s position in
the American navy (1801-1870).

FARRAR, FREDERICK WILLIAM, a celebrated divine and educationalist,
born at Bombay; graduated with distinction at King's College, London, and
at Cambridge; was ordained in 1854, and became head-master of Marlborough
College; was for some years a select preacher to Cambridge University,
and held successively the offices of honorary chaplain and
chaplain-in-ordinary to the Queen; became canon of Westminster, rector of
St. Margaret's, archdeacon, chaplain to the House of Commons, and dean of
Canterbury; his many works include the widely-read school-tales, "Eric"
and "St. Winifred's," philological essays, and his vastly popular Lives
of Christ and St. Paul, besides the "Early Days of Christianity,"
"Eternal Hope," and several volumes of sermons; in recent years have
appeared "Darkness and Dawn" (1892) and "Gathering Clouds" (1895); _b_.
1831.

FASCES, a bundle of rods bound round the helve of an axe, and borne
by the lictors before the Roman magistrates in symbol of their authority
at once to scourge and decapitate.

FASCINATION, the power, originally ascribed to serpents, of
spell-binding by the eye.

FASTI, the name given to days among the Romans on which it was
lawful to transact business before the praetor; also the name of books
among the Romans containing calendars of times, seasons, and events.

FASTOLF, SIR JOHN, a distinguished soldier of Henry V.'s reign, who
with Sir John Oldcastle shares the doubtful honour of being the prototype
of Shakespeare's Falstaff, but unlike the dramatist's creation was a
courageous soldier, and won distinction at Agincourt and at the "Battle
of the Herrings"; after engaging with less success in the struggle
against Joan of Arc, he returned to England and spent his closing years
in honoured retirement at Norfolk, his birthplace; he figures in the
"Paston Letters" (1378-1459).

FATA MORGANA, a mirage occasionally observed in the Strait of
Messina, in which, from refraction in the atmosphere, images of objects,
such as men, houses, trees, etc., are seen from the coast under or over
the surface of the water.

FATALISM, the doctrine that all which takes place in life and
history is subject to fate, that is is to say, takes place by inevitable
necessity, that things being as they are, events cannot fall out
otherwise than they do.

FATES, THE, in the Greek mythology the three goddesses who presided
over the destinies of