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Rh de wieg tot in het graf (“Three Men from the Cradle to the Grave,” 1861), in which he propounded radical and humanitarian views. The songs of Julius Vuylsteke (1836–1903) are full of liberal and patriotic ardour; but his later life was devoted to politics rather than literature. He had been the leading spirit of a students’ association at Ghent for the propagation of “flamingant” views, and the “Willemsfonds” owed much of its success to his energetic co-operation. His Uit het studenten leven appeared in 1868, and his poems were collected in 1881. The poems of Mme van Ackere (1803–1884), née Maria Doolaeghe, were modelled on Dutch originals. Joanna Courtmans (1811–1890), née Berchmans, owed her fame rather to her tales than her poems; she was above all a moralist, and her fifty tales are sermons on economy and the practical virtues. Other poets were (q.v.), author of comedies, opera libretti and some admirable songs; the abbé Guido Gezelle (1830–1899), who wrote religious and patriotic poems in the dialect of West Flanders; Lodewijk de Koninck (b. 1838), who attempted a great epic subject in Menschdon Verlost (1872); J. M. Dautzenberg (1808–1869), author of a volume of charming Volksliederen. The best of Dautzenberg’s work is contained in the posthumous volume of 1869, published by his son-in-law, Frans de Cort (1834–1878), who was himself a song-writer, and translated songs from Burns, from Jasmin and from the German. The Makamen en Ghazelen (1866), adapted from Rückert’s version of Hariri, and other volumes by “Jan Ferguut” (J. A. van Droogenbroeck, b. 1835) show a growing preoccupation with form, and with the work of Theodoor Antheunis (b. 1840), they prepare the way for the ingenious and careful workmanship of the younger school of poets, of whom Charles Polydore de Mont is the leader. He was born at Wambeke in Brabant in 1857, and became professor in the academy of the fine arts at Antwerp. He introduced something of the ideas and methods of contemporary French writers into Flemish verse; and explained his theories in 1898 in an Inleiding tot de Poëzie. Among Pol de Mont’s numerous volumes of verse dating from 1877 onwards are Claribella (1893), and Iris (1894), which contains amongst other things a curious “Uit de Legende van Jeschoea-ben-Jossef,” a version of the gospel story from a Jewish peasant.

Mention should also be made of the history of Ghent (Gent van den vroegsten Tijd tot heden, 1882–1889) of Frans de Potter (b. 1834), and of the art criticisms of Max Rooses (b. 1839), curator of the Plantin museum at Antwerp, and of Julius Sabbe (b. 1846).

See Ida van Düringsfeld, ''Von der Schelde bis zur Maas. Das'' geistige Leben der Vlamingen (Leipzig, 3 vols., 1861); J. Stecher, Histoire de la littérature néerlandaise en Belgique (1886); Geschiedenis der Vlaamsche Letterkunde van het jaar 1830 tot heden (1899), by Theodoor Coopman and L. Scharpé; A. de Koninck, Bibliographie nationale (3 vols., 1886–1897); and Histoire politique et littéraire du mouvement flamand (1894), by Paul Hamelius. The Vlaamsche Bibliographie, issued by the Flemish Academy of Ghent, by Frans de Potter, contains a list of publications between 1830 and 1890; and there is a good deal of information in the excellent Biographisch woordenboeck der Noord- en Zuid- Nederlandsche Letterkunde (1878) of Dr W. J. A. Huberts and others.

