When a man shall have stedfastly fixed his eyes upon the dread majesty of an ever-present God, and upon the deplorable wretchedness of his own condition, he shall be in a meet capacity to receive the holy fear, whereof we treat. Neither indeed is it possible for him to see that all-glorious presence, and not presently thereupon find himself affected with a trembling kind of awfulness: neither can he look upon his own vileness without an humble and bashful dejection of soul: but when he shall see both these at once-how can he choose but be wholly possessed with a devout shivering, and religious astonishment? Bp. Hall.

Fear doth not more multiply evils, than faith diminisheth them, Id. Contemplations.

He gave instances of an invincible courage, and fearlessness in danger. Clarendon.

The flaming seraph, fearless, though alone Encompassed round with foes, thus answered bold. Milton.

This is the natural fruit of sin, and the present revenge which it takes upon sinners, besides that fearful punishment which shall be inflicted on them in anocher life. Tillotson.

If it was so fearful when Christ looked his denier into repentance, what will it be when he shall look him into destruction? South.

A third thing that makes a government justly despised, is fearfulness of, and mean compliances with, bold popular offenders.

See, pious king, with different strife,
Thy struggling Albion's bosom torn :

Id.

Prior.

So much she fears for William's life, That Mary's fate she dare not mourn. Fear, in general, is that passion of our nature whereby we are excited to provide for our security upon the approach of evil. Rogers.

A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty. Hume.

'Tis matter of the greatest astonishment to observe the stupid, yet common boldness of men, who so fearlessly expose themselves to this most formidable of perils. Decay of Piety. For fame the wretch beneath the gallows lies, Disowning every crime for which he dies, Of life profuse, tenacious of a name, Fearless of death, and yet afraid of shame.

Soame Jenyns.

So fare we in this prison-house the world; And 'tis a fearful spectacle to see So many maniacs dancing in their chains.

Соорет.

The pigmy warriors eye with fearless glare The host thick swarming o'er the burdened air; Thick swarming now, but to their native land Doomed to return a scanty straggling band.

Beattie.

And is he gone ?'-on sudden solitude How oft that fearful question will intrude? 'Twas but an instant past-and here he stood! Byron.

FEARNE (Charles), an ingenious lawyer of the last century, was a native of London, and educated at Westminster school. He afterwards became a student of the Inner Temple, and commenced practice as a chamber counsel and conveyancer, in which branches he attained the reputation of great skill and legal learning. He was the author of an Essay on Contingent Remainders and Executory Devises; A Legigraphical Chart of Landed Property: Observations on the Statute of enrollment of Bargains and Sales; and an Essay on Consciousness, or a Series of Evidences of a distinct Mind. He died January 21st, 1794, aged forty-five.

FEASIBLE, adj. Fr. faisable, of Lat. FEASIBILITY, . S. facio, to do. Practicable; FEASIBLENESS, n. s. (evident; that which may FEASIBLY, adv. be easily done: feasibility is sometimes used for a thing practicable. Bishop Hall writes the other substantive, strictly according to its etymology, 'faisableness.'

Let us enquire into the faisableness of this great improvement of our Christian diligence. Bp. Hall.

FEAST, n. s., v. n. & v. a. Sax. Fæst; Fr. fete FEAST'ER, n. s. feste; old Fr. feast; FEAST'FUL, adj. Ital. and Port. festa; FEAST RITE, n. s. Span. fiesta; Belg. feest; Goth. fist (food); Lat. festum. A formal or sumptuous entertainment; an anniversary day of rejoicing; delicious food: to feast is to eat sumptuously, or on a joyful occasion: as a verb active, to give a sumptuous entertainment; to delight; pamper: feastful is luxurious; festive; joyous feastrite, a custom or rite observed at feasts.

On Pharaoh's birthday he made a feast unto all his

servants.

Genesis xl. 20.

Who frowns at others' feasts, had better bide away

Sir P. Sidney.

Shakspeare.

Id.

Richard and Northumberland, great friends, Did feart together. Here's our chief guest. If he had been forgotten, It had been as a gap in our great feast. This day is called the feast of Crispian. Id. He was entertained and feasted by the king with great shew of favour. Hayward.

Those feasters could speak of great and many excellencies in manna. Taylor.

It is not the quantity of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests, which makes the feast; it was only at the feast of Centaurs, where they ate with one hand, and had drawn swords in the other; where there is no peace, there can be no feast. Clarendon.

