he resigned the office of minister of finance, but was on the same day appointed senator, and soon after rejoined the government as minister of state and of the imperial household. In this capacity he directed the Paris exhibition of 1855. The events of November 1860 led once more to his resignation, but he was recalled to the ministry of finance in November of the following year, and retained office until the publication of the imperial letter of the 19th of January 1867, when Émile Ollivier became the chief adviser of the emperor. During his last tenure of office he had reduced the floating debt, which the Mexican war had considerably increased, by the negotiation of a loan of 300 millions of francs (1863). Fould, besides uncommon financial abilities, had a taste for the fine arts, which he developed and refined during his youth by visiting Italy and the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean. In 1857 he was made a member of the Academy of the Fine Arts. He died at Tarbes on the 5th of October 1867.
FOULIS, ANDREW (1712–1775) and ROBERT (1707–1776),
Scottish printers and publishers, were the sons of a Glasgow
maltman. Robert was apprenticed to a barber; but his ability
attracted the attention of Dr Francis Hutcheson, who strongly
recommended him to establish a printing press. After spending
1738 and 1739 in England and France in company with his
brother Andrew, who had been intended for the church and had
received a better education, he started business in 1741 in
Glasgow, and in 1743 was appointed printer to the university.
In this same year he brought out Demetrius Phalereus de
elocutione, in Greek and Latin, the first Greek book ever printed
in Glasgow; and this was followed in 1774 by the famous 12mo
edition of Horace which was long but erroneously believed to
be immaculate: though the successive sheets were exposed in
the university and a reward offered for the discovery of any
inaccuracy, six errors at least, according to T. F. Dibdin, escaped
detection. Soon afterwards the brothers entered into partnership,
and they continued for about thirty years to issue carefully
corrected and beautifully printed editions of classical works in
Latin, Greek, English, French and Italian. They printed more
than five hundred separate publications, among them the small
editions of Cicero, Tacitus, Cornelius Nepos, Virgil, Tibullus and
Propertius, Lucretius and Juvenal; a beautiful edition of the
Greek Testament, in small 4to; Homer (4 vols. fol., 1756–1758);
Herodotus, Greek and Latin (9 vols. 12mo, 1761); Xenophon,
Greek and Latin (12 vols. 12mo, 1762–1767); Gray’s Poems;
Pope’s Works; Milton’s Poems. The Homer, for which Flaxman’s
designs were executed, is perhaps the most famous production
of the Foulis press. The brothers spared no pains, and
Robert went to France to procure manuscripts of the classics,
and to engage a skilled engraver and a copper-plate printer.
Unfortunately it became their ambition to establish an institution
for the encouragement of the fine arts; and though one of their
chief patrons, the earl of Northumberland, warned them to
“print for posterity and prosper,” they spent their money in
collecting pictures, pieces of sculpture and models, in paying
for the education and travelling of youthful artists, and in
copying the masterpieces of foreign art. Their countrymen
were not ripe for such an attempt, and the “Academy” not only
proved a failure but involved the projectors in ruin. Andrew
died on the 18th of September 1775, and his brother went to
London, hoping to realize a large sum by the sale of his pictures.
They were sold for much less than he anticipated, and Robert
returned broken-hearted to Scotland, where he died at Edinburgh
on the 2nd of June 1776. Robert was the author of a Catalogue
of Paintings with Critical Remarks. The business was afterwards
carried on under the same name by Robert’s son Andrew.
See W. J. Duncan, Notices and Documents illustrative of the Literary History of Glasgow, printed for the Maitland Club (1831), which inter alia contains a catalogue of the works printed at the Foulis press, and another of the pictures, statues and busts in plaster of Paris produced at the “Academy” in the university of Glasgow.
FOULLON, JOSEPH FRANÇOIS (1717–1789), French administrator,
was born at Saumur. During the Seven Years’ War he
was intendant-general of the armies, and intendant of the army
and navy under Marshal de Belle-Isle. In 1771 he was appointed
intendant of finances. In 1789, when Necker was dismissed,
Foullon was appointed minister of the king’s household, and
was thought of by the reactionary party as a substitute. But
he was unpopular on all sides. The farmers-general detested
him on account of his severity, the Parisians on account of
his wealth accumulated in utter indifference to the sufferings
of the poor; he was reported, probably quite without foundation,
to have said, “If the people cannot get bread, let them eat hay.”
After the taking of the Bastille on the 14th of July, he withdrew
to his estate at Vitry and attempted to spread the news of his
death; but he was recognized, taken to Paris, carried off with
a bundle of hay tied to his back to the hôtel de ville, and, in spite
of the intervention of Lafayette, was dragged out by the populace
and hanged to a lamp-post on the 22nd of July 1789.
See Eugène Bonnemère, Histoire des paysans (4th ed., 1887), tome iii.; C. L. Chassin, Les Élections et les cahiers de Paris en 1789. (Paris, 1889), tomes iii. and iv.
FOUNDATION (Lat. fundatio, from fundare, to found), the
act of building, constituting or instituting on a permanent
basis; especially the establishing of any institution by endowing
or providing it with funds for its continual maintenance. The
word is thus applied also to the institutions so established, such
as a college, monastery or hospital; and the terms “on the
foundation,” or “foundationer,” are used of members of such a
college or society who enjoy, as fellows, scholars, &c., the benefits
of the endowment. Formerly “foundation” also meant the
charter or incorporation of any such institution or society, and
it is still applied to the funds used for the endowment of such
institutions.
The terms “old foundation” and “new foundation” used in connexion with the organizing of English cathedral chapters have no reference to the age of the cathedrals. At the time of the Reformation under Henry VIII. the old college chapters were left unchanged, and are referred to as the “old foundations,” but the monastic chapters were all suppressed, consequently new chapters had to be formed for their cathedrals and these constitute the “new foundations.”
“Foundation” also means the base (natural or artificial) on which any erection is built up; generally made below the level of the ground (see Foundations below). A foundation-stone is one of the stones at the base of a building, generally a corner-stone, frequently laid with a public ceremony to celebrate the commencement of the building. The term is also applied to the ground-work of any structure, such as, in dress-making, the underskirt over which the real skirt is hung, any material used for stiffening purposes, as “foundation muslin or net.” In knitting or crochet the first stitches onto which all the rest are worked are called the “foundation chain.” In gem-cutting the “foundation-square” is the first of eight squares round the edges of a brilliant made in bevel planes and from which the angles are all removed to form three-corner facets.
FOUNDATIONS, in building. The object of foundations is
to distribute the weight of a structure equally over the ground.
In the construction of a building the weights are concentrated
at given points on piers, columns, &c., and these foundations
require to be spread so as to reduce the weight to an average.
In the preparation of a foundation care must be taken to prevent
the lateral escape of the soil or the movement of a bed upon
sloping ground, and it is also necessary to provide against any
damage by the action of the atmosphere. The soils met with
in ordinary practice, such as rock, gravel, chalk, clay and sand,
vary as to their capabilities of bearing weight. There is no
provision in any English building acts as to the load that may
be placed on any of these soils, but under the New York Building
Code it is provided that, where no test of the sustaining power
of the soil is made, different soils, excluding mud, at the bottom
of the footings shall be deemed to safely sustain the following
loads to the superficial foot:
| per sq. ft. | |
| Soft clay | 1 ton. |
| Ordinary soft clay and sand, together in layers, wet and springy | 2 tons. |
| Loam, clay or fine sand, firm and dry | 3 tons. |
| Very firm coarse sand, stiff gravel or hard clay | 4 tons. |
