VOLUME X SLICE III Fenton, Edward to Finistere (continued 9)

See Rome: History; and arts, on Sulla and Marius.

FIMBRIATE (from Lat. fimbriae, fringe), a zoological and botanical term, meaning fringed. In heraldry, “fimbriate” or “fimbriated” refers to a narrow edge or border running round a bearing.

FINALE (Ital. for “end”), a term in music for the concluding movement in an instrumental composition, whether symphony, concerto or sonata, and, in dramatic music, the concerted piece which ends each act. Of instrumental finales, the great choral finale to Beethoven’s 9th symphony, and of operatic finales, that of Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro, to the second act, and to the last act of Verdi’s Falstaff may be mentioned. In the Wagnerian opera the finale has no place.

FINANCE. The term “finance,” which comes into English through French, in its original meaning denoted a payment (finatio). In the later middle ages, especially in Germany, it acquired the sense of usurious or oppressive dealing with money and capital. The specialized use of the word as equivalent to the management of the public expenditure and receipts first became prominent in France during the 16th century and quickly spread to other countries. The plural form (Les Finances) was particularly reserved for this application, while the singular came to denote business activity in respect to monetary dealings (as in the expression la haute finance). For the Germans the phrase “science of finance” (Finanzwissenschaft) refers exclusively to the economy of the state. English and American writers are less definite in their employment of the term, which varies with the convenience of the author.

A work on “finance” may deal with the Money Market or the Stock Exchange; it may treat of banking and credit organization, or it may be devoted to state revenue and expenditure, which is on the whole the prevailing sense. The expressions “science of finance” and “public finance” have been suggested as suitable to delimit the last mentioned application. At all events, the broad sense is quite intelligible. “Financial” means what is concerned with business, and the idea of a balance between effort and return is also prominent. In the present article attention will be directed to “public finance”; for the other aspects of the subject reference may be made (inter alia) to the following:—Banks and Banking; Company; Exchange; Market; Stock Exchange. See also English Finance, and the sections on finance under headings of countries.

Finance, regarded as state house-keeping, or “political economy” (see Economics) in the older sense of the term, deals with (1) the expenditure of the state; (2) state revenues; (3) the balance between expenditure and receipts; (4) the organization which collects and applies the public funds. Each of these large divisions presents a series of problems of which the practical treatment is illustrated in the financial history of the great nations of the world. Thus the amount and character of public expenditure necessarily depends on the functions that the state undertakes to perform—national defence, the maintenance of internal order, and the efficient equipment of the state organization; such are the tasks that all governments have to discharge, and for their cost due provision has to be made. The widening sphere of state activity, so marked a characteristic of modern civilization, involves outlay for what may be best described as “developmental” services. Education, relief of distress, regulation of labour and trade, are duties now in great part performed by public agencies, and their increasing prominence involves augmented expense. The first problem on this side of expenditure is the due balancing of outlay by income. The financier has to “cover” his outlay. There is, further, the duty of establishing a proper proportion between the several forms of expenditure. Not only has there to be a strict control over the total national expense; supervision has to be carried into each department of the state. No one branch of public activity is entitled to make unlimited calls on the state’s revenue. The claims of the “expert” require to be carefully scrutinized. The great financiers have made their reputation quite as much by rigorous control over extravagance in expenditure as by dexterity in devising new forms of revenue. Unfortunately they have not been able to reduce their methods to rule. As yet no more definite principle has been discovered than the somewhat obvious one of measuring the proposed items of outlay (1) against each other, (2) against the sacrifice that additional taxation involves. Of almost equal importance is the rule that the utmost return is to be obtained for the given outlay. The canon of economy is as fundamental in regard to public expenditure as it will appear, later, to be in respect to revenue. Just application of the outlay of the state, so that no class receives undue advantage, and the use of public funds for “reproductive,” in preference to “unproductive” objects, are evident general principles whose difficulty lies in their application to the circumstances of each particular case.

Far greater progress has been made in the formulation of general canons as to the nature, growth and treatment of the public revenues. Historically, there is, first, the tendency towards increase in state income to balance the advance in outlay. A second general feature is the relative decline of the receipts from state property and industries in contrast to the expansion of taxation. Regarded as an organized system, the body of receipts has to be made conformable to certain general conditions. Thus there should be revenue sufficient to meet the public requirements. Otherwise the financial organization has failed in one of its essential purposes. In order continuously to attain this end, the revenue must be flexible, or, as is often said, elastic enough to vary in response to pressure. Frequently recurring deficits are, in themselves, a condemnation of the methods under which they are found. Again, the rule of “economy” in raising revenue, or, in other words, taking as little as possible from the contributors over and above what the state receives, holds good for the whole and for each part of public revenue. In like manner the principle of formal justice has the same claim in respect to revenue as to expenditure. No class of person should bear more than his or its proper share. In fact the special maxims usually placed under the head of taxation have really a wider scope as governing the whole financial system. The recognition of even the most elementary rules has been a very slow process, as the course of financial history abundantly proves. Until the 18th century no scientific treatment of financial problems was attained, though there had been great advances on the administrative side.

A brief description of the historical evolution of the earlier financial forms will be the most effective illustration of this statement. The theory of well-organized public finance is also discussed under Taxation and National Debt.

The earliest forms of public revenue are those obtained from the property of the chief or ruler. Land, cattle and slaves are the principal kinds of wealth, and they are all constituents of the king’s revenue; enforced work contributed by members of the community, and the furnishing commodities on requisition, further aid in the maintenance of the primitive state. Financial organization makes its earliest appearance in the great Eastern monarchies, in which tribute was regularly collected and the oldest and most general form of taxation—that levied on the produce of land—was established. In its normal shape this impost consisted in a given proportion of the yield, or of certain portions of the yield, of the soil; one-fourth as in India, one-fifth as in Egypt, or two separate levies of a tenth as in Palestine, are examples of what may from the last instance be called the “tithe” system. Dues of various kinds were gradually added to the land revenue, until, as in the later Egyptian monarchy, the forms of revenue reached a bewildering complexity. But no Eastern state advanced beyond the condition generally characterized as the “patrimonial,” i.e. an organization on the model of the household. The part played by money economy was small, and it is noticeable that the revenues were collected by the monarch’s servants, the farming out of taxes being completely unknown. Tribute, however, was paid by subject communities as a whole, and was collected by them for transmission to the conquerors.

A much higher stage was reached in the financial methods of the Greek states, or more correctly speaking of Athens, the best-known specimen of the class. Instead of the comparatively simple expedients of the barbarian Ancient Greek. monarchies, as indicated above, the Athenian city state by degrees developed a rather complex revenue system. Some of the older forms are retained. The city owned public land which was let on lease and the rents were farmed out by auction. A specially valuable property of Athens was the possession of the silver mines at Laurium, which were worked on lease by slave labour. The produce, at first distributed amongst the citizens, was later a part of the state income, and forms the subject of some of the suggestions respecting the revenue in the treatise formerly ascribed to Xenophon. The reverence that attached to the precious metals caused undue exaltation of the services rendered by this property.

One of the characteristics of the ancient state was its extensive control over the persons and property of its citizens. In respect to finance this authority was strikingly manifested in the burdens imposed on wealthy citizens by the requirements of the “liturgies” (λειτουργίαι), which consisted in the provision of a chorus for theatrical performances, or defraying the expenses of the public games, or, finally, the equipment of a ship, “the trierarchy,” which was economically and politically the most important. Athenian statesmanship in the time of Demosthenes was gravely exercised to make this form of contribution more effective. The grouping into classes and the privilege of exchanging property, granted to the contributor against any one whom he believed entitled to take his place, are marks of the defective economic and financial organization of the age.

Amongst taxes strictly so called were the market dues or tolls, which in some cases approximated to excise duties, though in their actual mode of levy they were closely similar to the octrois of modern times. Of greater importance were the customs duties on imports and exports. These at the great period of Athenian history were only 2%. The prohibition of export of corn was an economic rather than a financial provision. In the treatment of her subject allies Athens was more rigorous, general import and export duties of 5% being imposed on their trade. The high cost of carriage, and the need of encouraging commerce in a community relying on external sources for its food supply, help to explain the comparatively low rates adopted. Neither as financial nor as protective expedients were the custom duties of classical societies of much importance.

Direct taxation received much greater expansion. A special levy on the class of resident aliens (μετοίκιον), probably paralleled by a duty on slaves, was in force. A far more important source of revenue was the general tax on property (εἰσφορά), which according to one view existed as early as the time of Solon, who made it a part of his constitutional system. Modern inquiry, however, tends towards the conclusion that it was under the stress of the Peloponnesian War that this impost was introduced (428 B.C.). At first it was only levied at irregular intervals; afterwards, in 378 B.C., it became a permanent tax based on elaborate valuation under which the richer members paid on a larger quota of their capital; in the case of the wealthiest class the taxable quota was taken as one-fifth, smaller fractions being adopted for those belonging to the other divisions. The assessment (τίμημα) included all the property of the contributor, whose accuracy in making full returns was safeguarded by the right given to other citizens to proceed against him for fraudulent under-valuation. A further support was provided in the reform of 378 B.C. by the establishment of the symmories, or groups of tax-paying citizens; the wealthier members of each group being responsible for the tax payments of all the members.

