informed of the dates either of the death or the birth of Borgognone. His fame is principally associated with that of one great building, the Certosa, or church and convent of the Carthusians at Pavia, for which he worked much and in many different ways. It is certain, indeed, that there is no truth in the tradition which represents him as having designed, in 1473, the celebrated façade of the Certosa itself. His residence there appears to have been of eight years' duration, from 1486, when he furnished the designs of the figures of the virgin, saints, and apostles for the choir-stalls, executed in tarsia or inlaid wood work by Bartolommeo Pola, till 1494, when he returned to Milan. Only one known picture, an altar-piece at the church San Eustorgio, can with probability be assigned to a period of his career earlier than 1486. For two years after his return to Milan he worked at the church of San Satiro in that city. From 1497 he was engaged for some time in decorating with paintings the church of the Incoronata in the neighbouring town at Lodi. Our notices of him thenceforth are few and far between. In 1508 he painted for a church in Bergamo; in 1512 his signature appears in a public document of Milan; in 1524-and this is our last authentic record--he painted a series of frescoes illustrating the life of St Sisinius in the portico of San Simpliciano at Milan. Without having produced any works of signal power or beauty, Borgognone is a painter of marked individuality. He holds an interesting place in the most interesting period of Italian art. The National Gallery of London has two fair examples of his work-the separate fragments of a silk banner painted for the Certosa, and containing the heads of two kneeling groups severally of men and women, and a large altar-piece of the marriage of St Catherine, painted for the chapel of Rebecchino near Pavia. But to judge of his real powers and peculiar ideals -his system of faint and clear colouring, whether in fresco, tempera, or oil-his somewhat slender and pallid types, not without something that reminds us of northern art in their Teutonic sentimentality as well as their Teutonic fidelity of portraiture-the conflict of his instinctive love of placidity and calm with a somewhat forced and borrowed energy in figures where energy is demanded his conservatism in the matter of storied and minutely diversified backgrounds—to judge of these qualities of the master as they are, it is necessary to study first the great series of his frescoes and altar-pieces at the Certosa, and next those remains of later frescoes and altar-pieces at Milan and Lodi, in which we find the influence of Leonardo and of the new time mingling with, but not expelling, his first predilections. Calvi, Visita alla Certosa di Pavia, and Notizie, vol. ii.; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Hist. of Painting in North Italy, vol. ii. p. 41 sq. FOSSOMBRONE, a town of Italy, in the province of Pesaro and Urbino, about 7 miles from Urbino, on the left bank of the Metauro, which is there crossed by a fine bridge of a single arch. It is commanded by an old castle on the heights, and it possesses a cathedral with ancient inscriptions and pictures, a Capuchin church, a seminary, and the vestiges of a Roman theatre. There are several silk factories in the town, and the silk produced in the district ranks as the finest in all Italy. The population of the town proper in 1871 was 3821, and of the commune 9056. Of the origin of Fossombrone nothing is definitely known. It appears by the name of Forum Sempronii as a flourishing municipal town under the Roman empire. Ruined by the Goths and Lombards, it was soon afterwards restored on a slightly different site. The Malatesta and Galeazzo families had for a long time possession of the lordship, but they sold it in 1440 to the duke of Urbino. FOSSOMBRONI, VITTORIO (1754-1844), a Tuscan statesman and mathematician, was born at Arezzo in 1754. He was educated at the university of Pisa, where he devoted himself particularly to mathematical science. He obtained an official appointment in Tuscany in 1782, and twelve years later was entrusted by the grand-duke with the direction of the works for the drainage of the Val di Chiana, a task for which he had already shown his fitness by the publication of a treatise on the subject. In 1796 he was made minister for foreign affairs; and on the erection of the grand-duchy into the ephemeral kingdom of Etruria, he became a member of the commission of finance. After the annexation of Tuscany to the French empire, he was created by Napoleon I. chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was also named head of the commission established for carrying out the drainage of the Pontine marshes. He became first minister of the restored grand-duchy (1814), and his administration, which was only terminated by his death, greatly contributed to promote the wellbeing of the