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 50 FABER crusade was proclaimed against him ; but he still successfully resisted all combinations, and in the latter year he besieged Mantua. A new league being formed against him, which was joined by Venice, the allies invested and cap- tured Padua, which was held by his nephew Ansedisio. But Ezzelino defeated the army of the league near Brescia, and captured that city Sept. 1, 1258. In 1259 he threatened Mfli but it was saved by Martin della Torre ; am Ezzelino's retreat being cut off, he was forced into a battle near Soncino, in which he waa severely wounded and captured (Sept. 16), and his army dispersed. He refused food, tore the bandages from his wounds, and died without reconciliation to the church. F THE 6th letter of the English and Latin, the 20th of the Arabic, and the 23d of the 'Persian alphabet, indicates a labio-dental sound, produced by the passage of the expired air between the lower lip and the upper in- cisive teeth, while the glottis and larynx are almost at rest. Quintilian calls this sound "scarcely human," since it is a mere afflatus, and is wrongly placed among the semi- vocals. Its sonorous parallel is the softer sound of V (as in English), in producing which the glottis and larynx are engaged. F is represented in ancient Greek both by the (ph) and the di- gamma, in corresponding wo*ds ; but the sound of the former was less harsh and rather as- pirated than blowing (efflatus), and the latter sounded almost like our V. The figure of the Latin F arose from the doubling of the Greek F. The emperor Claudius is reported to have used it inverted (J) to represent V. As a numeral sign for 6, the stigma was employed by the Alexandrines, as one of the three 'fniar^ia, instead of this digamma, which is named (3av or van. The shape of the stigma (r) is an in- verted Oscic and Umbric F (H ). We find the prototype of our cursive f on ancient Hebrew coins; but in the present so-called Hebrew, as in the Syriac, Sabseic, Palmyrenic, and some other kindred writings, the van takes the place of F, and indicates the sounds of v and u. F occurs in the same place also on the Idalian tablet of Cyprus, in Lycian, also in Tuarik (Berber), and in some other writings. In the Cyrillic alphabet the phert and phie (<) corre- spond to it as the 27th letter, in Glagolitic as the 23d, and in Russian as the 27th. F is the first rune, and it is represented hieroglyph - ically by a horned snake. It is often vica- riously converted into other letters or sounds, especially into labials, as in the following exam- ples : Lat. f rater, frango, fagus, Eng. brother, break', beech ; Lat. pes, pugnare, porculus, Eng. foot, fight, Ger. Ferlcel; Lat. ferrum, fili- us, folium, fugere, formosus, fabulari, fames, furari, Span, (since the 14th century) hierro, hijo, hoja, huir, hermoso, hablar, hambre, hur- tar. The Greek $ the Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese uniformly replace by f. F sometimes also interchanges with gutturals, as Germ. Schacht, Eng. shaft ; Dutch achter, Eng. after ; Germ, kriechen, Eng. creep and crafty. In English and French it alternates with v in grammatical forms, as wife, wives ; natif, native. The Greek 6 sometimes becomes /, as Theodoros, Russ, Fedor ; Bipa, Qipa, Lat. fores, fera. Very peculiar are the transforma- tions of the Latin ft (also pi) into Spanish II and Portuguese ch ; as fiamma, Span, llama, Port, chamma, &c. The Devanagari, and most graphic systems of eastern Asia derived from it, have no F. The sound exists in the Chinese and Japanese languages. Most Amer- ican languages are guttural, and lack among others the sound of /. As a numeral in the middle ages, F was equivalent to 40, and F to 40,000. It signifies 80 in Arabic, and 10,000 in Armenian. Its substitute ph stands for 500 in Russian and Georgian ; while the Phoenician, Chaldaic, and Syriac vau designated 6. As an abbreviation, F stands for filius, fecit, Flavius, Fahrenheit; for forte in music, and ff for fortissimo. F is marked on the French coins of Angers, on the Prussian of Magdeburg, and on the Austrian of Hall in the Tyrol. In music, it denotes the fourth diatonic interval, or the sixth string on the piano in the chromatic scale, and is called fa in the solfeggio. FABER, Frederick William, an English clergy- man and author, born June 28, 1814, died Sept. 26, 1863. He was educated at Oxford, and became rector of Elton in Northamptonshire, which office he filled until his conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, which was formally consummated Nov. 17, 1845. His published writings up to that time were as follows : " Tracts on the Church and the Prayer Book " (1839) ; " A Sermon on Education " (1840) ; " The Cherwell Water Lily and other Poems " (1840) ; " The Styrian Lake and other Poems " (1842); "Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches" (1842); " Sir Lancelot, a Poem" (1844) ; " The Rosary and other Poems " (1845) ; and several papers in the " Lives of the English Saints," edited by the Rev. Dr. Newman. Dr. Faber was ordained priest in 1847, joined Dr. Newman, who had just transplanted the Ora- tory of St. Philip Neri to England, in 1848 received the habit of that congregation, and became distinguished as an earnest and eloquent preacher. His published writings after his conversion are as follows : " Catholic Hymns," and an " Essay on Beatification and Canoniza- tion " (1848) ; " The Spirit and Genius of St. Philip Neri " (1850) ; " Catholic Home Mis-