The scanty and obscure references to finance, and to economic matters generally, in classical literature do not elucidate all the details of the system; but the analogies of other countries, e.g. the mode of levying the taille in 18th century France and the “tenth and fifteenth” in medieval England, make it tolerably plain that in the 4th century B.C. the Athenian state had developed a mode of taxation on property which raised those questions of just distribution and effective valuation that present themselves in the latest tax systems of the modern world. Taken together with the liturgies, the “eisphora” placed a very heavy burden on the wealthier citizens, and this financial pressure accounts in great part for the hostility of the rich towards the democratic constitution that facilitated the imposition of graduated taxation and super-taxes—to use modern terms—on the larger incomes. The normal yield of the property tax is reported as 60 talents (£14,400); but on special occasions it reached 200 talents (£48,000), or about one-sixth of the total receipts.

On the administrative side also remarkable advances were made by the entrusting of military expenditure to the “generals,” and in the 4th century B.C. by the appointment of an administrator whose duty it was to distribute the revenue of the state under the directions of the assembly. The absence of settled public law and the influence of direct democracy made a complete ministry of finance impossible.

The Athenian “hegemony” in its earlier and later phases had an important financial side. The confederacy of Delos made provision for the collection of a revenue (φόρος) from the members of the league, which was employed at first for defence against Persian aggression, but afterwards was at the disposal of Athens as the ruling state. The annual collection of 460 talents (£110,400) shows sufficiently the magnitude of the league.

Too little is known of the financial methods of the other Greek states and of the Macedonian kingdoms to allow of any definite account of their position. In the latter, particularly in Egypt, the methods of the earlier rulers probably survived. Their finance, like their social life generally, exhibited a blending of Hellenic and barbarian elements. The older land-taxes were probably accompanied by import dues and taxes on property.

In the infancy of the Roman republic its revenues were of the kind usual in such communities. The public land yielded receipts which may indifferently be regarded as rents or taxes; the citizens contributed their services or Roman. commodities, and dues were raised on certain articles coming to market. With the progress of the Roman dominion the financial organization grew in extent. In order to meet the cost of the early wars a special contribution from property (tributum ex censu) was levied at times of emergency, though it was in some cases regarded as an advance to be repaid when the occasion of expense was over. Owing to the great military successes, and the consequent increase of the other sources of revenue, it became feasible to suspend the tributum in 167 B.C., and it was not again levied till after the death of Julius Caesar. From this date the expenses of the Roman state “were undisguisedly supported by the taxation of the provinces.” Neither the state monopolies nor the public land in Italy afforded any appreciable revenue. The other charges that affected Italy were the 5% duty on manumissions, and customs dues on seaborne imports. But with the acquisition of the important provinces of Sicily, Spain and Africa, the formation of a tax system based on the tributes of the dependencies became possible. To a great extent the pre-existing forms of revenue were retained, but were gradually systematized. In legal theory the land of conquered communities passed into the ownership of the Roman state; in practice a revenue was obtained through land taxes in the form of either tithes (decumae) or money payments (stipendia). To the latter were adjoined capitation and trade taxes (the tributum capitis). For pasture land a special rent was paid. In some provinces (e.g. Sicily) payment in produce was preferred, as affording the supply needed for the free distribution of corn at Rome.

The great form of indirect taxation consisted in the customs dues (portoria), which were collected at the provincial boundaries and varied in amount, though the maximum did not exceed 5%. Under the same head were included the town dues (or octrois). Further, the local administration was charged on the district concerned, and requisitions for the public service were frequently made on the provincial communities. Supplies of grain, ships and timber for military use were often demanded.

The methods of levy may be regarded as an additional tax. “Vexation,” as Adam Smith remarks, “though not strictly speaking expense, is certainly equivalent to the expense at which every man would be willing to redeem himself from it”; and the Roman system was extraordinarily vexatious. From an early date the collection of the taxes had been farmed out to companies of contractors (societates vectigales), who became a by-word for rapacity. Being bound to pay a stated sum to the public authorities these publicani naturally aimed at extracting the largest possible amount from the unfortunate provincials, and, as they belonged to the Roman capitalist class, they were able to influence the provincial governors. Undue claims on the part of the tax collectors were aggravated by the extortion of the public officials. The defects of the financial organization were a serious influence in the complex of causes that brought about the fall of the Republic.

One of the reasons that induced the subject populations to accept with pleasure the establishment of the Empire was the improvement in financial treatment that it secured. The corrupt and uneconomical method of farming out the collection of the revenue was, to a great extent, replaced by collection through the officials of the imperial household. The earlier Roman treasury (aerarium) was formally retained for the receipt of revenue from the senatorial provinces, but the officials were appointed by the Princeps and became gradually mere municipal officers. The real centre of finance was the fiscus or imperial treasury, which was under the exclusive control of the ruler (“res fiscales,” says Ulpian, “quasi propriae et privatae principis sunt”), and was administered by officials of his household. Under the Republic the Senate had been the financial authority, with the Censors as finance ministers and the Quaestors as secretaries of the treasury. Never very precise, this system in the 1st century B.C. fell into extreme decay. By means of his freedmen the emperor introduced the more rigorous economy of the Roman household into public finance. The census as a method of valuation was revived; the important and productive land taxes were placed on a more definite footing; while, above all, the substitution of direct collection by state officials for the letting out by auction of the tax-collection to the companies of publicani was made general. Thus some of the most valuable lessons as to the normal evolution of a system of finance are to be learned in this connexion. Of equal, or even greater moment is the failure of the administrative reforms of the Empire to secure lasting improvement, a result due to the absence of constitutional guarantees. The close relation between finance and general policy is most impressively illustrated in this failure of benevolent autocracy.

Viewed broadly, the financial resources of the earlier Empire were obtained from (1) the public land alike of the state and the Princeps; (2) the monopolies, principally of minerals; (3) the land tax; (4) the customs; (5) the taxes on inheritances, on sales and on the purchase of slaves (vectigalia). One result of the establishment of the Principate was the consolidation of the public domain. The old “public land” in Italy had nearly disappeared; but the royal possessions in the conquered provinces and the private properties of the emperor became ultimately a part of the property of the Fiscus. Such land was let either on five-year leases or in perpetuity to coloni. Mines were also taken over for public use and worked by slaves or, in later times, by convict labour. The tendency towards state monopoly became more marked in the closing days of the Empire, the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. Perhaps the most comprehensive of the fiscal reforms of the Empire was the reconstruction of the land tax, based on a census or (to use the French term) cadastre, in which the area, the modes of cultivation and the estimated productiveness of each holding were stated, the average of ten preceding years being taken as the standard. After the reconstruction under Diocletian at the end of the 3rd century A.D., fifteen years (the indictio)—though probably used as early as the time of Hadrian—was recognized as the period for revaluation. With the growing needs of the state this taxation became more rigorous and was one of the great grievances of the population, especially of the sections that were declining in status and passing into the condition of villenage. The portoria, or customs, received a better organization, though the varying rates for different provinces continued. By degrees the older maximum of 5% was exceeded, until in the 4th century 12½% was in some cases levied. Even at this higher rate the facilities for trade were greater than in medieval or (until the revolution in transport) modern times. In spite of certain prejudices against the import of luxuries and the export of gold, there is little indication of the influence of mercantilist or protectionist ideas. The nearest approach to excise was the duty of 1% on all sales, a tax that in Gibbon’s words “has ever been the occasion of clamour and discontent.” The higher charge of 4% on the purchase of slaves, and the still heavier 5% on successions after death, were likewise established at the beginning of the Empire and specially applied to the full citizens. Escheats and lapsed legacies (caduca) were further miscellaneous sources of gain to the state.

Taken as a whole, the financial system of Imperial Rome shows a very high elaboration in form. The patrimonium, the tributa and the vectigalia are divisions parallel to the domaine, the contributions directes and the contributions indirectes of modern French administration; or the English “non-tax” revenue, inland revenue and “customs and excise.” The careful regulations given in the Codes and the Digest show the observance of technical conditions as to assessment and accounting. In substance and spirit, however, Roman finance was essentially backward. Without altogether accepting Merivale’s judgment that “their principles of finance were to the last rude and unphilosophical,” it may be granted that Roman statesmen never seriously faced the questions of just distribution and maximum productiveness in the tax system. Still less did they perceive the connexion between these two aspects of finance. Mechanical uniformity and minute regulation are inadequate substitutes for observance of the canons of equality, certainty and economy in the operation of the tax system. Whether (as has been suggested) an Adam Smith in power could have saved the Empire is doubtful; but he would certainly have remodelled its finance. The most glaring fault was plainly the undue and increasing pressure on the productive classes. Each century saw heavier burdens imposed on the actual workers and on their employers, while expenditure was chiefly devoted to unproductive purposes. The distribution was also unfair as between the different territorial divisions. The capital and certain provincial towns were favoured at the expense of the provinces and the country districts. Again, the cost of collection, though less than under the farming-out system, was far too great. Some alleviation was indeed obtained by the apportionment of contributions amongst the districts liable, leaving to the community to decide as it thought best between its members. The allotment of the land-tax to units (juga) of equal value whatever might be the area, was a contrivance similar in character.

The gradual way in which the several provinces were brought under the general tax system, and the equally gradual extension of Roman citizenship, account further for the irregularity and increased weight of the taxes; as the absence of publicity and the growth of autocracy explain the sense of oppression and the hopelessness of resistance so vividly indicated in the literature of the later Empire. Exemptions at first granted to the citizens were removed, while the cost of local government which continually increased was placed on the middle-class of the towns as represented by the decuriones, or members of the municipalities.

