that, though any man may have gained mastery of a kingdom by any of the lawful means whereof we have spoken in the laws going before this, yet, if he use his power ill, in the ways whereof we speak in this law, him may the people still call tyrant; for he turneth his mastery which was rightful into wrongful, as Aristotle hath said in the book which treateth of the rule and government of kingdoms.”[71] [71] Partida II. Tít. I. Ley 10, ed. Acad., Tom. II. p. 11. In other laws, reasons are given why kings and their sons should be taught to read;[72] and in a law about the governesses of king’s daughters, it is declared:-- [72] Partida II. Tít. VII. Ley 10, and Tít. V. Ley 16. “They are to endeavour, as much as may be, that the king’s daughters be moderate and seemly in eating and in drinking, and also in their carriage and dress, and of good manners in all things, and especially that they be not given to anger; for, besides the wickedness that lieth in it, it is the thing in the world that most easily leadeth women to do ill. And they ought to teach them to be handy in performing those works that belong to noble ladies; for this is a matter that becometh them much, since they obtain by it cheerfulness and a quiet spirit; and besides, it taketh away bad thoughts, which it is not convenient they should have.”[73] [73] Partida II. Tít. VII. Ley 11. Many of the laws concerning knights, like one on their loyalty, and one on the meaning of the ceremonies used when they are armed,[74] and all the laws on the establishment and conduct of great public schools, which he was endeavouring, at the same time, to encourage, by the privileges he granted to Salamanca,[75] are written with even more skill and selectness of idiom. Indeed, the Partidas, in whatever relates to manner and style, are not only superior to any thing that had preceded them, but to any thing that for a long time followed. The poems of Berceo, hardly twenty years older, seem to belong to another age, and to a much ruder state of society; and, on the other hand, Marina, whose opinion on such a subject few are entitled to call in question, says, that, during the two or even three centuries subsequent, nothing was produced in Spanish prose equal to the Partidas for purity and elevation of style.[76] [74] Partida II. Tít. XXI. Leyes 9, 13. [75] The laws about the Estudios Generales,--the name then given to what we now call Universities,--filling the thirty-first Título of the second Partida, are remarkable for their wisdom, and recognize some of the arrangements that still obtain in many of the Universities of the Continent. There was, however, at that period, no such establishment in Spain, except one which had existed in a very rude state at Salamanca for some time, and to which Alfonso X. gave the first proper endowment in 1254. [76] Marina, in Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. IV., Ensayo, p. 52.