FLENSBURG (Danish, Flensborg), a seaport of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, at the head of the Flensburg Fjord, 20 m. N.W. from Schleswig, at the junction of the main line Altona-Vamdrup (Denmark), with branches to Kiel and Glücksburg. Pop. (1905) 48,922. The principal public buildings are the Nikolai Kirche (built 1390, restored 1894), with a spire 295 ft. high; the Marienkirche, also a medieval church, with a lofty tower; the law courts; the theatre and the exchange. There are two gymnasia, schools of marine engineering, navigation, wood-carving and agriculture. The cemetery contains the remains of the Danish soldiers who fell at the battle of Idstedt (25th of July 1850), but the colossal Lion monument, erected by the Danes to commemorate their victory, was removed to Berlin in 1864. Flensburg is a busy centre of trade and industry, and is the most important town in what was formerly the duchy of Schleswig. It possesses excellent wharves, does a large import trade in coal, and has shipbuilding yards, breweries, distilleries, cloth and paper factories, glass-works, copper-works, soap-works and rice mills. Its former extensive trade with the West Indies has lately suffered owing to the enormous development of the North Sea ports, but it is still largely engaged in the Greenland whale and the oyster fisheries.

Flensburg was probably founded in the 12th century. It attained municipal privileges in 1284, was frequently pillaged by the Swedes after 1643, and in 1848 became the capital, under Danish rule, of Schleswig.

See Holdt, Flensburg früher und jetzt (1884).

FLERS, a manufacturing town of north-western France, in the arrondissement of Domfront, and department of Orne, on the Vère, 41 m. S. of Caen on the railway to Laval. Pop. (1906) 11,188. A modern church in the Romanesque style and a restored château of the 15th century are its principal buildings. There is a tribunal of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a communal college and a branch of the Bank of France. Flers is the centre of a cotton and linen-manufacturing region which includes the towns of Condé-sur-Noireau and La Ferté-Macé. Manufactures are very important, and include, besides cotton and linen fabrics, of which the annual value is about £1,500,000, drugs and chemicals; there are large brick and tile works, flour mills and dyeworks.

FLETA, a treatise, with the sub-title seu Commentarius juris Anglicani, on the common law of England. It appears, from internal evidence, to have been written in the reign of Edward I., about the year 1290. It is for the most part a poor imitation of Bracton. The author is supposed to have written it during his confinement in the Fleet prison, hence the name. It has been conjectured that he was one of those judges who were imprisoned for malpractices by Edward I. Fleta was first printed by J. Selden in 1647, with a dissertation (2nd edition, 1685).

FLETCHER, ALICE CUNNINGHAM (1845–&emsp;&emsp;), American ethnologist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1845. She studied the remains of Indian civilization in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, became a member of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879, and worked and lived with the Omahas as a representative of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. In 1883 she was appointed special agent to allot lands to the Omaha tribes, in 1884 prepared and sent to the New Orleans Exposition an exhibit showing the progress of civilization among the Indians of North America in the quarter-century previous, in 1886 visited the natives of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands on a mission from the commissioner of education, and in 1887 was United States special agent in the distribution of lands among the Winnebagoes and Nez Percés. She was made assistant in ethnology at the Peabody Museum in 1882, and received the Thaw fellowship in 1891; was president of the Anthropological Society of Washington and of the American Folk-Lore Society, and vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and, working through the Woman’s National Indian Association, introduced a system of making small loans to Indians, wherewith they might buy land and houses. In 1888 she published Indian Education and Civilization, a special report of the Bureau of Education. In 1898 at the Congress of Musicians held at Omaha during the Trans-Mississippi Exposition she read “several essays upon the songs of the North American Indians. . . in illustration of which a number of Omaha Indians. . . sang their native melodies.” Out of this grew her Indian Story and Song from North America (1900), illustrating “a stage of development antecedent to that in which culture music appeared.”

FLETCHER, ANDREW, of Saltoun (1655–1716), Scottish politician, was the son and heir of Sir Robert Fletcher (1625–1664), and was born at Saltoun, the modern Salton, in East Lothian. Educated by Gilbert Burnet, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, who was then the parish minister of Saltoun, he completed his education by spending some years in travel and study, entering public life as member of the Scottish parliament which met in 1681. Possessing advanced political ideas, Fletcher was a fearless and active opponent of the measures introduced by John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale, the representative of