The fact that no ingenuity of modern research has been able to construct a real budget of expenditure and receipt for any part of the long centuries of the Empire is significant as to the secrecy that surrounded the finances, especially in the later period. For at the beginning of the principate Augustus seems to have aimed at a complete estimate of the financial situation, though this may be regarded as due to the influence of the freer republican traditions which the reverence that soon attached to the emperor’s dignity completely extinguished.

In addition to its value as illustrating the difficulties and defects that beset the development of a complex financial organization from the simpler forms of the city and the province, Roman finance is of special importance in consequence of its place as supplying a model or rather a guide for the administration of the states that arose on its ruins. The barbarian invaders, though they were accustomed to contributions to their chiefs and to the payment of commodities as tributes or as penalties, had no acquaintance with the working of a regular system of taxation. The more astute rulers utilized the machinery that they inherited from the Roman government. Under the Franks the land tax and the provincial customs continued as forms of revenue, while beside them the gifts and court fees of Teutonic origin took their place. Similar conditions appear in Theodoric’s administration of Italy. The maintenance of Roman forms and terms is prominent in fiscal administration. But institutions that have lost their life and animating spirit can hardly be preserved for any length of time. All over western Europe the elaborate devices of the census and the stations for the collection of customs crumbled away; taxation as such disappeared, through the hostility of the clergy and the exemptions accorded to powerful subjects. This process of disintegration spread out over centuries. The efforts made from time to time by vigorous rulers to enforce the charges that remained legally due, proved quite ineffectual to restore the older fiscal system. The final result was a complete transformation of the ingredients of revenue. The character of the change may be best indicated as a substitution of private claims for public rights. Thus, the land-tax disappears in the 7th century and only comes into notice in the 9th century in the shape of private customary dues. The customs duties become the tolls and transit charges levied by local potentates on the diminishing trade of the earlier middle ages. This revolution is in accordance with—indeed it is one side of—the movement towards feudalism which was the great feature of this period. Finance is essentially a part of public law and administration. It could, therefore, hold no prominent place in a condition of society which hardly recognized the state, as distinct from the members of the community, united by feudal ties. The same conception may be expressed in another way, viz. by the statement that the kingdoms which succeeded the Roman Empire were organized on the patrimonial basis (i.e. the revenues passed into the hands of the king or, rather, his domestic officials), and thus in fact returned to the condition of pre-classical times. Notwithstanding the differing features in the several countries, retrogression is the common characteristic of European history from the 5th to the 10th century, and it was from the ruder state that this decline created that the rebuilding of social and political organization had to be accomplished. On the financial side the work, as already suggested, was aided by the ideas and institutions inherited from the Roman Empire. This influence was common to all the continental states and indirectly was felt even in England. Each of the great realms has, however, worked out its financial system on lines suitable to its own particular conditions, which are best considered in connexion with the separate national histories.

Running through the different national systems there are some common elements the result not of inheritance merely but still more of necessity, or at the lowest of similarity in environment. Over and above the details of financial development there is a thread of connexion which requires treatment under Finance taken as a whole. As the great aim of this side of public activity is to secure funds for the maintenance of the state’s life and working, the administration which operates for this end is the true nucleus of all national finance. The first sign of revival from the catastrophe of the invasions is the reorganization of the Imperial household under Charlemagne with the intention of establishing a more exact collection of revenue. The later German empire of Otto and the Frederics; the French Capetian monarchy and, in a somewhat different sphere, the medieval Italian and German cities show the same movement. The treasury is the centre towards which the special receipts of the ruler or rulers should be brought, and from it the public wants should be supplied. Feudalism, as the antithesis of this orderly treatment, had to be overthrown before national finance could become established. The development can be traced in the financial history of England, France and the German states; but the advance in the French financial organization of the 15th and 16th centuries affords the best illustration. The gradual unification operates on all the branches of finance,—expenditure, revenue, debt and methods of control. In respect to the first head there is a well-marked “integration” of the modes for meeting the cost of the public services. What were semi-private duties become public tasks, which, with the growing importance of “money-economy,” have to be defrayed by state payments. Thus, the creation of the standing army in France by Charles VII. marks a financial change of the first order. The English navy, though more gradually developed, is an equally good illustration of the movement. All outlay by the state is brought into due co-ordination, and it becomes possible for constitutional government to supervise and direct it. This improvement, due to English initiative, has been adopted amongst the essential forms of financial administration on the continent. The immense importance of this view of public expenditure as representing the consumption of the state in its unified condition is obvious; it has affected, for the most part unconsciously, the conception of all modern peoples as to the functions of the state and the right of the people to direct them.

On the side of receipts a similar unifying process has been accomplished. The almost universal separation between “ordinary” and “extraordinary” receipts, taxation being put under the latter head, has completely ceased. It was, however, the fundamental division for the early French writers on finance, and it survives for England as late as Blackstone’s Commentaries. The idea that the ruler possessed a normal income in certain rents and dues of a quasi-private character, which on emergency he might supplement by calls on the revenues of his subjects, was a bequest of feudalism which gave way before the increasing power of the state. In order to meet the unified public wants, an equally unified public fund was requisite. The great economic changes which depreciated the value of the king’s domain contributed towards the result. Only by well-adjusted taxation was it possible to meet the public necessities. In respect to taxation also there has been a like course of readjustment. Separate charges, assigned for distinct purposes, have been taken into the national exchequer and come to form a part of the general revenue. There has been—taking long periods—a steady absorption of special taxes into more general categories. The replacement of the four direct taxes by the income tax in France, as proposed in 1909, is a very recent example. Equally important is the growth of “direct” taxation. As tax contributions have taken the places of the revenue from land and fees, so, it would seem, are the taxes on commodities likely to be replaced or at least exceeded by the imposts levied on income as such, in the shape either of income taxes proper or of charges on accumulated wealth. The recent history of the several financial systems of the world is decisive on this point. A clearer perception of the conditions under which the effective attainment of revenue is possible is another outcome of financial development. Security, and in particular the absence of arbitrary impositions, combined with convenient modes of collection, have come to be recognized as indispensable auxiliaries in financial administration which further aims at the selection of really productive forms of charge. Unproductiveness is, according to modern standard, the cardinal fault of any particular tax. How great has been the progress in these aspects is best illustrated in the case of English finance, but both French and German fiscal history can supply many instructive examples.

In a third direction the co-ordination of finance has been just as remarkable. Financial adjustment implies the conception of a balance, and this should be found in the relation of outlay and income. Under the pressure of war and other emergencies it has been found impossible to maintain this desirable equilibrium. But the use of the system of credit, and the general establishment of constitutional government, have enabled the difficulty to be surmounted by the creation on a vast scale of national debts. Apart from the special problems that this system of borrowing raises, there is the general one of its aid in making national finance continuous and orderly. Deficits can be transferred to the capital account, and the country’s resources employed most usefully by repaying liabilities contracted in times of extreme need. The growth of this department, parallel with the general progress of finance, is significant of its function.

Finally, in all countries though with diversities due to national peculiarities, the modes of account and control have been brought into a more effective condition. Previous legislative sanction for both expenditure and receipts in all their particular forms is absolutely necessary; so is thorough scrutiny of the actual application of the funds provided. Either by administrative survey or by judicial examination care is taken to see that there has been no improper diversion from the designed purposes. It is only when the varied systems of financial organization are studied in their general bearing, and with regard to what may be called their frame-work, that their essential resemblance is thoroughly realized. Such a real underlying unity is the reason and justification for regarding “public finance” as a distinct subject of study and as an independent division of political science.

Local Finance.—One of the most remarkable features of modern financial development has been the growth of the complementary system of local finance, which in extent and complication bids to rival that of the central authority. Under the constraining power of the Roman Empire the older city states were reduced to the position of municipalities, and their financial administration became dependent on the control of the Emperor—as is abundantly illustrated in the correspondence of Pliny and Trajan. After the fall of the Western Empire, a partial revival of city life, particularly in Italy and Germany, gave some scope for a return to the type of finance presented by the Athenian state. Florence affords an instructive specimen; but the passage from feudalism to the national state under the authority of monarchy made the cities and country districts parts of a larger whole. It is in this condition of subordination that the finance of localities has been framed and effectively organized. Though each great state has adopted its own methods, influenced by historical circumstances and by ideas of policy, there are general resemblances that furnish material for scientific treatment and allow of important generalizations being made.

Amongst these the first to be noticed is the essential subordination of local finance. Alike in expenditure, in forms of receipt, and in methods of administration the central government has the right of directing and supervising the work of municipal and provincial agencies. The modes employed are various, but they all rest on the sovereignty of the state, whether exercised by the central officials or by the courts. A second characteristic is the predominance of the economic element in the several tasks that local administrations have to perform, and the consequent tendency to treat the charges of local finance as payments for services rendered, or, in the usual phrase, to apply the “benefits” principle, in contrast to that of “ability,” which rightly prevails in national finance. Over a great part of municipal administration—particularly that engaged in supplying the needs of the individual citizens—the finance may be assimilated to that of the joint-stock company, with of course the necessary differences, viz. that the association is compulsory; and that dividends are paid, not in money, but in social advantage. The great expansion in recent years of what is known as Municipal Trading has brought this aspect of local finance into prominence. Water supply, transport and lighting have become public services, requiring careful financial management, and still retaining traces of their earlier private character.

