Chapter XVII: Front Matter (17)

FRERE, SIR HENRY BARTLE EDWARD (1815-1884), British administrator, born at Clydach in Brecknockshire, on the 29th of March 1815, was the son of Edward Frere, a member of an old east county family, and a nephew of John Hookham Frere, of _Anti-Jacobin_ and _Aristophanes_ fame. After leaving Haileybury, Bartle Frere was appointed a writer in the Bombay civil service in 1834, and went out to India by way of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea in an open boat from Kosseir to Mokha, and sailing thence to Bombay in an Arab dhow. Having passed his examination in the native languages, he was appointed assistant collector at Poona in 1835. There he did valuable work and was in 1842 chosen as private secretary to Sir George Arthur, governor of Bombay. Two years later he became political resident at the court of the rajah of Satara, where he did much to benefit the country by the development of its communications. On the rajah's death in 1848 he administered the province both before and after its formal annexation in 1849. In 1850 he was appointed chief commissioner of Sind, and took ample advantage of the opportunities afforded him of developing the province. He pensioned off the dispossessed amirs, improved the harbour at Karachi, where he also established municipal buildings, a museum and barracks, instituted fairs, multiplied roads, canals and schools.

Returning to India in 1857 after a well-earned rest, Frere was greeted at Karachi with news of the mutiny. His rule had been so successful that he felt he could answer for the internal peace of his province. He therefore sent his only European regiment to Multan, thus securing that strong fortress against the rebels, and sent further detachments to aid Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. The 178 British soldiers who remained in Sind proved sufficient to extinguish such insignificant outbreaks as occurred. His services were fully recognized by the Indian authorities, and he received the thanks of both houses of parliament and was made K.C.B. He became a member of the viceroy's council in 1859, and was especially serviceable in financial matters. In 1862 he was appointed governor of Bombay, where he effected great improvements, such as the demolition of the old ramparts, and the erection of handsome public offices upon a portion of the space, the inauguration of the university buildings and the improvement of the harbour. He established the Deccan College at Poona, as well as a college for instructing natives in civil engineering. The prosperity--due to the American Civil War--which rendered these developments possible brought in its train a speculative mania, which led eventually to the disastrous failure of the Bombay Bank (1866), an affair in which, from neglecting to exercise such means of control as he possessed, Frere incurred severe and not wholly undeserved censure. In 1867 he returned to England, was made G.C.S.I., and received honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge; he was also appointed a member of the Indian council.

In 1872 he was sent by the foreign office to Zanzibar to negotiate a treaty with the sultan, Seyyid Burghash, for the suppression of the slave traffic. In 1875 he accompanied the prince of Wales to Egypt and India. The tour was beyond expectation successful, and to Frere, from Queen Victoria downwards, came acknowledgments of the service he had rendered in piloting the expedition. He was asked by Lord Beaconsfield to choose between being made a baronet or G.C.B. He chose the former, but the queen bestowed both honours upon him. But the greatest service that Frere undertook on behalf of his country was to be attempted not in Asia, but in Africa. Sir Bartle landed at Cape Town as high commissioner of South Africa on the 31st of March 1877. He had been chosen by Lord Carnarvon in the previous October as the statesman most capable of carrying his scheme of confederation into effect, and within two years it was hoped that he would be the first governor of the South African Dominion. He went out in harmony with the aims and enthusiasm of his chief, "hoping to crown by one great constructive effort the work of a bright and noble life." In this hope he was disappointed. As he stated at the close of his high commissionership, a great mistake seemed to have been made in trying to hasten what could only result from natural growth, and the state of South Africa during Frere's tenure of office was inimical to such growth.

Discord or a policy of blind drifting seemed to be the alternatives presented to Frere upon his arrival at the Cape. He chose the former as the less dangerous, and the first year of his sway was marked by a Kaffir war on the one hand and by a rupture with the Cape (Molteno-Merriman) ministry on the other. The Transkei Kaffirs were subjugated early in 1878 by General Thesiger (the 2nd Lord Chelmsford) and a small force of regular and colonial troops. The constitutional difficulty was solved by Frere dismissing his obstructive cabinet and entrusting the formation of a ministry to Mr (afterwards Sir) Gordon Sprigg. Frere emerged successfully from a year of crisis, but the advantage was more than counterbalanced by the resignation of Lord Carnarvon early in 1878, at a time when Frere required the steadiest and most unflinching support. He had reached the conclusion that there was a widespread insurgent spirit pervading the natives, which had its focus and strength in the celibate military organization of Cetywayo and in the prestige which impunity for the outrages he had committed had gained for the Zulu king in the native mind. That organization and that evil prestige must be put an end to, if possible by moral pressure, but otherwise by force. Frere reiterated these views to the colonial office, where they found a general acceptance. When, however, Frere undertook the responsibility of forwarding, in December 1878, an ultimatum to Cetywayo, the home government abruptly discovered that a native war in South Africa was inopportune and raised difficulties about reinforcements. Having entrusted to Lord Chelmsford the enforcement of the British demands, Frere's immediate responsibility ceased. On the 11th of January 1879 the British troops crossed the Tugela, and fourteen days later the disaster of Isandhlwana was reported; and Frere, attacked and censured in the House of Commons, was but feebly defended by the government. Lord Beaconsfield, it appears, supported Frere; the majority of the cabinet were inclined to recall him. The result was the unsatisfactory compromise by which he was censured and begged to stay on. Frere wrote an elaborate justification of his conduct, which was adversely commented on by the colonial secretary (Sir Michael Hicks Beach), who "did not see why Frere should take notice of attacks; and as to the war, all African wars had been unpopular." Frere's rejoinder was that no other sufficient answer had been made to his critics, and that he wished to place one on record. "Few may now agree with my view as to the necessity of the suppression of the Zulu rebellion. Few, I fear, in this generation. But unless my countrymen are much changed, they will some day do me justice. I shall not leave a name to be permanently dishonoured."