The virgins also shall on feastful days
Visit his tomb with flowers, only bewailing
His lot unfortunate in nuptial choice,
From whence captivity and loss of eyes.

Milton.

The suitor train

Who crowd his palace, and with lawless power His herds and flocks in fcastful rites devour.

Pope.

Returning to England in the same vessel with my self, as I have related above, he invited all his old Franklin. creditors to a feast.

FEAST, OF FESTIVAL, is derived by some from feriari, to keep holiday; by others from ɛsiaw, to feast or entertain; by others, particularly M. Huet, from festinare, which is used by Origen in the same sense, in his Comment on Matthew. Social or civil feasts are also expressed by the words convivium, and compotatio, or concœnatio.

We learn from Herodotus, that the ancients had neither cups nor bowls at their feasts, but they drank out of little horns tipt with silver or gold. The Greeks and Romans kept a domestic for the purpose of reading during their meals and feasts. Sometimes the chief of the family him

self performed the office of reader; and history

while his family ate. The Greeks at feasts proinforms us, that the emperor Severus often read posed moral topics for conversation, of which Plutarch has preserved a collection. Heroes rarely assembled convivially without bringing affairs of consequence into discourse, or deliberating upon those that regarded either present events or future contingencies. The Scythians, while at meat, used to make the strings of their bows resound, lest their warlike virtues might be enfeebled or lost in the season of pleasure. People of rank among the Rhodians, by a fun

state.

daily with those who had the management of damental law of the state, were obliged to dine affairs, in order to deliberate with them concerning such things as were necessary or useful for the country; and on this account the principal ministers of the kingdom were obliged to keep open table for all who could be of use to the The Persians also generally deliberated on business at table, but never determined, or put their determinations in execution, except in the morning before having eaten. Among the Romans, the place where they supped was generally the vestibule, that a more retired part of the house might not encourage licentiousness and disorder. There were several laws that restricted their meals to these vestibules. When luxury reigned in Rome, they had superb halls for their entertainments. Lucullus had many, each of which bare the name of some deity; and this name was a mark which indicated to the servants the expense of the entertainment. The expense of a supper in Lucullus's hall of Apollo amounted to 50,000 drachmas. Singers, dancers, musicians, stage-players, jesters, and buffoons, were brought into these halls to amuse the guests. Plutarch informs us that Cæsar, after his triumphs, treated the Roman people at 22,000 tables; and by calculation it would seem, that there were at these tables upwards of 200,000 persons. The hall in which Nero feasted, by the circular motion of its walls and ceiling, imitated the revolutions of the heavens, and represented the different seasons of the year, changing at every course, and showering down flowers and perfumes on the guests. The Romans did not, as we do, use but one table at their feasts; they

The Athenian cook had both a secular and a sacred capacity; and the parish-clerk of England has not more right to mix himself up with the religion of his country, than had this person to take his place among the priesthood of Athens. All the mechanical parts of the sacrificial rites were entrusted to him; and that this was no unimportant function may be evinced from the earnest language in which Olympias writes to her son Alexander, then engaged in his grand Asiatic exterprise, upon the subject of a person of this description whom she had sent to him at his own request. As the epistle possesses a convenient brevity, we insert a version of it, without troubling ourselves much about the difficulties of commentators. You will please to accept at my hands of a cook his name Pelignas. He is well versed in all the modes of sacrifice usual in your own country; he is also acquainted with those practised in the mysteries, and the festivals of Bacchus, and with such as take place before the commencement of the Olympic games. You will, therefore, pay him every attention, and be cautious of any neglect. Let me hear from you at your earliest leisure.' That fit and able persons might never be wanting in this branch of the profession, there appears to have been a particular tribe at Athens, enrolled into a sort of collegiate body, for the sake of preserving the knowledge of their important functions.

The taste for fish of every kind, salt, fresh, shelled or otherwise, was, among the Athenians, universal and vehement. Among other saltfish, in various degrees of favor among the common Athenians, may be mentioned the scombri, which the most correct taste decided, ought to be eaten just three days after putting into brine; the coracini, of which the best came from the Lacus Mæotis, and which then assumed the name of saperda; the mugiles supplied from Abdera and Sinope; the enormous tiltus, and that species of fish, of which the larger sort were called platistaci, the middle-sized mylli, and the small agnotidia. Of all salted fish, the cheapest, perhaps, was the omotarichos. In a very amusing fragment of Alexis, where a person, with his table and reckoning stones before him, settles the various prices of fish, the omotarichos is rated at five-eighths of an obol: seamuscles fetch seven-eighths of the same coin, and the echinus, or sea-porcupine, an entire obol. These fish, potted down, formed the common food of the Greek soldiers and sailors. Epicures pronounced them to be best when boiled in seawater; and the hotter they were brought to table, the more agreeable they were declared to be.