Corresponding to the mainly economic nature of local expenditure there is the further limitation imposed on the side of revenue. Unlike the state in this, localities are limited in respect to the amount and form of their taxation. Several distinct influences combine to produce this result. The needs of the central government lead to its retention of the more profitable modes of procuring revenue. No modern country can surrender the chief direct and indirect taxes to the local administrations. Another limiting condition is found in the practical impossibility of levying by local agencies such imposts as the customs and the income-tax in their modern forms. The elaborate machinery that is requisite for covering the national area and securing the revenue against loss can only be provided by an authority that can deal with the whole territory. Hence the very general limitation of local revenues to certain typical forms. Though in some cases municipal taxation is imposed on commodities in the form of octrois or entry duties—as is notably the case in France—yet the prevailing tendency is towards the levy of direct charges on immovable property, which cannot escape by removal outside the tax jurisdiction. In addition to these “land” and “house” taxes, the employment of licence duties on trades, particularly those that are in special need of supervision, is a favourite method. Closely akin are the payments demanded for privileges to industrial undertakings given as “franchises,” very often in connexion with monopolies, e.g. gas-works and tramways. Over and above the peculiar revenues of local bodies there is the further resource—which emphasizes the subordinate position of local finance—of obtaining supplemental revenue from the central treasury, either by taxes additional to the charges of the state, and collected at the same time; or by donations from its funds, in the shape of grants for special services, or assignments of certain parts of the state’s receipts. Great Britain, France and Prussia furnish good examples of these different modes of preserving local administration from financial collapse.

The broad resemblance between the two parts of the entire system of public finance is seen in another direction. To national debts there has been added a great mass of municipal and local indebtedness, which seems likely to equal, or even exceed in magnitude the liabilities of the central governments. But here also the essential limitations of the newer form are easily perceptible. The sovereignty of the state enables it to deal as it thinks best with the public creditor. In its methods of borrowing, in its plans for repayment, or, in extremity, in its power of repudiation it is independent of external control. Local debt on the other hand can only be contracted under the sanction of the appropriate administrative organ of the state. The creditor has the right of claiming the aid of the law against the defaulting municipality; and the amounts, the terms, and the time of duration of local debt are supervised in order to prevent injustice to particular persons or improvidence with regard to the revenue and property of the local units. The chief reason for contracting local debt being the establishment of works that are, directly or indirectly, reproductive, the governing conditions are evidently to be found in the character and probable yield of those businesses. The principles of company investments are fully applicable: the creation of sinking-funds, the fixing the term of each loan to the time at which the return from its employment ceases, and the avoidance of the formation of fictitious capital, become guiding rules from this part of finance, and indicate the connexion with what the commercial world calls “financial operations.”

Finally, there is the same set of problems in respect to accounting and control in local as in central finance. Though the materials are simpler, the need for a well-prepared budget is existent in the case of the city, county or department, if there is to be clear and accurate financial management. Perhaps the greatest weakness of local finance lies in this direction. The public opinion that affects the national budget is unfortunately too often lacking in the most important towns, not excluding those in which political life is highly developed.

Bibliography.—The English literature on finance is rather unsatisfactory; for public finance the available text-books are: Adams, Science of Finance (New York, 1898); Bastable, Public Finance (London, 1892; 3rd ed., 1903); Daniels, Public Finance (New York, 1899), and Plehn, Public Finance (3rd ed., New York, 1909). In French, Leroy-Beaulieu, Traité de la science des finances (1877; 3rd ed., 1908), is the standard work. The German literature is abundant. Roscher, 5th ed. (edited by Gerlach), 1901; Wagner (4 vols.), incomplete; Cohn (1889) and Eheberg (9th ed., 1908) have published works entitled Finanzwissenschaft, dealing with all the aspects of state finance. For Greek financial history Boekh, Staalshaushaltung der Athenen (ed. Fränkel, 1887), is still a standard work. For Rome, Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, vol. ii., and Humbert, Les Finances et la comptabilité publique chez les Romains, are valuable. Clamageran, Histoire de l’impôt en France (1876), gives the earlier development of French finance. R.H. Patterson, Science of Finance (London, 1868), C.S. Meade, Trust Finance (1903), and E. Carroll, Principles and Practice of Finance, deal with finance in the wider sense of business transactions.

(C. F. B.)

FINCH, FINCH-HATTON. This old English family has had many notable members, and has contributed in no small degree to the peerage. Sir Thomas Finch (d. 1563), who was knighted for his share in suppressing Sir T. Wyatt’s insurrection against Queen Mary, was a soldier of note, and was the son and heir of Sir William Finch, who was knighted in 1513. He was the father of Sir Moyle Finch (d. 1614), who was created a baronet in 1611, and whose widow Elizabeth (daughter of Sir Thomas Heneage) was created a peeress as countess of Maidstone in 1623 and countess of Winchilsea in 1628; and also of Sir Henry Finch (1558-1625), whose son John, Baron Finch of Fordwich (1584-1660), is separately noticed. Thomas, eldest son of Sir Moyle, succeeded his mother as first earl of Winchilsea; and Sir Heneage, the fourth son (d. 1631), was the speaker of the House of Commons, whose son Heneage (1621-1682), lord chancellor, was created earl of Nottingham in 1675. The latter’s second son Heneage (1649-1719) was created earl of Aylesford in 1714. The earldoms of Winchilsea and Nottingham became united in 1729, when the fifth earl of Winchilsea died, leaving no son, and the title passed to his cousin the second earl of Nottingham, the earldom of Nottingham having since then been held by the earl of Winchilsea. In 1826, on the death of the ninth earl of Winchilsea and fifth of Nottingham, his cousin George William Finch-Hatton succeeded to the titles, the additional surname of Hatton (since held in this line) having been assumed in 1764 by his father under the will of an aunt, a daughter of Christopher, Viscount Hatton (1632-1706), whose father was related to the famous Sir Christopher Hatton.

FINCH OF FORDWICH, JOHN FINCH, Baron (1584-1660), generally known as Sir John Finch, English judge, a member of the old family of Finch, was born on the 17th of September 1584, and was called to the bar in 1611. He was returned to parliament for Canterbury in 1614, and became recorder of the same place in 1617. Having attracted the notice of Charles I., who visited Canterbury in 1625, and was received with an address by Finch in his capacity as recorder, he was the following year appointed king’s counsel and attorney-general to the queen and was knighted. In 1628 he was elected speaker of the House of Commons, a post which he retained till its dissolution in 1629. He was the speaker who was held down in his chair by Holles and others on the occasion of Sir John Eliot’s resolution on tonnage and poundage. In 1634 he was appointed chief justice of the court of common pleas, and distinguished himself by the active zeal with which he upheld the king’s prerogative. Notable also was the brutality which characterized his conduct as chief justice, particularly in the cases of William Prynne and John Langton. He presided over the trial of John Hampden, who resisted the payment of ship-money, and he was chiefly responsible for the decision of the judges that ship-money was constitutional. As a reward for his services he was, in 1640, appointed lord keeper, and was also created Baron Finch of Fordwich. He had, however, become so unpopular that one of the first acts of the Long Parliament, which met in the same year was his impeachment. He took refuge in Holland, but had to suffer the sequestration of his estates. When he was allowed to return to England is uncertain, but in 1660 he was one of the commissioners for the trial of the regicides, though he does not appear to have taken much part in the proceedings. He died on the 27th of November 1660 and was buried in St Martin’s church near Canterbury, his peerage becoming extinct.

See Foss, Lives of the Judges; Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices.

FINCH (Ger. Fink, Lat. Fringilla), a name applied (but almost always in composition—as bullfinch, chaffinch, goldfinch, hawfinch, &c.) to a great many small birds of the order Passeres, and now pretty generally accepted as that of a group or family—the Fringillidae of most ornithologists. Yet it is one the extent of which must be regarded as being uncertain. Many writers have included in it the buntings (Emberizidae), though these seem to be quite distinct, as well as the larks (Alaudidae), the tanagers (Tanagridae), and the weaver-birds (Ploceidae). Others have separated from it the crossbills, under the title of Loxiidae, but without due cause. The difficulty which at this time presents itself in regard to the limits of the Fringillidae arises from our ignorance of the anatomical features, especially those of the head, possessed by many exotic forms.

Taken as a whole, the finches, concerning which no reasonable doubt can exist, are not only little birds with a hard bill, adapted in most cases for shelling and eating the various seeds that form the chief portion of their diet when adult, but they appear to be mainly forms which predominate in and are highly characteristic of the Palaearctic Region; moreover, though some are found elsewhere on the globe, the existence of but very few in the Notogaean hemisphere can as yet be regarded as certain.

But even with this limitation, the separation of the undoubted Fringillidae1 into groups is a difficult task. Were we merely to consider the superficial character of the form of the bill, the genus Loxia (in its modern sense) would be easily divided not only from the other finches, but from all other birds. The birds of this genus—the crossbills—when their other characters are taken into account, prove to be intimately allied on the one hand to the grosbeaks (Pinicola) and on the other through the redpolls (Aegiothus) to the linnets (Linota)—if indeed these two can be properly separated. The linnets, through the genus Leucosticte, lead to the mountain-finches (Montifringilla), and the redpolls through the siskins (Chrysomitris) to the goldfinches (Carduelis); and these last again to the hawfinches, one group of which (Coccothraustes) is apparently not far distant from the chaffinches (Fringilla proper), and the other (Hesperiphona) seems to be allied to the greenfinches (Ligurinus). Then there is the group of serins (Serinus), to which the canary belongs, that one is in doubt whether to refer to the vicinity of the greenfinches or that of the redpolls. The mountain-finches may be regarded as pointing first to the rock-sparrows (Petronia) and then to the true sparrows (Passer); while the grosbeaks pass into many varied forms and throw out a very well marked form—the bullfinches (Pyrrhula). Some of the modifications of the family are very gradual, and therefore conclusions founded on them are likely to be correct; others are further apart, and the links which connect them, if not altogether missing, can but be surmised. To avoid as much as possible prejudicing the case, we shall therefore take the different groups of Fringillidae which it is convenient to consider in this article in an alphabetical arrangement.

