On 8 FREILIGRATH, FERDINAND (1810-1876), a popular | house. In 1848 he was on the point of emigrating with German poet, was born June 17, 1810, at Detmold, where his family to America, there to join Longfellow and other his father was a teacher in the Stadtschule. He was edu- literary friends, when the Revolution broke out, and the cated at the gymnasium of his native town, and at the age amnesty of March 19 allowed him to return to Germany. of fifteen was apprenticed to an uncle who kept a grocer's He now took up his post at the head of the democratic shop in Soest. Freiligrath had no great liking for trade. party at Düsseldorf, but was shortly afterwards imprisoned He was an insatiable reader, especially of books of travel on account of his poem Die Todten an die Lebenden. and adventure, and from his childhood a scribbler of verse. being liberated by verdict of the jury, he removed to CoAt Soest he devoted some hours daily to the study of logne, to assist in the management of the Neue Rheinische English, French, and Italian, and towards the end of his Zeitung. During this year also he published his Februarfive years' apprenticeship was writing verses for several klänge and Die Revolution. Zwischen den Garben, eine small Westphalian papers, such as the Gunloda and Nachlese älterer Gedichte, appeared in 1849, and Neue poliMindener Sonntagsblatt. Having spent other five years tische und sociale Gedichte in 1850. Fresh impeachments (1831-6) as clerk in a bank at Amsterdam, Freiligrath re- drove Freiligrath again to London in 1851, and he once turned to Soest, published his translations of Victor Hugo's more returned for a livelihood to the prosaic existence of the Odes and Twilight Songs (1836), and started, conjointly desk and office stool, still, however, devoting his leisure with his friends Ignaz Hub and A. Schnezler, a journal, hours to literature, and specially to those translations from entitled Rheinisches Ideon (1836-8). In 1837 he went to the English poets which in Germany have carned him a Barmen as bookkeeper in a mercantile house, about which position equal to Rückert's as a translator of English verse. time also his fugitive pieces, still appearing in Westphalian | In 1854 he published a selection of translations from English, papers, among which were the Morgenblatt and Deutscher Scotch, and Irish literature, entitled The Rose, Thistle, and Musenalmanach, had the good fortune to be praised by the Shamrock; also Dichtung und Dichter, eine Anthologie. His poet Chamisso. A year later appeared his first volume of translation of Longfellow's Hiawatha appeared 1857. He Gedichte, which became immediately and widely popular. also translated Cymbeline and the Winter's Tale for & German Finding himself at the age of twenty-eight one of the edition of Shakespeare, edited by Bodenstedt. In 1866 a favourite poets of his day, Freiligrath now gave up his national testimonial, which ultimately reached the sum of situation of bookkeeper in Barmen, and spent the next year 60,000 thalers, was set on foot in Germany, for the purpose at Unkel on the Rhine, where he wrote his Roland's Album of providing a pension for the poet în his old age; and (1840), and in connexion with Levin Schücking compiled when, two years later, a general amnesty was granted to Das malerische und romantische Westfalen (1840-42). He political offenders, Freiligrath returned to his native country, married in 1841 Ida Melos, daughter of Professor Melos and was received with public enthusiasm. He now settled of Weimar, and removed first to St Goar, where, with his in Stuttgart, where, at the beginning of the Francofriends Simrock and Matzerath, he edited the Rheinisches German war, he wrote some since popular songs, such as Jahrbuch (1840-41), and in 1842 to Darmstadt, where he Hurrah Germania! and the Trompete von Gravelotte. He published, conjointly with Duller, a poem, Zum Besten des removed to Cannstadt in 1875, and died there, March 18, Kölner Doms, and endeavoured also to start a periodical, to 1876. An edition of his collected works was published at be called Britannica: für Englisches Leben und Englische Stuttgart (6 vols. 1870, 2 vols. 1871, and since) and there Literatur, for which Dickens and Bulwer had promised is also a Tauchnitz edition, containing a selection of some their assistance. This scheme, however, failed, and of Freiligrath's best known poems, translated into English Freiligrath returned to St Goar, there to complete his Karl by various authors, and edited by his daughter Mrs FreiliImmermann, Blütter der Erinnerung an ihn (1842). In grath Kroeker (1869 and 1871). the same year he received a pension of 300 thalers from King William IV. Up to this time, Freiligrath's poetry had borne no trace of the politician. Among the Gedichte, so popular in German households, were his Moos-thee, Die Auswanderer, Der Blumenrache, Prinz Eugen, Der Bilderbibel, Löwenritt, and many others written before 1840, all purely imaginative in their character, and still, from a literary point of view, unquestionably the poet's masterpieces. When, after his return to St Goar, Freiligrath was drawn irresistibly into the political controversies of the day, he still endeavoured to keep clear of