country. Fossombroni was author of many treatises on mathematical and mechanical science, most of them relating to hydraulics. At the age of seventy-eight he married, and twelve years afterwards died, in 1844, at the age of ninety. FOSTER, JOHN (1770-1843), an English author and dissenting minister, generally known as the "Essayist," was born in a small farmhouse near Halifax, Yorkshire, September 17, 1770. Partly from constitutional causes, but partly also from the want of proper companions, as well as from the grave and severe habits of his parents, the outward and physical life of boyhood had for him scarcely an existence, and his earlier years were enshrouded in a somewhat gloomy and sombre atmosphere, which was never afterwards wholly dissipated. His youthful energy, finding no proper outlet, developed within him a tendency to morbid intensity of thought and feeling; and, according to his own testimony, before he was twelve years old he was possessed of a "painful sense of an awkward but entire individu ality;" what observations he made on men and things were characterized by a precocious shrewdness and gravity, but he lived in an interior world of emotions and sentiments which he recoiled from communicating to any human being; his imagination often exercised on him a tyrannous sway, endowing past or fictitious events with a stronger and more importunate reality than the actual circumstances which surrounded him, and sometimes arousing almost insupportable emotions of pain or terror. A partial counteractive to the predominance of this inward life was supplied by his love of natural scenery, but even here his interest was rather in the grand and sublime than in the beautiful, and nature awakened his strong enthusiasm more frequently than it inspired him with quiet and genial enjoyment. The most wholesome influence exercised on his earlier years was perhaps that obtained from the perusal of books of travel-a species of literature for which he had always a decided preference. It supplied him with actual scenes and adventures on which to exercise his imagination, and helped to deliver him from a too constant contemplation of abstractions and a too minute analysis of his own moods and sentiments. His moral feelings in youth were not only sensitive but deeply rooted and constant and steadfast in their influence, being manifested in entire dutifulness to his parents, strong but "not malicious " antipathies, habitual abhorrence of cruelty, intense love of the heroic, and a tone of mind whose seriousness was excessive. The small income accruing to Foster's parents from their farm they supplemented by weaving, and at an early age he began to assist them by spinning wool by the hand wheel, and from his fourteenth year by weaving double stuffs. Even "when a child," however, he had the "feelings of a foreigner in the place;" and though he performed his monotonous task with conscientious diligence, IX. 60 he succeeded so indifferently in fixing his wandering that on resigning his charge he determined to adopt literature thoughts upon it that his work never without difficulty passed the ordeal of inspection. There is little information as to the manner in which he obtained his primary education, but at an early period he had acquired a great taste for reading, to gratify which he sometimes shut himself up alone in a barn, afterwards working at his loom "like a horse," to make up for lost time. He had also at this period "a passion for making pictures with a pen." ." Shortly after completing his seventeenth year he became a member of the Baptist church at Hebden Bridge, with which his parents were connected; and with the view of preparing himself for the ministerial office, he began about the same time to attend a seminary at Brearley Hall conducted by his pastor Dr Fawcett. The mental processes of Foster followed a course which was entirely their own, and the manner of their operation was often awkward and unwieldy. He had difficulty in bending his attention to the continuous contemplation of a subject as it had been viewed by others, and smaller niceties and details only made an impression on his mind after a repeated perusal. He therefore mastered his tasks very slowly and with great labour, and his application was so intense and protracted as to awaken the serious anxiety of his friends. To excel in literary composition was the purpose which occupied his most eager attention, and with a view to obtain facility and variety of diction, it was his custom to select paragraphs from different writers and to alter the structure and expression of each sentence in as many different ways as his ingenuity could invent, a method which, if it helped him to acquire the particular kind of flexibility which his style afterwards manifested, was perhaps also in part the means of betraying him into his occasional use of lumbering expressions, and of a harsh, involved, or clumsy order of arrangement. After