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502 FRITH FROEBEL fierlinischen Gesellschaft far dcuteche Sprache und Alter thumslcunde. FRITH, William Powell, an English artist, born at Studley, near Ripon, Yorkshire, in 1819. He is one of the most successful painters of genre of the modern English school, selecting his subjects from Shakespeare, Cervantes, Gold- smith, the " Spectator," and kindred sources. Of late years he has produced some striking representations of every-day life. Perhaps his greatest painting is the "Railway Station" (1862), for which he received 6,000; the painting, with the right of engraving, has since been sold for 23,000. He was elected an honorary member of the imperial academy of fine arts at Vienna in 1869, and of the royal academy of Belgium in 1871. FRITZ, Samuel, a German Roman Catholic missionary, born in Bohemia in 1650, died in Jeberos, Ecuador, in 1730. Being sent as a missionary to the Omagua Indians of South America, he selected as his field of labor the district between the mouths of the Rio Napo and the Rio Negro on the upper Amazon, where in 1688 he had succeeded in attaching five other tribes to the Omaguas, among whom he had established 40 missions. The whole number of Indians to whom the gospel was thus preached was about 40,000. In 1710 the war of the Spanish succession which was oc- cupying Europe seemed to the Portuguese of Pard sufficient reason for making an irruption into the country of the upper Amazon, and of the Indians in the district of Father Fritz more than 20,000 were carried captive to Para, and most of the others fled to their native forests. Fritz made a large map of the river Amazon, which long maintained its authority. FRIULI (Ger. Friaul ; so named from the ancient town of Forum Julii, now Cimdale del Friuli), an old province of N. Italy, for- merly embracing some adjoining districts and divided between Austria and the republic of Venice, and afterward, under the dominion of Austria, forming the circle of Gorz, part of Trieste, and the delegation of Friuli or TJdine in Venetia. It was one of the most important duchies of the Lombard kingdom, and after the overthrow of that monarchy by Charlemagne, and even up to the 15th century, when it was conquered by Venice and its territories were dismembered, it retained a considerable degree of independence. The main or Venetian por- tion was ceded to Austria in 1797, was annexed to the kingdom of Italy in 1806, recovered by Austria in 1814, and in 1866 united to the kingdom of Italy, and is now called the prov- ince of Udine. (See UDINE.) The Friulians are a tribe kindred to the Italians, but their language is largely mixed with Celtic elements. FROBEL. See FEOEBEL. FROBISHER, Sir Martin, an English explorer, born near Doncaster, died in Plymouth, Nov. 7, 1594. After spending 15 years in fruitless endeavors to get up an expedition to find the northwest passage, he at length sailed with three barks from Deptford, June 8, 1576, going as far as Labrador and Greenland, discovering the bay now known by his name, and return- ing in October. Indications of gold were dis- covered, which led to the despatch of a large squadron in the following year ; and the ore brought back being thought valuable, still a third expedition was fitted out with 15 ships in 1578, but the fleet, being scattered by storms on the coast of Greenland, was obliged to re- turn early in the winter without having effect- ed any settlement. Relics of these expeditions were discovered by Hall in 1860-'62. In 1585 Frobisher went with Sir Francis Drake to the West Indies ; and in 1588, on the defeat of the Spanish armada, he was knighted for his services in the action. He afterward commanded a fleet on the Spanish coast, and in 1594 support- ed Henry IV. against the leaguers and Span- iards, and died of a wound received in an attack on Brest. FROBISHER BAY, an arm of the sea in British North America, setting up westward from the Atlantic near the entrance to Davis strait, between Hudson strait and Northumberland inlet. It penetrates the region known as Meta Incognita, is 240 m. long, 30 m. in average breadth, and has rugged mountainous shores. FROEBEL. I. Friedrich, a German educator, founder of the Kindergarten system of schools, born at Oberweissbach, April 21, 1782, died in Marienthal, June 21, 1852. In 1826 he pub- lished the first volume of his work on educa- tion (Die Menschenerziehung). In this, as well as in a weekly journal which he edited subse- quently ( Wochenschrift fur alle Freunde der Menschenbildung), he advocated a full and harmonious development of the human facul- ties. In 1837 he founded a school or Kinder- garten for little children at Blankenburg, Thuringia, which became the model of simi- lar institutions in many parts of Germany and in foreign countries, especially in Switz- erland. The duke of Meiningen gave him the use of his mansion of Marienthal, near Liebenstein, for the establishment of a nor- mal school, where female teachers were instructed. The great freedom which he al- lowed to the children was considered dan- gerous, and his schools were denounced as nur- series of socialism and atheism. His nephew, Karl Froebel (born in 1808), had founded a school for girls at Hamburg in 1850, the pro- gramme for which furnished a pretext to the Prussian government for prohibiting (Aug. 7, 1851) all Kindergarten in which the Froebel system of education prevailed. II. Julius, a German author and traveller, nephew of the preceding, born in Griesheim in 1806. He en- gaged successively in various scientific, literary, and statistical labors, and attended the univer- sities of Jena, Munich, and Berlin. In 1833 he was appointed professor of geography, natural history, and history at Zurich, and was subse- quently professor of mineralogy in the high school of that city. Having become a natu-