10)7 



FRERET, NICHOLAS. 



FRESNEL, AXJGUSTIN JEAN. 



103S 



exertions the party at length passed over the last culminating ridge of 

 the Sierra Nevada, and descended into the low country watered by the 

 Kio Sacramento, and in the spring of 1846 arrived at Monterey, then 

 the capital of Upper California. Here, in the previous year, an insur- 

 rection had broken out, and Upper California had been declared an 

 independent republic. In 1846 war was declared by the United States 

 against Mexico, and Captain Fremont immediately entered into commu- 

 nication with the American commanders on the coast. In conjunction 

 with Commodore Stockton he retained possession of California, and 

 assumed the military command till General Kearney arrived from New 

 Mexico with his dragoons, and the Americans were enabled, after some 

 hard fighting, to obtain complete possession of the country. Meantime 

 a commission arrived, appointing Fremont a lieutenant-colonel, and 

 as there had been from the first a dispute between Stockton and 

 Kearney as to which of them was entitled to the command in chief, 

 Fremont continued to obey the orders of Stockton. Kearney was 

 dissatisfied, but did nothing in the matter till they both reached Fort 

 Leavenworth on their return home, when he arrested Fremont, and 

 brought him to trial before a court-martial for disobedience of his 

 order*. The court-martial found Lieutenant-Colonel Fremont guilty, 

 and deprived him of his commission. President Polk signed the 

 sentence, but offered Fremont a new commission of the same rank as 

 that of which he had been deprived. This offer Fremont refused, and 

 became thenceforth a private citizen. 



Fremont's last and most disastrous expedition occurred at the end 

 of 1848 and beginning of 1849. He had resolved to settle as a 

 farmer ill Califorriu, and made the necessary arrangements for having 

 his wife and family transferred there by the usual route. He then 

 collected a strong exploring party of about 30 men and 130 mules, 

 with the intention of crossing the Rocky Mountains by the head- 

 waters of the Rio Grande del Norte. He left the Missouri on the 

 21st of October, reached the Upper Pueblo near the head of the 

 Arkansas, and there unluckily engaged a trapper as a guide who had 

 entirely forgotten the region through which they were to pass, or eNe 

 had never known it. After much delay and with extreme difficulty 

 they crossed the dividing ridge of the Sierra San Juan, among deep 

 snow, exposed to violent winds, and suffering excessively from intense 

 cold, Fremont then discovered that it was impossible to go forward ; 

 he therefore resolved to return, and endeavour to reach New Mexico. 

 They had scarcely recrossed the summit before all the mules were 

 dead, and all tho men began to droop, and one or two died. After a 

 aeries of struggles, exhibiting unconquerable energy and perseverance, 

 Fremont reached Taos in New Mexico, where he obtained relief, aad 

 collected those of his party who remained alive. Ten had died, and 

 of those who were living some were so much exhausted as to be 

 unable to walk. He left the Upper Pueblo on the 25th of November 



1848, and reached Taos on the 28th of January 1849, so that the 

 party had been for more than two months engaged in this terrible 

 struggle with the elements. From Taos he and his party were 

 transported to Santn Fe 1 , which they reached on the 17th of February. 

 Tho chief scene of their sufferings was probably about 33" 30' N. lat., 

 107" W. long. The party reached California without any further 

 difficulty. 



California became one of the United States of America in December 



1849, and on the 10th of September 1850 Mr. Fremont took his seat 

 in Congress as one of tho two senators elected by the State. In the 

 same year, at the suggestion of Humboldt, he received the great gold 

 medal of the Prussian government for " his efforts in the advance- 

 ment of science," and was elected an honorary member of the Geo- 

 graphical Society of Berlin. 



Mr. Fremont, having become a landed proprietor in tha state of 

 California, found himself subject to claims for sunn due for supplies 

 which had been furnished on his private credit to tho American army 

 during the campaign in California. The government of the United 

 State?, after much delay, relieved him from these liabilities by paying 

 the sums due. In maintaining his right to the Mariposa estate, which 

 lie had purchased, he was in a similar manner subjected to much 

 annoyance by the government, which resisted his claim, and it was 

 not till he had obtained more than ouo decision in his favour by 

 the Supremo Court of the United States that he obtained a final 

 triumph. 



A strong party has now (August 1856) been organised among tho 

 Republican Northern States for the election of Fremont as tho next 

 President, in opposition to Buchanan, who is supported by the 

 Democratic Southern States. The presid. n<-y of Mr. Pierce will 

 terminate on the 3rd of March 1837. 



The Reports of Captain Fremont's first two expeditions were 



published by the American government, and were republished together 



in I'.ngland in one volume, entitled 'Narratives of the Exploring 



Expedition to the Rocky Mountains iu the year 1842, and to the 



Oregon &nd North California in the years 1843-44, by Brevet-Captain 



J. C. Fremont, of the Topographical Engineers,' 8vo, London, 1856. 



UKT, NICHOLAS, born at Paris in 1088, was the son of a 



<r. He studied the law to please his family, but devoted his 



ion chiefly to the study of history and chronology. His first 



publication, ' Origine ties Francau et do leur Etablissemcnt dans les 



OauleK,' is written with a bolrluess and candour unusual at that timo ; 



