo to that of Ugo, now began to take an active part in the stormy political discussions which the fall of the republic of Venice had provoked. He was a prominent member of the national committees, and addressed an ode to Napoleon the liberator, expecting from the military successes of the French general, not merely the overthrow of the effete Venetian oligarchy, but the establishment of a free republican government.

The treaty of Campo Formio (17th Oct. 1797), by which Napoleon handed Venice over to the Austrians, gave a rude shock to Foscolo, but did not quite destroy his hopes. The state of mind produced by that shock is reflected in the _Letters of Jacopo Ortis_ (1798), a species of political _Werther_,--for the hero of Foscolo embodies the mental sufferings and suicide of an undeceived Italian patriot just as the hero of Goethe places before us the too delicate sensitiveness embittering and at last cutting short the life of a private German scholar. The story of Foscolo, like that of Goethe, had a groundwork of melancholy fact. Jacopo Ortis had been a real personage; he was a young student of Padua, and committed suicide there under circumstances akin to those described by Foscolo. At this period Foscolo's mind appears to have been only too familiar with the thought of suicide. Cato and the many classical examples of self-destruction scattered through the pages of Plutarch appealed to the imaginations of young Italian patriots as they had done in France to those of the heroes and heroines of the Gironde. In the case of Foscolo, as in that of Goethe, the effect produced on the writer's mind by the composition of the work seems to have been beneficial. He had seen the ideal of a great national future rudely shattered; but he did not despair of his country, and sought relief in now turning to gaze on the ideal of a great national poet. At Milan, whither he repaired after the fall of Venice, he was engaged in other literary pursuits besides the composition of _Ortis_. The friendship formed there with the great poet Parini was ever afterwards remembered with pride and gratitude. The friendship formed with another celebrated Milanese poet soon gave place to a feeling of bitter enmity. Still hoping that his country would be freed by Napoleon, he served as a volunteer in the French army, took part in the battle of the Trebbia and the siege of Genoa, was wounded and made prisoner. When released he returned to Milan, and there gave the last touches to his _Ortis_, published a translation of and commentary upon _Callimachus_, commenced a version of the _Iliad_, and began his translation of Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_. The result of a memorandum prepared for Lyons, where, along with other Italian delegates, he was to have laid before Napoleon the state of Italy, only proved that the views cherished by him for his country were too bold to be even submitted to the dictator of France. The year 1807 witnessed the appearance of his _Carme sui sepolcri_, of which the entire spirit and language may be described as a sublime effort to seek refuge in the past from the misery of the present and the darkness of the future. The mighty dead are summoned from their tombs, as ages before they had been in the masterpieces of Greek oratory, to fight again the battles of their country. The inaugural lecture on the origin and duty of literature, delivered by Foscolo in January 1809 when appointed to the chair of Italian eloquence at Pavia, was conceived in the same spirit. In this lecture Foscolo urged his young countrymen to study letters, not in obedience to academic traditions, but in their relation to individual and national life and growth. The sensation produced by this lecture had no slight share in provoking the decree of Napoleon by which the chair of national eloquence was abolished in all the Italian universities. Soon afterwards Foscolo's tragedy of _Ajax_ was represented but with little success at Milan, and its supposed allusions to Napoleon rendering the author an object of suspicion, he was forced to remove from Milan to Tuscany. The chief fruits of his stay in Florence are the tragedy of _Ricciarda_, the _Ode to the Graces_, left unfinished, and the completion of his version of the _Sentimental Journey_ (1813). His version of Sterne is an important feature in his personal history. When serving with the French he had been at the Boulogne camp, and had traversed much of the ground gone over by Yorick; and in his memoir of Didimo Cherico, to whom the version is ascribed, he throws much curious light on his own character. He returned to Milan in 1813, until the entry of the Austrians; thence he passed into Switzerland, where he wrote a fierce satire in Latin on his political and literary opponents; and finally he sought the shores of England at the close of 1816.

During the eleven years passed by Foscolo in London, until his death there, he enjoyed all the social distinction which the most brilliant circles of the English capital confer on foreigners of political and literary renown, and experienced all the misery which follows on a disregard of the first conditions of domestic economy. His contributions to the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_, his dissertations in Italian on the text of Dante and Boccaccio, and still more his English essays on Petrarch, of which the value was enhanced by Lady Dacre's admirable translations of some of Petrarch's finest sonnets, heightened his previous fame as a man of letters. But his want of care and forethought in pecuniary matters involved him in much embarrassment, and at last consigned him to a prison; and when released he felt bitterly the change in his social position, and the coldness now shown to him by many whom he had been accustomed to regard as friends. His general bearing in society--if we may accept on this point the testimony of so keen an observer and so tolerant a man as Sir Walter Scott--had unhappily not been such as to gain and retain lasting friendships. He died at Turnham Green on the 10th of October 1827. Forty-four years after his death, in 1871, his remains were brought to Florence, and with all the pride, pomp and circumstance of a great national mourning, found their final resting-place beside the monuments of Machiavelli and Alfieri, of Michelangelo and Galileo, in Italy's Westminster Abbey, the church of Santa Croce. To that solemn national tribute Foscolo was fully entitled. For the originality of his thoughts and the splendour of his diction his country honours him as a great classic author. He had assigned to the literature of his nation higher aims than any which it previously recognized. With all his defects of character, and through all his vicissitudes of fortune, he was always a sincere and courageous patriot.