remaining three years at Brearley Hall he was admitted to the Baptist College, Bristol, and on finishing his course of study at this institution, he obtained an engagement at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he preached to an audience of less than a hundred persons, in a small and dingy room situated near the river at the top of a flight of steps called Tuthill stairs. At Newcastle he remained only three months. In the beginning of 1793 he proceeded to Dublin, where after failing as a preacher he attempted to revive a classical and mathematical school, but with so little success that he did not prosecute the experiment for more than eight or nine months. From 1797 to 1799 he was minister of a Baptist church at Chichester, but though he applied himself with more earnestness and perseverance than formerly to the discharge of his ministerial duties, his efforts produced little apparent impression, and the gradual diminution of his hearers necessitated his resignation. After employing himself for a few months at Battersea in the instruction of twenty African youths brought to England by Zachary Macaulay, with the view of having them trained to aid as missionaries to their fellow-countrymen, he in 1800 accepted the charge of a small congregation at Downend, Bristol, where he continued about four years. In 1804, chiefly through the recommendation of Robert Hall, he became pastor of a congregation at Frome,'but a swelling in the thyroid gland compelled him in 1806 to resign his charge. In the same year he published the volume of Essays on which his literary fame most largely if not mainly rests. They were written in the form of letters addressed to the lady whom he afterwards married, and consist of four papers, "On a Man writing Memoirs of himself;" "On Decision of Character;" "On the Application of the Epithet Romantic;" and "On some Causes by which Evangelical Religion has been rendered unacceptable to Men of Cultivated Taste." The success of this work was immediate, and was so considerable as his profession. The Eclectic Review was the only periodical with which he established a connexion; but his contributions to that journal, which were begun in 1807, number no fewer than 185 articles. On his marriage in May 1808 he removed to Bourton-on-the-Water, a small village in Gloucestershire, where he remained till 1817, when he returned to Downend and resumed his duties to his old congregation. Here he published in 1820 his Essay on Popular Ignorance, which was the enlargement of a sermon originally preached on behalf of the British and Foreign School Society. He describes this essay with a certain degree of happiness and accuracy as a "broad, true, and strongly delineated picture of the intellectual and moral state of the mass of our people;" only it must be added that the contemplation of the gloomy features of his subject has so reacted on his vision that an artificially darkened atmosphere seems to overespread his whole canvas, and his picture somewhat resembles that of a landscape painted during an eclipse. In 1821 he removed to Stapleton near Bristol, and in 1822 he began a series of fortnightly lectures at Broadmead Chapel, Bristol, which were afterwards published in 2 vols. On the settlement of Robert Hall at Bristol this service was discontinued, as in such circumstances it appeared to Foster to be "altogether superfluous and even bordering on impertinent.' The health of Foster during the later years of his life was somewhat infirm, the result chiefly of the toil and effort of literary composition; and the death of his only son, his wife, and the greater number of his most intimate friends combined with his bodily ailments to lend additional sombreness to his manner of regarding the events and arrangements of the present world-the "visage of death" being almost his "one remaining luminary." He died at Stapleton 15th October 1843. He The cast of Foster's mind was meditative and reflective rather than logical or metaphysical, and though holding moderately Calvinistic views, his language even in preaching very seldom took the mould of theological forms. His apprehension of the divine mercy, and of the terms of hope and safety for poor mortals, was," he says, "widely remote from the austerity of the systematic divines." rejected the doctrine of eternal punishment, because the idea of such protracted and hopeless misery following such a "brief trial and sojourn on earth seemed inconsistent with the divine goodness, and he was thus compelled to believe that the language of Scripture which seemed to support this doctrine was susceptible of another and milder interpretation. Though always retaining his connexion with the Baptist denomination, the evils resulting from organized religious communities seemed to him so great that he came to be "strongly of opinion that churches are useless and mischievous institutions, and the sooner they are dissolved the better." The