party feeling, declaring that the poet stood" auf einer höheren Warte als auf den Zinnen der Partei." But he was soon obliged to vacate this position and descend among the politicians; and in 1844 he threw up his royal pension, published his Glaubensbekennt niss, and finally joined the democratic party. From this time forward he boldly proclaimed the democratic cause in verse, till, as the author of Trotz-alledem (a translation of Burns's A Man's a Man for a' that), Jacta est Alea, Die Freiheit! Das Recht!, Hamlet, England an Deutschland, and other equally daring effusions, he was forced to seek safety in exile, and retired first to Belgium and then to Switzerland. There he prepared for press a volume of Englische Gedichte aus neuerer Zeit (1846), containing translations from Mrs Hemans, L. E. L., Southey, Tennyson, Longfellow, and others, and also a volume of political songs entitled Ca Ira! The publication of this last led to his flight to England, and for the next two years he lived in London, as foreign correspondent to a mercantile Powerful as Freiligrath's poetry is, and masterly as his diction and rhythm are admitted to be, he is yet wanting in the tenderness of a Chamisso, or the exquisite subtlety of a Heine. The principal charm of his poetry lies in its entire originality. He came, belonging to no school of versifiers, at a time when old tastes were being cast off, and novelty was restlessly desired, and he has been fitly christened a bahnbrechender Poet. He was original in style of thought and choice of subject, while in many of his poems, such as his Iceland Moss Tea, Skating Negro, Revenge of the Flowers, Lion's Ride, and many of his grim, revolutionary parables, there is even an element of the fantastic-the bizarre. And it was a part of this native originality of mind which made Freiligrath so eminently a cosmopolitan poet. He was no traveller, and spent the greater part of his days in a dusty counting house; yet, few as his sources of inspiration could have been, he himself acknowledges the old Bilderbibel of his childhood as one, while others have traced them to the busy docks and strange cargoes of a seaport town,-his fancy was rarely contented with lingering among the scenery and legends at home, but branched rather into new paths, into the distant parts of the earth,into the Weltferne. This love of the Weltferne, however, predominates only in his earlier Gedichte, to which the intense patriotism of his later muse is a strange contrast. In England Freiligrath's political poetry is of secondary interest; for to the British intellect it is scarcely comprehepsible how such effusions-grim, outspoken, as they are— should be a sufficient cause for imprisonment, or an almost life-long exile; and as poems of occasion-although that the marksman, instead of swallowing the sacramental host, occasion was a revolution-they rank lower with the literary kept it and fixed it on a tree, shot at it, and caused it to critic than the purely imaginative poetry of his youth. bleed great drops of blood, gathered the drops on a piece But by most Germans Freiligrath is best remembered as of cloth and reduced the whole to ashes, and then with the political poet; while among the countrymen of his own these ashes added the requisite virtue to the lead of which party, old political friends and fellow exiles, he has been his bullets were made. Various vegetable or animal subcalled a poet-martyr, the "bard of freedom," and "inspired stances had the reputation of serving the same purpose. singer of the revolution." (F. M.) Stories about the Freischütz were especially common in FREIND, JOHN (1675-1728), English physician, was Germany during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries; but born in 1675 at Croton in Northamptonshire. He made the first time that the legend was turned to literary profit great progress in classical knowledge under Dr Busby at is said to have been by Apel in the Gespensterbuch or Westminster, and at Christ Church, Oxford, under Dr" Book of Ghosts." It has become universally known as Aldrich, and while still very young, produced, along with the basis of Weber's opera Der Freischütz (1821), the libretto Foulkes, an excellent edition of the speeches of Eschines of which was written by Friedrich Kind, who had sugand Demosthenes on the affair of Ctesiphon. After this gested Apel's story as an excellent theme for the composer. he began the study of medicine, and having proved his The name by which the Freischütz is known in French is scientific attainments by various treatises was appointed Robin des Bois. According to some mythologists, the professor of chemistry at Oxford in 1704. In the following legend is to be traced back to the great solar myth. year he accompanied the English army, under the earl of See Kind, Freyschützbuch, Leipsic, 1843; Revue des Deux Mondes, Peterborough, into Spain, and, on returning home in 1707, February 1855; Grässe, Die Quelle des Freischütz, Dresden, 1875. wrote an account of the expedition which attained great FREISING, FREYSING, or FREISINGEN, a town of popularity. Two years later he published his Prelectiones Bavaria, district of Upper Bavaria, is situated on the Isar, Chimice, which he dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton. In 20 miles N.N.E. of Munich. It has breweries, distilleries, 1711 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society. Shortly dyoworks, sawmills, and machine factories. Among the after his return in 1713 from Flanders, whither he had ac- principal buildings are the cathedral (famous for its crypt), companied the British troops, ho took up his residence in erected in the end of the 12th century, the town-hall, the London, where he soon obtained a great reputation as a lyceum, and the gymnasium. Freising is a very ancient physician. In 1716 he became fellow of the college of phy- town, and is said to have been founded by the Romans. sicians, of which he was chosen one of the censors in 1718, It at any rate existed as early as 444 A.D., and was made and Harveian orator in 1720. In 1722 he entered parlia- the seat of a bishop in 724. In 1802 the bishopric was ment as member for Launceston in Cornwall, but, being sus- united to the newly-created archbishopric of Munich, whose pected of favouring the cause of the exiled Stuarts, he spent occupant bears the title of Freising as well as Munich. half of that year in the Tower. During his imprisonment The population of Freising in 1875 was 8252. he conceived the plan of his most important and valuable work, The History of Physic, of which the first part appeared in 1725, and the second in the following year. In the latter year he was appointed physician to Queen Caroline, an office which he held till his death, 26th July 1728. A complete edition of his Latin works, with a Lutin translation of the History of Physic, edited by Dr Wigan, was published in London in 1732. A monument was erected to Freind in Westminster Abbey. FREIRE, FRANCISCO JOZE (1713-1773), a Portuguese historian and philologist, was born at Lisbon in 1713. He belonged to the monastic society of St Philip Neri, and was a zealous member of the literary association known as the Academy of Arcadians, in connexion with which he adopted the pseudonym of Candido Lusitano. He contributed much to the improvement of the style of the Portuguese prose literature, but his endeavour to effect a reformation in the national poetry by a translation of Horace's Ars Poetica was less successful. The work in which he set forth his opinions regarding the vicious taste pervading the current Portuguese prose literature is entitled Maximas sobre a Arte Oratoria, and is preceded by a chronological table forming almost a social and physical history of Portugal His best known work, however, is his Vida do Infant D. Henrique, which has given him a place in the first rank of Portuguese historians. He also wrote an account of the great earthquake of 1775, and his Réflexions sur la Langue Portugaise was published in 1842 by the Lisbon society for the promotion of useful knowledge. He died in 1773. FREISCHÜTZ is, in German folklore, a marksman who by a compact with the devil has obtained a certain number of bullets destined to hit without fail whatever object he wishes. As the legend is usually told, six of the Freikugeln ог "free bullets "} are thus subservient to the marksman's will, but the seventh is at the absolute disposal of the devil himself. Various methods were adopted in order to procure possession of the marvellous missiles. According to one | | FREIWALDAU, a town in Austrian Silesia, circle of Troppau, is situated in a pleasant valley 40 miles W.N.W. of Troppau. It was formerly a protection-town of the archbishopric of Breslau, and possesses an old castle and a large church. Its industries are linen and cotton weaving, flaxspinning, and wax-bleaching About a mile and a half distant is the well-known hydropathic establishment of Gräfenberg. In 1869 the population of Freiwaldau, including suburbs, was 5242 FREJUS, the ancient Forum Julii, a town of France, department of Var, about a mile from the Mediterranean, and 15 miles S.E. of Draguignan. It is the seat of a bishop, and has some handsome modern buildings, among which are the cathedral and the episcopal palace, both of Gothic architecture, and constructed partly of the remains of Roman edifices. It possesses manufactures of cork and soap, and among the minerals of the neighbourhood are coal, pumice stone, porphyry, jasper, and amethyst. Fréjus took its name from Julius Cæsar, who is said to have established a Roman colony there. It was improved by Augustus, and in the time of the subsequent emperors it became an important naval station. Among the remains of the ancient town are a triumphal arch, a ruined amphitheatre, traces of two moles which formed the entrance of the port, and portions of a fine aqueduct, which brought the waters of the Siagne into the town from a distance of 20 miles. Traces of the old walls of the town are also visible. The port, which communicated with the sea by means of a canal, has been dried up, and its site is now occupied by gardens. At St Raphael, a fishing village about a mile and a half distant, Napoleon disembarked on his return from Egypt in 1799, and re-embarked for Elba in 1814. The population of Fréjus in 1876 was 2791. Sco Texier, Mémoires sur la ville et le port de Fréjus, 1847. FREMONT, a city of the United States