Ample materials for the study of Foscolo's character and career may be
found in the complete series of his works published in Florence by Le
Monnier. The series consists of _Prose letterarie_, (4 vols., 1850);
_Epistolario_ (3 vols., 1854); _Prose politiche_ (1 vol., 1850);
_Poesie_ (1 vol., 1856); _Lettere di Ortis_ (1 vol., 1858); _Saggi di
critica storico-letteraria_ (1st vol., 1859; 2nd vol., 1862). To this
series must be added the very interesting work published at Leghorn in
1876, _Lettere inedite del Foscolo, del Giordani, e della Signora di
Stael, a Vincenzo Monti_. The work published at Florence in the summer
of 1878, _Vita di Ugo Foscolo, di Pellegrino Artusi_, throws much
doubt on the genuineness of the text in Foscolo's writings as given in
the complete Florence edition, whilst it furnishes some curious and
original illustrations of Foscolo's familiarity with the English
language. (J. M. S.)

FOSS, EDWARD (1787-1870), English lawyer and biographer, was born in London on the 16th of October 1787. He was a solicitor by profession, and on his retirement from practice in 1840, he devoted himself to the study of legal antiquities. His _Judges of England_ (9 vols., 1848-1864) is a standard work, characterized by accuracy and extensive research. _Biographia Juridica_, _a Biographical Dictionary of English Judges_, appeared shortly after his death. He assisted in founding the Incorporated Law Society, of which he was president in 1842 and 1843. He died of apoplexy on the 27th of July 1870.

FOSSANO, a town and episcopal see of Piedmont, Italy, in the province of Cuneo, 15 m. N.E. of it by rail, 1180 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 7696 (town), 18,175 (commune). It has an imposing castle with four towers, begun by Filippo d'Acaia in 1314. The cathedral was reconstructed at the end of the 18th century. The place began to acquire some importance in the 13th century. It appears as a commune in 1237, but in 1251 had to yield to Asti. It finally surrendered in 1314 to Filippo d'Acaia, whose successor handed it over to the house of Savoy. It lies on the main line from Turin to Cuneo, and has a branch line to Mondovi.

FOSSANUOVA, an abbey of Italy, in the province of Rome, near the railway station of Sonnino, 64 m. S.E. of Rome. It is the finest example of a Cistercian abbey, and of the Burgundian Early Gothic style, in Italy, and dates from the end of the 12th to the end of the 13th century. The church (1187-1208) is closely similar to that of Casamari. The other conventual buildings also are noteworthy. Thomas Aquinas died here in 1274.

See C. Enlart, _Origines francaises de l'architecture gothique en
Italie_ (Paris, 1894) (_Bibliotheque des ecoles francaises d'Athenes
et de Rome_, fasc. 66).

FOSSE (or FOSS) WAY, the Early English name of a Roman road or series of roads in Britain, used later by the English, running from Lincoln by Leicester and Bath to Exeter. Almost all the Roman line is still in use as modern road or lane. It passes from Lincoln through Newark and Leicester (the Roman _Ratae_) to High Cross (_Venonae_), where it intersects Watling Street at a point often called "the centre of England." Hence it runs to Moreton-in-the-Marsh, Cirencester, Bath and Ilchester, crosses the hills near Chard, Axminster and Honiton, and enters Exeter. Antiquaries have taken it farther, usually to Totnes, but without warrant. (See further under ERMINE STREET.) (F. J. H.)

FOSSICK (probably an English dialectical expression, meaning fussy or troublesome), a term applied by the gold diggers of Australia to the search for gold by solitary individuals, in untried localities or in abandoned diggings. A "fossicker," or pocket miner, is one who buys up the right to search old claims, in the hope of finding gold overlooked by previous diggers.

FOSSOMBRONE (anc. _Forum Sempronii_), a town and episcopal see of the Marches, Italy, in the province of Pesaro and Urbino, 11 m. E.S.E. of the latter by road, 394 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) town, 7531, commune, 10,847. The town is situated in the valley of the Metauro, in the centre of fine scenery, at the meeting-point of roads to Fano, to the Furlo pass and Fossato di Vico (the ancient Via Flaminia), to Urbino and to Sinigaglia, the last crossing the river by a fine bridge. The cathedral, rebuilt in 1772-1784, contains the chief work of the sculptor Domenico Rosselli of Rovezzano, a richly sculptured _ancona_ of 1480. S. Francesco has a lunette by him over the portal. The library, founded by a nephew of Cardinal Passionei, contains some antiquities. Above the town is a medieval castle. There is a considerable trade in silk.

