The discipline of the University at Coimbra was also entirely remodeled. Two months only were allowed for vacation, instead of the long periods hitherto wasted under that name. Regular attendance at lectures and lessons was strictly insisted upon, unless illness or any other sufficient cause was pleaded. Fines were inflicted for the first and second absence, and confinement for the third. By these ordinances all idlers were compelled to take their names off the books, and in a short time the number of students fell from several thousands to 600 or 700.

In like manner, with a view to real progress, Pombal regulated the management of the Botanic Garden, ordering the curators to reduce the number of plants to those necessary for botanic studies, in order that the students might not be ignorant of this branch of medicine, as it is practiced with little expense in other Universities, and to remember that the garden was raised "for the study of boys, not the ostentation of princes."

In the same year the Royal Press was instituted, the superintendence of which was given to Nicolas Pagliarini, a Roman printer, who had been expatriated for printing anti-Jesuitical works. Previous to this period, such was the deplorable state of letters, that almost all Portuguese works were printed in foreign countries.

But Pombal's attention was not exclusively turned to the education of the higher classes. In the same year, November 6, 1772, he established in the Portuguese dominions no less than 887 professors and masters for the gratuitous instruction of all his Majesty's subjects, and, of these, 94 were appointed to the islands and colonies. Small taxes, under the name of "the literary subsidy," were laid on various articles of general consumption, in order to pay the salaries of these professors; and still further to prove his love for literature, and to show the exalted opinion he entertained of its influence upon mankind, and with the hope of elevating its professors both in their own estimation and in that of the people, Pombal determined that they should enjoy the various privileges attached to nobreza, or nobility, in Portugal, and so it was accordingly decreed. His biographer says, speaking of the pains he took to educate the people:

He hoped by these means to lay the foundation on which, at a future period, the superstructure of a free government might be erected. He was well aware that, if popular governments are to be any thing but shadows, they must be based on popular knowledge. He felt that his country without the aid of education would be unfit for any of those forms of free government which, when the people are ignorant, too frequently confer absolute power on factions, who enjoy the good for which others have toiled. He perceived that the spirit of revolution was already abroad in his time, that its progress was slow but irre

sistable, and he thereupon wished his countrymen to be prepared for its advent. With a presentiment of the evils that menaced his successors, he frequently exclaimed, "Os meus filhos ainda poderao viver descançados, mas ai dos meus netos." (Our children may live to end their days in peace, but God help our grandchildren.)

We can not in this place go into his financial, military and naval reforms. Suffice it to say, that he deprecated the policy of the government in retaining the working of all mines of gold and silver, which he designated "the fatal treasuries of princes," and which had compelled the king, reported to be one of the richest monarchs in Europe, at the beginning of his reign to borrow 400,000 cruzados ($200,000), to meet the exigencies of his court. In less than five years, by encouraging different national industries, he did away with the annual deficit, and secured an annual surplus in the royal treasury. He found both the army and the navy, nominally strong, but actually weak and deteriorating-so weak that the Algerine corsairs were in the habit not only of making descents on the coast, and plundering the inhabitants, without danger of chastisement, but would from time to time shut in the merchant vessels in their principal ports, until a convoy could be dispatched to protect them. He enlarged the navy by sending to England for 300 shipwrights and their workmen to work in the dockyards and arsenals of Lisbon, and built new and strengthened the old fortifications at all the principal ports.

Each of the reformatory measures of Pombal, aroused implacable enemies among them who were profiting by ancient abuses, or who were too ignorant to appreciate alteranate beneficial results beyond temporary inconveniences. These all culminated on the death of the King, and his few remaining years were darkened by seeing many of his reforms obstructed and overthrown, his official and personal enemies raised to positions of honor and trust, and accusations of all kinds against his personal fidelity, and a commission was appointed to investigate all his pecuniary transactions.

Overcome at length by age and infirmity Pombal breathed his last in the midst of his family and relations on the 5th of May, 1682, and in the 83d year of his age. "Love and obedience," if not "troops of friends," accompanied his dying moments; his wife, his two daughters, and his son, the Count d' Oeyras, soothing that deathbed on which he exhibited the resignation of a philosopher and the steady faith of a Christian. His funeral was celebrated with the respect due to his rank, but the Bishop of Coimbra, for having assisted at it, was sharply reprimanded by the Governor of the province, and the priest who pronounced his funeral oration, having dared to deplore the ingratitude of Portugal towards the greatest of its Ministers, was confined in a convent in the Cape Verde Islands. When we add that the eulogistic epitaph which filial piety inscribed on his tomb was ordered by Government to be removed or erased, we have given the finishing touch to the picture of royal ingratitude towards one who had ceaselessly labored for the benefit of his country during a reign whose prosperity was mainly due to his single exertions.

