to condemn such a benefactor to his country to any severe penalty, and after being driven about from pillar to post for four years, the old man, now more than eighty years of age, was condemned to be banished twenty leagues from Court. Had his relentless persecutor, the widow of King Joseph, been alive, his punishment would doubtless have been more severe, and, as it was, the queen dared not pass such a light sentence until after her mother’s death. The old minister did not long survive his disgrace, and died at Pombal on May 8, 1782, at the age of eighty-three. To the credit of Pedro and Maria let it be admitted at once that in consideration of his father’s long and eminent services the young Marquis of Pombal was fully confirmed in all the honours and estates which had been conferred upon the minister by King Joseph. It need hardly be said that the fall of Pombal left many aspirants to his high place. The three Secretaries of State, Martinho de Mello e Castro, Thomas Xavier de Lima Brito, Viscount of Villa Nova de Cerveira, afterwards Marquis of Ponte de Lima, and Ayres de Sá e Mello; the Intendant of the Treasury, Pedro José de Noronha, Marquis of Angeja; and the Intendant of Police, Diogo Ignacio de Pina Manique, had all been trained in official work by Pombal, and were all eager to succeed their master in power. None of them, however, were successful, for the great nobles who had been recalled to Court were determined to have no such supreme ruler again over them, while they were too jealous of each other and too inexperienced in affairs to take office themselves. Matters went on therefore at the commencement of the new reign much as they had done under the management of Pombal; his spirit remained amongst the ministers, and in such measures as the commercial treaty with Russia, the lighting of Lisbon by oil lamps, and the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the impulse he had given to all reforms is clearly to be seen. The “Arcadia de Lisboa” was indeed allowed to disappear, but in its place the Duke of Lafoẽs established the “Academia Real das Sciencias” in 1779, which did even better work for literature by its publication of the works of the early Portuguese chroniclers. In carrying out these measures the king and queen had little share; Pedro III. was a silly and vicious man, and Maria Francisca was a woman of weak intellect, completely subservient to her confessor, Ignacio de San Caetano who found her greatest happiness in raising vast sums of money and sending them to the Latin convent at Jerusalem. The only important event in which they took a part was their conference with the Court of Spain at Badajoz in 1785, when an arrangement was come to about the disputed frontier in South America; and when Dom John, the second son of Pedro and Maria, was betrothed to Donna Carlotta Joaquina, grand-daughter of Charles III. of Spain. In the following year Pedro III. died, and his death, followed as it speedily was by those of her