Increase in the Number of Wealthy, Educated Filipinos.--The Filipino had now become embarked upon a new current of intellectual experience--a course of enlightenment which has been so full of unexpected development, and which has already carried him so far from his ancestor of one hundred years ago, that we can not say what advance another generation or two may bring. Throughout all the towns of the Islands a class was rapidly growing up to which the new industries had brought wealth. Their means enabled them to build spacious and splendid homes of the fine, hard woods of the Philippines, and to surround themselves with such luxuries as the life of the Islands permitted. This class was rapidly gaining education. It acquired a knowledge of the Spanish language, and easily assumed that graceful courtesy which distinguishes the Spaniard. The only misfortune, as regards this class, was that it was very small. It could embrace but a few families in each populous town. Some of these had Chinese and Spanish blood in their veins, but other notable families were pure Filipinos. Attitude of the Spanish and the Friars toward Filipino Education.--The great mistake committed by the Spaniard was that he rarely welcomed the further progress of the native population, and the center of this opposition to the general enlightenment of the race was the friars. Thus those who had been the early protectors and educators, little by little, because of their extreme conservatism and their fear of loosening the ties that bound the Filipino to the church and to Spain, changed into opponents of his progress and enemies of his enlightenment; but the education which the church itself had given to the Filipino, and which had been fostered by the state and especially in recent times by the Jesuits, had made the Filipino passionately ambitious for more enlightenment and freedom. The Rule of Governor Torre.--Liberal Reforms.--In 1868, Queen Isabella II. of Spain was deposed, and a little later a revolutionary government, the "Republic of Spain," was founded. It was the brief triumph of that reforming and liberal spirit which for so many years had been struggling to free Spain from the burdens of aristocracy and ecclesiasticism.