The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 was a very severe blow to scholarly and literary activity in colonial society. The Jesuits had a school or a college in every important town of the dependencies, and their instruction was clearer and more effective than that of the other schools, although one is sometimes disposed to regard their employment of a rigid mould of predetermined form, in which to cast all minds, as the greatest educational error of history. But under conditions where, outside of the chief towns, the dominating influences made either for the roughness of the camp or the brutishness of semi-barbarism, a system of instruction that trained the mind to a definite standard was not without its merits, although that standard was the inelastic standard of the Jesuits.[8] [Sidenote: The viceregal academy] [Sidenote: _Triunfos de amor y poder_] The universities presumed a more or less extensive group of cultivated persons in the towns where they were established; and when these towns were also the principal seats of government, as were Lima, Bogotá, Santiago de Chile, and Caracas, the officials of the administration formed another superior element in the population. Lima, as the viceroy’s residence, was the social capital of the dependencies. The powers of the viceroy were practically those of an autocratic ruler, during the period of his incumbency, and there were brought to Lima from Spain many of the forms and ceremonies of the Spanish court. The viceroy appeared in public with much of the state affected by European monarchs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sometimes he used the influence of his high position to encourage learning and literary activity. The viceregal palace, in the reign of the viceroy Casteldosríus, was the meeting-place of a society where authors assembled every Monday to present their writings and discuss subjects of interest to men of letters. Dr. Pedro Peralta Barnuevo, the author of _Lima fundada_, was a member of this academy. But the “high society” of Lima had a lower conception of literature and literary men than the learned viceroy, and expressed regret that the ancient customs and dignity of the viceregal office had been violated by the participation of the head of the state in the proceedings of a literary society. The victory of the French under Vendome over the Austrians under Starhemberg was celebrated at the palace by the production of Barnuevo’s comedy called _Triunfos de amor y poder_; and there were more regrets by the aristocracy that the palace of the viceroy had been turned into a theatre. [Illustration: El Marqués de Casteldosríus, 24th Viceroy of Peru 1707-1710] [Sidenote: Lima and the other capitals]