with an inexhaustible fund of humour. It is true her books portray the eccentricities, the follies, and foibles of the society in which she lived, caricaturing with terrible exactness its hypocrisy, boastfulness, greed, affectation, and undue subservience to public opinion. Yet Miss Ferrier wrote less to reform than to amuse. In this she is less like Miss Edgeworth than Miss Austen. Miss Edgeworth was more of a moralist; her wit is not so involuntary, her caricatures not always so good-natured. But Miss Austen and Miss Ferrier were genuine humorists, and with Miss Ferrier especially a keen sense of the ludicrous was always dominant. Her humorous characters are always her best. It was no doubt because she felt this that in the last year of her life she regretted not having devoted her talents more exclusively to the service of religion. But if she was not a moralist, neither was she a cynic; and her wit, even where it is most caustic, is never uncharitable.
Miss Ferrier’s mother died in 1797, and from that date she kept house for her father until his death in 1829. She lived quietly at Morningside House and in Edinburgh for more than twenty years after the publication of her last work. The pleasantest picture that we have of her is in Lockhart’s description of her visit to Scott in May 1831. She was asked there to help to amuse the dying master of Abbotsford, who, when he was not writing Count Robert of Paris, would talk as brilliantly as ever. Only sometimes, before he had reached the point in a narrative, “it would seem as if some internal spring had given way.” He would pause, and gaze blankly and anxiously round him. “I noticed,” says Lockhart, “the delicacy of Miss Ferrier on such occasions. Her sight was bad, and she took care not to use her glasses when he was speaking; and she affected to be also troubled with deafness, and would say, ‘Well, I am getting as dull as a post; I have not heard a word since you said so-and-so,’—being sure to mention a circumstance behind that at which he had really halted. He then took up the thread with his habitual smile of courtesy—as if forgetting his case entirely in the consideration of the lady’s infirmity.”
Miss Ferrier died on the 5th of November 1854, at her brother’s house in Edinburgh. She left among her papers a short unpublished article, entitled “Recollections of Visits to Ashestiel and Abbotsford.” This is her own very interesting account of her long friendship with Sir Walter Scott, from the date of her first visit to him and Lady Scott at Ashestiel, where she went with her father in the autumn of 1811, to her last sad visit to Abbotsford in 1831. It contains some impromptu verses written by Scott in her album at Ashestiel.
Miss Ferrier’s letters to her sister, which contained much interesting biographical matter, were destroyed at her particular request, but a volume of her correspondence with a memoir by her grand-nephew, John Ferrier, was published in 1898.
FERROL [El Ferrol], a seaport of north-western Spain, in
the province of Corunna; situated 12 m. N.E. of the city of
Corunna, and on the Bay of Ferrol, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean.
Pop. (1900) 25,281. Together with San Fernando, near Cadiz,
and Cartagena, Ferrol is governed by an admiral, with the
special title of captain-general; and it ranks beside these two
ports as one of the principal naval stations of Spain. The town
is beautifully situated on a headland overlooking the bay, and
is surrounded by rocky hills which render it invisible from the
sea. Its harbour, naturally one of the best in Europe, and the
largest in Spain except those of Vigo and Corunna, is deep,
capacious and secure; but the entrance is a narrow strait about
2 m. long, which admits only one vessel at a time, and is commanded
by modern and powerfully armed forts, while the neighbouring
heights are also crowned by defensive works. Ferrol is
provided with extensive dockyards, quays, warehouses and
an arsenal; most of these, with the palace of the captain-general,
the bull-ring, theatres, and other principal buildings, were built
or modernized between 1875 and 1905. The local industries are
mainly connected with the shipping trade, or the refitting of
warships. Owing to the lack of railway communication, and
the competition of Corunna at so short a distance, Ferrol is not
a first-class commercial port; and in the early years of the 20th
century its trade, already injured by the loss to Spain of Cuba
and Porto Rico in 1898, showed little prospect of improvement.
