Happily for his country he resembled his mother rather than his father. Studious and laborious, books were his great occupation. He was an indefatigable and omnivorous reader, and, though especially fond of history and sociology, few subjects and few literatures escaped him. No fact ever failed to interest him, but his mind was too discursive and his studies too widespread and too superficial to give him a store of sound and well-digested knowledge. Morally he was a complete contrast to his dissipated father. He was a monarch of the conscientious nineteenth-century type. He as a little boy had been obedient to the priests and ladies to whom his rearing had been entrusted, but they retained no great influence over him. Though thoroughly respectful toward religion he was not especially devout, and his political ideas were gathered rather from his own reading than from direct teaching. As a father and husband he was good and kind, and conscientiously devoted all his energies to the performance of his duties, public and private. His first act on assuming power was to forbid the people of his household to ask any favours of him in regard to public affairs. His manners were democratic. Though tall and handsome he cared little for his personal appearance; his clothing was ill-fitting and ill cared for; he drove about in rickety old carriages with absurd-looking horses; he kept no Court properly so called; he would gobble through his state dinners in a hurry to get back to his books; he would call Cabinet meetings at inconvenient hours of the night if an idea struck him. Though his subjects loved and trusted him, the general tendency was rather to laugh at his peculiarities. It could hardly be said that people personally stood much in awe of him. At the same time, when action was to be taken in a crisis, he could be as arbitrary as any czar. He took no pride in imposing his will over that of others, and his manners and methods were always mild and gentle. Some believe that he deliberately assumed careless, democratic ways, thinking them best adapted to maintaining himself in power, and it is certain that he showed little anxiety about his position and seemed to value it slightly. Intellectually restless though he was, his judgment was sound enough to enable him soon to foresee that the inevitable tendency was toward a republic, and in the latter part of his life he often said that he was the best republican in the empire, and that his main function was to prepare the way for it. At bottom he was not a man of strong passions or intense will, but was rather a mild-mannered and philosophic opportunist whose greatest merit was that he loved peace, and whose greatest achievement was that Brazil remained internally quiet during his long reign.