The ancient Forum Sempronii lay about 2 m. to the N.E. at S. Martino al Piano, where remains still exist. It was a station on the Via Flaminia and a _municipium_. The date of its foundation is not known. Excavations in 1879-1880 led to the discovery of a house and of other buildings on the ancient road (A. Vernarecci in _Notizie degli scavi_, 1880, 458). It already had a bishop in the years 499-502. In 1295 the Malatesta obtained possession of it, and kept it until 1444, when it was sold, with Pesaro, to Federico di Montefeltro of Urbino, and with the latter it passed to the papacy under Urban VIII. in 1631.

FOSSOMBRONI, VITTORIO, COUNT (1754-1844), Tuscan statesman and mathematician, was born at Arezzo. He was educated at the university of Pisa, where he devoted himself particularly to mathematics. He obtained an official appointment in Tuscany in 1782, and twelve years later was entrusted by the grand duke with the direction of the works for the drainage of the Val di Chiana, on which subject he had published a treatise in 1789. In 1796 he was made minister for foreign affairs, but on the French occupation of Tuscany in 1799 he fled to Sicily. On the erection of the grand duchy into the ephemeral kingdom of Etruria, under the queen-regent Maria Louisa, he was appointed president of the commission of finance. In 1809 he went to Paris as one of the senators for Tuscany to pay homage to Napoleon. He was made president of the legislative commission on the restoration of the grand duke Ferdinand III. in 1814, and subsequently prime minister, which position he retained under the grand duke Leopold II. His administration, which was only terminated by his death, greatly contributed to promote the well-being of the country. He was the real master of Tuscany, and the bases of his rule were equality of all subjects before the law, honesty in the administration of justice and toleration of opinion, but he totally neglected the moral improvement of the people. At the age of seventy-eight he married, and twelve years afterwards died, in 1844.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Gino Capponi, _Il Conte V. Fossombroni_, A. von
Reumont, _Geschichte Toscanas unter dem Hause Lothringen-Habsburg_
(Gotha, 1877); Zobi, _Storia civile delta Toscana_ (Florence,
1850-1853); Galeotti, _Delle Leggi e dell' amministrazione della
Toscana_ (Florence, 1847); Baldasseroni, _Leopoldo II_. (Florence,
1871); see also under CAPPONI, GINO; FERDINAND III., of Tuscany, and
LEOPOLD II., of Tuscany. (L. V.*)

FOSTER, SIR CLEMENT LE NEVE (1841-1904), English geologist and mineralogist, the second son of Peter Le Neve Foster (for many years secretary of the Society of Arts), was born at Camberwell on the 23rd of March 1841. After receiving his early education at Boulogne and Amiens, he studied successively at the Royal School of Mines in London and at the mining college of Freiburg in Saxony. In 1860 he joined the Geological Survey in England, working in the Wealden area and afterwards in Derbyshire. Conjointly with William Topley (1841-1894) he communicated to the Geological Society of London in 1865 the now classic paper "On the superficial deposits of the Valley of the Medway, with remarks on the Denudation of the Weald." In this paper the sculpturing of the Wealden area by rain and rivers was ably advocated. Retiring from the Geological Survey in 1865, Foster devoted his attention to mineralogy and mining in Cornwall, Egypt and Venezuela. In 1872 he was appointed an inspector of mines under the home office for the S.W. of England, and in 1880 he was transferred to the N. Wales district. In 1890 he was appointed professor of mining at the Royal College of Science and he held this post until the close of his life. His later work is embodied largely in the reports of mines and quarries issued annually by the home office. He was distinguished for his extensive scientific and practical knowledge of metalliferous mining and stone quarrying. He was elected F.R.S. in 1892 and was knighted in 1903. While investigating the cause of a mining disaster in the Isle of Man in 1897 his constitution suffered much injury from carbonic-oxide gas, and he never fully recovered from the effects. He died in London on the 19th of April 1904. He published _Ore and Stone Mining_, 1894 (ed. 5, 1904); and _The Elements of Mining and Quarrying_, 1903.

FOSTER, GEORGE EULAS (1847- ), Canadian politician and financier, was born in New Brunswick on the 3rd of September 1847, of U.E. Loyalist descent. After a brilliant university career at the university of Brunswick, at Edinburgh and Heidelberg, he returned to Canada and taught in various local schools, eventually becoming professor of classics and history in the local university. In 1882 he became Conservative member for King's County, N.B., in the Dominion parliament, and in 1885 entered the cabinet of Sir John Macdonald as minister of marine and fisheries; in 1888 he became minister of finance, which position he held till the defeat of his party in 1896. A careful and even brilliant financier, and a keen debater, he became known as a strong believer in protection for Canadian industries and in preferential trade within the British empire.

