Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/375

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
FEL
349
FEL

People," &c. It was this pamphlet which led to his acquaintance with the once-noted and eccentric Baron Maseres. A general agreement of views cemented the acquaintance thus early commenced, and when the baron died in 1824, he bequeathed more than £100,000 to Dr. Fellowes. This addition of fortune was freely employed in charity and beneficence. The London university, and the hospital in Gower Street, may be mentioned among other similar institutions, as having derived assistance from his liberality. Attended by Dr. Elliotson in a dangerous illness, he marked his sense of his physician's assiduity and care by founding two annual prizes—known as the Fellowes' gold medals—to be given to the two chief proficients in clinical medicine, among the students of University college, of which Dr. Elliotson was then a professor. Among his other practical achievements, it is recorded that to his exertions was chiefly due the extension of the space in the Regent's Park devoted to the public use. In 1836 Dr. Fellowes published his latest work of any elaborateness, "The Religion of the Universe," an exposition of deistical principles, but more remarkable for its quasi-devotional tone than for ratiocination, demonstrative or polemical. Dr. Fellowes adhered to these opinions till his death on the 6th of February, 1847, after a short illness.—F. E.

FELLOWS, Sir Charles, a distinguished archæological discoverer, was born at Nottingham in August, 1799, the eleventh of the fourteen children of John Fellows, Esq , banker, whose family had for many generations held the same property in that town. Sir Charles was educated at a private school in Nottingham, and evinced from an early age the qualities conspicuous in the explorer of ancient Lycia—quick perception and artistic talent. At the age of fourteen he made, in the course of an excursion to Newstead Abbey, sketches of Lord Byron's ancestral seat, which five-and-twenty years afterwards were engraved on the title-page of Moore's Life of the poet. During the ensuing six years he travelled through all parts of England and Scotland, sketching as he went. In 1820 he removed to London, and entered the best literary and scientific society of the day, joining many of the institutions of which he was a member. The name of Charles Fellows figures among those of the earliest members of the British Association. In 1827 he travelled in Switzerland; and. on the 25th of July in that year, he performed the ascent of Mont Blanc, then a rare achievement. An elegant volume of unpublished sketches, the first taken of that icy region, remains as a memorial of this adventurous exploration. It is to him that subsequent ascenders of Mont Blanc have owed the new route by the opposite side of the grand plateau, which ever since has been substituted for the previous one. In 1832, the year in which he lost his mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, he enlarged the range of his excursions; and for the next ten years his life was chiefly one of travel in Italy, Greece, and the Levant. The sketches which he made during this period formed a chief attraction of the Illustrated Childe Harold, published by Mr. Murray. In 1838 he made a still more extended expedition in the interior of Asia Minor. In the course of this tour he was, to quote his own account, "so struck by the beauty and peculiarity of the architectural remains on the coast of the province of Lycia, that" he "determined, if possible, to penetrate into the interior of the country." Prior writers on the geography and archæology of Lycia, had pointed attention to the fact that the valley of the Xanthus had not been visited by modern explorers, and it was to this region that Sir Charles, then Mr. Fellows, devoted the efforts which were crowned with triumphant success. Commencing his researches at Patara, at the mouth of the river, he discovered some nine miles higher up the ruins of Xanthus, the ancient capital of Lycia, studded with the most curious architectural and sculptural remains, the date of the construction of several of which preceded by a hundred years that of the Parthenon. Higher up the river still, he discovered another ancient city, which he was enabled by inscriptions to identify as the ancient Tlos; and other interesting ruins he saw and heard of in the mountains, but he was then unable to protract his residence in the country. Returning to England, he published in 1839 his "Journal of an Excursion in Asia Minor," which excited the liveliest interest, and not among archæologists solely. Finding that books threw no light upon the region which he had visited, he resolved to return to Lycia and re-explore its geography and archæology. When undertaking this second expedition, he was stimulated by the hope that the Turkish government would permit him to carry away some of the more interesting objects of art discovered and discoverable in the valley of the Xanthus—Lord Palmerston, who was then foreign secretary, having directed Lord Ponsonby, the English ambassador at Constantinople, to make an application to that effect to the Porte. During his second Lycian expedition. Sir Charles Fellows was enabled to discover thirteen additional cities, but he was disappointed in his expectation that he would be allowed to bring home any specimens of the archæological treasures of Lycia; the government of the sultan making some technical objections to the application as worded by the British minister. Sir Charles accordingly returned again to England, and published in 1841 a second journal, which proved even more successful than its predecessor. In the autumn of 1841 the trustees of the British museum having received information that the proper firman, authorizing the removal of ancient works of Lycian art, was in the hands of the British consul at Smyrna, Sir Charles set out once more for the east, liberally offering to defray his own expenses, and only stipulating for a free passage to and fro in one of her majesty's vessels. Arrived at Smyrna, he found that the firman was non-extant, and it was only procured by his personal exertions at Constantinople, whither he repaired. Other annoyances had to be suffered and short-comings tolerated; and when he landed, near the mouth of the Xanthus, he found himself, with his working party of fifteen men, in a wilderness. "High sandhills rose for miles around us, and no signs of life were visible but the footsteps of the wolves and jackals." It took the expedition four days to transport their stores to the vicinity of the city of Xanthus, a distance of nine miles, by towing a boat against a stream, which Sir Charles describes as one of the most powerful, wild, and unmanageable he ever saw. After considerable toil in excavating and displacing some of the most curious relics of Lycian antiquity, their removal was impeded by new official obstacles, which it required both boldness and energy to surmount. After his return to England in the year which followed his departure from it. Sir Charles had the satisfaction of witnessing the arrival of a number of cases containing the precious remains which formed the nucleus of the interesting Xanthian collection, now among the most valuable of the archæological contents of the British museum. Sir Charles was formally thanked by the trustees of the British museum for his disinterested exertions. In 1845, after the Xanthian collection had been further enriched by the results of another expedition made under his superintendence, he received the honour of knighthood in recognition of his services to archæology. Besides the two journals already mentioned, Sir Charles published in 1843 an opuscule, entitled "The Xanthian Marbles: their acquisition and transmission to England;" and to it we owe many of the facts contained in the present sketch. All three works, with other interesting archæological matter, were republished in 1852, and in compendious one-volume form, with the title, "Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, more particularly in the province of Lycia." In 1855 appeared his ingenious work, the "Coins of Ancient Lycia before the reign of Alexander, with an essay on the relative dates of the Lycian monuments in the British Museum." Sir Charles died 8th November, 1862.—F. E.

FELLTHAM, Owen, was born about the year 1608, probably at Babram or Babraham in Cambridgeshire, of which his father, who was of a Suffolk family, seems to have been the rector. It is the fashion of biographers to say that nothing whatever is known about the events of his life; yet a few interesting and authentic particulars may be gleaned on a careful examination of his works, which have not hitherto been recorded. The first century of his "Resolves" (that is, solutions of difficult questions in morals and philosophy) was composed when he was only eighteen; no copy of the first edition is known to have been preserved, but the second edition bears the date, 1628. It is a book of essays, suggested probably by those of Lord Bacon. In 1636 or 1637 the work was republished in an enlarged form, containing now two centuries of "Resolves;" the first consisting of a hundred, the second of eighty-five essays. Some of these may still be considered as pleasant and profitable reading. The work was dedicated by Felltham to the countess dowager of Thomond, under whose roof, he says, most of them were composed. He lived for many years with the Thomond family, but in what precise capacity we are not informed. He was a zealous royalist and churchman, and did not scruple to adopt, when speaking of his king, that extravagant and profane language, of