The Zulu trouble and the disaffection that was brewing in the Transvaal reacted upon each other in the most disastrous manner. Frere had borne no part in the actual annexation of the Transvaal, which was announced by Sir Theophilus Shepstone a few days after the high commissioner's arrival at Cape Town. The delay in giving the country a constitution afforded a pretext for agitation to the malcontent Boers, a rapidly increasing minority, while the reverse at Isandhlwana had lowered British prestige. Owing to the Kaffir and Zulu wars Sir Bartle had hitherto been unable to give his undivided attention to the state of things in the Transvaal. In April 1879 he was at last able to visit that province, and the conviction was forced upon him that the government had been unsatisfactory in many ways. The country was very unsettled. A large camp, numbering 4000 disaffected Boers, had been formed near Pretoria, and they were terrorizing the country. Frere visited them unarmed and practically alone. Even yet all might have been well, for he won the Boers' respect and liking. On the condition that the Boers dispersed, Frere undertook to present their complaints to the British government, and to urge the fulfilment of the promises that had been made to them. They parted with mutual good feeling, and the Boers did eventually disperse--on the very day upon which Frere received the telegram announcing the government's censure. He returned to Cape Town, and his journey back was in the nature of a triumph. But bad news awaited him at Government House--on the 1st of June 1879 the prince imperial had met his death in Zululand--and a few hours later Frere heard that the government of the Transvaal and Natal, together with the high commissionership in the eastern part of South Africa, had been transferred from him to Sir Garnet Wolseley.

When Gladstone's ministry came into office in the spring of 1880, Lord Kimberley had no intention of recalling Frere. In June, however, a section of the Liberal party memorialized Gladstone to remove him, and the prime minister weakly complied (1st August 1880). Upon his return Frere replied to the charges relating to his conduct respecting Afghanistan as well as South Africa, previously preferred in Gladstone's Midlothian speeches, and was preparing a fuller vindication when he died at Wimbledon from the effect of a severe chill on the 29th of May 1884. He was buried in St Paul's, and in 1888 a statue of Frere upon the Thames embankment was unveiled by the prince of Wales. Frere edited the works of his uncle, Hookham Frere, and the popular story-book, _Old Deccan Days_, written by his daughter, Mary Frere. He was three times president of the Royal Asiatic Society.

His _Life and Correspondence_, by John Martineau, was published in
1895. For the South African anti-confederation view, see P. A.
Molteno's _Life and Times of Sir John Charles Molteno_ (2 vols.,
London 1900). See also SOUTH AFRICA: _History_.

FRERE, JOHN HOOKHAM (1769-1846), English diplomatist and author, was born in London on the 21st of May 1769. His father, John Frere, a gentleman of a good Suffolk family, had been educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and would have been senior wrangler in 1763 but for the redoubtable competition of Paley; his mother, daughter of John Hookham, a rich London merchant, was a lady of no small culture, accustomed to amuse her leisure with verse-writing. His father's sister Eleanor, who married Sir John Fenn (1739-1794), the learned editor of the _Paston Letters_, wrote various educational works for children under the pseudonyms "Mrs Lovechild" and "Mrs Teachwell." Young Frere was sent to Eton in 1785, and there began an intimacy with Canning which greatly affected his after life. From Eton he went to his father's college at Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1792 and M.A. in 1795. He entered public service in the foreign office under Lord Grenville, and sat from 1796 to 1802 as member of parliament for the close borough of West Looe in Cornwall.

From his boyhood he had been a warm admirer of Pitt, and along with Canning he entered heart and soul into the defence of his government, and contributed freely to the pages of the _Anti-Jacobin_, edited by Gifford. He contributed, in collaboration with Canning, "The Loves of the Triangles," a clever parody of Darwin's "Loves of the Plants," "The Needy Knife-Grinder" and "The Rovers." On Canning's removal to the board of trade in 1799 he succeeded him as under-secretary of state; in October 1800 he was appointed envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Lisbon; and in September 1802 he was transferred to Madrid, where he remained for two years. He was recalled on account of a personal disagreement he had with the duke of Alcudia, but the ministry showed its approval of his action by a pension of L1700 a year. He was made a member of the privy council in 1805; in 1807 he was appointed plenipotentiary at Berlin, but the mission was abandoned, and Frere was again sent to Spain in 1808 as plenipotentiary to the Central Junta. The condition of Spain rendered his position a very responsible and difficult one. When Napoleon began to advance on Madrid it became a matter of supreme importance to decide whether Sir John Moore, who was then in the north of Spain, should endeavour to anticipate the occupation of the capital or merely make good his retreat, and if he did retreat whether he should do so by Portgual or by Galicia. Frere was strongly of opinion that the bolder was the better course, and he urged his views on Sir John Moore with an urgent and fearless persistency that on one occasion at least overstepped the limits of his commission. After the disastrous retreat to Corunna, the public accused Frere of having by his advice endangered the British army, and though no direct censure was passed upon his conduct by the government, he was recalled, and the marquess of Wellesley was appointed in his place.