The ancient dinners were no sinecures, either in a bodily or an intellectual view. To touch a lute, to bear a part in a catch or scolium, to enliven the board, or repay hospitality by a fable or a tale similar to those found in the old Fabliaux, were among the lighter contributions to a Grecian feast; the guests were often called upon for a more important task; and had the convivial discourses of Aristotle, Speusippus, Dion, and others come down to us, we should perhaps have found that the Greeks, like the Romans, brought their common-place books when they distrusted

their memories, and mercilessly showered down their contents on the unfortunate auditors.— Another list of fish brings us among the Alphesta, which were always caught in pairs, one seeming to follow at the tail of the other; the amia, so delicious in itself, that in autumn, if dressed after the setting of the Pleiades, it defied all the arts of bad cookery to spoil it; the scarus, the only fish, according to Seleucus, that never slept at night, the anthias, particularly agreeable in winter, as the chromius was in spring; the ellops, by some writers supposed to be the same as the anthias; the batis (maid or skate) which, in concert with hares, and women whose gait or feet have puzzled translators, formed the great attraction, according to Eupolis, of Callias's table; the gnapheus or fuller;-in the water, which boiled one, says Dorion, I washed out every one of my stains ;—the salpa, who never could resist a hook baited with gourds; the sacred fish pompilus, to which so many romantic Greek stories are attached, and which was said to have sprung with Venus from the blood of the sky; and the aphyæ (anchovies), for the dressing of which Archestratus has given a very full receipt. The fish called at Rhodes the fox, and at Syracuse the dog, is opposed by Lynceus to any of the Athenian fish, 'even though surpassing Cecrops himself in reputation.' Archestratus recommends epicures to steal it at the hazard of life, if they cannot purchase it; and all accidents of fate were to be considered as immaterial, according to this great gastrologist, when a man had once eaten of this inestimable dainty. The aper he declares to be too divine for the eyes of any but rich bankers and moneyreckoners to look upon; and he recommends travellers to purchase it even at its weight in gold, under pain of incurring the divine displeasure, for it is the flower of nectar.' Eels, the only instance perhaps in Athens of modest merit brought from the shade of retirement, supplied an admirable repast for the table, and no small one for the theatre; some of the happiest strokes of the comic poets being derived from its natural habits. It has already appeared incidentally, that the Copaic eel ranked first. The Baotians, with whom this eel formed a valuable article of trade, crowned the larger sort with a garland like victims, and then offered them to the gods. The eel ranked among fish, according to good eaters, as Helen among women in the opinion of amatory poets; Archestratus sang its praises accordingly: I commend,' says he, 'eels of every kind, but happiest among men is he who lives near Messina, for there the best are found.' The Egyptians, the bold Antiphanes tells us, rank the eel in equal honor with the gods; but in fact, it is in much higher estimation than the gods. Offer a few prayers to the heavenly powers, continues the poet, and you gain all your desires; but such is the value set upon eels, that you may pay ten good drachmæ, and hardly get a small one after all! He who goes to cater,' says Amphis, 'and buys herbs, when he has the power to buy good fish, is a madman.'

Two other articles connected with Grecian dinners, will, from their intrinsic excellence,

(observes the lively writer we have adverted to,) repay a little attention-perfumery and flowers. The room where an entertainment was held was commonly perfumed by burning myrrh and frankincense. The thicker perfumes were called χρίματα; the thinner αλειμματα. Το indulge in the latter, which was poured over the limbs, was thought to evince a feminine and voluptuous disposition; but the sober and the virtuous, it was allowed, might use the thicker sort without any impeachment of their good qualities. The suppliers of perfumery occupied a considerable place in the list of Greek artisans; those perfumes impregnated with the odor of the violet and the rose were the most popular. The practice of wearing flowers at feasts is referred by Eschylus to a grateful memento of the chains worn by Prometheus, as a punishment for his endeavours to benefit mankind. Sappho ascribes the custom to a religious feeling: for flowers,' said she, are agreeable to the gods, who turn with aversion from those whose heads are uncrowned with them.'