only Christian observances which he regarded as of any importance were public worship and the Lord's Supper, and it so happened that he never administered the ordinance of baptism. Though he was mild and charitable in his interpretation of the conduct of individuals, his moral constitution was narrow and stern rather than sympathetic, and his creed left little room for laughter, and on the question of amusements was strongly puritanical. The dark and sombre scenes which his imagination so vividly pictured forth riveted his contemplation by a fascination from which he vainly struggled to be free. With such mournful views of life the "weight of this unintelligible world" pressed rather heavily upon him, and his cast of thought is largely coloured by a constant reference to the "endless future." was a firm believer in supernatural appearances, and cherished a longing hope that a ray of light from the He other world might sometimes in this way be vouchsafed to mortals. Apart from the singularity of his modes of thought, and the unusual forms of his spoken as well as his written style, Foster was constitutionally unfitted to excel as an orator, and Robert Hall testifies that " though his words might be fire within, the moment they left his lips they froze and fell down at his feet." As a writer his most characteristic quality is his searching discernment of every kind of moral falsity and weakness, the dark and subtle windings of which he tracks with unerring and dogged sagacity, and exposes either with easy irony, or with a keen and scathing satire, whose indignation, however, is slightly qualified by a faint suggestion of sorrowful contempt. He often strangely interweaves the hackneyed and commonplace with the novel and unexpected. The substance of his thought is old and worn, but after passing through the crucible of his mind it acquires a brilliant lustre, and he places it in such new and striking lights that his exhibition of it resembles the revelation of something hitherto unknown. He is, however, so intent on adequately representing the minutest aspects of his subject that he does not sufficiently distinguish between the important and the unimportant; and he often employs a beautiful sometimes a sublime figure to illustrate either an almost selfevident proposition, or a thought otherwise much too lowly for such a splendid dress; while, on the other hand, an elevated thought or sentiment is sometimes associated with imagery as much out of harmony with its surroundings and position as would be the rags of a beggar with the splendour and magnificence of a court. His originality consists chiefly in placing old and time-honoured beliefs in new and unexpected relations, and imparting a vividness to truths which are so generally recognized that their importance is almost forgotten. He has therefore given no new impulse to thought, and he has scarcely entered upon the threshold of the speculation and ideas of the 19th century. Though his intellectual was much wider than his moral sympathy, his literary criticisms-apart from the fact that they are totally unfettered by artificial rules and maxims, and record in ingenuous language the actual impression produced upon his mind by the work he examines are chiefly of value for their keen detection of what is hollow and false in sentiment, and their sarcastic exposure of affectation and pretence. He wrote with intense mental strain and effort, and sometimes spent days in the elaboration of a single paragraph. His style has the merit of entire individuality; as he himself says, his "language is simply and absolutely formed for the thought-is adapted and flexible to it-is taken out of the whole vocabulary of our tongue just on purpose for the thoughts, and moulded to their very shape, with an almost perfect independence and avoidance of all the set artificial forms of expression." With this merit however, it has the defects formerly 'adverted to; and while scarcely ever weak or ambiguous, but even in the midst of its frequent involutions surprising by terse and pointed or vivid and graphic interpolations, and preserving throughout its winding structure a compact, nervous, and sinewy strength which occasionally assumes the form of a rhythmical and measured eloquence, it is yet on the whole deficient in directness, freedom, ease, and grace. Besides the works already alluded to, Foster is the author of a Discourse on Missions, 1818; "Introductory Essay" to Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion, 1825; "Observations on Mr Hall's Character as a Preacher," prefixed to the collected edition of Hall's Works, 1832; an "Introduction" to a pamphlet by Mr Marshman on the Serampore Missionaries; several political letters to the Morning Chronicle, and contributions to the Eclectic Review, published posthumously in 2 vols., 1844. His Life and Correspondence, edited by J. E. Ryland, originally published in 1846, has passed through