Thus ended Frere's public life. He afterwards refused to undertake an embassy to St Petersburg, and twice declined the honour of a peerage. In 1816 he married Elizabeth Jemima, dowager countess of Erroll, and in 1820, on account of her failing health, he went with her to the Mediterranean. There he finally settled in Malta, and though he afterwards visited England more than once, the rest of his life was for the most part spent in the island of his choice. In quiet retirement he devoted himself to literature, studied his favourite Greek authors, and taught himself Hebrew and Maltese. His hospitality was well known to many an English guest, and his charities and courtesies endeared him to his Maltese neighbours. He died at the Pieta Valetta on the 7th of January 1846. Frere's literary reputation now rests entirely upon his spirited verse translations of Aristophanes, which remain in many ways unrivalled. The principles according to which he conducted his task were elucidated in an article on Mitchell's _Aristophanes_, which he contributed to _The Quarterly Review_, vol. xxiii. The translations of _The Acharnians_, _The Knights_, _The Birds_, and _The Frogs_ were privately printed, and were first brought into general notice by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis in the _Classical Museum_ for 1847. They were followed some time after by _Theognis Restitutus, or the personal history of the poet Theognis, reduced from an analysis of his existing fragments_. In 1817 he published a mock-heroic Arthurian poem entitled _Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers, intended to comprise the most interesting particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table_. William Tennant in _Anster Fair_ had used the _ottava rima_ as a vehicle for semi-burlesque poetry five years earlier, but Frere's experiment is interesting because Byron borrowed from it the measure that he brought to perfection in _Don Juan_.

Frere's complete works were published in 1871, with a memoir by his
nephews, W. E. and Sir Bartle Frere, and reached a second edition in
1874. Compare also Gabrielle Festing, _J. H. Frere and his Friends_
(1899).

FRERE, PIERRE EDOUARD (1819-1886), French painter, studied under Delaroche, entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1836 and exhibited first at the Salon in 1843. The marked sentimental tendency of his art makes us wonder at Ruskin's enthusiastic eulogy which finds in Frere's work "the depth of Wordsworth, the grace of Reynolds, and the holiness of Angelico." What we can admire in his work is his accomplished craftsmanship and the intimacy and tender homeliness of his conception. Among his chief works are the two paintings, "Going to School" and "Coming from School," "The Little Glutton" (his first exhibited picture) and "_L'Exercice_" (Mr Astor's collection). A journey to Egypt in 1860 resulted in a small series of Orientalist subjects, but the majority of Frere's paintings deal with the life of the kitchen, the workshop, the dwellings of the humble, and mainly with the pleasures and little troubles of the young, which the artist brings before us with humour and sympathy. He was one of the most popular painters of domestic genre in the middle of the 19th century.

FRERE-ORBAN, HUBERT JOSEPH WALTHER (1812-1896), Belgian statesman, was born at Liege on the 24th of April 1812. His family name was Frere, to which on his marriage he added his wife's name of Orban. After studying law in Paris, he practised as a barrister at Liege, took a prominent part in the Liberal movement, and in June 1847 was returned to the Chamber as member for Liege. In August of the same year he was appointed minister of public works in the Rogier cabinet, and from 1848 to 1852 was minister of finance. He founded the Banque Nationale and the Caisse d'Epargne, abolished the newspaper tax, reduced the postage, and modified the customs duties as a preliminary to a decided free-trade policy. The Liberalism of the cabinet, in which Frere-Orban exercised an influence hardly inferior to that of Rogier, was, however, distasteful to Napoleon III. Frere-Orban, to facilitate the negotiations for a new commercial treaty, conceded to France a law of copyright, which proved highly unpopular in Belgium, and he resigned office, soon followed by the rest of the cabinet. His work _La Mainmorte et la charite_ (1854-1857), published under the pseudonym of "Jean van Damme," contributed greatly to restore his party to power in 1857, when he again became minister of finance. He now embodied his free-trade principles in commercial treaties with England and France, and abolished the _octroi_ duties and the tolls on the national roads. He resigned in 1861 on the gold question, but soon resumed office, and in 1868 succeeded Rogier as prime minister. In 1869 he defeated the attempt of France to gain control of the Luxemburg railways, but, despite this service to his country, fell from power at the elections of 1870. He returned to office in 1878 as president of the council and foreign minister. He provoked the bitter opposition of the Clerical party by his law of 1879 establishing secular primary education, and in 1880 went so far as to break off diplomatic relations with the Vatican. He next found himself at variance with the Radicals, whose leader, Janson, moved the introduction of universal suffrage. Frere-Orban, while rejecting the proposal, conceded an extension of the franchise (1883); but the hostility of the Radicals, and the discontent caused by a financial crisis, overthrew the government at the elections of 1884. Frere-Orban continued to take an active part in politics as leader of the Liberal opposition till 1894, when he failed to secure re-election. He died at Brussels on the 2nd of January 1896. Besides the work above mentioned, he published _La Question monetaire_ (1874); _La Question monetaire en Belgique_ in 1889; _Echange de vues entre MM. Frere-Orban et E. de Laveleye_ (1890); and _La Revision constitutionnelle en Belgique et ses consequences_ (1894). He was also the author of numerous pamphlets, among which may be mentioned his last work, _La Situation presente_ (1895).

