a journal entitled Le Modéruteur. He was resident at Lyons during the revolutionary atrocities—he was proscribed, and had a narrow escape of his life. In 1795, on the formation of the Institute, we find Fontanes a member of the class of literature and fine arts. He soon after, however, is driven by the circumstances of France to seek a refuge in England, and he and Chateaubriand are together in London, making out among booksellers such support as they can. When things become somewhat settled in France, we find them in 1799, with La Harpe and others, engaged in the redaction of the Mercure. In 1802 Fontanes was advanced to the corps legislatif, and on the formation of the legion of honour, was one of its first members. In 1814 he became a member of the chamber of peers. He was one of the judges who tried Ney, and he voted against his death. In 1821 Fontanes was attacked with apoplexy. His health had been already broken down, when the death of an adopted son, killed in a duel, occurred: his own soon followed. The evening before his death, a translation of Pope's Essay on Man—one of his earliest works, and which he had from time to time altered and improved—appeared in a new edition. The collected works of Fontanes, which are by no means devoid of interest, have been published, edited by Saint Beuve, Paris, 1839.—J. A., D.
FONTANINI, Giusto, born at San Daniele, a castle in Friuli in 1666. He entered the jesuits' college at Gorizia, and studied for the church. Anxious to acquaint himself with the higher branches of philosophy, he visited the universities of Venice and Padua, and there he published a dissertation entitled "Le Masnade e gli altri servi presso i Longobardi." A great admirer of Francesco Redi, he successfully imitated his style. Fontanini was the friend of Apostolo Zeno, one of the great scholars of the age, by whom he was highly esteemed. Having espoused the cause of the temporal power of the church, then threatened by Austria at Comacchio, Fontanini had the honour to oppose the celebrated Ludovico Muratori, who had embraced the contrary opinion on behalf of the house of Este. Fontanini left many works, enumerated at length by Tipaldo, and a history of the literature of Friuli. He died of apoplexy on the 17th of April, 1736.—A. C. M.
FONTE MODERATA. See Pozzo.
FONTE or FUENTES. See Fuentes.
FONTENAY, Jeanne Marie Ignace Thérèse de Cabarrus, Marquise de, played an important part in the closing scenes of the French revolutionary drama, and was the daughter of François, count de Cabarrus, originally a Spanish banker, who was finance minister to successive kings of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte included. Born at Saragossa in 1772, and early celebrated for her wit, grace, and beauty, she was, at seventeen, the victim of a marriage de convenance with M. Devin, marquis de Fontenay, who filled a respectable post in connection with the parliament of Paris. The match was not a happy one, and her fortune was dissipated by her husband. On her marriage, coincident as it was in date with the breaking out of the French revolution, she became the leader of a social circle, of which Lafayette and other prominent constitutionalists were members. At the approach of the Reign of Terror, a citoyenne of madame de Fontenay's political and social connections naturally felt herself in danger, and, unhappy in the husband who had impoverished her, she resolved to take refuge in Spain with her father. On her way thither she visited Bourdeaux, where an uncle carried on business, and the vigilant and suspicious revolutionary authorities of the city threw her into prison, seemingly on account of some informality in her papers. The ultra-revolutionary and terrorist Tallien was then in Bourdeaux, on a mission to extirpate the moderate and counter-revolutionary parties, and the prisons of the city were crowded. Madame de Fontenay wrote to the all-powerful tribune to implore the exertion of his influence on her behalf. Tallien, who had probably heard of her beauty and fascinations, came, saw, and was conquered. From that moment he was a changed man. To the connection which immediately sprang up between the two, many of the political prisoners of Bourdeaux owed their liberation, and when she followed her lover to Paris, still more important consequences were its results. Thrown into prison after her arrival in the French metropolis, she made the acquaintance of Josephine de Beauharnais, afterwards the wife of the first Napoleon, and her pressing letters to Tallien served to stimulate him to attempt, successfully as it proved, the overthrow of Robespierre, which closed the Reign of Terror. In the period which immediately followed this