several editions. (T. F. H.) FOSTER, STEPHEN COLLINS (1826-1864), a prolific American song and ballad writer, was born at Alleghany, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1826. He was the youngest child of a merchant who became mayor of his native city, and a member of the State legislature, and was related by marriage to President Buchanan. As a boy Stephen was delicate, and through life he was of a quiet retiring disposition-in strong contrast with the spirit of many of his most popular songs. He early showed talent for music, and played upon several instruments; he also acquired a fair knowledge of French and German. When thirteen years old he wrote a song afterwards published in his works "Sadly to Mine Heart Appealing." At sixteen he wrote the then much admired " Open thy Lattice, Love;" at seventeen he entered his brother's business house, Cincinnati, Ohio, where he remained about three years, composing meanwhile such popular pieces as "Old Uncle Ned," "O Susanna!" &c. For the latter he received 100 dollars, which induced him to adopt song-writing as a vocation. His chief successes were songs written for the negro melodists or "minstrels." Besides those mentioned, the following attained great popularity, viz., “Nelly was a Lady," "Old Kentucky Home," "Old Folks at Home,' "Massa's in the Cold Ground," &c. For these and other songs the composer received considerable sums, "Old Folks at Home" bringing him, it is said, 15,000 dollars. For the most of his songs Foster wrote both words and music. His reputation rests chiefly on his negro melodies, many of which have been popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and sung in many tongues. His later songs were of a more refined and somewhat higher order of musical composition, and after his mother's death were characterized by melancholy. Among these are "Old Dog Tray," "Gentle Annie," "Willie, we have missed you," &c. His "Come where my Love lies Dreaming" is considered one of the most pleasing and popular vocal quartets ever written. Composers and poets of celebrity recognized his peculiar talent, and great musicians incorporated many of his melodies into concert fantasias. Although as a musician and composer Foster would, strictly speaking, have little claim to high rank, his song-writing made an epoch in popular music of a class which certainly possessed melody united to beauty of harmony, while to the words employed he gave fitting musical expression. He died at New York, January 13, 1864. an FOTHERGILL, JOHN (1712-1780), F.R.S., eminent physician, a member of the Society of Friends, was born at Carr End in Yorkshire. He took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh in 1736. After visiting the Continent, he in 1740 settled in London, and gained there an extensive practice. In the epidemics of influenza in 1775 and 1776 he is said to have had sixty patients daily. In his leisure he made a study of conchology and botany; and after his death, which took place in December 1780, his collections of shells, prints, and other objects were sold for a considerable sum. Fothergill was a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London, and a fellow of that of Edinburgh, of which he was a great benefactor. He was the patron of Sidney Parkinson, the South Sea voyager. A translation of the Bible (1764 sq.) by Anthony Purver, a Quaker, was made and printed at his expense. His pamphlet entitled Account of the Sore Throat attended with Ulcers (1748, 2d ed. 1754), prepared with the assistance of information supplied by Dr Letherland, attracted great attention, and was translated into several languages. His works were edited by Dr John Elliot (1781), by Gilbert Thomson (1782), and by Dr Lettsom (1783). FOUCAULT, JEAN BERNARD LEON (1819-1868), a distinguished French physicist, was the son of a well-known publisher at Paris, where he was born September 18, 1819. After an education received chiefly at home, he studied medicine, which, however, he speedily abandoned for physical science, the improvement of Daguerre's photographic processes being the object to which he first directed his attention. During three years he was experimental assistant to M. Donné in his course of lectures on microscopic anatomy. With M. Fizeau he carried on a series of investigations on the intensity of the light of the sun, as compared with that of carbon heated in the voltaic arc, and of lime in the flame of the oxyhydrogen blowpipe; on the interference of heat rays, and of light rays differing greatly in lengths of path; and on the chromatic polarization of light. In 1849 he contributed to the Comptes Rendus of the Academy of Sciences, t. xxviii., a description of an electromagnetic regulator for the electric lamp, and, in conjunction with Regnault, a paper on binocular vision. By the use of a revolving mirror sunilar to that used by Wheatstone for measuring the rapidity of electric currents, but having a concave