FIDELIO, a celebrated opera by Beethoven, and his only one.

FI`DES, the Roman goddess of fidelity, or steadfast adherence to promises and engagements.  Numa built a shrine for her worship and instituted a festival in her honour; in later times a temple containing a statue of her dressed in white adjoined the temple of Jupiter, on the Capitol at Rome.

FIELD, CYRUS WEST, brother of the following, born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts; was first a successful paper manufacturer, but turning his attention to submarine telegraphy was instrumental in establishing cable communication between England and America, and founded the Atlantic Telegraph Company in 1856; on the successful laying of the 1866 cable, since which time communication between the Old and New Worlds has never been interrupted, he was awarded a gold medal and the thanks of the nation; afterwards interested himself in developing the overhead railway in New York (1819-1892).

FIELD, DAVID DUDLEY, an eminent American Jurist, born in Haddam, Connecticut; for 57 years a prominent member of the New York bar, during which time he brought about judiciary reforms, and drew up, under Government directions, political, civil, and penal codes; interested himself in international law, and laboured to bring about an international agreement whereby disputes might be settled by arbitration and war done away with; was President of the London Peace Congress in 1890 (1805-1894).

FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, a plain near Guisnes, where Henry VIII. had an interview with Francis I.; was so called from the magnificence displayed on the occasion on the part of both sovereigns and their retinue.

FIELDING, COPLEY, an eminent English water-colour painter; became secretary and treasurer and finally president of the Society of Water-Colour Painters (1787-1855).

FIELDING, HENRY, a famous novelist, who has been styled by Scott “the father of the English novel,” born at Sharpham Park, Glastonbury, son of General Edmund Fielding and a cousin of LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (q. v.); was educated at Eton and at Leyden, where he graduated in 1728; led for some years a dissipated life in London, and achieved some celebrity by the production of a series of comedies and farces, now deservedly sunk into oblivion; in 1735 he married Miss Charlotte Cradock, and after a brief experiment as a theatre lessee studied law at the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar; literature was, however, his main pursuit, and in 1742 he came to the front with “Joseph Andrews,” a burlesque on Richardson’s “Pamela,” in which his powers as a novelist first showed themselves; in 1743 followed three volumes of “Miscellanies,” including “Jonathan Wild”; after his wife’s death he turned again to law, but in 1745 we find him once more engaged in literature as editor of the True Patriot and afterwards of the Jacobite’s Journal; “Tom Jones,” his masterpiece, appeared in 1749, and three years later “Amelia”;