FOSTER, JOHN (1770-1843), English author and dissenting minister, generally known as the "Essayist," was born in a small farmhouse near Halifax, Yorkshire, on the 17th of September 1770. Partly from constitutional causes, but partly also from the want of proper companions, as well as from the grave and severe habits of his parents, his earlier years were enshrouded in a somewhat gloomy and sombre atmosphere, which was never afterwards wholly dissipated. His youthful energy, finding no proper outlet, developed within him a tendency to morbid intensity of thought and feeling; and, according to his own testimony, before he was twelve years old he was possessed of a "painful sense of an awkward but entire individuality."

The small income accruing to Foster's parents from their farm they supplemented by weaving, and at an early age he began to assist them by spinning wool by the hand wheel, and from his fourteenth year by weaving double stuffs. Even "when a child," however, he had the "feelings of a foreigner in the place"; and though he performed his monotonous task with conscientious diligence, he succeeded so indifferently in fixing his wandering thoughts upon it that his work never without difficulty passed the ordeal of inspection. He had acquired a great taste for reading, to gratify which he sometimes shut himself up alone in a barn, afterwards working at his loom "like a horse," to make up for lost time. He had also at this period "a passion for making pictures with a pen." Shortly after completing his seventeenth year he became a member of the Baptist church at Hebden Bridge, with which his parents were connected; and with the view of preparing himself for the ministerial office he began about the same time to attend a seminary at Brearley Hall conducted by his pastor Dr Fawcett.

After remaining three years at Brearley Hall he was admitted to the Baptist College, Bristol, and on finishing his course of study at this institution he obtained an engagement at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he preached to an audience of less than a hundred persons, in a small and dingy room situated near the river at the top of a flight of steps called Tuthill Stairs. At Newcastle he remained only three months. In the beginning of 1793 he proceeded to Dublin, where, after failing as a preacher, he attempted to revive a classical and mathematical school, but with so little success that he did not prosecute the experiment for more than eight or nine months. From 1797 to 1799 he was minister of a Baptist church at Chichester, but though he applied himself with more earnestness and perseverance than formerly to the discharge of his ministerial duties, his efforts produced little apparent impression, and the gradual diminution of his hearers necessitated his resignation. After employing himself for a few months at Battersea in the instruction of twenty African youths brought to England by Zachary Macaulay, with the view of having them trained to aid as missionaries to their fellow-countrymen, he in 1800 accepted the charge of a small congregation at Downend, Bristol, where he continued about four years. In 1804, chiefly through the recommendation of Robert Hall, he became pastor of a congregation at Frome, but a swelling in the thyroid gland compelled him in 1806 to resign his charge. In the same year he published the volume of _Essays_ on which his literary fame most largely if not mainly rests. They were written in the form of letters addressed to the lady whom he afterwards married, and consist of four papers,--"On a Man writing Memoirs of himself"; "On Decision of Character"; "On the Application of the Epithet Romantic"; and "On some Causes by which Evangelical Religion has been rendered unacceptable to Men of Cultivated Taste." The success of this work was immediate, and was so considerable that on resigning his charge he determined to adopt literature as his profession. The _Eclectic Review_ was the only periodical with which he established a connexion; but his contributions to that journal, which were begun in 1807, number no fewer than 185 articles. On his marriage in May 1808 he removed to Bourton-on-the-Water, a small village in Gloucestershire, where he remained till 1817, when he returned to Downend and resumed his duties to his old congregation. Here he published in 1820 his _Essay on Popular Ignorance_, which was the enlargement of a sermon originally preached on behalf of the British and Foreign School Society. In 1821 he removed to Stapleton near Bristol, and in 1822 he began a series of fortnightly lectures at Broadmead chapel, Bristol, which were afterwards published. On the settlement of Robert Hall at Bristol this service was discontinued, as in such circumstances it appeared to Foster to be "altogether superfluous and even bordering on impertinent." The health of Foster during the later years of his life was somewhat infirm, the result chiefly of the toil and effort of literary composition; and the death of his only son, his wife and the greater number of his most intimate friends combined with his bodily ailments to lend additional sombreness to his manner of regarding the events and arrangements of the present world--the "visage of death" being almost his "one remaining luminary." He died at Stapleton on the 15th of October 1843.

The cast of Foster's mind was meditative and reflective rather than logical or metaphysical, and though holding moderately Calvinistic views, his language even in preaching very seldom took the mould of theological forms. Though always retaining his connexion with the Baptist denomination, the evils resulting from organized religious communities seemed to him so great that he came to be "strongly of opinion that churches are useless and mischievous institutions, and the sooner they are dissolved the better." The only Christian observances which he regarded as of any importance were public worship and the Lord's Supper, and it so happened that he never administered the ordinance of baptism. His cast of thought is largely coloured by a constant reference to the "endless future." He was a firm believer in supernatural appearances, and cherished a longing hope that a ray of light from the other world might sometimes in this way be vouchsafed to mortals. As a writer he was most painstaking and laborious in his choice of diction, and his style has its natural consequent defects, though the result is eloquent in its way.

