[310] The “Teatro Crítico” and “Cartas Eruditas y Curiosas,” with the discussions they provoked, fill fifteen and sometimes sixteen volumes. The edition of 1778 has a Life of Feyjoó prefixed to it, written by Campomanes, the distinguished minister of state under Charles III.; the same person who, on the nomination of Franklin, was made a member of the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia. Clemencin says truly of Feyjoó, that “to his enlightened and religious mind is due the overthrow of many vulgar errors, and a great part of the progress in civilization made by Spain in the eighteenth century.” Note to Don Quixote, Tom. V., 1836, p. 35. CHAPTER III. INTOLERANCE, CREDULITY, AND BIGOTRY.--REIGN OF FERDINAND THE SIXTH.--SIGNS OF IMPROVEMENT.--LITERATURE.--SALADUEÑA.--MORALEJA.-- ACADEMY OF GOOD TASTE.--VELAZQUEZ.--MAYANS.--NASARRE. It can hardly be said, that, during the forty-six years of the reign of Philip the Fifth, the intolerance which had so long blighted the land relaxed its grasp. The progress of knowledge might, indeed, be gradually and silently accumulating means to resist it, but its power was still unbroken, and its activity as formidable as ever. Louis the Fourteenth, in whom an old age of bigotry naturally ended a life of selfish indulgence, had counselled his grandson to sustain the Inquisition, as one of the means for insuring tranquillity to the political government of the country; and this advice, not given without a knowledge of the Spanish character, was, on the whole, acted upon with success, if not with entire consistency. At first, indeed, the personal dispositions of the king in relation to this mighty engine of state seemed somewhat unsettled. When it was proposed to him to celebrate an _auto da fé_, as a part of the pageant suitable to the coming in of a new dynasty, the young monarch, fresh from the elegance of the court of Versailles, refused to sanction its barbarities by his presence. Even later he encouraged Macanaz, a person high in office, to publish a work in defence of the crown against the overgrown pretensions of the Church, and at one time he went so far as to entertain a project for suspending the Holy Office, or suppressing it altogether.[311] [311] Llorente, Hist. de l’Inquisition, Tom. IV., 1818, pp. 29, 43. The “Papel” of Macanaz is on the Index of the Inquisition, 1790.