13 



FACULTIES. 



FAITH. 



(mostly girls) earn about 6s. per week each on an average ; some, who 

 are quick and clever, occasionally earn as much as 20s. In one of the 

 establishments the sewing-machines are driven by steam-power, and 

 are fitted with patent self-acting regulators, still further to increase the 

 automatic action. Besides these machine-sewers working in factories, 

 there are 16,000 hand-sewers scattered over the counties of London- 

 derry, Donegal, Tyrone, Fermanagh, and Antrim. 



We may remark, in conclusion, that in the United States, spinning 

 and weaving factories are much more frequently owned by joint-stock 

 companies than in England. The celebrated cotton factories at Lowell, 

 and numerous others in the northern states of the Union, are held by 

 companies ; they are large, well provided with machinery, and worked 

 by operatives who maintain a somewhat higher status than those of 

 England. This may in part result from the more general diffusion 

 of education in that country, a fact of which there seems to be no 

 doubt. In these large American spinning and weaving mills, owned 

 by companies, the proprietors often provide boarding-houses, in which 

 many of the workpeople especially girls and young women away from 

 their parents' homes are supplied with food and lodging under a 

 well-organised system, and at prices calculated rather in relation to 

 the weU-being of the persons themselves than to the realisation of a 

 profit. 



FACULTIES. [UNIVERSITY.] 



FAGINE. An alkaloid of unknown composition contained in the 

 fceech-nut, Pagns tyhv < 



FAGOT, SAP-, a small kind of FASCINE, about 3 feet in length. 



FAINTING. [SYNCOPE.] 



FAIIl, an annual or fixed meeting of buyers and sellers; from the 

 Latin feria, a holiday. Fairs in ancient times were chiefly held on 

 holidays. 



Anciently, before many flourishing towns were established, and the 

 ;iries or ornaments of life, from the convenience of communication 

 and the increase of provincial civility, could be procured in various 

 places, goods and commodities of every kind were chiefly sold at fairs, 

 to which, as to one universal mart, the people resorted periodically, and 

 supplied most of their wants for the ensuing year. The display of 

 merchandise and the conflux of customers at these the most com- 

 prehensive markets for domestic commerce was prodigious, and they 

 were therefore often held on open and extensive plains. Warton, in 

 his ' History of English Poetry,' has given a curious account of that 

 of St. Giles's Hill or Down, near Winchester. It was instituted and 

 given as a kind of revenue to the Bishop of Winchester by William 

 the Conqueror, who by his charter permitted it to continue for three 

 days ; but in consequence of new royal grants, Henry III. prolonged 

 its continuance to sixteen days. Its jurisdiction extended seven miles 

 round, and comprehended even Southampton, then a capital trading 

 town ; and all merchants who sold wares within that circuit, unless at 

 the fair, forfeited them to the bishop. As late as 1512, as we learn 

 from the Northumberland Household-book, fairs still continued to be 

 tin' principal marts for purchasing necessaries in large quantities, 

 which are now supplied by the numerous trading towns. 



Philip, king of France, complained in very strong terms to Edward II. 

 in 1314 that the merchants of England had desisted from frequenting 

 the fairs in his dominions with their wood and other goods, to the great 

 Ion of his subjects, and entreated him to persuade, and, if necessary^to 

 compel them, to frequent the fairs of France as formerly, promising 

 tin -m all possible security and encouragement. (Rytn., ' Fox!.,' torn, iii., 

 p. 482.) 



When a town or village had suffered from misfortune, by way of 

 assisting to re-establish it, a fair, among other privileges, was sometimes 

 granted. This was the case at Burley, in Rutlandshire, 49th Edw. III. 

 (' Abbrev. Uot. Orig.,' vol. ii., p. 338.) 



The Chronicles of Stow and Grafton, published in Queen Elizabeth's 

 time, contain lists of the fairs of England according to the months. 



No fair or market can be held but by a grant from the crown, or by 

 prescription supposed to take its rise from some ancient grant, of which 

 no record can be found. 



The fairs of Frankfort-on-the-Mayn and Leipzig are still pre-eminent 

 in Europe ; each is held three times a year. Leipzig at these times 

 ia the mart and exchange of Central Europe, and is visited by mer- 

 chants and foreigners from the most distant parts of the globe, some- 

 tiling to the number of thirty or forty thousand. The whole book- 

 trade of Germany is centred in the Easter fair at Leipzig. Nishnei 

 Norgorod, in Russia, at the confluence of the Oka and the Wolga, has 

 a great annual fan- in June, at which an immense number of traders 

 assemble, many of them from the most remote parts of Asia. 



FAIRIES, a small sort of imaginary spirits of both sexes in human 

 shape, who are fabled to haunt houses in companies, to reward cleanli- 

 ness, to dance and revel in meadows in the night-time, and to play a 

 thousand freakish pranks. Both sexes are represented generally an 

 ;,Teen, and the traces of their tiny feet are supposed to 

 ii visible on the grass for a long time after their dances : these 

 ill called fairy-rings or circles. They are also fabled to be in the 

 "o of stealing unbaptised infants and leaving their own progeny 

 in their xtead. Besides these terrestrial fairies, there was a species who 

 dwelt in the mines, where they were often heard to imitate the actions 

 of the workmen, to whom they were thought to be inclined to do 

 ervice. In Wales this kind of fairies was called "knockers," and 



was said to point out the rich veins of silver and lead. Some fairies 

 are fabled to have resided in wells. It was also believed that there 

 was a sort of domestic fairies, called, from their sunburnt complexions, 

 Broicniet, who were extremely useful, and who performed all sorts of 

 domestic drudgery. The words fairy and browny seem at once to point 

 out their own etymologies. 



