Results of his Teachers' Work.

That Friedrich's Course of Education did on the whole prosper, in spite of every drawback, is known to all men. He came out of it a man of clear and ever improving intelligence; equipped with knowledge, true in essentials, if not punctiliously exact, upon all manner of practical and speculative things, to a degree not only unexampled among modern Sovereign Princes so called, but such as to distinguish him even among the studious class; nay, many 'Men of Letters' have made a reputation for themselves with but a fraction of the real knowledge concerning men and things, past and present, which Friedrich was possessed of. Already, at the time when action came to be demanded of him, he was what we must call a well informed and cultivated man, which character he never ceased to merit more and more; and as for the action and the actions, we shall see whether he was fit for these or not.

One point of supreme importance in his Education was all along made sure of by the mere presence and presidence of Friedrich Wilhelm in the business: that there was an inflexible law of discipline every where active in it; that there was a Spartan rigor, frugality, veracity, inculcated upon him. Economy he is to study to the bottom;' and not only so, but, in another sense of the word, he is to practice economy; and does, or else suffers for not doing it. Economic of his time first of all: generally every other noble economy will follow out of that, if a man once understand and practice that. Here was a truly valuable foundation laid; and as for the rest, Nature, in spite of shot rubbish, had to do what she could in the rest. Among the confused hurtful elements of his schooling, was the salutary and potent one of its being an apprenticeship to Friedrich Wilhelm.

Friedrich Wilhelm, King of Prussia, did not set up for a Pestalozzi, and the plan of education for his son is open to manifold objections. Nevertheless, as schoolmasters go, I much prefer him to most others we have at present The wild man had discerned, with his rugged natural intelligence (not wasted away in the idle element of speaking and of being spoken to, but kept wholesomely silent for most part), that human education is not, and can not be, a thing of vocables; that it is a thing of earnest facts; of capabilities devoloped, of habits established, of dispositions well dealt with, of tendencies confirmed and tendencies repressed; a laborious separating of the character into two firmaments; shutting down the subterranean, well down and deep; an earth and waters, and what lies under them; then your everlasting azure sky and immeasurable depths of ether hanging overhead. To make of the human soul a Cosmos, so far as possible, that was Friedrich Wilhelm's dumb notion, not to leave the human soul a mere Chaos; how much less a Singing or eloquently Spouting Chaos, which is ten times worse than a Chaos left mute, confessedly chaotic and not cosmic! To develop the man into doing something, and withal into doing it as the Universe and the Eternal Laws require-which is but another name for really doing and not merely seeming to do it-that was Friedrich Wilhelm's dumb notion; and it was, I can assure you, very far from being a foolish one, though there was no Latin in it, and much of Prussian pipe-clay.

MARQUIS OF POMBAL.

SEBASTIAN JOSEPH DE CARVALHO E MELLO, MARQUIS OF POMBAL, the great statesman and educator of Portugal, was born in 1693, in the reign of John V., who laid out 225,000l. on a chapel, measuring 17 feet by 12 feet, in the Church of St. Roque, and left his country at his death burdened with a debt of three millions sterling, "with a nominal navy and a nominal army, dismantled and abandoned fortresses, nominal lines of defense, nominal regiments of observation, and apparently on the brink of ruin." Long before Pombal came into power he appears to have contemplated this state of things with something of the resolute spirit of Chancellor Erskine, who, while yet a young lawyer, being checked in censure of some legal abuse by the remark, "It was the law before you were born," replied, "It is because I was not born that it is law, and I will alter it before I die." Accordingly, when at length the Portuguese reformer had power commensurate with his will, he unflinchingly devoted his energies to the uprooting of ancient prejudices and the establishment of beneficial changes.

Pombal entered the University of Coimbra in 1717, but quitted it in disgust at its "routine of unprofitable studies," and entered the army as a private, according to the custom of Portugal. Promoted to the rank of corporal he relinquished this nominal profession of arms, and devoted himself thenceforth to the study of history, politics, and legislation. While occupied with these more congenial pursuits he was presented by an uncle to Cardinal Motta, at that time high in favor with John V. The Cardinal's shrewd perception at once fixed on Pombal as one whose talents might be turned to account, and he strongly recommended him to the King. Dom John, however, beyond appointing him member of the Royal Academy of History, and expressing an anxiety that he should undertake the biographies of certain Portuguese monarchs, does not appear for some time to have further noticed him.

Having married in the interval Donna Theresa de Noronha, a widow, and niece of the Count dos Arcos, Pombal seems to have

seriously desired some active employment in the State; but he continued unemployed till the latter end of the year 1739, when by Cardinal Motta's recommendation he was sent to London as Minister. There he studied hard, in spite of ill-health, to acquaint himself with the history, constitution, and legislation of Great Britain, but remained ignorant of the English language; an odd fact, which the Conde da Carnota excuses by the remark that French was the language chiefly spoken at the court of George II., and that most of the best works then in vogue on politics or legislation were by French writers. In the course of his reading these authors, Sully became the model example of a Minister in the eyes of Pombal.