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

THE STRAP-ROD-FERULE-BIRCH.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED.*

It is is recorded of an old-fashioned schoolmaster that in the course of fifty years he administered to his pupils nearly half a million canings, and a hundred and twenty-four thousand proper floggings! This pedagogue, who in the days of Solomon would have been a man after that wise king's own heart, may be taken as the type of a class of teachers who flourished in 'the good old days' -rigid disciplinarians who never spared the rod nor spoiled the child. Happy school-boys of the present day have but a faint notion of those times, or of the severities undergone at school by their fathers and grandfathers.

Instruments and Agents.

The Romans, who carried the art of whipping to a high degree of perfection, had a number of recognized instruments for different offenses. Horace and Juvenal particularize three-namely, scutica, ferula, and flagellum. Scutica was a strap of leather or parchment, and ferula a rod or stick; both of these were employed as instruments of correction in schools, and, with several alterations and improvements, have been handed down to recent times. Flagellum was a whip or lash of leathern thongs or twisted cords tied to a wooden handle, and sharpened with knots, and sometimes with small bits of iron and lead. Some doubts exist as to the exact form of the ferula of ancient times-whether it was a rod, or switch, or strap; but the means of determining its more modern shape are not so scanty.

In the oak carvings of the cathedrals of the middle ages, the figure of a monkish schoolmaster, holding a rod ready to beat a boy on the breech, is quite frequent. The ferule of modern days was a more ingenious instrument, and was not used on the breech like the above mentioned, but only on the hand. It was made of wood, shaped somewhat like a small bat, and in many cases it was furnished with a small hole in the center of the broad part, which raised a blister on the delinquent's hand and made the punishment very sharp. Thirty years ago the spatula used by London schoolmasters was known amongst the boys as Jonathan.'

* In some annotations on that classical production, Shenstone's Schoolmistress, as published in Barnard's American Journal of Education (III. 453), and gathered into the volume of English Pedagogy, First Series, we intimated our intention of resuming the subject of School Punishment in its various forms, and many abuses, as practiced in different countries. For this purpose we have gathered many illustrations from the traditions of schools, and the painful reminiscences of pupils whom we met. A recent English publication, entitled' Flagellation and Flagellants-A History of the Rod in different Countries. By Rev. W. M. Cooper, B. A. London: Hotten, Piccadilly,' contains so much material already gathered, that we conclude to make up a chapter at once with extracts, commending the volume itself to those who wish to know how cruel man may prove himself either as teacher or legislator.

The ferula in use at the school of Howgill some forty years ago, is described as being of wood, shaped like a battledore; and the common seals of the grammar schools of Tewkesbury and Camberwell display a formidable battledore in the hands of the master. Lately, there was at Amsterdam, in Holland, an exhibition of objects either belonging or having belonged to school management and discipline. Among the relics exhibited was a ferula, and the figure of a bird. The mode of application was this: the bird was thrown to the offender, who had to take it back to the schoolmaster in order to receive his destined share of slaps on the palm of the hand. In Gerard Dow's picture of the Schoolmaster in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the master holds an instrument of this kind in one hand. The blows of the wooden ferule were called pandies in some parts, and were so far objectionable that they were liable to wound and bruise the hand. There was another form of the ferule, a less objectionable but equally effective instrument. This was a broad leather strap, about ten inches long, the end being rounded, and between four and five inches broad. The other end was tapered to the breadth of an inch and a half, and fastened to a wooden handle. The leather was thick and hammered hard without losing its flexibility. It was used for striking the palm of the hand, and produced a smart tingling sensation.