Bourne, in his ' Antiquitates Vulgares," supposes the superstition 

 relating to fairies to have been conveyed down to us by tradition from 

 the Lamia;, or ancient sorceresses ; others have deduced them from 

 the lares of the Romans. Dr. Percy tells us, on the assurance of 

 a learned friend in Wales, that the existence of fairies is alluded to 

 by the most ancient British bards, among whom their commonest name 

 was that of the Spirits of the Mountains. The most general conjecture, 

 however, is, that these imaginary people are of Oriental origin, and 

 that the notion of them was first entertained by the Persians aud 

 Arabs, whose traditions and stories abound with the adventures of 

 these imaginary beings. The Persians called them Perls ; the Arabs, 

 Gin a : and the Arabs assigned them a peculiar country "to inhabit, 

 which they called Ginnittan, or Fairy-land. 



.Shakspere has been singularly happy in his dramatic exhibition of 

 fairies. The belief in these fabled beings has still a fast hold upon 

 the minds of many of our rustics, which may perhaps be considered 

 as a remnant of that credulity which was once almost universal. 

 Poole, in his ' English Parnassus,' has given the names of the fair}' 

 court, their clothing, and their diet. Dr. Grey, in his ' Notes on 

 Shakspere,' gives us a description, from other writers, of fairy-land, a 

 fairy entertainment, and fairy hunting; and Dr. King has given a 

 description of Orpheus' fairy entertainment in his ' Orpheus and Eury- 

 dice' (edit. 1776, vol. iii., p. 212). Wieland in his 'Oberon' gives 

 an account of the quarrel of Oberon and Titania, with consequences 

 varying considerably from those detailed by Shakspere in his ' Mid- 

 summer Night's Dream.' A chann against fairies was tuniiiiy the 

 cloak. The reader who would look further into fairy mythology may 

 consult Percy's ' Reliques of Antient English Poetry; ' Sir Walter Scott's 

 ' Essay on the Fairy Superstition,' in the ' Minstrelsy of the Scottish 

 Border;' Keightley's ' Fairy Mythology,' published in 1828, in which 

 the legends of different countries are collected ; and Jacob Grimm's 

 ' Deutsche Mythologie,' 1835. 



FAITH (Jides, in Latin), means belief or trust in a fact or doctrine, 

 and is more especially used to express the belief of Christians in the 

 tenets of their religion, and also by figure to mean that religion itself. 

 The great divisions of Christianity, the Roman, the Greek, the Reformed 

 or Calvinist, the Episcopal English, the Independents, and the Protestant 

 or Lutheran churches, have each separate confessions of faith, but they 

 all acknowledge the great fundamental points of the Christian faith or 

 religion, namely, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the divinity of 

 Jesus Christ. [CONFESSIONS.] In the earlier ages of the Church the 

 chief controversies of theologians, especially in the East, ran upon 

 metaphysical questions concerning the mysteries of the Trinity, the 

 Incarnation, and the divine nature of the Saviour. In modern times 

 controversy has run more frequently upon moral questions concerning 

 the conduct of men, the requisites of salvation, and the discipline of 

 the Church. Faith, the necessity of which is acknowledged by all 

 Christians, has been viewed in various lights with respect to its efficacy. 

 From the earliest ages the Church has taught that faith, or belief in 

 the Redeemer, joined with good works, was necessary for the justifi- 

 cation of man ; that good works, that is, works acceptable to God, could 

 only be produced by the Spirit of God influencing the heart, but that 

 the human will must co-operate with grace in producing them, though 

 the human will alone is powerless to good unless assisted by divine 

 grace. Still, man being a free agent, the will can call on God, through 

 the merits of the Saviour, for a measure of his grace to assist its own 

 efforts. Thus the co-operation of God and man was held as the means 

 of the justification and salvation of the latter. Luther, however, and 

 Calvin, denied the power of the will to call on God for his grace ; they 

 substituted faith, and faith alone, in the merits of the Redeemer, as the 

 mean') of salvation, by which faith man firmly believes that his sins are 

 at once remitted. But this faith must be sincere, absolute, without a 

 shadow of doubt or distrust ; and as man cannot of himself obtain this, 

 it can only be given to him by inspiration of the Spirit of God. Here 

 the question of faith becomes involved with those of grace and predes- 

 tination. As for our works, both Luther and Calvin look upon them 

 as absolutely worthless for our salvation. Some fanatics, and the 

 Anabaptists among the rest, drew from these premises of the leading 

 reformers some very dangerous consequences, which Luther and Calvin 

 had not anticipated, such as that men might live as profligately as they 

 pleased, and yet, by the inspiration of divine grace, might obtain the 

 faith requisite for their salvation. 



The opinions of Luther and Calvin on the subject of faith and 

 predestination have been since considerably modified by many Protestant 

 divines, who have admitted that the will of man must co-operate in 

 order to obtain the grace necessary for justification. The Roman 

 Catholic church admits the merit of good works and repentance, united 

 with faith, for the purpose of salvation. But then, it requires an 

 absolute faith in all the decisions of its general councils in matters of 

 dogma, without the least liberty of investigation on the part of the 

 laity, and without any doubt, for doubt itself is held to be sinful. The 

 Reformed and Protestant churches, generally speaking, hold faith in 