of America, capital of Sandusky county, Ohio, is situated on the Sandusky river at the head of navigation, 30 miles east of Toledo by rail. Steamers ply between the city and the principal ports of Lake Erie, and it has manufactories of woollens, sashes, and blinds, flour mills, and engineering works. The late Mr Birchard bequeathed to the city land | for two public parks, and $50,000 for a public library, the building for which is erected on the Fort Stephenson property, the scene of the gallant and successful defence of General Croghan against a superior force of the British and Indians, August 1st and 2d, 1813. The population of Fremont in 1870 was 5455. FRENCH, NICHOLAS (1604-1678), an Irish political pamphleteer, was born in Wexford in 1604. After receiv ing ordination at Louvain, he became Roman Catholic priest at Wexford, and in 1643 he was appointed bishop of Ferns. Having taken a prominent part in the political disturbances of this period, he deemed it prudent, after the universal submission which followed the storming of Wexford by Oliver Cromwell, to retire to Brussels, where, in 1652, he published his attack on Ormond, entitled The Unkind Deserter of Loyal Men and True Friends, and shortly afterwards The Bleeding Iphigenia. The most inportant of his other pamphlets is the Sale and Settlement of Ireland. Shortly before his death, which took place August 23, 1678, he was nominated coadjutor-archbishop of Ghent. The Historical Works of Bishop French, comprising the pamplilets above named and several others, were published at London in 1846 in 2 vols., and a notice of him will be found in T. D. M'Gee's Irish Writers of the 17th Century, London, 1846. FRERE, JOHN HOOKHAM (1769-1841), an English diploinatist and author, was born in London, May 21, 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 powerful competition of Paley; his mother, daughter of Mr John Hookham, a rich London merchant, was a lady of no small ability and culture, accustomed to amuse her leisure with the pleasures of versification; and his father's sister Ellinor was married to Sir John Fenn, the learned editor of the Paston Letters, and contributed with her own pen to the formation of a library of fiction for children. Young Frere was sent to Eton in 1785, and there began that intimacy with Canning which so 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 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. 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 on September 1802 he was transferred to Spain, where he remained for two years. He was recalled on account of a personal disagreement he had with the "Prince of Peace," but his conduct was approved by the ministry, and in 1808 he was again sent out as plenipotentiary to Ferdinand VII. The condition of Spain rendered his position a very responsible and difficult one, but had it not been for one unfortunate step he would have left the country with greatly increased reputation. 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 Portugal 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 called home, and the Marquis 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 various literary labours, 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: and when he died in 1841, his loss was evidently regarded by rich and poor as a common calamity. Frere's literary ability was early displayed. He was a contributor the members' prize at Cambridge in 1792 by an essay on the strange at Eton to the school magazine known as the Microcosm, and gained question, "Whether it were possible to hope for improvement in morals and the cultivation of virtue in the rising republic of Botany Bay?" During the first period of his public life he was one of the chief writers in the Anti-Jacobin, contributing, among other pieces, "The Loves of the Triangles," a clever parody of Darwin's "Loves of the Plants," and sharing with Canning the honour of "The Needy Knife-Grinder" and The Rovers." In 1817 he published a mock-heroic poem entitled, Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Slow-Market, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar makers, intended to comprise the most interesting particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table. It attracted considerable attention at the time, and though it was afterwards comparatively forgotten, it served to bring again into fashion the octave stanza of the Italians, and formed, as far at least as its versification was concerned, the acknowledged model of Byron's Beppo. Much greater importance attached to the translations of Aristophanes, by which indeed Frere occupies an almost unrivalled position in English literature. 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. 