Juvenal speaks of the Roman school-boys 'drawing back the hand from the ferula,' manum ferulæ subdurimus; and the modern school-boy practices a similar dodge by pulling down the cuff of his jacket over his hand to catch the blow of the laws. The virga, a switch rod, was another instrument of whipping employed among the Romans, and seems to have suggested the use of the birch, which has long been in operation in large public schools. Following the opinion of Solomon, that 'a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding,' and ‘a whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back,' the punishment of the birch was in general inflicted on the bare posteriors of the offender. For the convenience of the flogger the delinquent was placed on a block or hoisted on the back of one of the older pupils (this last operation was called horsing), and there received his appointed punishment. The custom of horsing is of considerable antiquity, for a painting discovered at Pompeii, still preserved in the Royal Museum at Naples, represents one boy taken upon another boy's back, and suffering the infliction of a flogging. Another instance may be mentioned. The seal of the Louth Grammar School gives a representation of the punishment of the Rod, as applied to a school-boy in the time of Edward VI., accompanied by the inscription. 'Qvi: Parcit: Virge: odit: filiv: 'He that spareth the Rod hateth his son.' In public schools there was an official whose duty it was to perform the operation of flagellation, and this custom has also been handed down from remote times. St. John, in his 'Manners and Customs of the Ancient Greeks,' mentions that in the Spartan Republic 'regular floggers, as at our own great schools, always attended the inspectors of public instruction.' In France, the flagellator in a school was called cuistre, which originally signified a cook, and this arose from the fact that in the houses of the nobility, as well as in public schools, the people of the kitchen were supposed to possess peculiar abilities and facilities for performing flagellation. Solomon has said, 'He that spareth the Rod hateth his son; but he that loves him chastises him betimes,' and the maxim has been considered indisputable in

all ages. Schoolmasters have regarded the Rod as absolutely indispensable in the education of the young. The first flogging schoolmaster that we meet with in our reading is Toilus, who used to whip Homer, and who, after performing that operation effectually, assumed the title of Homeromastix. This worthy

man received no other reward for his enterprise than crucifixion, which he suf fered by the orders of King Ptolemy. Horace calls his schoolmaster, who was fond of this discipline, 'the flogging Orbilius' (plagosus Orbilius ;) Quintilian denounces the practice of whipping school-boys on account of its severity and its degrading tendency; and Plutarch, in his Treatise on Education,' says: 'I am of opinion that youth should be impelled to the pursuit of liberal and laudable studies by exhortations and discourses, certainly not by blows and stripes. These are methods of incitement far more suitable to slaves than to the free, on whom they can produce no other effect than to induce torpor of mind and disgust for exertion, from a recollection of the pain and insult of the inflictions endured.'

In German schools the Rod was at one time plied industriously: the operator was called the 'blue man.' Not only boys, but youths up to the age of eighteen or twenty years, were subjected to the Rod. Some professors preferred to inflict the punishment with their own hands; but in general it was inflicted by a man wearing a mask, and having his instrument concealed under a blue cloak (whence the name, the ‘blue man,') in the passage before the school-room, and in the presence of the professor; and very few youths could boast, on leaving the gymnasium, of having never been under the care of the ‘blue man.'

It is recorded of a Suabian schoolmaster that, during his fifty-one years' superintendence of a large school, he had given 911,500 canings, 121,000 floggings, 209,000 custodes, 136,000 tips with the ruler, 10,200 boxes on the ear, and 22,700 tasks by heart. It was further calculated that he had made 700 boys stand on peas, 6,000 kneel on a sharp edge of wood, 5,000 wear the fool's cap, and 1,700 hold the rod.

Ravisius Textor, who was rector of the University of Paris, in one of his epistles, writes thus concerning the treatment of boys:-'If they offend, if they are detected in falsehood, if they slip from the yoke, if they murmur against it, or complain in ever so little a degree, let them be severely whipt; and spare neither the scourge nor mitigate the punishment till the proud heart shall evidently be subdued, and they shall have become smoother than oil, and softer than a pumpkin. And if they endeavor by mollifying speeches to disarm the preceptor's anger, let all their words be given to the wind.'

In England, the school-boy has been, time out of mind, subject to the birch. In the middle ages, we read of children running to the shrines of saints, in the hope of there obtaining protection against the cruelty of their masters. A boy, in that hope, once clung to the tomb of St. Adrian, at Canterbury, and the master, notwithstanding the sanctity of the place, proceeded to inflict chastisement. The first and second strokes were allowed to be given with impunity, but the outraged saint stiffened the master's arm as he was about to inflict the third; and it was only when he had implored forgiveness of the boy, and the boy had interceded for him, that the use of his arm was restored! Another legend is related where the miracle was still more surprising:-An ill-used boy having fled, as usual, to the shrine, the master declared that not even although the