counter-revolution of the 9th of Thermidor, Madame Tallien, as she had now become nominally—for the marquis de Fontenay was still alive—was the leader of the glittering, voluptuous, and luxurious social movement which succeeded the horrors of the Reign of Terror. Her salon was the favourite haunt of the jeunesse dorée of the new régime, and it was there that Napoleon, who owed much at that early stage of his career to her patronage, first saw Josephine. Her marriage to the gloomy Tallien proved no happier than its predecessor. Her husband accompanied Napoleon to Egypt. In 1802 she procured a divorce from Tallien—an easy matter in those days—and married the count de Caraman, afterwards prince de Chimay. Under the consulship and the empire the Tuileries were closed to her; but some sort of amicable, though private communication, was kept up by Napoleon with his early friend. With the Restoration, she opened a beautiful house in the Rue de Babylone, but it was foreigners chiefly who accepted her brilliant hospitality. Neither the court nor the world of fashion recognized her. Her matrimonial status was doubtful; the Romish theologians, to whom she applied in 1814, having decided that she was still madame de Fontenay. Latterly, she held a little court of her own at Chimay, and the mode in which she spent her declining years presented an edifying contrast to the irregularities of much of her previous career. She died at Chimay on the 15th of January, 1855. After her death, a curious lawsuit arose between those of her children born during Tallien's absence in Egypt and those who were the issue of her marriage with the prince de Chimay; in its forensic conduct Berryer and Dupin were prominent. Of the many French notices of this celebrated woman, the best is that contributed by M. Villenave to the new edition of Michaud's Biographie Universelle.—F. E.
FONTENELLE, Bernard le Bovier de, was born at Rouen on the 11th of February, 1657, and died at Paris on the 9th of January, 1757. His mother, Martha Corneille, was the sister of the Great Corneille. Fontenelle was educated at the jesuits' college, was a brilliant student, and gained at thirteen the prize for a Latin poem. His father, who was a barrister, wished his son to follow the same profession. The son consented, but the first time he had to plead his client was defeated. He therefore determined to abandon the law for ever, and to follow his natural bent for literature. With this purpose he went to Paris, and quickly ascended to a distinguished position. Tempted by the glory of his uncle, Pierre Corneille, and his intercourse with another uncle, Thomas Corneille, he first tried his hand at a tragedy. Comedies, operas, pastoral poems, had their turn. But Fontenelle had little imagination. As a poet, therefore, he signally failed. In prose he was more successful. His dialogues on the "Plurality of the Worlds" appeared in 1686. This work attempted to popularize astronomical discoveries; and, though astronomy has long marched beyond, it is still the best book of its kind. Fontenelle took part in one of those useless quarrels which rise up in literature from time to time. In the hot debate on the comparative merits of the ancients and the moderns, he was the champion of the latter. From 1699 till 1741 he held the situation of perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and in this capacity delivered numerous éloges. A French éloge is a form of oratory which, fortunately for itself, English literature knows nothing of. A discourse, frigid, bombastic, and false, on every deceased member of a learned body indiscriminately—that is a French éloge, and Fontenelle gave it no new feature. More, however, than as an author, either in prose or in verse, was Fontenelle conspicuous in those conversational circles in which Frenchmen so ardently delight, and are so well fitted to shine. There has been a tendency lately to depreciate Fontenelle, and to represent him as wholly heartless. It is gravely asserted that he had never either laughed or wept. But a man may love tranquillity, abhor the polemical, shun all violent emotions, and yet not be without affection. Fontenelle speaks with tenderness of his relations with Vertot, Varignon, and the abbe de Saint Pierre, when he first came to Paris, and the last of these was too good a man to make a friend of one incapable of friendship. Along with Fontenelle's natural equanimity, there was, perhaps, an affectation of caring more for an absolutely untroubled existence than he really cared. What he said about himself jocularly, has too readily been taken as a confession of faith. The two axioms which he professed to take as guides of his conduct, and by the