In 1745 he represented his government at Vienna, where he married the Countess Daun for his second wife. In 1750 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs, and enjoyed the confidence of Dom Joseph, who, for 27 years, sustained his measures of political, religious, and educational reform. In the first year of his ministry he succeeded in restricting the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and prohibiting its private tortures and public executions, which had for so long a period disgraced the country. So early in his ministry as 1751 a decree regulating its practices was promulgated. By this decree it was enacted that no auto-da-fé was henceforward to be celebrated and no sentences were to be executed without the consent and approbation of government, which reserved for itself as a court of appeal the province of inquiry and examination, and of confirming or reversing the sentence.

In 1761 (Sept. 19), he secured the passage of a law by which all slaves arriving in Portugal and touching her soil were declared to be ipso facto free men; that other law of mercy which forbade at home the imprisonment of debtors who were bona fide unable to meet the demands of their creditors; and many other edicts, all emanating from the same spirit.

When the city of Lisbon was well-nigh destroyed by the earthquake on the morning of All Saints' Day, in 1755, and the conflagration which followed the falling of the roofs of the numerous churches on the millions of tapers which were burning in honor of the festival, the efforts of the Minister rose to the greatness and urgency of the occasion. "What is to be done," said the King, who happened to be at a country residence on that fatal day, "to meet this infliction of Divine justice?" "Bury the dead, and feed the living," said his intrepid Minister Pombal-and at once entered his carriage and drove to Lisbon, to share the danger and alleviate the calamities of the earthquake and fire; and for several days his

carriage was his head-quarters, where he issued over 200 regulations, which not only brought order out of chaos, but permanent improvement out of these terrible disasters. In an incredible short space of time two hundred decrees were promulgated respecting the maintenance of order, the lodging of the people, the distribution of provisions, and the burial of the dead. In these numerous decrees Pombal entered into the minutest details; and, such was the rapidity with which they were conceived and promulgated, that many were written in pencil on his kness, and without being copied, were hastily forwarded to their various destinations. The wounded were removed and their wounds dressed; the houseless were collected and lodged in temporary huts; provisions were brought from all quarters and distributed to the poor; monopolies of all kinds were forbidden; troops were drawn from the provinces to preserve order; idlers were forced to work; the dispersed nuns were reassembled; the ruins removed; the dead buried, and public worship restored.

Before the earthquake not a single regular street above the length. of 100 yards existed. Now they were rebuilt handsome, solid, level, and well paved. A public garden was for the first time laid out. Sewers were constructed in the new streets. Rules for enforcing general cleanliness were likewise made. Much was done not only in the useful but the decorative line, and Lisbon rose from ruin in renewed beauty; but many of Pombal's plans were destined never to be carried out, and the one most regretted by the Portuguese-namely, the magnificent promenade which he designed to form on the shores of the lovely Tagus, from Santa Appallonia to Belem, a distance of about five miles, was never even commenced.

Pombal next turned his attention to the interests of agriculture as one of the chief sources of national prosperity, without exactly copying the spasmodic efforts of an ancient king (Dom Alfonso IV.), who enacted that the husbandman who neglected his lands should, for the first offense, forfeit his flocks, and if he persisted in careless or unskillful cultivation, should be hung. Stringent and compulsory edicts now rescued great tracts of soil from obstinate cultivation of the poorest sort of vines, and devoted them to corn and timber, while the importation of mulberry trees at the rate of 20,000 plants and upwards in successive years quadrupled the production of silk goods, and turned the attention of landholders to a new branch of industry.

It was through Pombal's judicious policy that the vine in the Upper Douro, and of which the "genuine old port" is made, was

rescued from a ruinous method of culture, and the vine from processes of deterioration, and its sale from the grasp of a monopoly, until the production rose to the highest demand in the foreign markets. His efforts, although crowned with success, involved the government in an insurrectionary movement in the district, and well-nigh caused a rupture with England, whose merchants had a monopoly of all the wines of this grape-a portion of the vintage being now brought into open market.

From the improvement of the soil and the agriculture, to the cultivation of the minds of the people, the transition was natural in this clear-sighted minister. His own son he sent to Rome, and afterwards to Vienna and Venice, to enjoy advantages he could not get at home; and at the same time, Pombal set agencies at work to relieve others from the necessities of sending their sons abroad for similar advantages. He determined that no Portuguese youth should have the excuse of want of opportunity, for not knowing how to write a decent letter in his vernacular, or be compelled to go to Venice and Genoa to obtain a commercial education. A School of Commerce was opened in Lisbon for those who wished to become clerks and enter the public offices; and a College (Royal Collegio dos Nobres) for the liberal education of the sons of the nobility. The laws and ordinances of this seminary were entirely framed by Pombal-so universal was his genius and so capable was he of perceiving and remedying every kind of evil that afflicted and depressed his country. As the old custom of conversing in Latin was still observed, to the utter destruction of good Latinity, he directed that the students should for the future converse either in Portuguese, French, Italian, or English, and never in Latin, as, he remarks, the familiar use of this dead language tends more para os ensinar a barbarisar than to facilitate the knowledge of it. With respect to modern languages, it was directed that all lessons, so far as that was practicable, should be given viva voce, without overwhelming the pupils with a multitude of useless rules; since living languages are more readily acquired by conversation and reading, than by elaborate grammars and abstruse philological works. "How far we are from following such valuable precepts," say the Conde da Carnota, "parents must have often felt, for it too frequently happens that, after their children have been ostensibly learning French for several years at an English school, they have come home as unable to converse in it as if they had never opened a French gramAnd from what does this arise, but from the inefficient system of teaching pursued at most places of instruction?"

mar.