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FLORIN FLOWERS. 



FLORIN is sometimes used for a coin, and some- 

 times for a money of account. The florin coin is of 

 different values. The gold florins are most of them 

 of a coarse alloy, some of them not exceeding thir- 

 u en or fourteen carats, and none of them seventeen 

 and a half. As to silver florins, those of Holland 

 are worth about Is. 8d. See Coin. 



FLORIS, FRANCIS, a painter, whose family name 

 was Vriendt, was born at Antwerp in 1520. He 

 was called by his contemporaries the Raphael of 

 Flanders. He studied the art of painting- under 

 Lombard, at Liege. The pupil soon surpassed his 

 toaster. After his return to Antwerp, Floris estab- 

 lished a school for painters in that city. He after- 

 wards went to Italy, where his taste, particularly in 

 design, was improved by the study of the master- 

 pieces of Michael Angelo ; but he never equalled 

 the grace and purity of form which distinguished 

 the Florentine and Roman masters. His style was 

 grand.; but his colouring and his figures are re- 

 proached with dryness and stiffness. After his re- 

 turn to his native country, he was engaged to execute 

 important paintings, and soon acquired a considerable 

 fortune, which he squandered by his excesses. He 

 boasted of being the boldest drinker of his time, 

 and, to sustain his reputation, drank on the most 

 extravagant wagers. He composed with remarka- 

 ble ease. His intemperance brought him to an early 

 grave. Most of his works, and, in particular, his 

 triumphal arches, made on the occasion of the entry 

 of Charles V. and Philip II. into Antwerp, and his 

 twelve labours of Hercules, have often been engraved 

 by skilful artists. His paintings are to be met with 

 in Flanders, Holland, Spain, Paris, Vienna, and 

 Dresden. He died in 1570. Few artists have had 

 so many disciples. He had more than 120, amongst 

 whom were his two sons ; one of whom, Francis 

 Floris, has some celebrity as a painter. 



FLORUS, Lucius ANN^EUS ; a Roman historian, 

 was probably a native of Spain or Gaul. He lived 

 in the beginning of the second century after Christ, i 

 and wrote an abridgment (epitome) of Roman history 

 in four books, from the foundation of the city to the 

 first time of closing the temple of Janus, in the reign 

 of Augustus. His style is florid, and not sufficiently 

 simple for history. Some are of opinion that the 

 work of Florus belongs to the age of Augustus, but 

 that it has come down to us with interpolations in 

 facts and language. The best edition is that of 

 Duker (Leyden, 1744); later ones are by Fischer 

 (1760), and Titze (1819). 



FLOS, in chemistry; the most subtile parts of 

 bodies, separated from the more gross parts by sub- 

 limation, in a dry form. 



FLOTSAM, JETSAM, and LAGAN, in law. 

 Flotsam is when a ship is sunk or cast away, and 

 the goods float on the sea ; jetsam is when a ship is 

 in danger of being sunk, and, to lighten the ship, 

 the goods are thrown overboard, and the ship, not- 

 withstanding, perishes ; and lagan is when the goods 

 so cast into the sea are so heavy that they sink to the 

 bottom, and therefore the mariners fasten to them a 

 buoy or cork, or such other thing as will not sink, 

 to enable them to find them again. 



FLOURISH ; an appellation sometimes given to 

 the decorative notes which a singer or instrumental 

 performer adds to a passage, with the double view 

 of heightening the effect of the composition, and of 

 displaying his own flexibility of voice or finger. 

 There is nothing of which a sensible performer 

 will be more cautious than of the introduction of 

 flourishes, because he is never so much in danger of 

 mistaking, as when he attempts to improve his au- 

 thor's ideas. With performers of little taste, plain 

 passages are indiscriminate invitations to ornament ; 



and too frequently in the flourish, the beauty of a 

 studied simplicity is at once overlooked and de- 

 stroyed. Auditors who are fonder of execution than 

 of expression, and more alive to flutter than to senti- 

 ment, applaud these sacrifices to vanity ; but those 

 who prefer nature to affectation, and listen in order 

 to feel, know exactly how to value such performers. 



FLOWER-CLOCK is a contrivance for measuring 

 time by means of flowers Flowers, it is wefi 

 known, open and shut according to the state of the 

 atmosphere, or according to the length of the day. 

 Some, however, open at certain hours of the day, 

 as, for instance, early in the morning or in the 

 evening, and thus afford the means of indicating the 

 time. If, for instance, flowers are chosen which 

 regularly open one hour, and then shut again, and 

 others, that open and shut the next hour, are placed 

 beside the former, and so on until sunset, we have a 

 time-piece of flowers. 



FLOWER DE L1S, or FLOWER DE LUCE, in 

 heraldry ; a bearing representing the lily, called the 

 queen of flowers, and the true hieroglyphic of royal 

 majesty; but of late it is become more common, 

 being borne in some coats one, in others three, in 

 others five, and in some semee, or spread all over the 

 escutcheon in great numbers. 



FLOWERS, ARTIFICIAL; a considerable article 

 of French manufacture. They were first made at 

 Sienna, in Tuscany ; and Florence, Milan, Venice, and 

 other towns in Italy, were for a long time the only 

 places where this manufacture flourished. At present, 

 the best artificial flowers are made at Paris, Lyons, 

 Bourdeaux, Rouen, Nantes, and Marseilles, with 

 astonishing skill and taste, and exact imitation of 

 nature. They are worn in the hair, in bonnets, &c. 

 In former times, in the height of the fashionable rage 

 for porcelain, flowers of all kinds were made of 

 porcelain, and the odour of the real flowers imitated 

 by means of perfumes j but they are now little 

 esteemed. 



FLOWERS, in chemistry ; a term formerly ap- 

 plied to a variety of substances procured by sublima- 

 tion, in the form of slightly cohering powder ; hence, 

 in all old books, we find mention made of the flowers 

 of antimony, arsenic, zinc, and bismuth, which are 

 the sublimed oxides of these metals, either pure 

 or combined with a small quantity of sulphur ; we 

 have also still in use, though not generally, the terms 

 flowers of sulphur, benzoin, &c. 



FLOWERS, LANGUAGE OF. In the youthful and 

 imaginative period of nations, flowers, as well as 

 colours, and other objects of sense, often have parti- 

 cular symbolical significations attached to them. Who 

 does not know that the rose is the flower of Venus, 

 the flower of love ? Who does not remember the sad 

 passage of Shakspeare, where rosemary, the flower 

 of widows and of mourning for the departed, is so 

 happily introduced ? In Asia, where the imagination 

 is livelier and less checked by intellectual cultivation 

 than in Europe, and where the art of writing is not 

 generally practised, the language of flowers has 

 acquired a more distinct character. The signification 

 of flowers has become more distinctly fixed, and the 

 art of combining them, so as to express not only a 

 single idea, but connected thoughts, has grown up. 

 The seclusion of women in the East, and their igno- 

 rance of writing, * connected with their lively ima- 

 gination, which personifies every object, must be 

 considered as the chief causes of the invention of this 



* Doctor Madden, in big Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nu- 

 bia, and Palestine (London, 1828, Philad., 1830), says, "In 

 all my travels, I only met one woman who could read and 

 write, and tbat was in Datnietta : she was a Levantine 

 Christian, and her peculiar talent was looked upon as some- 

 thing superhuman." 