mirror centred in its axis, he was enabled in 1850 to demonstrate the greater velocity of light in air than in water, and to establish the law deduced from the undulatory theory that the velocity of light in different media is inversely as the refractive indices of the media. In the same year he was created a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. For his demonstration in 1851 of the diurnal motion of the earth by the rotation of the plane of oscillation of a freely suspended, long, and heavy pendulum in an E.S.W. direction, exhibited by him at the Pantheon in Paris, and again in the following year by means of his invention the gyroscope, he in 1855 received the Copley medal of the Royal Society of London. He was also in 1855 made physical assistant in the imperial observatory at Paris. In September of that year he discovered that the force required for the rotation of a copper disc moving in its own plane becomes greater, the disc at the same time growing hotter, when the disc is made to rotate with its rim between the poles of a horse-shoe magnet. Foucault invented in 1857 the polarizer which bears his name, and in the succeeding year a method of giving to the speculum of reflecting telescopes the form of a spheroid or a paraboloid of revolution. His reflector for the great telescope in the Paris observatory was mounted in June 1859. With Wheatstone's revolving mirror he in 1862 determined the absolute velocity of light to be 298,000 kilometres (about 185,000 miles) a second, or 10,000 kilom. less than that obtained by previous experimenters. He was created in that year a member of the Bureau des Longitudes and an officer of the Legion of Honour, in 1864 a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, and next year a member of the Mechanical Section of the Institute. In 1865 appeared his papers on a modification of Watt's governor, upon which he had for some time been experiment ing with a view to making its period of revolution constant, and on a new apparatus for regulating the electric light; and in the following year (Compt. Rend. lxiii.) he showed how, by the deposition of a transparently thin film of silver on the outer side of the object glass of a telescope, the sun could be viewed without injuring the eye by excess of light. Foucault died of paralysis, February 11, 1868. From the year 1845 he edited the scientific portion of the Journal des Débats. His chief scientific papers are to be found in the Comptes Rendus, t. xxv., 1847-lxix., 1869. See Revue Cours Scient. vi., 1869, pp. 484-489; Proc. Roy. Soc. xvii., 1869, pp. lxxxiii.-lxxxiv.; Lissayous, Notice historique sur la vie et les travaux de Léon Foucault, Paris, 1875. FOUCHÉ, JOSEPH (1763-1820), duke of Otranto, minister of police under Napoleon I., was born in a small village near Nantes, 26th May 1763. He was the son of a ship captain, and at the age of nine years began the study of mathematics at the college of his native place, with the view of entering the merchant marine. That such a calling would have proved congenial to him is not very probable, and at any rate it presented so little attraction to his youthful fancy that he induced his father to consent to the abandonment of this intention, and to permit him to continue his studies at Paris under the superintendence of the principal of the oratory. He afterwards taught successively in the colleges of Juilly, Arras, and Vendôme; and at the time of the Revolution he was préfet des études at Nantes. He now renounced his connexion with the ecclesiastical profession, and in 1792 succeeded in being chosen one of the national deputies for Loire-Inférieure. In this capacity he made a violent speech in support of the execution of Louis XVI, without respite and without appeal to the people, taunting those who hesitated to adopt such an extreme measure with "trembling before the shade of a king." In the midst of the political chaos he determined to "ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm:" though he had little or no interest in moral speculation, he became an ardent asserter of atheism; and, though devoid of all political predilections, and actuated in his political purposes simply by a cool calculation of advantages that was seldom if ever surprised or ruffled even by the most critical contingencies, he soon manifested a zeal for republicanism which exceeded that of the wildest enthusiasts of that exceptional time. Having at the end of 1793 been commissioned to put in operation the law des suspects in the department of Nièvre, then one of the centres of the royalist sympathizers, he not only succeeded in completely crushing all insurrectionary symptoms, but initiated the movement for the spoliation of the churches, by which the treasury was supplied with money for the campaign of 1794; and he also further inaugurated the age of reason by suppressing the priests and causing to be inscribed on the doors of the cemeteries