FRERET, NICOLAS (1688-1749), French scholar, was born at Paris on the 15th of February 1688. His father was _procureur_ to the parlement of Paris, and destined him to the profession of the law. His first tutors were the historian Charles Rollin and Father Desmolets (1677-1760). Amongst his early studies history, chronology and mythology held a prominent place. To please his father he studied law and began to practise at the bar; but the force of his genius soon carried him into his own path. At nineteen he was admitted to a society of learned men before whom he read memoirs on the religion of the Greeks, on the worship of Bacchus, of Ceres, of Cybele and of Apollo. He was hardly twenty-six years of age when he was admitted as pupil to the Academy of Inscriptions. One of the first memoirs which he read was a learned and critical discourse, _Sur l'origine des Francs_ (1714). He maintained that the Franks were a league of South German tribes and not, according to the legend then almost universally received, a nation of free men deriving from Greece or Troy, who had kept their civilization intact in the heart of a barbarous country. These sensible views excited great indignation in the Abbe Vertot, who denounced Freret to the government as a libeller of the monarchy. A _lettre de cachet_ was issued, and Freret was sent to the Bastille. During his three months of confinement he devoted himself to the study of the works of Xenophon, the fruit of which appeared later in his memoir on the _Cyropaedia_. From the time of his liberation in March 1715 his life was uneventful. In January 1716 he was received associate of the Academy of Inscriptions, and in December 1742 he was made perpetual secretary. He worked without intermission for the interests of the Academy, not even claiming any property in his own writings, which were printed in the _Recueil de l'academie des inscriptions_. The list of his memoirs, many of them posthumous, occupies four columns of the _Nouvelle Biographie generale_. They treat of history, chronology, geography, mythology and religion. Throughout he appears as the keen, learned and original critic; examining into the comparative value of documents, distinguishing between the mythical and the historical, and separating traditions with an historical element from pure fables and legends. He rejected the extreme pretensions of the chronology of Egypt and China, and at the same time controverted the scheme of Sir Isaac Newton as too limited. He investigated the mythology not only of the Greeks, but of the Celts, the Germans, the Chinese and the Indians. He was a vigorous opponent of the theory that the stories of mythology may be referred to historic originals. He also suggested that Greek mythology owed much to the Phoenicians and Egyptians. He was one of the first scholars of Europe to undertake the study of the Chinese language; and in this he was engaged at the time of his committal to the Bastille. He died in Paris on the 8th of March 1749.

Long after his death several works of an atheistic character were
falsely attributed to him, and were long believed to be his. The most
famous of these spurious works are the _Examen critique des
apologistes de la religion chretienne_ (1766), and the _Lettre de
Thrasybule a Leucippe_, printed in London about 1768. A very defective
and inaccurate edition of Freret's works was published in 1796-1799. A
new and complete edition was projected by Champollion-Figeac, but of
this only the first volume appeared (1825). It contains a life of
Freret. His manuscripts, after passing through many hands, were
deposited in the library of the Institute. The best account of his
works is "Examen critique des ouvrages composes par Freret" in C. A.
Walckenaer's _Recueil des notices_, &c. (1841-1850). See also
Querard's _France litteraire_.

FRERON, ELIE CATHERINE (1719-1776), French critic and controversialist, was born at Quimper in 1719. He was educated by the Jesuits, and made such rapid progress in his studies that before the age of twenty he was appointed professor at the college of Louis-le-Grand. He became a contributor to the _Observations sur les ecrits modernes_ of the abbe Guyot Desfontaines. The very fact of his collaboration with Desfontaines, one of Voltaire's bitterest enemies, was sufficient to arouse the latter's hostility, and although Freron had begun his career as one of his admirers, his attitude towards Voltaire soon changed. Freron in 1746 founded a similar journal of his own, entitled _Lettres de la Comtesse de_.... It was suppressed in 1749, but he immediately replaced it by _Lettres sur quelques ecrits de ce temps_, which, with the exception of a short suspension in 1752, on account of an attack on the character of Voltaire, was continued till 1754, when it was succeeded by the more ambitious _Annee litteraire_. His death at Paris on the 10th of March 1776 is said to have been hastened by the temporary suppression of this journal. Freron is now remembered solely for his attacks on Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, and by the retaliations they provoked on the part of Voltaire, who, besides attacking him in epigrams, and even incidentally in some of his tragedies, directed against him a virulent satire, _Le Pauvre diable_, and made him the principal personage in a comedy _L'Ecossaise_, in which the journal of Freron is designated _L'Ane litteraire_. A further attack on Freron entitled _Anecdotes sur Freron_ ... (1760), published anonymously, is generally attributed to Voltaire.

Freron was the author of _Ode sur la bataille de Fontenoy_ (1745);
_Histoire de Marie Stuart_ (1742, 2 vols.); and _Histoire de l'empire
d'Allemagne_, (1771, 8 vols.). See Ch. Nisard, _Les Ennemis de
Voltaire_ (1853); Despois, _Journalistes et journaux du XVIII^e
siecle_; Barthelemy, _Les confessions de Freron_: Ch. Monselet,
_Freron, ou l'illustre critique_ (1864); _Freron, sa vie, souvenirs_,
&c. (1876).

FRERON, LOUIS MARIE STANISLAS (1754-1802), French revolutionist, son of the preceding, was born at Paris on the 17th of August 1754. His name was, on the death of his father, attached to _L'Annee litteraire_, which was continued till 1790 and edited successively by the abbes G. M. Royou and J. L. Geoffroy. On the outbreak of the revolution Freron, who was a schoolfellow of Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, established the violent journal _L'Orateur du peuple_. Commissioned, along with Barras in 1793, to establish the authority of the convention at Marseilles and Toulon, he distinguished himself in the atrocity of his reprisals, but both afterwards joined the Thermidoriens, and Freron became the leader of the _jeunesse doree_ and of the Thermidorian reaction. He brought about the accusation of Fouquier-Tinville, and of J. B. Carrier, the deportation of B. Barere, and the arrest of the last _Montagnards_. He made his paper the official journal of the reactionists, and being sent by the Directory on a mission of peace to Marseilles he published in 1796 _Memoire historique sur la reaction royale et sur les malheurs du midi_. He was elected to the council of the Five Hundred, but not allowed to take his seat. Failing as suitor for the hand of Pauline Bonaparte, one of Napoleon's sisters, he went in 1799 as commissioner to Santo Domingo and died there in 1802. General V. M. Leclerc, who had married Pauline Bonaparte, also received a command in Santo Domingo in 1801, and died in the same year as his former rival.