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 an article in the North American Review, vol. cvii., 1868. FRERET, NICOLAS (1688-1749), a French scholar, one of the most learned men of his age, was born at Paris, February 7 or 15, 1688. His father was procureur to the parliament of Paris, and destined him to the profession of the law. His passion for knowledge declared itself almost from his birth; and so early did he apply himself to studies of the most diverse kind, and accumulate vast stores of information, that he scarcely seemed to have any childhood. His precocity in learning and literary labour appears to rival even that of John Stuart Mill. He had for his tutors the historian Rollin and Father Desmolets. Amongst his early studies history, chronology, and mythology held a prominent place. To please his father he studied law and began to practice as a pleader; but the force of his genius soon carried him into his own path. At nineteen he was admitted to a society of learned men who sought more freedom of discussion than was to be had within the Academy, and he read before them memoirs on the religion of the Greeks, on the worship of Bacchus, of Ceres, of Cybele, and of Apollo. The astonishing reputation which he gained for learning, and the influence of the eminent men whose friendship he enjoyed, opened the way for his recognition by the Academy. 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 Français. His views, wellgrounded, unusual, and audacious, excited great indignation in the Abbé Vertot, who had written on the same subject in a manner more flattering to the vanity of Frenchmen, and he denounced Fréret to the Government as a libeller of the monarchy. A lettre de cachet was issued, and Fréret was sent to the Bastille. He was thus silenced on the perilous subject, and his memoir even remained unpublished till nearly fifty years after his death. During his six months of confinement-"a solitude," he says, "whose tranquillity there was nothing to disturb"-he devoted himself to the study of the works of Xenophon, the fruit of which appeared later in his memoir on the Cyropædia. The assertion, frequently repeated, that he was allowed to read nothing but Bayle's famous Dictionary, and that he nearly learnt it by heart and imbibed all its scepticism, is entirely untrue and unjust. From the time of his liberation in June 1715 his life was uneventful. It was a life of the most simple, pure, and complete devotion to knowledge, with absolute indifference to fame. In January 1716 he was received associate of the Academy, and in December 1742 he was made perpetual secretary. He lived and laboured without intermission for the interests and the honour of the Academy, not even claiming any property in his own writings, which almost all remained unpublished till after his death. The list of his memoirs occupies four columns of the Nouvelle Biographie Générale. They treat of a large variety of subjects, chiefly in the fields of history, chronology, geography, mythology, and religion. Throughout he appears as the keen, learned, and original critic; examining into the comparative value and credibility 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, and was a vigorous opponent of "euhemeristic" interpretation. 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. In addition to these labours and acquirements Fréret made himself master of modern literature, and was intimately acquainted with the dramatic works of the French, Italian, English, and Spanish poets. His multifarious pursuits left him no time for carrying on the publication of the Mémoires of the Academy, an enormous arrear of which had to be made up by his successor. He died at Paris, March 8, 1749. Long after his death several works of an atheistic character were Salsely attributed to him, and were long believed to be his. These were the Examen critique des apologistes de la religion chrétienne (1766), Lettre de Thrasybule à Leucippe, printed in London about 1768, and a few others. They were republished under the title of Euvres philosophiques in 1776. It is now believed that they were put forth in Fréret's name by Holbach, Naigeon, and Lagrange, and that Fréret had nothing whatever to do with them. A very defective and inaccurate edition of Fréret'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). His manuscripts, after passing through many hands, were deposited in the library of the Institute. FRÉRON, ÉLIE CATHERINE (1719-1776), a French eritie and controversialist, was born at Quimpor 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. On resigning his connexion with the Jesuits in 1739, he was employed by the Abbé des Fontaines as a contributor to his Observations sur les Ecrits Modernes. After the death of the latter in 1746 he 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 écrits 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 L'Année Littéraire. His death at Paris on the 10th March 1776 is said to have been hastened by the temporary suppression of this journal. Fréron is now remembered solely for his attacks on Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, and the fame of his criticisms is not due to their inherent merits, which, notwithstanding a certain clever malignity, are very slight, but to the retaliations they provoked on the part of Voltaire, who, besides attacking him in epigrams, and evca incidentally in some of his tragedies, directed against him a virulent satire entitled Le Pauvre Diable, and also made him the principal personage in a comedy L'Ecossaise, in which the journal of Fréron is designated L'Âne Littéraire. Besides conducting the serials already mentioned, Fréron is the author of Ode sur la bataille