a sentence afterwards generally adopted for this purpose-La mort est un sommeil éternel. In November of the same year he was appointed, along with Collot d'Herbois, to execute the decree of the convention against the royalist city of Lyons; and here he vied with his colleague in a mania for destruction and bloodshed, inditing bombastic regrets that the mine and the guillotine did their work too slowly to accord with the impatience of the republic, or to express the omnipotence of the people. This devoted enthusiasm for freedom led to his being elected president of the Jacobin Club, 4th June 1794, soon after his return to Paris. He now so far allowed his audacity to overcome his discretion as to make some derisive allusions to the part played in the fête de l'Être Suprême by Robespierre, who on that account denounced him as an impostor and peculator, and procured his expulsion from the society. Fouché had erred, however, only by a too quick anticipation of public opinion, for the execution of Robespierre followed on the 25th July. The star of Fouché was thus for a short time again in the ascendant; but having awakened distrust by some new intrigues, he was denounced as a terrorist, expelled the convention 9th August 1795, and placed under arrest. He obtained his freedom by the amnesty of the 26th October following; and having obtained the confidence of the socialist Babeuf, and revealed his conspiracy to Barras, then president of the directory, he was rewarded by an interest in the contracts of the army, and by being appointed in 1798 ambassador to the Cisalpine republic. Soon afterwards his intrigues against the directory of Milan led to his recall, but when the party of Barras again came into power he was appointed to the Hague. There he remained only a few months, returning to Paris to enter upon his famous career as minister of police. In this capacity he for some years exercised an influence on the internal affairs of France perhaps greater than that of any one else; and it was chiefly owing to his well-chosen measures of repression, his ready and dexterous use of expedients, his almost omniscient faculty of detection, and his just appreciation of political contingencies, that at this critical period of France's history the reign of anarchy was averted. Recognizing the necessity of a new political departure, he suppressed the Jacobin clubs and newspapers, and was concerned in instigating the beginning of a reaction towards monarchical principles. Though he failed to effect an understanding between Barras and Napoleon, he resolved rather to desert his patron than to share his overthrow, and exerted all his powers of management and finesse to bring the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire to a successful termination. Besides taking an important though carefully guarded share in the preliminary negotiations, he suspended in the name of the directory the twelve municipalities of Paris, tranquillized the citizens by posting on the walls reassuring intimations, and took the precaution of shutting the gates of Paris to prevent the fugitive deputies from reentering the city. Under the consulate, Fouché, notwithstanding the opposition of Sieyes, was continued minister of police, partly because he was to be dreaded as an opponent, and partly because no one else could bear comparison with him in fitness for the office. Its duties he discharged, not only with unequalled tact and discretion, but with a justice and mildness rendered possible only by his perfect confidence in his superior cunning. At the same time there was necessarily attached to it a very great irresponsible power, and far from neglecting to make undue use of this he took care to lend an additional appearance of necessity and value to his services by a continual supply of political fomentations. If his audacity and assumption aroused the jealousy of Napoleon, his cool impenetrability no less disconcerted him, and matters were not improved by the ludicrous blunders of the secret police which Napoleon had the folly to employ, in order both to test his minister's fidelity and render him less indispensable. Actuated therefore most probably by a regard to his own position, Fouché endeavoured to prevent a too rapid abandonment of the lines of republicanism, and deprecated as imprudent the means that were being used towards the establishment of a monarchical government. Such advices doubtless increased Napoleon's irritation and distrust, and on becoming consul for life in 1802 he determined to rid himself of the galling fetters of his minister's ascendency. He did this, however, with great caution and respect; and while he suppressed the office as no longer necessary, he conferred on Fouché the dignity of a senator, and presented him with half the police reserve funds. The association of the functions of the old office with those of the ministry of justice did not prove a happy arrangement; and Fouché❘ by maintaining for his own purposes the same system of espionage as formerly, was able, by revealing the Georges conspiracy to reassert his influence in the affairs of state Divining Napoleon's secret wishes and intentions, he now took every opportunity to press upon him the advisability of immediately assuming the monarchical crown, and applied himself to the furtherance of this object with an ostentatious zeal that was doubtless meant to suggest that he was almost the sole agent in determining events towards that end. And indeed he might, after Napoleon, justly claim the chief merit of that great political change, for at any rate the smoothness with which it was accomplished was greatly due to Fouché's skilful management. After Napoleon's coronation Fouché was therefore reinstalled in his old office, 4th July 1804, uniting with its functions those of the ministry of the interior. In this position he took a very prominent part in the rule of France under Napoleon, and to some extent rivalled his master in influence; for if the empire gained glory by Napoleon's achievements, it owed its internal harmony to Fouché, who had for a time the entire direction of its administration. On the revival of the titles of nobility he was created duke of Otranto, and it appeared as if his tenure of office were indissolubly connected with the empire's stability. The bond between him and the emperor was, however, solely one of interest, and the very antipodes of one of affection and mutual esteem. His imperturbable self-control, his connexion with the old republicans, the obscurity and mystery in which he shrouded his intentions, and his power of secret strategy gained him almost a kind of mastery over the arbitrary spirit of Napoleon, but it was a mastery borne both with impatience and with resentment. Apart from this, his cold and vulgar ambition and his cynical contempt for all unsubstantial glory irritated the sensitive egoism of Napoleon, whose magnificent projects he often pierced with shafts of truth that were too painfully effective, and whom he somewhat imprudently tormented with warnings as to the necessity of limiting his designs of conquest. When matters were in this critical condition, they were brought to a crisis by a proclamation of Fouché calling on France-then threatened by the English invasion-to prove that Napoleon's presence was not necessary to scatter his enemies. The proclamation was effectual; but on Napoleon's return to Paris Fouché was deprived of the ministry of the interior. Shortly afterwards he sent an agent to England to carry on negotiations with the English Government, in ignorance that Napoleon had sent another for the same purpose; and the English minister, suspecting a trick, declined all further negotiations. This mischance completed Fouché's disgrace; he ceased to be minister of police, 3d June 1810; and to secure his absence from France, he was appointed governor of Rome. While delaying his departure he was requested to deliver up the autograph letters of Napoleon and other Government documents in his possession; and his answer that they were all destroyed was deemed so little satisfactory that he found it expedient to go into voluntary exile. On deliver ing up the papers the destruction of which he had asserted, he was afterwards permitted to return to his estate at PontCarré; but in 1813 Napoleon judged it prudent to appoint him governor of Illyria, after which he was sent to Rome to watch the movements of Murat. Being recalled to France some time before the entrance of the allies into Paris, he in anticipation of events came to an understanding with Talleyrand, and becoming one of the principal members of the provisional Government, proposed that a deputation should be sent to the Comte d'Artois, brother of Louis XVIII. He afterwards wrote letters to the king recommending the adoption of certain measures fitted to reconcile the opponents of the Bourbon dynasty, and on the 25th April addressed a letter to Napoleon at Elba, advising him, instead of making an effort to remount the throne of France, to seek a sphere for his ambition in America, where his genius would be admired without being feared." On the news of Napoleon's escape from Elba the Government of Louis offered Fouché the portfolio of police, but he declined it on the ground that the Government could no longer hold its position. Next day he was ordered to be arrested, but deluding by a clever stratagem the officers sent for that purpose, he escaped to the hôtel of Hortense Beauharnais, and received on the following day his old office from the hands of Napoleon. He now determined merely to prepare for Napoleon's downfall, which he saw to be imminent; and besides securing the confidence of both patriots and royalists, he opened a communication with the allies. After the battle of Waterloo it was therefore to him that all eyes turned for guidance; and, becoming the head of the provisional |