FRESCO (Ital. for _cool_, "fresh"), a term introduced into English, both generally (as in such phrases as _al fresco_, "in the fresh air"), and more especially as a technical term for a sort of mural painting on plaster. In the latter sense the Italians distinguished painting _a secco_ (when the plaster had been allowed to dry) from _a fresco_ (when it was newly laid and still wet). The nature and history of fresco-painting is dealt with in the article PAINTING.

FRESCOBALDI, GIROLAMO (1583-1644), Italian musical composer, was born in 1583 at Ferrara. Little is known of his life except that he studied music under Alessandro Milleville, and owed his first reputation to his beautiful voice. He was organist at St Peter's in Rome from 1608 to 1628. According to Baini no less than 30,000 people flocked to St Peter's on his first appearance there. On the 20th of November 1628 he went to live in Florence, becoming organist to the duke. From December 1633 to March 1643 he was again organist at St Peter's. But in the last year of his life he was organist in the parish church of San Lorenzo in Monte. He died on the 2nd of March 1644, being buried at Rome in the Church of the Twelve Apostles. Frescobaldi also excelled as a teacher, Frohberger being the most distinguished of his pupils. Frescobaldi's compositions show the consummate art of the early Italian school, and his works for the organ more especially are full of the finest devices of fugal treatment. He also wrote numerous vocal compositions, such as canzone, motets, hymns, &c., a collection of madrigals for five voices (Antwerp, 1608) being among the earliest of his published works.

FRESENIUS, KARL REMIGIUS (1818-1897), German chemist, was born at Frankfort-on-Main on the 28th of December 1818. After spending some time in a pharmacy in his native town, he entered Bonn University in 1840, and a year later migrated to Giessen, where he acted as assistant in Liebig's laboratory, and in 1843 became assistant professor. In 1845 he was appointed to the chair of chemistry, physics and technology at the Wiesbaden Agricultural Institution, and three years later he became the first director of the chemical laboratory which he induced the Nassau government to establish at that place. Under his care this laboratory continuously increased in size and popularity, a school of pharmacy being added in 1862 (though given up in 1877) and an agricultural research laboratory in 1868. Apart from his administrative duties Fresenius occupied himself almost exclusively with analytical chemistry, and the fullness and accuracy of his text-books on that subject (of which that on qualitative analysis first appeared in 1841 and that on quantitative in 1846) soon rendered them standard works. Many of his original papers were published in the _Zeitschrift fur analytische Chemie_, which he founded in 1862 and continued to edit till his death. He died suddenly at Wiesbaden on the 11th of June 1897. In 1881 he handed over the directorship of the agricultural research station to his son, Remigius Heinrich Fresenius (b. 1847), who was trained under H. Kolbe at Leipzig. Another son, Theodor Wilhelm Fresenius (b. 1856), was educated at Strassburg and occupied various positions in the Wiesbaden laboratory.

FRESHWATER, a watering place in the Isle of Wight, England, 12 m. W. by S. of Newport by rail. Pop.(1901) 3306. It is a scattered township lying on the peninsula west of the river Var, which forms the western extremity of the island. The portion known as Freshwater Gate fronts the English Channel from the strip of low-lying coast interposed between the cliffs of the peninsula and those of the main part of the island. The peninsula rises to 397 ft. in Headon Hill, and the cliffs are magnificent. The western promontory is flanked on the north by the picturesque Alum Bay, and the lofty detached rocks known as the Needles lie off it. Farringford House in the parish was for some time the home of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who is commemorated by a tablet in All Saints' church and by a great cross on the high downs above the town. There are golf links on the downs.

FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN JEAN (1788-1827), French physicist, the son of an architect, was born at Broglie (Eure) on the 10th of May 1788. His early progress in learning was slow, and when eight years old he was still unable to read. At the age of thirteen he entered the Ecole Centrale in Caen, and at sixteen and a half the Ecole Polytechnique, where he acquitted himself with distinction. Thence he went to the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees. He served as an engineer successively in the departments of Vendee, Drome and Ille-et-Villaine; but his espousal of the cause of the Bourbons in 1814 occasioned, on Napoleon's reaccession to power, the loss of his appointment. On the second restoration he obtained a post as engineer in Paris, where much of his life from that time was spent. His researches in optics, continued until his death, appear to have been begun about the year 1814, when he prepared a paper on the aberration of light, which, however, was not published. In 1818 he read a memoir on diffraction for which in the ensuing year he received the prize of the Academie des Sciences at Paris. He was in 1823 unanimously elected a member of the academy, and in 1825 he became a member of the Royal Society of London, which in 1827, at the time of his last illness, awarded him the Rumford medal. In 1819 he was nominated a commissioner of lighthouses, for which he was the first to construct compound lenses as substitutes for mirrors. He died of consumption at Ville-d'Avray, near Paris, on the 14th of July 1827.

The undulatory theory of light, first founded upon experimental demonstration by Thomas Young, was extended to a large class of optical phenomena, and permanently established by his brilliant discoveries and mathematical deductions. By the use of two plane mirrors of metal, forming with each other an angle of nearly 180 deg., he avoided the diffraction caused in the experiment of F. M. Grimaldi (1618-1663) on interference by the employment of apertures for the transmission of the light, and was thus enabled in the most conclusive manner to account for the phenomena of interference in accordance with the undulatory theory. With D. F. J. Arago he studied the laws of the interference of polarized rays. Circularly polarized light he obtained by means of a rhomb of glass, known as "Fresnel's rhomb," having obtuse angles of 126 deg., and acute angles of 54 deg. His labours in the cause of optical science received during his lifetime only scant public recognition, and some of his papers were not printed by the Academie des Sciences till many years after his decease. But, as he wrote to Young in 1824, in him "that sensibility, or that vanity, which people call love of glory" had been blunted. "All the compliments," he says, "that I have received from Arago, Laplace and Biot never gave me so much pleasure as the discovery of a theoretic truth, or the confirmation of a calculation by experiment."