de Fontenoy, 1745; Histoire de Marie Stuart, 1742, in 2 vols.; and Histoire de l'empire d'Allemagne 1771, in 8 vols. See Ch. Nisard, Les Ennemis de Voltaire, 1853; Despois, Journalistes et journaux du XVIIIe siècle; Barthélemy, Les Confessions de Fréron; Ch. Mouselet, Fréron, ou l'illustre critique, 1864; Fréron, sa vie, souvenirs, &c., 1876. FRÉRON, LOUIS STANISLAS (1765-1802), a French Revolutionist, son of the preceding, was born at Paris in 1765. His name was, on the death of his father, attached to L'Année Littéraire, which was continued till 1790, and edited successively by the Abbés Royou and Geoffroy. On the outbreak of the Revolution, Fréron, 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 equally with his colleague in the atrocity of his reprisals, but both afterwards joined the Thermidoriens, and Fréron became the leader of the Jeunesse Dorée. He then 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 Mémoire historique sur la réaction royale et sur les malheurs du midi. He died in 1802 at St Domingo, where he was for a few months subprefect. FRESCO. Fresco-painting is the art of mural painting upon freshly-laid plaster lime whilst it remains damp, with colonrs capable of resisting the caustic action of the lime with which they are mixed or brought into contact. Frescopainting might be called lime-painting, lime being the vehicle with which the colours are fixed, but the term would not be sufficiently distinctive, because colours mixed with lime may be applied under certain conditions to plaster which has been allowed to dry, an art which the Italians call painting "a secco," to distinguish it from "a fresco" or painting on newly-laid and still wet plaster. The art of painting with colours mixed with lime is very ancient; it was in use in Egypt from the remotest periods of the monumental history of that country; but as it was carried to perfection by the Italians, it is needless to trace its development elsewhere than in Italy, where the most primitive examples-those existing in Etruscan sepulchral chambers dug in tufa-are marked by technical peculiarities which survive in fresco-painting to this day. The walls of tufa were prepared by being whitewashed with lime,—a method revived in medieval mural pictures; and the outlines of the figures were drawn with a metal point or stylus, and subsequently coloured on the whitewash, which from the percolation of water through the tufa remained permanently IX. damp. In examples at Chiusi this outline is found limited exclusively to the external forms of the figures, a custom which reappears in mediaval pictures of the school of the neighbouring Siena, whilst drawing on wet plaster with the stylus belongs to this art in every age. The colours used were earths, which were mixed with lime and laid on in flat tints, and earths for the most part are the colours still employed in fresco-painting. The Romans, probably owing to Greek influence and example, carried the art much further than their Etruscan predecessors, and established real fresco-painting in Italy. Vitruvius remarks, "Colours when carefully applied on moist stucco do not therefore fade, but last for ever. Stuccoed walls, when well executed, do not easily become dirty, nor do they lose their colours when they require to be washed, unless the painting was carelessly done, or executed after the surface was dry." This is emphatically descriptive of fresco-painting. In this art it is essential that a given amount of plaster be laid for the painter at one time,-in modern practice only enough for a day's work,-and therefore frescos are readily recognized by the joinings in the plaster, most frequently following the outlines of the figures or other objects. These joinings vary in distinctness in different works according to the skill of the plasterer. Sometimes they are clearly perceptible, at other times they are only discoverable on minute examination. It has been observed on painted walls in Pompeii that such joinings exist, but they are further apart and less frequent than in modern works generally, suggesting either that the ancient artists painted more rapidly, or that several worked together on the same sheet of plaster, or that they knew how to keep the plaster fresh for more than one day, which, considering their great technical skill, is not improbable. Such wide divisions are found in the fragments of a mural painting of the 14th century existing in Sta Croce, and in others by Paolo Uccello, but this is explained by the completion of these pictures in distemper, whilst the Pompeian paintings are in fresco; for, besides the joinings, which are not inconsistent with the presence of tempera, there are also marks showing the use of the stylus on damp plaster, and by experiments made by the late Sir Humphry Davy, it has been shown that all the colours employed contain lime; therefore they are fresco and not tempera. It may be doubted whether any works of art produced in later times could have withstood the trials to which the maral paintings of Pompeii have been subjected from the action of heat and damp, the latter for centuries, without serious damage. The expression of Vitruvius that they would last for ever has been so far