Of the Bullfinches the best known is the familiar bird (Pyrrhula europaea). The varied plumage of the cock—his bright red breast and his grey back, set off by his coal-black head and quills—is naturally attractive; while the facility with which he is tamed, with his engaging disposition in confinement, makes him a popular cage-bird,—to say nothing of the fact (which in the opinion of so many adds to his charms) of his readily learning to “pipe” a tune, or some bars of one. By gardeners the bullfinch has long been regarded as a deadly enemy, from its undoubted destruction of the buds of fruit-trees in spring-time, though whether the destruction is really so much of a detriment is by no means so undoubted. Northern and eastern Europe is inhabited by a larger form (P. major), which differs in nothing but size and more vivid tints from that which is common in the British Isles and western Europe. A very distinct species (P. murina), remarkable for its dull coloration, is peculiar to the Azores, and several others are found in Asia from the Himalayas to Japan. A bullfinch (P. cassini) has been discovered in Alaska, being the first recognition of this genus in the New World.

The Canary (Serinus canarius) is indigenous to the islands whence it takes its name, as well, apparently, as to the neighbouring groups of the Madeiras and Azores, in all of which it abounds. It seems to have been imported into Europe at least as early as the first half of the 16th century,2 and has since become the commonest of cage-birds. The wild stock is of an olive-green, mottled with dark brown above, and greenish-yellow beneath. All the bright-hued examples we now see in captivity have been induced by carefully breeding from any chance varieties that have shown themselves; and not only the colour, but the build and stature of the bird have in this manner been greatly modified. The ingenuity of “the fancy,” which might seem to have exhausted itself in the production of topknots, feathered feet, and so forth, has brought about a still further change from the original type. It has been found that by a particular treatment, in which the mixing of large quantities of vegetable colouring agents with the food plays an important part, the ordinary “canary yellow” may be intensified so as to verge upon a more or less brilliant flame colour.3

Very nearly resembling the canary, but smaller in size, is the Serin (Serinus hortulanus), a species which not long since was very local in Europe, and chiefly known to inhabit the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. It has pushed its way towards the north, and has even been several times taken in England (Yarrell’s Brit. Birds, ed. 4, ii. pp. 111-116). A closely allied species (S. canonicus) is peculiar to Palestine.

The Chaffinches are regarded as the type-form of Fringillidae. The handsome and sprightly Fringilla coelebs4 is common throughout the whole of Europe. Conspicuous by his variegated plumage, his peculiar call note5 and his glad song, the cock is almost everywhere a favourite. In Algeria the British chaffinch is replaced by a closely-allied species (F. spodogenia), while in the Atlantic Islands it is represented by two others (F. tintillon and F. teydea)—all of which, while possessing the general appearance of the European bird, are clothed in soberer tints.6 Another species of true Fringilla is the brambling (F. montifringilla), which has its home in the birch forests of northern Europe and Asia, whence it yearly proceeds, often in flocks of thousands, to pass the winter in more southern countries. This bird is still more beautifully coloured than the chaffinch—especially in summer, when, the brown edges of the feathers being shed, it presents a rich combination of black, white and orange. Even in winter, however, its diversified plumage is sufficiently striking.

With the exception of the single species of bullfinch already noticed as occurring in Alaska, all the above forms of finches are peculiar to the Palaearctic Region.

(A. N.)

1 About 200 species of these have been described, and perhaps 150 may really exist.

2 The earliest published description seems to be that of Gesner in 1555 (Orn. p. 234), but he had not seen the bird, an account of which was communicated to him by Raphael Seiler of Augsburg, under the name of Suckeruögele.

3 See also The Canary Book, by Robert L. Wallace; Canaries and Cage Birds, by W.A. Blackston; and Darwin’s Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i. p. 295. An excellent monograph on the wild bird is that by Dr Carl Bolle (Journ. für Orn., 1858, pp. 125-151).

4 This fanciful trivial name was given by Linnaeus on the supposition (which later observations do not entirely confirm) that in Sweden the hens of the species migrated southward in autumn, leaving the cocks to lead a celibate life till spring. It is certain, however, that in some localities the sexes live apart during the winter.

5 This call-note, which to many ears sounds like “pink” or “spink,” not only gives the bird a name in many parts of Britain, but is also obviously the origin of the German Fink and the English Finch. The similar Celtic form Pinc is said to have given rise to the Low Latin Pincio, and thence come the Italian Pincione, the Spanish Pinzon, and the French Pinson.

6 This is especially the ease with F. teydea of the Canary Islands, which from its dark colouring and large size forms a kind of parallel to the Azorean Pyrrhula murina.

FINCHLEY, an urban district in the Hornsey parliamentary division of Middlesex, England, 7 m. N.W. of St Paul’s cathedral, London, on a branch of the Great Northern railway. Pop. (1891) 16,647; (1901) 22,126. A part, adjoining Highgate on the north, lies at an elevation between 300 and 400 ft., while a portion in the Church End district lies lower, in the valley of the Dollis Brook. The pleasant, healthy situation has caused Finchley to become a populous residential district. Finchley Common was formerly one of the most notorious resorts of highwaymen near London; the Great North Road crossed it, and it was a haunt of Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard, and was still dangerous to cross at night at the close of the 18th century. Sheppard was captured in this neighbourhood in 1724. The Common has not been preserved from the builder. In 1660 George Monk, marching on London immediately before the Restoration, made his camp on the Common, and in 1745 a regular and volunteer force encamped here, prepared to resist the Pretender, who was at Derby. The gathering of this force inspired Hogarth’s famous picture, the “March of the Guards to Finchley.”

FINCK, FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON (1718-1766), Prussian soldier, was born at Strelitz in 1718. He first saw active service in 1734 on the Rhine, as a member of the suite of Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Soon after this he transferred to the Austrian service, and thence went to Russia, where he served until the fall of his patron Marshal Münnich put an end to his prospects of advancement. In 1742 he went to Berlin, and Frederick the Great made him his aide-de-camp, with the rank of major. Good service brought him rapid promotion in the Seven Years’ War. After the battle of Kolin (June 18th, 1757) he was made colonel, and at the end of 1757 major-general. At the beginning of 1759 Finck became lieutenant-general, and in this rank commanded a corps at the disastrous battle of Kunersdorf, where he did good service both on the field of battle and (Frederick having in despair handed over to him the command) in the rallying of the beaten Prussians. Later in the year he fought in concert with General Wunsch a widespread combat, called the action of Korbitz (Sept. 21st) in which the Austrians and the contingents of the minor states of the Empire were sharply defeated. For this action Frederick gave Finck the Black Eagle (Seyfarth, Beilagen, ii. 621-630). But the subsequent catastrophe of Maxen (see Seven Years’ War) abruptly put an end to Finck’s active career. Dangerously exposed, and with inadequate forces, Finck received the king’s positive order to march upon Maxen (a village in the Pirna region of Saxony). Unfortunately for himself the general dared not disobey his master, and, cut off by greatly superior numbers, was forced to surrender with some 11,000 men (21st Nov. 1759). After the peace, Frederick sent him before a court-martial, which sentenced him to be cashiered and to suffer a term of imprisonment in a fortress. At the expiry of this term Finck entered the Danish service as general of infantry. He died at Copenhagen in 1766.

He left a work called Gedanken über militärische Gegenstände (Berlin, 1788). See Denkwürdigkeiten der militärischen Gesellschaft, vol. ii. (Berlin, 1802-1805), and the report of the Finck court-martial in Zeitschrift für Kunst, Wissenschaft und Geschichte des Krieges, pt. 81 (Berlin, 1851). There is a life of Finck in MS. in the library of the Great General Staff.

FINCK, HEINRICH (d. c. 1519), German musical composer, was probably born at Bamberg, but nothing is certainly known either of the place or date of his birth. Between 1492 and 1506 he was a musician in, and later possibly conductor of the court orchestra of successive kings of Poland at Warsaw. He held the post of conductor at Stuttgart from 1510 till about 1519, in which year he probably died. His works, mostly part songs and other vocal compositions, show great musical knowledge, and amongst the early masters of the German school he holds a high position. They are found scattered amongst ancient and modern collections of songs and other musical pieces (see R. Eitner, Bibl. der Musiksammelwerke des 16. und 17. Jahrh., Berlin, 1877). The library of Zwickau possesses a work containing a collection of fifty-five songs by Finck, printed about the middle of the 16th century.

FINCK, HERMANN (1527-1558), German composer, the great-nephew of Heinrich Finck, was born on the 21st of March 1527 in Pirna, and died at Wittenberg on the 28th of December 1558. After 1553 he lived at Wittenberg, where he was organist, and there, in 1555, was published his collection of “wedding songs.” Few details of his life have been preserved. His theoretical writing was good, particularly his observations on the art of singing and of making ornamentations in song. His most celebrated work is entitled Practica musica, exempla variorum signorum, proportionum, et canonum, judicium de tonis ac quaedam de arte suaviter et artificiose cantandi continens (Wittenberg, 1556). It is of great historic value, but very rare.