Besides the works already alluded to, Foster was the author of a
_Discourse on Missions_ (1818); "Introductory Essay" to Doddridge's
_Rise and Progress of Religion_ (1825); "Observations on Mr Hall's
Character as a Preacher," prefixed to the collected edition of Hall's
_Works_ (1832); an "Introduction" to a pamphlet by Mr Marshman on the
Serampore Missionaries; several political letters to the _Morning
Chronicle_, and contributions to the _Eclectic Review_, published
posthumously in 2 vols., 1844. _His Life and Correspondence_, edited
by J.E. Ryland, was published in 1846.

FOSTER, SIR MICHAEL (1836-1907), English physiologist, was born at Huntingdon on the 8th of March 1836. After graduating in medicine at London University in 1859, he began to practise in his native town, but in 1867 he returned to London as teacher of practical physiology at University College, where two years afterwards he became professor. In 1870 he was appointed by Trinity College, Cambridge, to its praelectorship in physiology, and thirteen years later he became the first occupant of the newly-created chair of physiology in the university, holding it till 1903. He excelled as a teacher and administrator, and had a very large share in the organization and development of the Cambridge biological school. From 1881 to 1903 he was one of the secretaries of the Royal Society, and in that capacity exercised a wide influence on the study of biology in Great Britain. In 1899 he was created K.C.B., and served as president of the British Association at its meeting at Dover. In the following year he was elected to represent the university of London in parliament. Though returned as a Unionist, his political action was not to be dictated by party considerations, and he gravitated towards Liberalism; but he played no prominent part in parliament and at the election of 1906 was defeated. His chief writings were a _Textbook of Physiology_ (1876), which became a standard work, and _Lectures on the History of Physiology in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries_ (1901), which consisted of lectures delivered at the Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, in 1900. He died suddenly in London on the 29th of January 1907.

FOSTER, MYLES BIRKET (1825-1899), English painter, was born at North Shields. At the age of sixteen he entered the workshop of Ebenezer Landells, a wood engraver, with whom he worked for six years as an illustrative draughtsman, devoting himself mainly to landscape. During the succeeding fifteen years he became famous as a prolific and accomplished illustrator, but about 1861 abandoned illustration for painting, and gained wide popularity by his pictures, chiefly in water colours, of landscapes and rustic subjects, with figures, mainly of children. He was elected in 1860 associate and in 1862 full member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours. His work is memorable for its delicacy and minute finish, and for its daintiness and pleasantness of sentiment.

See _Birket Foster, his Life and Work_ (extra number of the _Art
Journal_) by Marcus B. Huish (1890), an interesting sketch; and
_Birket Foster, R.W.S._, by H.M. Cundall (London, 1906), a very
complete and fully illustrated biography.

FOSTER, STEPHEN COLLINS (1826-1864), American song and ballad writer, was born near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on the 4th of July 1826. He was the youngest child of a merchant of Irish descent who became a member of the state legislature and was related by marriage to President Buchanan. Stephen early showed talent for music, and played upon the flageolet, the guitar and the banjo; he also acquired a fair knowledge of French and German. He was sent to school in Towanda, Pennsylvania, and later to Athens, Pennsylvania, and when thirteen years old he wrote the song "Sadly to Mine Heart Appealing." At sixteen he wrote "Open thy Lattice, Love"; at seventeen he entered his brother's business house, Cincinnati, Ohio, where he remained about three years, composing meanwhile such popular pieces as "Old Uncle Ned," "O Susannah!" and others. He then adopted song-writing as a profession. His chief successes were songs written for the negro melodists or Christy minstrels. Besides those mentioned the following attained great popularity: "Nelly was a Lady," "Old Kentucky Home," "Old Folks at Home," "Massa's in de Cold, Cold Ground," &c. For these and other songs the composer received considerable sums, "Old Folks at Home" bringing him, it is said, 15,000 dollars. For most of his songs Foster wrote both songs and music. In 1850 he married and moved to New York, but soon returned to Pittsburg. His reputation rests chiefly on his negro melodies, many of which have been popular on both sides of the Atlantic and sung in many tongues. "Old Black Joe," the last of these negro melodies, appeared in 1861. His later songs were sentimental ballads. Among these are "Old Dog Tray," "Gentle Annie," "Willie, we have missed you," &c. His "Come where my Love lies Dreaming" is a well known vocal quartet. Although as a musician and composer Foster has little claim to high rank, his song-writing gives him a prominent place in the modern developments of popular music. He died at New York on the 13th of January 1864.

