from the wholesale
threatened massacre of the race in Persia at the instigation of Haman:
OF TABERNACLES, a festival of eight days in memory of the wandering
tentlife of the people in the wilderness, observed by the people dwelling
in bowers made of branches erected on the streets or the roofs of the
house; it was the Feast of Ingathering as well.

FEBRUARY, the second month of the year, was added along with January
by Numa to the end of the original Roman year of 10 months; derived its
name from a festival offered annually on the 15th day to Februus, an
ancient Italian god of the nether world; was assigned its present
position in the calendar by Julius Caesar, who also introduced the
intercalary day for leap-year.

FECAMP (13), a seaport in the dep. of Seine-Inferieure, 25 m. NE. of
Havre; has a fine Gothic Benedictine church, a harbour and lighthouse,
hardware and textile factories; fishing and sugar refineries also
flourish; exports the celebrated Benedictine liqueurs.

FECHNER, GUSTAV THEODOR, physicist and psychophysicist, born at
Gross-Saerchen, in Lower Lusatia; became professor of Physics in Leipzig,
but afterwards devoted himself to psychology; laid the foundations of the
science of psychophysics in his "Elements of Pyschophysics"; wrote
besides on the theory of colour and galvanism, as well as poems and
essays (1801-1887).

FECHTER, CHARLES ALBERT, a famous actor, born in London, his father
of German extraction and his mother English; made his _debut_ in Paris at
the age of 17; after a tour through the European capitals established
himself in London as the lessee of the Lyceum Theatre in 1863; became
celebrated for his original impersonations of Hamlet and Othello; removed
to America in 1870, where he died (1824-1879).

FECIALES, a college of functionaries in ancient Rome whose duty it
was to make proclamation of peace and war, and confirm treaties.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, in modern parlance is the political system which
a number of independent and sovereign States adopt when they join
together for purposes of domestic and especially International policy;
local government is freely left with the individual States, and only in
the matter of chiefly foreign relations is the central government
paramount, but the degree of freedom which each State enjoys is a matter
of arrangement when the contract is formed, and the powers vested in the
central authority may only be permitted to work through the l