canned hif confinement in the Bastille for a short time by order 



of the Regent d' Orleans. He was made a member of the Academy of 

 the Inscriptions, and wrote numerous memoirs, chiefly upon difficult 

 questions of ancient history and chronology. His principal works ara 

 ' Reoherehes Historiques sur les ancieus Peuples da 1'Asie ; ' ' Obser- 

 vations sur la Ge'uealogie de Pythagore ; ' ' Observations sur la CyropiS- 

 die de Xdnophon ; ' 'DeTeuse de la Chronologia fondds sur les Monu- 

 mens de 1'Histoire aucieuue, coufcre la Systome chronologique de 

 Newton.' This last work waa edited after Freret's death by Bougain- 

 ville, who added to it a biographical notice of the author. Freret, 

 while discarding the enormous antiquity attributed by some to 

 Egyptian and Chinese history, and showing the accordance of tho 

 authentic records of those nations with the Mosaic chronology, throws 

 back the dawn of the historical times of Greece several centuries fur- 

 ther than Newton. He wrote also ou the religion and geography of 

 the ancients. Freret was a man of very extensive erudition and of 

 indefatigable application, and he rendered considerable service to 

 history. He died at Paris in 1749. His scattered works have been 

 published together : ' OEuvrss completes de Freret,' 20 vols. 12rno, 

 Paris, 1796. Long after Freret's death, two or three works of an 

 anti-Christian tendency were published under his name by Naigeon, 

 a disciple of Diderot, and others of tha same school ; but these works 

 are so different in their style and spirit from all those that are known 

 to be his, and their authenticity has been so little proved, that they 

 are now generally regarded as apocrvphal. 



FRERON, ELIE CATHERINE," was born in 1719, and educated 

 by the Jesuits. He made himself conspicuous by his literary journal, 

 which he began to edit in 1746, under the title of ' Lettres a Madame 

 la Comtease.' Being suppressed ou account of some bitter attacks ou 

 several writers, Freron changed its title, in 1749, into that of ' Lettres 

 dcrites sur quelques sujets de ce Temps." In 1754 he aain changed 

 the name of his journal to that of ' Ann<5e Litteraire,' which he con- 

 tinued till his death in 1774. Freron directed his attacks against tho 

 philosophers of the 18th century, and particularly against Voltaire. 

 His bitter invectives were more than retaliated by his adversaries, who 

 succeeded in making Frerou's name synonymous with that of a scur- 

 rilous reviewer. Freron's son (Louis Stanislas), who continued tho 

 'Annde LitteVaire' till 1790, became notorious during the French 

 revolution as a violent Jacobin. He died iu 1802 at St. Domingo, where 

 he accompanied General Leolerc, being nominated sous-pre'fet of that 

 island. 



FRESCOBALDI, GIROLAMO, a most distinguished composer for 

 and performer on the organ, was a native of Ferrara, and at the age 

 of twenty-three became organist of St. Peter's at Rome. He may be 

 considered as the father of the true organ style, and his writings have 

 been more or less imitated by every orthodox composer of the kiud of 

 music in which he so much excelled. " His first work," says Dr. 

 Burney, entitled 'Ricercari e Canzoni Francose, fatta sopra divers! 

 oblighi in Partitura,' contains the first compositions we have seen 

 printed in score, aud with bars. They are likewise the first regular 

 fugues that we have found upon one subject, or of two subjects 

 carried on at the same time, from the beginning of a movement to 

 the end." Frescobaldi was born in the early part of the 17th century, 

 but the precise date of neither his birth nor death appears to bo known. 

 However, iu 1641, according to Delia Valle, Frescobaldi was living : 

 Gerber states that his first work was published in 1628. 



FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN JEAN, a very distinguished French mathe- 

 matician and natural philosopher, was born in 1788, at Broglie near 

 Beruay : his father, who was an architect, endeavoured early to com- 

 municate to him the rudiments of education; but considerable dif- 

 ficulty was experienced iu effecting this desirable object, partly from 

 the delicate state of the pupil's health, and partly, it is supposed, from 

 a distaste in the latter for the acquisition of that kind of knowledge 

 which depends chiefly ou the exercise of the memory ; hence the youth 

 made small progress in the study of languages, and he was eight years 

 of age before he could write in a legible manner. An inquiring faculty 

 was however manifest in him even at that timo by the experiments 

 whicli he made to determine the best materials and the best construc- 

 tions for the small machines used in tho sports of children. 



At tho age of sixteen years and a half he was admitted a pupil in 

 the Ecole Polytechniquo, where he soon made great progress in the 

 study of tho sciences, aud where ho attracted the notice of Legendre 

 by his solution of a problem which had been proposed by that mathe- 

 matician as a trial of the abilities of the students. On leaving that 

 institution he was appointed engineer iu the department of the Fonts- 

 ct-Chaussdes. 



It is remarkable however that it was not till the year 1814 that 

 Fresnel began to study the branch of science in which he afterwards 

 became so much distinguished. In that year ho requested a friend, 

 by letter, to inquire of his uncle what was meant by ' polarisation of 

 light ; ' and it is to be presumed that he obtained the information he 

 sought, for in eight months from that time he appears to have made 

 himself fully acquainted with tho subject. In 1823 ho was made a 

 member of the Academe des Sciences at Paris ; in 1825 he was elected 

 a Fellow of tho Royal Society of London, and two years later this 

 learned body awarded him the llumford medal for his optical dis- 

 coveries. At the time of his death, which happened iu 1827, he held 

 the post of secretary to the Commission for the Lighthouses ofFranoe , 

 and ho was succeeded iu this post by his brother, M. Leonor Fresnel. 