FOSTORIA, a city, partly in Seneca, partly in Hancock, and partly in Wood county, Ohio, U.S.A., 35 m. S. by E. of Toledo. Pop. (1890) 7070; (1900) 7730 (584 foreign-born); (1910) 9597. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio, the New York, Chicago & St Louis, the Ohio Central, the Lake Erie & Western, and the Hocking Valley railways, and by two interurban electric lines. The city is situated in an agricultural region, and oil abounds in the vicinity. Among the city's manufactures are glass, flour, planing mill products, brass and iron, carriages, barrels, incandescent lamps, carbons, wire nails and fences, automobile engines and parts, railway torpedoes and muslin underwear. The waterworks are owned and operated by the municipality. In 1832, upon the coming of the first settlers, two towns, Rome and Risdon, were laid out on the site of what is now Fostoria. A bitter rivalry arose between them, but they were finally united under one government, and the city thus formed was named in honour of Charles W. Foster, whose son Charles Foster (1828-1904), governor of the state from 1880 to 1884 and secretary of the United States treasury from 1891 to 1893, did much to promote its growth. Fostoria was chartered as a city in 1854.

FOTHERGILL, JOHN (1712-1780), English physician, was born of a Quaker family on the 8th of March 1712 at Carr End in Yorkshire. He took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh in 1736, and after visiting the continent of Europe he in 1740 settled in London, where he gained an extensive practice. In the epidemics of influenza in 1775 and 1776 he is said to have had sixty patients daily. In his leisure he made a study of conchology and botany; and at Upton, near Stratford, he had an extensive botanical garden where he grew many rare plants obtained from various parts of the world. He was the patron of Sidney Parkinson, the South Sea voyager. A translation of the Bible (1764 sq.) by Anthony Purver, a Quaker, was made and printed at his expense. His pamphlet entitled "Account of the Sore Throat attended with Ulcers" (1748) contains one of the first descriptions of diphtheria in English, and was translated into several languages. He died in London on the 26th of December 1780.

FOTHERINGHAY, a village of Northamptonshire, England, picturesquely situated on the left bank of the river Nene, 1-1/2 m. from Elton station on the Peterborough branch of the London & North-Western railway. The castle, of which nothing but the earthworks and foundations remain, is famous as the scene of the imprisonment of Mary queen of Scots from September 1586 to her trial and execution on the 8th of February 1587. The earthworks, commanding a ford of the river, are apparently of very early date, and probably bore a castle from Norman times. It became an important stronghold of the Plantagenets from the time of Edward III., and was the birthplace of Richard III. in 1452. The church of St Mary and All Saints, originally collegiate, is Perpendicular, and only the nave with aisles, and the tower surmounted by an octagon, remain; but the building is in the best style of its period. Edward, second duke of York, who was killed at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, Richard, the third duke, and his duchess, Cicely (d. 1495), also his son the earl of Rutland, who with Richard himself, fell at the battle of Wakefield in 1460, are buried in the church. Their monuments were erected by Queen Elizabeth, who found the choir and tombs in ruins.

FOUCAULT, JEAN BERNARD LEON (1819-1868), French physicist, was the son of a publisher at Paris, where he was born on the 18th of September 1819. After an education received chiefly at home, he studied medicine, which, however, he speedily abandoned for physical science, the improvement of L.J.M. Daguerre's photographic processes being the object to which he first directed his attention. During three years he was experimental assistant to Alfred Donne (1801-1878) in his course of lectures on microscopic anatomy. With A.H.L. Fizeau he carried on a series of investigations on the intensity of the light of the sun, as compared with that of carbon in the electric arc, and of lime in the flame of the oxyhydrogen blowpipe; on the interference of heat rays, and of light rays differing greatly in lengths of path; and on the chromatic polarization of light. In 1849 he contributed to the _Comptes Rendus_ a description of an electromagnetic regulator for the electric arc lamp, and, in conjunction with H.V. Regnault, a paper on binocular vision. By the use of a revolving mirror similar to that used by Sir Charles Wheatstone for measuring the rapidity of electric currents, he was enabled in 1850 to demonstrate the greater velocity of light in air than in water, and to establish that the velocity of light in different media is inversely as the refractive indices of the media. For his demonstration in 1851 of the diurnal motion of the earth by the rotation of the plane of oscillation of a freely suspended, long and heavy pendulum exhibited by him at the Pantheon in Paris, and again in the following year by means of his invention the gyroscope, he received the Copley medal of the Royal Society in 1855, and in the same year he was made physical assistant in the imperial observatory at Paris. In September of that year he discovered that the force required for the rotation of a copper disk becomes greater when it is made to rotate with its rim between the poles of a magnet, the disk at the same time becoming heated by the eddy or "Foucault currents" induced in its metal. Foucault invented in 1857 the polarizer which bears his name, and in the succeeding year devised a method of giving to the speculum of reflecting telescopes the form of a spheroid or a paraboloid of revolution. With Wheatstone's revolving mirror he in 1862 determined the absolute velocity of light to be 298,000 kilometres (about 185,000 m.) a second, or 10,000 kilom. less than that obtained by previous experimenters. He was created in that year a member of the Bureau des Longitudes and an officer of the Legion of Honour, in 1864 a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, and next year a member of the mechanical section of the Institute. In 1865 appeared his papers on a modification of Watt's governor, upon which he had for some time been experimenting with a view to making its period of revolution constant, and on a new apparatus for regulating the electric light; and in the following year (_Compt. Rend._ lxiii.) he showed how, by the deposition of a transparently thin film of silver on the outer side of the object glass of a telescope, the sun could be viewed without injuring the eye by excess of light. Foucault died of paralysis on the 11th of February 1868 at Paris. From the year 1845 he edited the scientific portion of the _Journal des Debats_. His chief scientific papers are to be found in the _Comptes Rendus_, 1847-1869.

