FIGARO, MARIAGE DE, a play by Beaumarchais, “issued on the stage in Paris 1784, ran its hundred nights; a lean and barren thing; succeeded, as it flattered a pruriency of the time and spoke what all were feeling and longing to speak.”

FIGUIER, LOUIS, a popular writer on scientific subjects, born at Montpellier, where he became professor of Pharmacy in 1846, and subsequently in Paris; his voluminous writings have done much to popularise science, and they comprise a volume on alchemy and one in defence of immortality; many of these have been received with favour in England (1819-1894).

FIJI (125), a group of islands in the S. Pacific Ocean, known also as the Viti Islands; they lie between 15 deg.-22 deg.  S. lat. and 176 deg.  E.-178 deg.  W. long., and are a dependency of Britain; sighted by Tasman in 1643, though first discovered, properly speaking, by Cook in 1773, came first into prominence in 1858, when the sovereignty was offered to England and declined, but in 1874 were taken over and made a crown colony; they number over 200 islands, of which Viti Leon and Vanua Leon are by far the largest; Suva is the capital; sugar, cotton, vanilla, tea, and coffee are cultivated, besides fruit.

FILDES, S. LUKE, artist, born in Lancashire; made his mark first as a designer of woodcuts; contributed to various magazines and illustrated books, notably Dickens’s “Edwin Drood”; his most noted pictures are “Applicants for a Casual Ward,” “The Widower,” and “The Doctor”; he was made an R.A. in 1887; b. 1844.

FILIBUSTER, a name given to buccaneers who infested the Spanish-American coasts or those of the West Indies, but more specially used to designate the followers of Lopez in his Cuban expedition in 1851, and those of Walker in his Nicaraguan in 1855; a name now given to any lawless adventurers who attempt to take forcible possession of a foreign country.

FILIGREE, a name given to a species of goldsmith’s ornamental work fashioned out of fine metallic (usually gold or silver) wire into lace-like patterns; the art is of ancient date, and was skilfully practised by the Etruscans and Egyptians, as well as in Central Asia and India.

FILIOQUE CONTROVERSY, a controversy which ended in the disruption of the Western from the Eastern Church on the question whether the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son or from the Father only, the Western maintaining the former and the Eastern the latter.

FILLAN, ST., a name borne by two Scottish saints:  (1) the son of a Munster prince, lived in the 8th century, was first abbot of the monastery on the Holy Loch in Argyll, and afterwards laboured at Strathfillan, Perthshire; some of his relics are to be seen in the Edinburgh Antiquarian Museum; (2) or Faolan, known as “the leper,” had his church at the end of Loch Earn, Perthshire; a healing well and chair are associated with his name.

FILLMORE, President of the United States from 1850 to 1853.