FLECHE. 715 FLEET. Jesuit college built by Henry IV. It is a pre- paratory school for Saint-Cyr. Anion;,' its fa- mous alumni have been l'rinee Eugene, Descartes, and Picard, the astronomer. La Fleche has some trade in corn, bay, and wine, also manu- factures of oil, leather, and gloves. Population, in 1901, 10,519. FLECHIER, tla'shya', VALENTIN ESPRIT (1032-1710). A French ecclesiastic. He was born at Pernes, near Avignon, and educated in the College of the Congregation of Christian Doctrine at Tarascon. In 1051) he went to Paris and taught for a time, but soon gave himself entirely to preaching. He won great fame as an orator, and particularly by his funeral orations, among which that on Marshal Turenne (1670) is considered his masterpiece. That on Madame Montausier secured his admission to the Academy at the same time with Racine (1673). He also wrote poems in French and Latin, and political com- positions, among which were the Carmen Eucha- rist hum (1660), celebrating the Peace of the Pyrenees; Circus Regius (1662), describing a tournament given by Louis XIV. ; and Memoires sur les grands jours de Clermont ( first published in 1844), in which he relates in half romantic and half historic form the proceedings of that extraordinary court of justice. In 1685 he was appointed Bishop of Lavaux, and in 1687 of Ntrnes. The Edict of Nantes had been revoked two years earlier, and Calvinists were still nu- merous in the bishopric. In the troublous times which followed he softened, to the utmost of his power, the rigor of the edicts, and showed him- self so sensible to the evils of persecution and so indulgent even of what he regarded as error, that his memory was long held in veneration by the Protestants of the district. In the famine which followed the winter of 1709 he assisted all in his diocese without regard to their religious tenets, declaring that all alike were his children. His works appeared at Nlmes in ten volumes (1782), and at Paris (2 vols., 1856). His funeral orations have been often printed; that on Marshal Turenne may be found in English in Fish, History and Repository of Pulpit Eloquence (New York, 1856), and in Lee, The World's Orators, vol. iv. (New York. 1900). For his life, consult Delacroix (Paris, 1883). FLECHSIG, fleK'ziK, Paul Emil (1847—). A German physician. He was born at Zwickau, and was educated at the University of Leip- zig, where he was appointed professor of psychiatry in 1884. His close personal investiga- tions of the various European systems for the treatment of insanity secured for him an appoint- ment in 1882 as director of the Clinical Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology at Leipzig, on the organization and management of which he subse- quently published the work entitled Die Irren- klinik der Universitat Leipzig in den Jahri n 1882-86 (1887). His original investigations on the structure of the brain are embodied in the work entitled Die Leitungsbahnen im Oehirn und Riickenmark des Mensohen auf Grund ent- wicklu n gsgesch ich t licher Untersuchungen darge- stellt (1876). FLECK, Eduakd (1804-79). A Prussian writer on military law, born at Pforten. Lower Lusatia. After serving as auditor of the garrison at Magdeburg, he was appointed general auditor Vol. VII. — 46 of the Prussian Army in 1857. In 1876 he was in- vested with the rank of lieutenant j iral He was long an instructor in the .Military Academy
- it. Berlin, and during a period «'l nunc than
thirty years assisted in the formation oi marly every important military law enacted in Prussia. His works, » Inch relate chief!] to military juri prudence, comprise the following: Erlauti rungi zu din altered preussischen Kriegsartikeln (iat- est ed. 1850); Die Verordnimgen uber dii Ehren- geriohte im preussischen Heer (3d ed. 1805) , Kommentar uber das Strafgesetzbuch fiir das preussische Heer (latest ed. 2 vols., 1869); Militiir strafgesetzbuch fiir das Deutsche Reich (2ded. 1880). FLECK, Joiiann Friedbicu Ferdinand ( 1757 1801). A noted German actor of the National Theatre at Berlin. He was born at Breslau, and in youth studied theology, for a time attending the University of Halle. Having joined a theat- rical troupe, however, at Leipzig in 1777, he went, two years later, to Hamburg, where he became very successful. He made his appearance at Berlin in 1783. Among his celebrated char- acters were Karl Moor, Glitz, Lear, Shylock, and Wallenstein. FLECKEISEN, flek'I-zen. Alfred (1820-99). A German philologist, born in Wolfenbfittel (Brunswick). He studied at the University of Gottingen, and was connected with educational institutions at Frankfort-on-the-Main and at Dresden, where from 1861 until his retire- ment in 1889., he was associate principal of the Vitzthum Gymnasium. From 1855 he was editor of the department of classical philology in Jahn's Jahrbiicher fiir Philologie und Piidnyogik. His publications include Kritische Miscellen (1864), a recension of Halm's text edition of the Vita? of Nepos (last impression 1898), and a standard critical edition of Terence' (1857; re- vised and enlarged 1898). The last two of these appeared in the well-known Bibliotheca Teub- neriana. FLECKNOE, flek'nd, Richard (?-c,1678). An English versifier of the seventeenth century, about whom very little is known. It is said that he was an Irishman and a Roman Catholic priest, and according to his own account, he trav- eled much in Europe and America — Ten Years' Travels (1656). His voluminous writings, con- sisting of plays, epigrams, and miscellaneous poems, are no longer read even by scholars: and in his own time he was the type of a dull and tiresome versifier. As such, he was immortalized in Dryden's 3tac Flccknoe (1682). FLEECE'EM, Mrs. A character in Foote's The Cozeners, intended as an exposure of Mrs. Grieve, who had victimized Charles Fox. FLEE FROM THE PRESS. A poem as- cribed to Chaucer, before 1532, but attributed by many later critics to John Lydgate. It is some times known as the Balade of Goode Conns, il. FLEET, The. A small creek, anciently call i Fleta, rising near Hampstead Hills, and passing near the west wall of London City. Its lower por- tion was navigable at the time of Edward I., but it is now arched over and converted into one of the lar^e eitv sewers, discharging into the Thames at Blaekfriars Bridge 11- pestilential condition when the water was diverted is described by Jonson, Pope, Swift, Gay, and other writers.