6

'To drink like a Greek,' has become a proverb. The gods, it was understood, did not sit long at table; but the Greek sat long, and drank deep. Long may you live,' was the congratulatory expression used to a person who drank off a large cup without taking breath; and, that there might be no evasion, three public officers, we are assured, were elected in the free town of Athens, whose business it was to attend entertainments, and observe whether every man drank his portion. In the pains and headaches arising from the powerful effects of unmixed wine, a compression of the head by the hands was found to convey considerable relief. This gave rise to more permanent ligatures. Ivy, as the most ready a hand, was the first herbaceous plant used for the purpose; the myrtle, the rose, and the laurel soon followed, each having some physical qualities to recommend it, besides its external beauty. By the time of Theophrastus, a much larger assortment had been pressed into the service of the chaplet. The violet, both the black and the white, the lily, the anemone, the hyacinth, the helichrysus, deriving its name from the nymph who first gathered it,—the hemerocallis, which dies away at night and revives with the rising sun, the cosmosandalus, from the wearing of which in their chaplets, Clearchus dates the ruin of the Lacedæmonians,--the lychnis, born of the water in which Venus bathed.'

'During the day,' says Dr. Hill, the Athenians either took no food, or only a slight repast in private. At sun-set they sat down to supper; and, considering the business of the day as over, devoted the evening to society and amusement, and often continued to a late hour of the night. For the pic-nic parties, where each guest might send his own portion of the feast, or where one might provide, at a fixed price, an enter tainment for all the rest, the Athenians appear to have felt a passionate fondness. When Aris totle advocates the propriety of admitting that complex entity, the public,' as he calls them, into a share of the government, he more than once draws an argument from the pic-nic suppers, which he asserts were always better than those

furnished by a single person. And Theophrastus, his great disciple, was so much persuaded of this truth, that among his legacies may be found one for the support of a pic-nic club.

Before the time of Menander, the law to prevent too large a concourse of people at an entertainment, had limited the number of guests to thirty: there were persons called gynœconomi, whose office it was to number the guests, and to see that this statute was not infringed. It was an ancient practice to give a bill of fare to the master of the feasts, who communicated its contents, at proper intervals, to the guests. The great man, whether host or guest, was generally attended by a flatterer, whose office, from the epithets attached to him by Julius Pollux, (the most amusing of word-collectors), was evidently no easy one-and recreations for the sight and hearing (Sɛapara, axpoaμara) made part of the entertainment. The supper-hunters (TPEXECEVOI), that class of persons upon whom is laid all the trouble of convivial conversation, and who are expected to perform the double task of never speaking with the mouth full, and yet never losing a mouthful, generally paid their quota in coin of the latter kind. They who were present without contributing towards the entertainment, says archbishop Potter, were termed acupßolo, in which condition (continues the learned, but plain-spoken archaeologist) were poets and singers, and others who made diversion for the company.'

The common Athenians contented themselves with salt-fish, herbs, pottage, a barley cake not very nicely kneaded: these with a bottle of wine, and figs perhaps for a dessert, formed their usual diet, when a sacrifice, or one of those feasts, which, on various pretences, were wrested from the rich, did not furnish a more substantial banquet.

The following picture of the domestic entertainments of the Romans, which introduces us to their social and convivial hour, contains, in a condensed and accurate shape, nearly all that can be collected upon the subject.

'The tables were originally made of ordinary wood, square, and on four feet; but the form was afterwards changed to circular, or oval, supported on a single carved pedestal, and they were richly inlaid with ivory, gold, or silver, sometimes with the addition of precious stones. Those most valued were made of a kind of wood with which we are at present unacquainted. It appears to have been brought from some part of Barbary, and was called citron-wood: but the timber from the tree of that name is far from beautiful, and certainly was not then so scarce as to command an extraordinary price; yet we are told of a single, table, formed of it, having cost a million of sesterces! They were at first used without any covering, and it was not until the reign of the emperors that cloths were introduced: these were of colored woollen, or silk and wool intermixed, and variously ornamented with embroidery; but those most in fashion were striped with gold and purple. A canopy was suspended over the table, to guard it, as it is said, from the dirt of the ceiling. This, however it may have added to the decoration of the