FINDEN, WILLIAM (1787-1852), English line engraver, was born in 1787. He served his apprenticeship to one James Mitan, but appears to have owed far more to the influence of James Heath, whose works he privately and earnestly studied. His first employment on his own account was engraving illustrations for books, and among the most noteworthy of these early plates were Smirke’s illustrations to Don Quixote. His neat style and smooth finish made his pictures very attractive and popular, and although he executed several large plates, his chief work throughout his life was book illustration. His younger brother, Edward Finden, worked in conjunction with him, and so much demand arose for their productions that ultimately a company of assistants was engaged, and plates were produced in increasing numbers, their quality as works of art declining as their quantity rose. The largest plate executed by William Finden was the portrait of King George IV. seated on a sofa, after the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. For this work he received two thousand guineas, a sum larger than had ever before been paid for an engraved portrait. Finden’s next and happiest works on a large scale were the “Highlander’s Return” and the “Village Festival,” after Wilkie. Later in life he undertook, in co-operation with his brother, aided by their numerous staff, the publication as well as the production of various galleries of engravings. The first of these, a series of landscape and portrait illustrations to the life and works of Byron, appeared in 1833 and following years, and was very successful. But by his Gallery of British Art (in fifteen parts, 1838-1840), the most costly and best of these ventures, he lost the fruits of all his former success. Finden’s last undertaking was an engraving on a large scale of Hilton’s “Crucifixion.” The plate was bought by the Art Union for £1470. He died in London on the 20th of September 1852.

FINDLATER, ANDREW (1810-1885), Scottish editor, was born in 1810 near Aberdour, Aberdeenshire, the son of a small farmer. By hard study in the evening, after his day’s work on the farm was finished, he qualified himself for entrance at Aberdeen University, and after graduating as M.A. he attended the Divinity classes with the idea of entering the ministry. In 1853 he began that connexion with the firm of W. & R. Chambers which gave direction to his subsequent activity. His first engagement was the editing of a revised edition of their Information for the People (1857). In this capacity he gave evidence of qualities and acquirements that marked him as a suitable editor for Chambers’s Encyclopaedia, then projected, and his was the directing mind that gave it its character. Many of the more important articles were written by him. This work occupied him till 1868, and he afterwards edited a revised edition (1874). He also had charge of other publications for the same firm, and wrote regularly for the Scotsman. In 1864 he was made LL.D. of Aberdeen University. In 1877 he gave up active work for Chambers, but his services were retained as consulting editor. He died in Edinburgh on the 1st of January 1885.

FINDLAY, SIR GEORGE (1829-1893), English railway manager, was of pure Scottish descent, and was born at Rainhill, in Lancashire, on the 18th of May 1829. For some time he attended Halifax grammar school, but left at the age of fourteen, and began to learn practical masonry on the Halifax railway, upon which his father was then employed. Two years later he obtained a situation on the Trent Valley railway works, and when that line was finished in 1847 went up to London. There he was for a short time among the men employed in building locomotive sheds for the London & North-Western railway at Camden Town, and years afterwards, when he had become general manager of that railway, he was able to point out stones which he had dressed with his own hands. For the next two or three years he was engaged in a higher capacity as supervisor of the mining and brickwork of the Harecastle tunnel on the North Staffordshire line, and of the Walton tunnel on the Birkenhead, Lancashire & Cheshire Junction railway. In 1850 the charge of the construction of a section of the Shrewsbury & Hereford line was entrusted to him, and when the line was opened for traffic T. Brassey, the contractor, having determined to work it himself, installed him as manager. In the course of his duties he was brought for the first time into official relations with the London & North-Western railway, which had undertaken to work the Newport, Abergavenny & Hereford line, and he ultimately passed into the service of that company, when in 1862, jointly with the Great Western, it leased the railway of which he was manager. In 1864 he was moved to Euston as general goods manager, in 1872 he became chief traffic manager, and in 1880 he was appointed full general manager; this last post he retained until his death, which occurred on the 26th of March 1893 at Edgware, Middlesex. He was knighted in 1892. Sir George Findlay was the author of a book on the Working and Management of an English Railway (London, 1889), which contains a great deal of information, some of it not easily accessible to the general public, as to English railway practice about the year 1890.

FINDLAY, JOHN RITCHIE (1824-1898), Scottish newspaper owner and philanthropist, was born at Arbroath on the 21st of October 1824, and was educated at Edinburgh University. He entered first the publishing office and then the editorial department of the Scotsman, became a partner in the paper in 1868, and in 1870 inherited the greater part of the property from his great uncle, John Ritchie, the founder. The large increase in the influence and circulation of the paper was in a great measure due to his activity and direction, and it brought him a fortune, which he spent during his lifetime in public benefaction. He presented to the nation the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, opened in Edinburgh in 1889, and costing over £70,000; and he contributed largely to the collections of the Scottish National Gallery. He held numerous offices in antiquarian, educational and charitable societies, showing his keen interest in these matters, but he avoided political office and refused the offer of a baronetcy. The freedom of Edinburgh was given him in 1896. He died at Aberlour, Banffshire, on the 16th of October 1898.

FINDLAY, a city and the county-seat of Hancock county, Ohio, U.S.A., on Blanchard’s Fork of the Auglaize river, about 42 m. S. by W. of Toledo. Pop. (1890) 18,553; (1900) 17,613, (1051 foreign-born); (1910) 14,858. It is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, the Lake Erie & Western, and the Ohio Central railways, and by three interurban electric railways. Findlay lies about 780 ft. above sea-level on gently rolling ground. The city is the seat of Findlay College (co-educational), an institution of the Church of God, chartered in 1882 and opened in 1886; it has collegiate, preparatory, normal, commercial and theological departments, a school of expression, and a conservatory of music, and in 1907 had 588 students, the majority of whom were in the conservatory of music. Findlay is the centre of the Ohio natural gas and oil region, and lime and building stone abound in the vicinity. Among manufactures are refined petroleum, flour and grist-mill products, glass, boilers, bricks, tile, pottery, bridges, ditching machines, carriages and furniture. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $2,925,309, an increase of 73.6% since 1900. The municipality owns and operates the water-works. Findlay was laid out as a town in 1821, was incorporated as a village in 1838, and was chartered as a city in 1890. The city was named in honour of Colonel James Findlay (c. 1775-1835), who built a fort here during the war of 1812; he served in this war under General William Hull, and from 1825 to 1833 was a Democratic representative in Congress.

FINE, a word which in all its senses goes back to the Lat. finire, to bring to an end (finis). Thus in the common adjectival meanings of elegant, thin, subtle, excellent, reduced in size, &c., it is in origin equivalent to “finished.” In the various substantival meanings in law, with which this article deals, the common idea underlying them is an end or final settlement of a matter.

A fine, in the ordinary sense, is a pecuniary penalty inflicted for the less serious offences. Fines are necessarily discretionary as to amount; but a maximum is generally fixed when the penalty is imposed by statute. And it is an old constitutional maxim that fines must not be unreasonable. In Magna Carta, c. 111, it is ordained “Liber homo non amercietur pro parvo delicto nisi secundum modum ipsius delicti, et pro magno delicto secundum magnitudinem delicti.”

The term is also applied to payments made to the lord of a manor on the alienation of land held according to the custom of the manor, to payments made by a lessee on a renewal of a lease, and to other similar payments.

Fine also denotes a fictitious suit at law, which played the part of a conveyance of landed property. “A fine,” says Blackstone, “may be described to be an amicable composition or agreement of a suit, either actual or fictitious, by leave of the king or his justices, whereby the lands in question become or are acknowledged to be the right of one of the parties. In its original it was founded on an actual suit commenced at law for the recovery of the possession of land or other hereditaments; and the possession thus gained by such composition was found to be so sure and effectual that fictitious actions were and continue to be every day commenced for the sake of obtaining the same security.” Freehold estates could thus be transferred from one person to another without the formal delivery of possession which was generally necessary to a feoffment. This is one of the oldest devices of the law. A statute of 18 Edward I. describes it as the most solemn and satisfactory of securities, and gives a reason for its name—“Qui quidem finis sic vocatur, eo quod finis et consummatio omnium placitorum esse debet, et hac de causa providebatur.” The action was supposed to be founded on a breach of covenant: the defendant, owning himself in the wrong,1 makes overtures of compromise, which are authorized by the licentia concordandi; then followed the concord, or the compromise itself. These, then were the essential parts of the performance, which became efficient as soon as they were complete; the formal parts were the notes, or abstract of the proceedings, and the foot of the fine, which recited the final agreement. Fines were said to be of four kinds, according to the purpose they had in view, as, for instance, to convey lands in pursuance of a covenant, to grant revisionary interest only, &c. In addition to the formal record of the proceedings, various statutes required other solemnities to be observed, the great object of which was to give publicity to the transaction. Thus by statutes of Richard III. and Henry VII. the fine had to be openly read and proclaimed in court no less than sixteen times. A statute of Elizabeth required a list of fines to be exposed in the court of common pleas and at assizes. The reason for these formalities was the high and important nature of the conveyance, which, according to the act of Edward I. above mentioned, “precludes not only those which are parties and privies to the fine and their heirs, but all other persons in the world who are of full age, out of prison, of sound memory, and within the four seas, the day of the fine levied, unless they put in their claim on the foot of the fine within a year and a day.” This barring by non-claim was abolished in the reign of Edward III., but restored with an extension of the time to five years in the reign of Henry VII. The effect of this statute, intentional according to Blackstone, unintended and brought about by judicial construction according to others, was that a tenant-in-tail could bar his issue by a fine. A statute of Henry VIII. expressly declares this to be the law. Fines, along with the kindred fiction of recoveries, were abolished by the Fines and Recoveries Act 1833, which substituted a deed enrolled in the court of chancery.