See _Revue cours scient._ vi. (1869), pp. 484-489; _Proc. Roy. Soc._
xvii. (1869), pp. lxxxiii.-lxxxiv.; Lissajous, _Notice historique sur
la vie et les travaux de Leon Foucault_ (Paris, 1875).

FOUCHE, JOSEPH, DUKE OF OTRANTO (1763-1820), French statesman, was born in a small village near Nantes on the 21st of May 1763. His father, a seafaring man, destined him for the sea; but the weakness of his frame and the precocity of his talents soon caused this idea to be given up. He was educated at the college of the Oratorians at Nantes, and showed marked aptitude for studies both literary and scientific. Desiring to enter the teaching profession he was sent to an institution kept by brethren of the same order at Paris. There also he made rapid progress, and soon entered upon tutorial duties at the colleges of Niort, Saumur, Vendome, Juilly and Arras. At Arras he had some dealings with Robespierre at the time of the beginning of the French Revolution (1789).

In October 1790 he was transferred by the Oratorians to their college at Nantes, owing to irregularities due to his zeal for revolutionary principles; but at Nantes he showed even more democratic fervour. His abilities and the zeal with which he espoused the most subversive notions brought him into favour with the populace at Nantes; he became a leading member of the local Jacobin club; and on the dissolution of the college of the Oratorians at Nantes in May 1792, Fouche gave up all connexion with the church, whose major vows he had not taken. After the downfall of the monarchy on the 10th of August 1792, he was elected as deputy for the department of the Lower Loire to the National Convention which met at the autumnal equinox and proclaimed the republic. The literary and pedagogic sympathies of Fouche at first brought him into touch with Condorcet and the party, or group, of the Girondists; but their vacillation at the time of the trial and execution of Louis XVI. (December 1792-January 21, 1793) led him to espouse the cause of the Jacobins, the less scrupulous and more thoroughgoing champions of revolutionary doctrine. On the question of the execution of the king, Fouche, after some preliminary hesitations, expressed himself with the utmost vigour in favour of immediate execution, and denounced those who "wavered before the shadow of a king."

The crisis which resulted from the declaration of war by the Convention against England and Holland (Feb. 1, 1793), and a little later against Spain, brought Fouche into notoriety as one of the fiercest of the Jacobinical fanatics who then held power at Paris. While the armies of the first coalition threatened the north-east of France, a revolt of the royalist peasants of Brittany and la Vendee menaced the Convention on the west. That body deputed Fouche with a colleague, Villers, to proceed to the west as commissioners invested with almost dictatorial powers for the crushing of the revolt of "the whites." The vigour with which he carried out these duties earned him other work, and he soon held the post of commissioner of the republic in the department of the Nievre. Together with Chaumette, he helped to initiate the atheistical movement, the founders of which in the autumn of 1793 began to aim at the extinction of Christianity in France. In the department of the Nievre he ransacked the churches, sent their spoils to the treasury and established the cult of the goddess of Reason. Over the cemeteries, he ordered these words to be inscribed: "Death is an eternal sleep." He also waged war against luxury and wealth, and desired to abolish the use of money. The new cult was inaugurated at Paris at Notre Dame by the strange orgy known as "The Festival of Reason" (November 10, 1793).

Fouche then proceeded to Lyons to execute the vengeance of the Convention on that city, which had revolted against the new Jacobin tyranny. Preluding his work by a festival remarkable for its obscene parody of religious rites, he then, along with his colleague, Collot d'Herbois, set the guillotine and cannon to work with a rigour which made his name odious. Modern research, however, proves that at the close of those horrors Fouche exercised a moderating influence. Outwardly his conduct was marked by the utmost rigour, and on his return to Paris early in April 1794, he thus characterised his policy: "The blood of criminals fertilises the soil of liberty and establishes power on sure foundations." By that time Robespierre had struck down the other leaders of the atheistical party; but early in June 1794, at the time of the "Festival of the Supreme Being," Fouche ventured to mock at the theistic revival which Robespierre then inaugurated. Sharp passages of arms took place between them, and Robespierre procured the ejection of Fouche from the Jacobin Club (July 14, 1794). Fouche, however, was working with his customary skill and energy, and along with Tallien and others, managed to effect the overthrow of the theistic dictator on Thermidor 10 (July 28), 1794. The ensuing reaction in favour of more merciful methods of government threatened to sweep away the group of Terrorists who had been mainly instrumental in carrying through the _coup d'etat_ of Thermidor; but, thanks largely to the skill of Fouche in intrigue, they managed for a time to keep at the head of affairs. Discords, however, crept in which left him for a time almost isolated, and it needed all his ability to withstand the attacks of the moderates. A vigorous attack on him by Boissy d'Anglas, on the 9th of August 1795, caused him to be arrested, but the troubles which ensued in Vendemiaire averted the doom that seemed to be pending; and he owed his release to the amnesty which was passed on the proclamation of the new constitution of the year 1795.

