Saavedra, whom he made first minister of state, is a man of great natural quickness, improved both by reading and the observation of real life; but so irresolute of purpose, so wavering in judgment, so incapable of decision, that, while in office, he seemed more fit to render public business interminable, than to direct its course in his own department. Jovellanos, appointed to be Saavedra’s colleague, is justly considered as one of the living ornaments of our literature. Educated at Salamanca in one of the _Colegios Mayores_, before the reform which stripped those bodies of their honours and influence, he was made a judge in his youth, and gradually ascended to one of the supreme councils of the nation. His upright and honourable conduct in every stage of his life, both public and private, the urbanity of his manners, and the formal elegance of his conversation, render him a striking exemplification of the old Spanish _Caballero_. With the virtues and agreeable qualities of that character, he unites many of the prejudices peculiar to the period to which it belongs. To a most passionate attachment to the privileges and distinctions of blood, he joins a superstitious veneration for all kinds of external forms. The strongest partialities warp his fine understanding, confining it, upon numerous subjects, to distorted or limited views. As a judge and a man of letters, he was respected and admired by all. As a chief justice in any of our provincial courts of law, he would have been a blessing to the people of his district; while the dignified leisure of that situation would have enabled him to enrich our literature with the productions of his elegant mind. As a minister, however, through whose hands all the gifts of the Crown were to be distributed to a hungry country, where two-thirds of the better classes look up to patronage for a comfortable subsistence, he disappointed the hopes of the nation. At Court, his high notions of rank converted his rather prim manner into downright stiffness; and his blind partiality for the natives of Asturias, his province--probably because he thought them the purest remnant of Gothic blood in Spain--made him the most unpopular of ministers. Instead of promoting the welfare of the nation by measures which gradually, and upon a large scale, might counteract the influence of a profligate Court, he tried to oppose the Queen’s established interference in detail. She once made a personal application to Jovellanos in favour of a certain candidate for a prebendal stall. The minister gave her a flat denial, alleging that the person in question had not qualified himself at any of the universities. “At which of them,” said the Queen, “did you receive your education?”--“At Salamanca, Madam.”--“What a pity,” rejoined she, “that they forgot to teach you manners!”