Fines are so generally associated in legal phraseology with recoveries that it may not be inconvenient to describe the latter in the present place. A recovery was employed as a means for evading the strict law of entail. The purchaser or alienee brought an action against the tenant-in-tail, alleging that he had no legal title to the land. The tenant-in-tail brought a third person into court, declaring that he had warranted his title, and praying that he might be ordered to defend the action. This person was called the vouchee, and he, after having appeared to defend the action, takes himself out of the way. Judgment for the lands is given in favour of the plaintiff; and judgment to recover lands of equal value from the vouchee was given to the defendant, the tenant-in-tail. In real action, such lands when recovered would have fallen under the settlement of entail; but in the fictitious recovery the vouchee was a man of straw, and nothing was really recovered from him, while the lands of the tenant-in-tail were effectually conveyed to the successful plaintiff. A recovery differed from a fine, as to form, in being an action carried through to the end, while a fine was settled by compromise, and as to effect, by barring all reversions and remainders in estates tail, while a fine barred the issue only of the tenant. (See also Ejectment; Proclamation.)

1 Hence called cognizor; the other party, the purchaser, is the cognizee.

FINE ARTS, the name given to a whole group of human activities, which have for their result what is collectively known as Fine Art. The arts which constitute the group are the five greater arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry, with a number of minor or subsidiary arts, of which dancing and the drama are among the most ancient and universal. In antiquity the fine arts were not explicitly named, nor even distinctly recognized, as a separate class. In other modern languages besides English they are called by the equivalent name of the beautiful arts (belle arti, beaux arts, schöne Künste). The fine or beautiful arts then, it is usually said, are those among the arts of man which minister, not primarily to his material necessities or conveniences, but to his love of beauty; and if any art fulfils both these purposes at once, still as fulfilling the latter only is it called a fine art. Thus architecture, in so far as it provides shelter and accommodation, is one of the useful or mechanical arts, and one of the fine arts only in so far as its structures impress or give pleasure by the aspect of strength, fitness, harmony and proportion of parts, by disposition and contrast of light and shade, by colour and enrichment, by variety and relation of contours, surfaces and intervals. But this, the commonly accepted account of the matter, does not really cover the ground. The idea conveyed by the words “love of beauty,” even stretched to its widest, can hardly be made to include the love of caricature and the grotesque; and these are admittedly modes of fine art. Even the terrible, the painful, the squalid, the degraded, in a word every variety of the significant, can be so handled and interpreted as to be brought within the province of fine art. A juster and more inclusive, although clumsier, account of the matter might put it that the fine arts are those among the arts of man which spring from his impulse to do or make certain things in certain ways for the sake, first, of a special kind of pleasure, independent of direct utility, which it gives him so to do or make them, and next for the sake of the kindred pleasure which he derives from witnessing or contemplating them when they are so done or made by others.

The nature of this impulse, and the several grounds of these pleasures, are subjects which have given rise to a formidable body of speculation and discussion, the chief phases of which will be found summarized under the heading Aesthetics. In the present article we have only to attend to the concrete processes and results of the artistic activities of man; in other words, we shall submit (1) a definition of fine art in general, (2) a definition and classification of the principal fine arts severally, (3) some observations on their historical development.

I. Of Fine Art in General.

According to the popular and established distinction between art and nature, the idea of Art (q.v.) only includes phenomena of which man is deliberately the cause; while the idea of Nature includes all phenomena, both in man Premeditation essential to art. and in the world outside him, which take place without forethought or studied initiative of his own. Art, accordingly, means every regulated operation or dexterity whereby we pursue ends which we know beforehand; and it means nothing but such operations and dexterities. What is true of art generally is of course also true of the special group of the fine arts. One of the essential qualities of all art is premeditation; and when Shelley talks of the skylark’s profuse strains of “unpremeditated art,” he in effect lays emphasis on the fact that it is only by a metaphor that he uses the word art in this case at all; he calls attention to that which (if the songs of birds are as instinctive as we suppose) precisely makes the difference between the skylark’s outpourings and his own. We are slow to allow the title of fine art to natural eloquence, to charm or dignity of manner, to delicacy and tact in social intercourse, and other such graces of life and conduct, since, although in any given case they may have been deliberately cultivated in early life, or even through ancestral generations, they do not produce their full effect until they are so ingrained as to have become unreflecting and spontaneous. When the exigencies of a philosophic scheme lead some writers on aesthetics to include such acts or traits of beautiful and expressive behaviour among the deliberate artistic activities of mankind, we feel that an essential distinction is being sacrificed to the exigencies of a system. That distinction common parlance very justly observes, with its opposition of “art” to “nature” and its phrase of “second nature” for those graces which have become so habitual as to seem instinctive, whether originally the result of discipline or not. When we see a person in all whose ordinary movements there are freedom and beauty, we put down the charm of these with good reason to inherited and inbred aptitudes of which the person has never thought or long since ceased to think, and could not still be thinking without spoiling the charm by self-consciousness; and we call the result a gift of nature. But when we go on to notice that the same person is beautifully and appropriately dressed, since we know that it is impossible to dress without thinking of it, we put down the charm of this to judicious forethought and calculation and call the result a work of art.

The processes then of fine art, like those of all arts properly so called, are premeditated, and the property of every fine art is to give to the person exercising it a special kind of active pleasure, and a special kind of passive or The active and the passive pleasures of fine art. receptive pleasure to the person witnessing the results of such exercise. This latter statement seems to imply that there exist in human societies a separate class producing works of fine art and another class enjoying them. Such an implication, in regard to advanced societies, is near enough the truth to be theoretically admitted (like the analogous assumption in political economy that there exist separate classes of producers and consumers). In developed communities the gifts and calling of the artist constitute in fact a separate profession of the creators or purveyors of fine art, while the rest of the community are its enjoyers or recipients. In the most primitive societies, apparently, this cannot have been so, and we can go back to an original or rudimentary stage of almost every fine art at which the separation between a class of producers or performers and a class of recipients hardly exists. Such an original or rudimentary stage of the dramatic art is presented by children, who will occupy themselves for ever with mimicry and make-believe for their own satisfaction, with small regard or none to the presence or absence of witnesses. The original or rudimentary type of the profession of imitative sculptors or painters is the cave-dweller of prehistoric ages, who, when he rested from his day’s hunting, first took up the bone handle of his weapon, and with a flint either carved it into the shape, or on its surface scratched the outlines, of the animals of the chase. The original or rudimentary type of the architect, considered not as a mere builder but as an artist, is the savage who, when his tribe had taken to live in tents or huts instead of caves, first arranged the skins and timbers of his tent or hut in one way because it pleased his eye, rather than in some other way which was as good for shelter. The original type of the artificer or adorner of implements, considered in the same light, was the other savage who first took it into his head to fashion his club or spear in one way rather than another for the pleasure of the eye only and not for any practical reason, and to ornament it with tufts or markings. In none of these cases, it would seem, can the primitive artist have had much reason for pleasing anybody but himself. Again, the original or rudimentary type of lyric song and dancing arose when the first reveller clapped hands and stamped or shouted in time, in honour of his god, in commemoration of a victory, or in mere obedience to the blind stirring of a rhythmic impulse within him. To some very remote and solitary ancestral savage the presence or absence of witnesses at such a display may in like manner have been indifferent; but very early in the history of the race the primitive dancer and singer joined hands and voices with others of his tribe, while others again sat apart and looked on at the performance, and the rite thus became both choral and social. A primitive type of the instrumental musician is the shepherd who first notched a reed and drew sounds from it while his sheep were cropping. The father of all artists in dress and personal adornment was the first wild man who tattooed himself or bedecked himself with shells and plumes. In both of these latter instances, it may be taken as certain, the primitive artist had the motive of pleasing not himself only, but his mate, or the female whom he desired to be his mate, and in the last instance of all the further motive of impressing his fellow-tribesmen and striking awe or envy into his enemies. The tendency of recent speculation and research concerning the origins of art has been to ascribe the primitive artistic activities of man less and less to individual and solitary impulse, and more and more to social impulse and the desire of sharing and communicating pleasure. (The writer who has gone furthest in developing this view, and on grounds of the most careful study of evidence, has been Dr Yrjö Hirn of Helsingfors.) Whatever relative parts the individual and the social impulses may have in fact played at the outset, it is clear that what any one can enjoy or admire by himself, whether in the way of mimicry, of rhythmical movements or utterances, of imitative or ornamental carving and drawing, of the disposition and adornment of dwelling-places and utensils—the same things, it is clear, others are able also to enjoy or admire with him. And so, with the growth of societies, it came about that one class of persons separated themselves and became the ministers or producers of this kind of pleasures, while the rest became the persons ministered to, the participators in or recipients of the pleasures. Artists are those members of a society who are so constituted as to feel more acutely than the rest certain classes of pleasures which all can feel in their degree. By this fact of their constitution they are impelled to devote their active powers to the production of such pleasures, to the making or doing of some of those things which they enjoy so keenly when they are made and done by others. At the same time the artist does not, by assuming these ministering or creative functions, surrender his enjoying or receptive functions. He continues to participate in the pleasures of which he is himself the cause, and remains a conscious member of his own public. The architect, sculptor, painter, are able respectively to stand off from and appreciate the results of their own labours; the singer enjoys the sound of his own voice, and the musician of his own instrument; the poet, according to his temperament, furnishes the most enthusiastic or the most fastidious reader for his own stanzas. Neither, on the other hand, does the person who is a habitual recipient from others of the pleasures of fine art forfeit the privilege of producing them according to his capabilities, and of becoming, if he has the power, an amateur or occasional artist.