In the ensuing period, known as that of the Directory (1795-1799), Fouche remained at first in obscurity, but the relations which he had with the communists, once headed by Chaumette and now by Francois N. ("Gracchus") Babeuf (q.v.), helped him to rise once more. He is said to have betrayed to the director Barras the secret of the strange plot which Babeuf and a few accomplices hatched in the year 1796; but recent research has tended to throw doubt on the assertion. His rise from poverty was slow, but in 1797 he gained an appointment for the supply of military _materiel_, which offered opportunities direct and indirect. After offering his services to the royalists, whose movement was then gathering force, he again decided to support the Jacobins and the director Barras (q.v.). In the _coup d'etat_ of Fructidor 1797 he made himself serviceable to Barras, who in 1798 appointed him to be French ambassador to the Cisalpine republic. At Milan he carried matters with so high a hand against the Gallophobes of that government that his actions were disavowed and he himself was removed; but in the confused state in which matters then were, he was able for a time to hold his own and to intrigue successfully against his successor. Early in 1799 he returned to Paris, and after a brief tenure of office as ambassador at The Hague, he became minister of police at Paris (July 20, 1799). The newly elected director, Sieyes (q.v.), was then in the ascendant and desired to curb the excesses of the Jacobins, who had recently reopened their club. Fouche, casting consistency to the winds, closed the Jacobins club in a manner at once daring and clever. Thereupon he hunted down the pamphleteers and editors, whether Jacobins or royalists, who were obnoxious to the government, so that at the time of the return of Bonaparte from Egypt (October 1799) the ex-Jacobin was one of the most powerful men in France.

Knowing well the unpopularity of the directors, Fouche lent himself to the schemes of Bonaparte and Sieyes for their overthrow. His activity in furthering the _coup d'etat_ of Brumaire 18-19 (November 9-10), 1799, procured him the favour of Bonaparte, who kept him in office (v. Napoleon I.). In the ensuing period of the Consulate (1799-1804) Fouche behaved with the utmost adroitness. While curbing the royalists and extreme Jacobins who at first alone opposed Bonaparte, Fouche was careful to temper as far as possible the arbitrary actions of the new master of France. In this difficult task he acquitted himself with so much skill as to earn at times the gratitude even of the royalists. Thus, while countermining a foolish intrigue of theirs in which the duchesse de Guiche was the chief agent, Fouche took care that she should escape. Equally skilful was his action in the affair of the so-called Arena-Ceracchi plot, in which the _agents provocateurs_ of the police were believed to have played a sinister part. The chief "conspirators" were easily ensnared and were executed when the affair of Nivose (December 1800) enabled Bonaparte to act with rigour. This far more serious attempt (in which royalist conspirators exploded a bomb near the First Consul's carriage with results disastrous to the bystanders) was soon seen by Fouche to be the work of royalists; and when the First Consul, eager to entrap the still formidable Jacobins, sought to fasten the blame on them, Fouche firmly declared that he would not only assert but would prove that the outrage was the work of royalists. All his efforts, however, failed to avert the punishment which Bonaparte was resolved to inflict on the leading Jacobins. In other matters (especially in that known as the Plot of the Placards in the spring of 1802) Fouche was thought to have secured the Jacobins concerned from the vengeance of the First Consul. In any case the latter resolved to rid himself of a man who had too much power and too much skill in intrigue to be desirable as a subordinate. On the proclamation of Bonaparte as First Consul for life (August 1, 1802) Fouche was deprived of his office; but the blow was softened by the suppression of the ministry of police and by the attribution of most of its duties to an extended ministry of justice. Fouche also became a senator and received half of the reserve funds of the police which had accumulated during his tenure of office. He continued, however, to intrigue through his spies, whose information was so superior to that of the new minister of police as to render great services to Napoleon at the time of the Cadoudal-Pichegru conspiracy (February-March 1804).

As a result Napoleon, now emperor, brought back Fouche to the re-constituted ministry of police (July 1804); he also later on entrusted to him that of the interior. His work was no less important than at the time of the Consulate. His police agents were ubiquitous, and the terror which Napoleon and Fouche inspired, owing to their proven ability to benefit by plots, partly accounts for the absence of conspiracies after 1804. After Austerlitz (December 1805) Fouche uttered the _mot_ of the occasion: "Sire, Austerlitz has shattered the old aristocracy; the boulevard St Germain no longer conspires."