See Duleau, "Notice sur Fresnel," _Revue ency._ t. xxxix.; Arago,
_OEuvres completes_, t. i.; and Dr G. Peacock, _Miscellaneous Works of
Thomas Young_, vol. i.

FRESNILLO, a town of the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, 37 m. N.W. of the city of Zacatecas on a branch of the Santiago river. Pop. (1900) 6309. It stands on a fertile plain between the Santa Cruz and Zacatecas ranges, about 7700 ft. above sea-level, has a temperate climate, and is surrounded by an agricultural district producing Indian corn and wheat. It is a clean, well-built town, whose chief distinction is its school of mines founded in 1853. Fresnillo has large amalgam works for the reduction of silver ores. Its silver mines, located in the neighbouring Proano hill, were discovered in 1569, and were for a time among the most productive in Mexico. Since 1833, when their richest deposits were reached, the output has greatly decreased. There is a station near on the Mexican Central railway.

FRESNO, a city and the county-seat of Fresno county, California, U.S.A., situated in the San Joaquin valley (altitude about 300 ft.) near the geographical centre of the state. Pop. (1880) 1112; (1890) 10,818; (1900) 12,470, of whom 3299 were foreign-born and 1279 were Asiatics; (1910 census) 24,892. The city is served by the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railways. The county is mainly a vast expanse of naturally arid plains and mountains. The valley is the scene of an extensive irrigation system, water being brought (first in 1872-1876) from King's river, 20 m. distant; in 1905 500 sq. m. were irrigated. Fresno is in a rich farming country, producing grains and fruit, and is the only place in America where Smyrna figs have been grown with success; it is the centre of the finest raisin country of the state, and has extensive vineyards and wine-making establishments. The city's principal manufacture is preserved (dried) fruits, particularly raisins; the value of the fruits thus preserved in 1905 was $6,942,440, being 70.5% of the total value of the factory product in that year ($9,849,001). In 1900-1905 the factory product increased 257.9%, a ratio of increase greater than that of any other city in the state. In the mountains, lumbering and mining are important industries; lumber is carried from Shaver in the mountains to Clovis on the plains by a V-shaped flume 42 m. long, the waste water from which is ditched for irrigation. The petroleum field of the county is one of the richest in California. Fresno is the business and shipping centre of its county and of the surrounding region. The county was organized in 1856. In 1872 the railway went through, and Fresno was laid out and incorporated. It became the county-seat in 1874 and was chartered as a city in 1885.

FRESNOY, CHARLES ALPHONSE DU (1611-1665), French painter and writer on his art, was born in Paris, son of an apothecary. He was destined for the medical profession, and well educated in Latin and Greek; but, having a natural propensity for the fine arts, he would not apply to his intended vocation, and was allowed to learn the rudiments of design under Perrier and Vouet. At the age of twenty-one he went off to Rome, with no resources; he drew ruins and architectural subjects. After two years thus spent he re-encountered his old fellow-student Pierre Mignard, and by his aid obtained some amelioration of his professional prospects. He studied Raphael and the antique, went in 1633 to Venice, and in 1656 returned to France. During two years he was now employed in painting altar-pieces in the chateau of Raincy, landscapes, &c. His death was caused by an attack of apoplexy followed by palsy; he expired at Villiers le Bel, near Paris. He never married. His pictorial works are few; they are correct in drawing, with something of the Caracci in design, and of Titian in colouring, but wanting fire and expression, and insufficient to keep his name in any eminent repute. He is remembered now almost entirely as a writer rather than painter. His Latin poem, _De arte graphica_, was written during his Italian sojourn, and embodied his observations on the art of painting; it may be termed a critical treatise on the practice of the art, with general advice to students. The precepts are sound according to the standard of his time; the poetical merits slender enough. The Latin style is formed chiefly on Lucretius and Horace. This poem was first published by Mignard, and has been translated into several languages. In 1684 it was turned into French by Roger de Piles; Dryden translated the work into English prose; and a rendering into verse by Mason followed, to which Sir Joshua Reynolds added some annotations.

FRET. (1) (From O. Eng. _fretan_, a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages; cf. Ger. _fressen_, to eat greedily), properly to devour, hence to gnaw, so used of the slow corroding action of chemicals, water, &c., and hence, figuratively, to chafe or irritate. Possibly connected with this word, in sense of rubbing, is the use of "fret" for a bar on the fingerboard of a banjo, guitar, or similar musical instruments to mark the fingering. (2) (Of doubtful origin; possibly from the O. Eng. _fraetive_, ornaments, but its use is paralleled by the Fr. _frette_, trellis or lattice), network, a term used in heraldry for an interlaced figure, but best known as applied to the decoration used by the Greeks in their temples and vases: the Greek fret consists of a series of narrow bands of different lengths, placed at right angles to one another, and of great variety of design. It is an ornament which owes its origin to woven fabrics, and is found on the ceilings of the Egyptian tombs at Benihasan, Siout and elsewhere. In Greek work it was painted on the abacus of the Doric capital and probably on the architraves of their temples; when employed by the Romans it was generally carved; the Propylaea of the temple at Damascus and the temple at Atil being examples of the 2nd century. It was carved in large dimensions on some of the Mexican temples, as for instance on the palace at Mitla with other decorative bands, all of which would seem to have been reproductions of woven patterns, and had therefore an independent origin. It is found in China and Japan, and in the latter country when painted on lacquer is employed as a fret-diaper, the bands not being at right angles to one another but forming acute and obtuse angles. In old English writers a wider signification was given to it, as it was applied to raised patterns in plaster oh roofs or ceilings, which were not confined to the geometrical fret but extended to the modelling of flowers, leaves and fruit; in such cases the decoration was known as fret-work. In France the fret is better known as the "meander."

