242 



FOUNDLING FOUQUIER-TINVILLE. 



FOUNDLING ; a child abandoned by Its parents, 

 and found by strangers. Though infanticide was 

 not punished among the ancient nations, yet natural 

 feeling would prompt parents rather to expose their 

 offspring, and leave their fate to accident. They 

 usually selected places which were much frequented, 

 where there was a greater chance of the child being 

 saved. In Athens and Home, they were exposed in 

 particular places. In the fourth century, the emper- 

 ors Valentinian, Valerius, and Gratian prohibited this 

 cruel practice, which is at present a crime by the 

 laws of all civilized nations. Even in ancient times, 

 the state made provision for the preservation of 

 exposed children ; but foundling hospitals are an 

 institution of modern times. 



The foundling hospital in Paris was established in 

 1620, and, up to 1807, had received 464,628 chil- 

 dren. In France, the number of foundlings, in 1784, 

 was 40,000; in 1798, more than 51,000, and, in 

 1822, 138,500. (See the prize essay of Benoiston 

 de Chateauneuf, Considerations sur les Enfants- 

 Trouves dans les Principaux Etats de VEurope, 

 1824.) According to the author, the number of 

 foundlings has increased, in the last forty years, in 

 almost all European countries, but in the greatest 

 proportion in France. Foundling hospitals diminish 

 not only the exposing of children, but also render 

 infanticide and intentional abortion less frequent. In 

 many cases, the children are better nursed and edu- 

 cated than they would be at home by bad parents 

 and bad nurses. The objection that foundling hos- 

 pitals contribute to the corruption of morals is suffi- 

 ciently answered by the preservation of so many 

 unfortunate beings from destruction. The objection 

 formerly drawn from the great mortality in found- 

 ling hospitals, has been removed in a great degree 

 by improvements in the regulation of these establish- 

 ments, particularly by sending the children into the 

 country to be nursed under proper superintendence. 



FOUNT, or FONT, among printers. &c. ; a set of 

 types, sorted for use, that includes running letters, 

 large and small capitals, single letters, double letters, 

 points, commas, lines, numerals, &c. ; as a fount of 

 English, of Pica, Bourgeois, &c. A fount of 100,000 

 characters, which is a common fount, would contain 

 5000 types of a, 3000 of e, 11, 000 of e, 6000 of i, 

 3000 of m, and about 30 or 40 of k, x, y, and z. 

 But this is only to be understood of the lower-case 

 types ; those of the upper case having other propor- 

 tions, which we need not here enumerate. 



FOUNTAIN, or ARTIFICIAL FOUNTAIN, in 

 hydraulics ; a machine or contrivance by which 

 water is violently spouted or darted up ; called also 

 a jet d'eau. There are various kinds of artificial 

 fountains, but all formed by a pressure, of one sort 

 or another, upon the water ; viz., either the pressure 

 or weight of a head of water, or the pressure arising 

 from the spring and elasticity of the air, &c. When 

 these are formed by the pressure of a head of water, 

 or any other fluid of the same kind with the foun- 

 tain, or jet, then will this spout up nearly to the same 

 height as that head, abating only a little for the resis- 

 tance of the air, with that of the adjutage, &c., in 

 the fluid rushing through; but, when the fountain is 

 produced by any other force than the pressure of a 

 column of the same fluid witli itself, it will rise to 

 such a height as is nearly equal to the altitude of a 

 column of the same fluid, whose pressure is equal to 

 the given force that produces the fountain. In 

 Greece, every principal town had public fountains or 

 conduits, some of which were of handsome design 

 and of beautiful execution. In the city of Megara, 

 in Achaia, there was a public fountain established 

 by Theagenes, which was celebrated for its grandeur 

 and magnificence. The Pirene, a fountain at Cor- 



inth, was encircled by an enclosure of white marble, 

 which was sculptured into various grottoes, from 

 which the water ran into a splendid basin of the 

 same material. Another fountain in Corinth, which 

 was called Lerna, was encircled by a beautiful por- 

 tico, under which were seats for the public to sit 

 upon during the extreme heats of summer, to enjoy 

 the cool air from the falling waters. In the sacred 

 wood of /Esculapius at Epidaurus, there was a 

 fountain that Pausanias cites as remarkable for the 

 beauty of its decorations. At Messina there were 

 also two elegant fountains, one called Arsinoe, 

 and the other Clepsydra. Pausanias also alludes to 

 several other fountains in various parts of Greece, 

 celebrated for the grandeur and beauty of their archi- 

 tectural and sculptural decorations. 



The ancient fondness for fountains still exists in 

 Italy and the East. The French are celebrated 

 for their fountains, but Italy, more particularly 

 Rome, is still more so. The fountains of Paris and 

 of the Tuileries, of the orangery at Versailles, 

 at St Cloud, and other places in the neighbour- 

 hood, are splendid structures. The principal 

 and most admired fountains at or near Rome 

 are those in front of St Peter's, of the Villa 

 Aldobrandini at Frascati, of the Termini, of mount 

 Janiculum, of the gardens of the Belvedere, in the 

 Vatican, of the Villa Borghese, which has also in the 

 audience chamber a splendid fountain of silver, five 

 Roman palms in height, ornamented with superb 

 vases and flowers ; the fountains of Trevi, the three 

 fountains of St Paul, of the Acqua Acetosa, and 

 many others described in the numerous works on 

 that ancient city. Sir Henry Wotton describes, in 

 his Elements of Architecture, a fountain by Michael 

 Angelo, in the figure of a sturdy woman wringing a 

 bundle of clothes, from whence the water issues that 

 supplies the basin. 



FOUQUE, HENRY AUGUSTUS, baron de la Motte, 

 a distinguished Prussian general in the seven years' 

 war, born in 1698, was descended from an old Nor- 

 man family, which had fled, on account of religious 

 persecutions, to the Hague. Fouque possessed the 

 confidence of Frederic the Great ; and the Memoires 

 du Baron de la Motte Fouque (2 vols., Berlin, 1788, 

 by Buttner, the secretary of Fouque), which contain 

 his correspondence with Frederic the Great, are 

 therefore highly interesting. His nephew has writ- 

 ten his life (Berlin, 1825), from family papers. 

 General Fouque died May 2, 1774. The modern 

 German writer, the Baron de la Motte Fouque', is 

 nephew to this general. 



FOUQUIER-TINVILLE, ANTHONY QUENTIN, 

 notorious for his ferocious cruelty in the first French 

 revolution, was born at Herouelles, near St Quentin, 

 in 1747. His excesses obliged him to sell the place 

 of a procureur au Chdtelet (attorney hi the court of 

 this name), which he had purchased, and to declare 

 himself insolvent. As a member of the revolutionary 

 tribunal, he distinguished himself by his alacrity 

 in pronouncing the verdict of guilty, and attracted the 

 attention of Robespierre, who gave him the office of 

 public accuser before this tribunal. The victims 

 now became numberless. Fouquier drew up the 

 scandalous articles of accusation against the queen 

 Marie Antoinette. His thirst for blood seems to 

 have been increased by gratification, until it became 

 a real insanity. He proposed the execution of Robe- 

 spierre and all the members of the revolutionary tri- 

 bunal, 9th Thermidor, 1794, was himself removed on 

 the 14th Thermidor (Aug. 1), 1794, and arrested. 

 He died May 7, 1795, under the guillotine, in a 

 cowardly manner, and as infamously as he had lived. 

 There does not appear to be a trait in the life of this 

 monster, which can entitle his crimes to the same 