justified. The processes of the ancients were not limited to fresco-painting; they were familiar with others of great beauty and durability, but these do not enter within the scope of the present notice. The construction of the walls and the system of plastering then in use are more important subjects of inquiry in connexion with fresco. Those unsurpassed builders, the Romans, faced walls intended to be painted, with a lining of bricks set on edge, detached by a small space from the main structure to which it was secured with leaden clamps. This was a precaution against damp well worthy of imitation. Generally, three preparatory coats of plaster were laid on this brick facing or on any other description of wall, the first consisting of lime mixed with pounded brick and pozzolana, the other two with lime and pozzolana. The finishing coat was frequently composed of lime and pounded marble, which was susceptible of an exquisite polish, after which it was painted by durable processes, the secret of which is now lost. For fresco-painting the last coat or intonaco consisted of lime mixed with sand only. A long gap now occurs in the progress of mural painting. Its practice is feebly illustrated in tombs and catacombs, interesting historically, but of little value technically. Finally it was displaced for a time by mosaic, but it was again revived in the 13th century, that great epoch of the resuscitation of the fine arts. The works of Giunta Pisano and some of his contemporaries in the upper church of St Francis at Assisi, executed in the first half of the 13th century, clearly indicate a knowledge of a system of fresco. In a history of the practice of this art these mural paintings, with those of Cimabue and his colleagues or assist ants, and those by Giotto and his followers, deserve special consideration. They illustrate the early processes of fresco and mural painting upon which all the methods subsequently followed were based. It is evident from the structure of the interior of the beautiful upper church of St Francis that the architect did not provide for its being painted internally. It was complete in its admirable masoury, and when it was determined to paint it, the only preparatory process possible was to cover the aslar with a thin coat of intonaco about one-eighth of an inch in thickness. Any plan of preparatory coats of plaster in the Roman manner would have buried the string courses and other mouldings, and ruined the proportions of the piers. True fresco-painting under such conditions was consequently very difficult, for the thin intonaco, laid on a stone wall which could not be soaked with water, of necessity dried rapidly. The mixed art of fresco and distemper which was thus made imperative at Assisi prevailed in mural painting, with certain modifications, for a long period everywhere. The following is a brief statement of the methods of Giunta Pisano and Cimabue. Both artists practised, if they did not inaugurate, the system of outlining their subjects on the walls, which continued for two centuries, till it was abandoned for tho better plan of preparing cartoons. A sketch was first made, and was squared in the usual manner with vertical and horizontal lines drawn to scale. The space to be painted was then squared proportionately, and, guided by the squares, the artist outlined his subject full size with charcoal on the wall. This done, with a hair pencil and some ochre mixed with water he passed over the general lines, and then brushed off the charcoal; he next marked in the entire composition with red "terra rossa mixed with water only, this time entering more into detail, and even indicating the chiaroscuro. Where the ancient intonaco has fallen off, these red outlines are visible; they have a mysterious grandeur, and those by the hand of Cimabue prove the possession on his part of freedom and power of drawing. Over these outlines the intonaco was spread in portions, and on it the artist marked the squares once more, and drew the outlines of the figures he meant to paint. That the intonaco was prepared in sections is proved, not only by the visible lines in the plaster, but also by the falling off of the leg of a figure, showing the cut made by the artist when he had finished his work. The cut follows the outline of the limb, and this process suffices to show that fresco-painting was practised in the first half of the 13th century, if any doubt should be entertained. The intonaco being spread, the artist painted his subject in a slight manner with terra rossa, laying in the chiaroscuro and details, after which the plaster was allowed to dry. The picture thus prepared was then coloured in distemper, and completed in every part. By the aid of Vasari and of Cennino Cennini a pupil of the school of Giotto, who completed his treatise on painting on the 31st July 1437, we have clear statements of the methods of mural painting followed by the Byzantine artists, and subsequently by the Italians Cennino, in the most express terms, states that mural pictures, although commenced in fresco, were always finished in distemper. The distempers used were a mixture of egg, including both the albumen and the yolk, with the milky fluid which exudes from twigs of |