FREUDENSTADT, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Wurttemberg, on the right bank of the Murg, 40 m. S.W. from Stuttgart, on the railway to Hochdorf. Pop. 7000. It has a Protestant and a Roman Catholic church, some small manufactures of cloth, furniture, knives, nails and glass, and is frequented as a climatic health resort. It was founded in 1599 by Protestant refugees from Salzburg.

FREUND, WILHELM (1806-1894), German philologist and lexicographer, was born at Kempen in the grand duchy of Posen on the 27th of January 1806. He studied at Berlin, Breslau and Halle, and was for twenty years chiefly engaged in private tuition. From 1855-1870 he was director of the Jewish school at Gleiwitz in Silesia, and subsequently retired to Breslau, where he died on the 4th of June 1894. Although chiefly known for his philological labours, Freund took an important part in the movement for the emancipation of his Prussian co-religionists, and the _Judengesetz_ of 1847 was in great measure the result of his efforts. The work by which he is best known is his _Worterbuch der lateinischen Sprache_ (1834-1845), practically the basis of all Latin-English dictionaries. His _Wie studiert man klassische Philologie?_ (6th ed., 1903) and _Triennium philologicum_ (2nd ed., 1878-1885) are valuable aids to the classical student.

FREWEN, ACCEPTED (1588-1664), archbishop of York, was born at Northiam, in Sussex, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where in 1612 he became a fellow. In 1617 and 1621 the college allowed him to act as chaplain to Sir John Digby, ambassador in Spain. At Madrid he preached a sermon which pleased Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I., and the latter on his accession appointed Frewen one of his chaplains. In 1625 he became canon of Canterbury and vice-president of Magdalen College, and in the following year he was elected president. He was vice-chancellor of the university in 1628 and 1629, and again in 1638 and 1639. It was mainly by his instrumentality that the university plate was sent to the king at York in 1642. Two years later he was consecrated bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and resigned his presidentship. Parliament declared his estates forfeited for treason in 1652, and Cromwell afterwards set a price on his head. The proclamations, however, designated him Stephen Frewen, and he was consequently able to escape into France. At the Restoration he reappeared in public, and in 1660 he was consecrated archbishop of York. In 1661 he acted as chairman of the Savoy conference.

FREY (Old Norse, Freyr) son of Njord, one of the chief deities in the northern pantheon and the national god of the Swedes. He is the god of fruitfulness, the giver of sunshine and rain, and thus the source of all prosperity. (See TEUTONIC PEOPLES, _ad fin._)

FREYBURG [FREYBURG AN DER UNSTRUT], a town of Germany, in Prussian Saxony, in an undulating vine-clad country on the Unstrut, 6 m. N. from Naumberg-on-the-Saale, on the railway to Artern. Pop. 3200. It has a parish church, a mixture of Gothic and Romanesque architecture, with a handsome tower. It is, however, as being the "Mecca" of the German gymnastic societies that Freyburg is best known. Here Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), the father of German gymnastic exercises, lies buried. Over his grave is built the Turnhalle, with a statue of the "master," while hard by it the Jahn Museum in Romanesque style, erected in 1903. Freyburg produces sparkling wine of good quality and has some other small manufactures. On a hill commanding the town is the castle of Neuenburg, built originally in 1062 by Louis the Leaper, count in Thuringia, but in its present form mainly the work of the dukes of Saxe-Weissenfels.

FREYCINET, CHARLES LOUIS DE SAULCES DE (1828- ), French statesman, was born at Foix on the 14th of November 1828. He was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique, and entered the government service as a mining engineer. In 1858 he was appointed traffic manager to the Compagnie de chemins de fer du Midi, a post in which he gave proof of his remarkable talent for organization, and in 1862 returned to the engineering service (in which he attained in 1886 the rank of inspector-general). He was sent on a number of special scientific missions, among which may be mentioned one to England, on which he wrote a notable _Memoire sur le travail des femmes et des enfants dans les manufactures de l'Angleterre_ (1867). On the establishment of the Third Republic in September 1870, he offered his services to Gambetta, was appointed prefect of the department of Tarn-et-Garronne, and in October became chief of the military cabinet. It was mainly his powers of organization that enabled Gambetta to raise army after army to oppose the invading Germans. He showed himself a strategist of no mean order; but the policy of dictating operations to the generals in the field was not attended with happy results. The friction between him and General d'Aurelle de Paladines resulted in the loss of the advantage temporarily gained at Orleans, and he was responsible for the campaign in the east, which ended in the destruction of Bourbaki's army. In 1871 he published a defence of his administration under the title of _La Guerre en province pendant le siege de Paris._ He entered the Senate in 1876 as a follower of Gambetta, and in December 1877 became minister of public works in the Dufaure cabinet. He carried a great scheme for the gradual acquisition of the railways by the state and the construction of new lines at a cost of three milliards, and for the development of the canal system at a further cost of one milliard. He retained his post in the ministry of Waddington, whom he succeeded in December 1879 as president of the council and minister for foreign affairs. He passed an amnesty for the Communists, but in attempting to steer a middle course on the question of the religious associations, lost the support of Gambetta, and resigned in September 1880. In January 1882 he again became president of the council and minister for foreign affairs. His refusal to join England in the bombardment of Alexandria was the death-knell of French influence in Egypt. He attempted to compromise by occupying the Isthmus of Suez, but the vote of credit was rejected in the Chamber by 417 votes to 75, and the ministry resigned. He returned to office in April 1885 as foreign minister in the Brisson cabinet, and retained that post when, in January 1886, he succeeded to the premiership. He came into power with an ambitious programme of internal reform; but except that he settled the question of the exiled pretenders, his successes were won chiefly in the sphere of colonial extension. In spite of his unrivalled skill as a parliamentary tactician, he failed to keep his party together, and was defeated on 3rd December 1886. In the following year, after two unsuccessful attempts to construct new ministries he stood for the presidency of the republic; but the radicals, to whom his opportunism was distasteful, turned the scale against him by transferring the votes to M. Sadi Carnot.