The exports are insignificant, and consist chiefly of wooden
staves and beams for use as pit-props; the chief imports are
coal, cement, timber, iron and machinery. In 1904, 282 vessels
of 155,881 tons entered the harbour. In the same year the construction
of a railway to the neighbouring town of Betanzos
was undertaken, and in 1909 important shipbuilding operations
were begun.
Ferrol was a mere fishing village until 1752, when Ferdinand VI. began to fit it for becoming an arsenal. In 1799 the British made a fruitless attempt to capture it, but on the 4th of November 1805 they defeated the French fleet in front of the town, which they compelled to surrender. On the 27th of January 1809 it was through treachery delivered over to the French, but it was vacated by them on the 22nd of July. On the 15th of July 1823 another blockade was begun by the French, and Ferrol surrendered to them on the 27th of August.
FERRUCCIO, or Ferrucci, FRANCESCO (1489–1530),
Florentine captain. After spending a few years as a merchant’s
clerk he took to soldiering at an early age, and served in the
Bande Nere in various parts of Italy, earning a reputation as a
daring fighter and somewhat of a swashbuckler. When Pope
Clement VII. and the emperor Charles V. decided to reinstate
the Medici in Florence, they made war on the Florentine republic,
and Ferruccio was appointed Florentine military commissioner
at Empoli, where he showed great daring and resource by his
rapid marches and sudden attacks on the Imperialists. Early
in 1530 Volterra had thrown off Florentine allegiance and
had been occupied by an Imperialist garrison, but Ferruccio
surprised and recaptured the city. During his absence, however,
the Imperialists captured Empoli by treachery, thus cutting
off one of the chief avenues of approach to Florence. Ferruccio
proposed to the government of the republic that he should
march on Rome and terrorize the pope by the threat of a sack
into making peace with Florence on favourable terms, but
although the war committee appointed him commissioner-general
for the operations outside the city, they rejected his
scheme as too audacious. Ferruccio then decided to attempt
a diversion by attacking the Imperialists in the rear and started
from Volterra for the Apennines. But at Pisa he was laid up
for a month with a fever—a misfortune which enabled the enemy
to get wind of his plan and to prepare for his attack. At the end
of July Ferruccio left Pisa at the head of about 4000 men, and
although the besieged in Florence, knowing that a large part
of the Imperialists under the prince of Orange had gone to meet
Ferruccio, wished to co-operate with the latter by means of a
sortie, they were prevented from doing so by their own traitorous
commander-in-chief, Malatesta Baglioni. Ferruccio encountered
a much larger force of the enemy on the 3rd of August at Gavinana;
a desperate battle ensued, and at first the Imperialists
were driven back by Ferruccio’s fierce onslaught and the prince
of Orange himself was killed, but reinforcements under Fabrizio
Maramaldo having arrived, the Florentines were almost annihilated
and Ferruccio was wounded and captured. Maramaldo
out of personal spite despatched the wounded man with his own
hand. This defeat sealed the fate of the republic, and nine days
later Florence surrendered. Ferruccio was one of the great
soldiers of the age, and his enterprise is the finest episode of the
last days of the Florentine republic. See also under Florence
and Medici.
Bibliography.—F. Sassetti, Vita di Francesco Ferrucci, written in the 16th century and published in the Archivio storico, vol. iv. pt. ii. (Florence, 1853), with an introduction by C. Monzani; E. Aloisi, La Battaglia di Gavinana (Bologna, 1881); cf. P. Villari’s criticism of the latter work, “Ferruccio e Maramaldo,” in his Arte, storia, e filosofia (Florence, 1884); Gino Capponi, Storia della repubblica di Firenze, vol. ii. (Florence, 1875).
FERRULE, a small metal cap or ring used for holding parts of a rod, &c., together, and for giving strength to weakened materials, or especially, when attached to the end of a stick, umbrella, &c., for preventing wearing or splitting. The word is properly verrel or verril, in which form it was used till the 18th century, and is derived through the O. Fr. virelle, modern