Most of the common properties which have been recognized by consent as peculiar to the group of fine arts will be found on examination to be implied in, or deducible from, the one fundamental character generally claimed for Pleasures of fine art disinterested. them, namely, that they exist independently of direct practical necessity or utility. Let us take, first, a point relating to the frame of mind of the recipient, as distinguished from the producer, of the pleasures of fine art. It is an observation as old as Aristotle that such pleasures differ from most other pleasures of experience in that they are disinterested, in the sense that they are not such as nourish a man’s body nor add to his riches; they are not such as can gratify him, when he receives them, by the sense of advantage or superiority over his fellow-creatures; they are not such as one human being can in any sense receive exclusively from the object which bestows them. Thus it is evidently characteristic of a beautiful building that its beauty cannot be monopolized, but can be seen and admired by the inhabitants of a whole city and by all visitors for all generations. The same thing is true of a picture or a statue, except in so far as an individual possessor may choose to keep such a possession to himself, in which case his pride in exclusive ownership is a sentiment wholly independent of his pleasure in artistic contemplation. Similarly, music is composed to be sung or played for the enjoyment of many at a time, and for such enjoyment a hundred years hence as much as to-day. Poetry is written to be read by all readers for ever who care for the ideas and feelings of the poet, and can apprehend the meaning and melody of his language. Hence, though we can speak of a class of the producers of fine art, we cannot speak of a class of its consumers, only of its recipients or enjoyers. If we consider other pleasures which might seem to be analogous to those of fine art, but to which common consent yet declines to allow that character, we shall see that one reason is that such pleasures are not in their nature thus disinterested. Thus the sense of smell and taste have pleasures of their own like the senses of sight and hearing, and pleasures neither less poignant nor very much less capable of fine graduation and discrimination than those. Why, then, is the title of fine art not claimed for any skill in arranging and combining them? Why are there no recognized arts of savours and scents corresponding in rank to the arts of forms, colours and sounds—or at least none among Western nations, for in Japan, it seems, there is a recognized and finely regulated social art of the combination and succession of perfumes? An answer commonly given is that sight and hearing are intellectual and therefore higher senses, that through them we have our avenues to all knowledge and all ideas of things outside us; while taste and smell are unintellectual and therefore lower senses, through which few such impressions find their way to us as help to build up our knowledge and our ideas. Perhaps a more satisfactory reason why there are no fine arts of taste and smell—or let us in deference to Japanese modes leave out smell, and say of taste only—is this, that savours yield only private pleasures, which it is not possible to build up into separate and durable schemes such that every one may have the benefit of them, and such as cannot be monopolized or used up. If against this it is contended that what the programme of a performance is in the musical art, the same is a menu in the culinary, and that practically it is no less possible to serve up a thousand times and to a thousand different companies the same dinner than the same symphony, we must fall back upon that still more fundamental form of the distinction between the aesthetic and non-aesthetic bodily senses, upon which the physiological psychologists of the English school lay stress. We must say that the pleasures of taste cannot be pleasures of fine art, because their enjoyment is too closely associated with the most indispensable and the most strictly personal of utilities, eating and drinking. To pass from these lower pleasures to the highest; consider the nature of the delight derived from the contemplation, by the person who is their object, of the signs and manifestations of love. That at least is a beautiful experience; why is the pleasure which it affords not an artistic pleasure either? Why, in order to receive an artistic pleasure from human signs and manifestations of this kind, are we compelled to go to the theatre and see them exhibited in favour of a third person who is not really their object any more than ourselves? This is so, for one reason, evidently, because of the difference between art and nature. Not to art, but to nature and life, belongs love where it is really felt, with its attendant train of vivid hopes, fears, passions and contingencies. To art belongs love displayed where it is not really felt; and in this sphere, along with reality and spontaneousness of the display, and along with its momentous bearings, there disappear all those elements of pleasure in its contemplation which are not disinterested—the elements of personal exultation and self-congratulation, the pride of exclusive possession or acceptance, all these emotions, in short, which are summed up in the lover’s triumphant monosyllable, “Mine.” Thus, from the lowest point of the scale to the highest, we may observe that the element of personal advantage or monopoly in human gratifications seems to exclude, them from the kingdom of fine art. The pleasures of fine art, so far as concerns their passive or receptive part, seem to define themselves as pleasures of gratified contemplation, but of such contemplation only when it is disinterested—which is simply another way of saying, when it is unconcerned with ideas of utility.

Modern speculation has tended in some degree to modify and obscure this old and established view of the pleasures of fine art by urging that the hearer or spectator is not after all so free from self-interest as he seems; that in the An objection and its answer. act of artistic contemplation he experiences an enhancement or expansion of his being which is in truth a gain of the egoistic kind; that in witnessing a play, for instance, a large part of his enjoyment consists in sympathetically identifying himself with the successful lover or the virtuous hero. All this may be true, but does not really affect the argument, since at the same time he is well aware that every other spectator or auditor present may be similarly engaged with himself. At most the objection only requires us to define a little more closely, and to say that the satisfactions of the ego excluded from among the pleasures of fine art are not these ideal, sympathetic, indirect satisfactions, which every one can share together, but only those which arise from direct, private and incommunicable advantage to the individual.

Next, let us consider another generally accepted observation concerning the nature of the fine arts, and one, this time, relating to the disposition and state of mind of the practising artist himself. While for success in other arts it is only Fine arts cannot be practised by rule and precept. necessary to learn their rules and to apply them until practice gives facility, in the fine arts, it is commonly and justly said, rules and their application will carry but a little way towards success. All that can depend on rules, on knowledge, and on the application of knowledge by practice, the artist must indeed acquire, and the acquisition is often very complicated and laborious. But outside of and beyond such acquisitions he must trust to what is called genius or imagination, that is, to the spontaneous working together of an incalculably complex group of faculties, reminiscences, preferences, emotions, instincts in his constitution. This characteristic of the activities of the artist is a direct consequence or corollary of the fundamental fact that the art he practices is independent of utility. A utilitarian end is necessarily a determinate and prescribed end, and to every end which is determinate and prescribed there must be one road which is the best. Skill in any useful art means knowing practically, by rules and the application of rules, the best road to the particular ends of that art. Thus the farmer, the engineer, the carpenter, the builder so far as he is not concerned with the look of his buildings, the weaver so far as he is not concerned with the designing of the patterns which he weaves, possesses each his peculiar skill, but a skill to which fixed problems are set, and which, if it indulges in new inventions and combinations at all, can indulge them only for the sake of an improved solution of those particular problems. The solution once found, the invention once made, its rules can be written down, or at any rate its practice can be imparted to others who will apply it in their turn. Whereas no man can write down, in a way that others can act upon, how Beethoven conquered unknown kingdoms in the world of harmony, or how Rembrandt turned the aspects of gloom, squalor and affliction into pictures as worthy of contemplation as those into which the Italians before him had turned the aspects of spiritual exaltation and shadowless day. The reason why the operations of the artist thus differ from the operations of the ordinary craftsman or artificer is that his ends, being ends other than useful, are not determinate nor fixed as theirs are. He has large liberty to choose his own problems, and may solve each of them in a thousand different ways according to the prompting of his own ordering or creating instincts. The musical composer has the largest liberty of all. Having learned what is learnable in his art, having mastered the complicated and laborious rules of musical form, having next determined the particular class of the work which he is about to compose, he has then before him the whole inexhaustible world of appropriate successions and combinations of emotional sound. He is merely directed and not fettered, in the case of song, cantata, oratorio or opera, by the sense of the words which he has to set. The value of the result depends absolutely on his possessing or failing to possess powers which can neither be trained in nor communicated to any man. And this double freedom, alike from practical service and from the representation of definite objects, is what makes music in a certain sense the typical fine art, or art of arts. Architecture shares one-half of this freedom. It has not to copy or represent natural objects; for this service it calls in sculpture to its aid; but architecture is without the other half of freedom altogether. The architect has a sphere of liberty in the disposition of his masses, lines, colours, alternations of light and shadow, of plain and ornamented surface, and the rest; but upon this sphere he can only enter on condition that he at the same time fulfils the strict practical task of supplying the required accommodation, and obeys the strict mechanical necessities imposed by the laws of weight, thrust, support, resistance and other properties of solid matter. The sculptor again, the painter, the poet, has each in like manner his sphere of necessary facts, rules and conditions corresponding to the nature of his task. The sculptor must be intimately versed both in the surface aspects and the inner mechanism of the human frame alike in rest and motion, and in the rules and conditions for its representation in solid form; the painter in a much more extended range of natural facts and appearances, and the rules and conditions for representing them on a plane surface; the poet’s art of words has its own not inconsiderable basis of positive and disciplined acquisition. So far as rules, precepts, formulas and other communicable laws or secrets can carry the artist, so far also the spectator can account for, analyse, and, so to speak, tabulate the effects of his art. But the essential character of the artist’s operation, its very bloom and virtue, lies in those parts of it which fall outside this range of regulation on the one hand and analysis on the other. His merit varies according to the felicity with which he is able, in that region, to exercise his free choice and frame his individual ideal, and according to the tenacity with which he strives to grasp and realize his choice, or to attain perfection according to that ideal.