In April 1888 he became minister of war in the Floquet cabinet--the first civilian since 1848 to hold that office. His services to France in this capacity were the crowning achievement of his life, and he enjoyed the conspicuous honour of holding his office without a break for five years through as many successive administrations--those of Floquet and Tirard, his own fourth ministry (March 1890-February 1892), and the Loubet and Ribot ministries. To him were due the introduction of the three-years' service and the establishment of a general staff, a supreme council of war, and the army commands. His premiership was marked by heated debates on the clerical question, and it was a hostile vote on his Bill against the religious associations that caused the fall of his cabinet. He failed to clear himself entirely of complicity in the Panama scandals, and in January 1893 resigned the ministry of war. In November 1898 he once more became minister of war in the Dupuy cabinet, but resigned office on 6th May 1899. He has published, besides the works already mentioned, _Traite de mecanique rationnelle_ (1858); _De l'analyse infinitesimale_ (1860, revised ed., 1881); _Des pentes economiques en chemin de fer_ (1861); _Emploi des eaux d'egout en agriculture_ (1869); _Principes de l'assainissement des villes and Traite d'assainissement industriel_ (1870); _Essai sur la philosophie des sciences_ (1896); _La Question d'Egypte_ (1905); besides some remarkable "Pensees" contributed to the _Contemporain_ under the pseudonym of "Alceste." In 1882 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1890 to the French Academy in succession to Emile Augier.

FREYCINET, LOUIS CLAUDE DESAULSES DE (1779-1842), French navigator, was born at Montelimart, Drome, on the 7th of August 1779. In 1793 he entered the French navy. After taking part in several engagements against the British, he joined in 1800, along with his brother Louis Henri Freycinet (1777-1840), who afterwards rose to the rank of admiral, the expedition sent out under Captain Baudin in the "Naturaliste" and "Geographe" to explore the south and south-west coasts of Australia. Much of the ground already gone over by Flinders was revisited, and new names imposed by this expedition, which claimed credit for discoveries really made by the English navigator. An inlet on the coast of West Australia, in 26 deg. S., is called Freycinet Estuary; and a cape near the extreme south-west of the same coast also bears the explorer's name. In 1805 he returned to Paris, and was entrusted by the government with the work of preparing the maps and plans of the expedition; he also completed the narrative, and the whole work appeared under the title of _Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes_ (Paris, 1807-1816). In 1817 he commanded the "Uranie," in which Arago and others went to Rio de Janeiro, to take a series of pendulum measurements. This was only part of a larger scheme for obtaining observations, not only in geography and ethnology, but in astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and meteorology, and for the collection of specimens in natural history. On this expedition the hydrographic operations were conducted by Louis Isidore Duperry (1786-1865) who in 1822 was appointed to the command of the "Coquille," and during the next three years carried out scientific explorations in the southern Pacific and along the coast of South America. For three years Freycinet cruised about, visiting Australia, the Marianne, Sandwich, and other Pacific islands, South America, and other places, and, notwithstanding the loss of the "Uranie" on the Falkland Islands during the return voyage, returned to France with fine collections in all departments of natural history, and with voluminous notes and drawings which form an important contribution to a knowledge of the countries visited. The results of this voyage were published under Freycinet's supervision, with the title of _Voyage autour du monde sur les corvettes "l'Uranie" et "la Physicienne"_ in 1824-1844, in 13 quarto volumes and 4 folio volumes of fine plates and maps. Freycinet was admitted into the Academy of Sciences in 1825, and was one of the founders of the Paris Geographical Society. He died at Freycinet, Drome, on the 18th of August 1842.

FREYIA, the sister of Frey, and the most prominent goddess in Northern mythology. Her character seems in general to have resembled that of her brother. (See TEUTONIC PEOPLES, _ad fin._)

FREYTAG, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH (1788-1861), German philologist, was born at Luneburg on the 19th of September 1788. After attending school he entered the university of Gottingen as a student of philology and theology; here from 1811 to 1813 he acted as a theological tutor, but in the latter year accepted an appointment as sub-librarian at Konigsberg. In 1815 he became a chaplain in the Prussian army, and in that capacity visited Paris. On the proclamation of peace he resigned his chaplaincy, and returned to his researches in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, studying at Paris under De Sacy. In 1819 he was appointed to the professorship of oriental languages in the new university of Bonn, and this post he continued to hold until his death on the 16th of November 1861.

Besides a compendium of Hebrew grammar (_Kurzgefasste Grammatik der
hebraischen Sprache_, 1835), and a treatise on Arabic versification
(_Darstellung der arabischen Verskunst_, 1830), he edited two volumes
of Arabic songs (_Hamasae carmina_, 1828-1852) and three of Arabic
proverbs (_Arabum proverbia_, 1838-1843). But his principal work was
the laborious and praiseworthy _Lexicon Arabico-latinum_ (Halle,
1830-1837), an abridgment of which was published in 1837.