and universal.

We now hasten to the close of this distinguished minister's career.
His frame, though naturally vigorous, began to feel the effects of
his incessant labour, and an apoplectic tendency threatened to
shorten a life so essential to the progress of Portugal; for that
whole life was one of _temperate_ and _progressive_ reform. His first
application was to the finances; he found the Portuguese exchequer on
the verge of bankruptcy. A third of the taxes was embezzled in the
collection. In 1761, his new system was adopted, by which the
finances were restored; and every week a balance-sheet of the whole
national expenditure was presented to the king. His next reform was
the royal household, where all unnecessary expenses--and they were
numerous--were abolished. Another curious reform will be longer
remembered in Portugal. The nation had hitherto used _only_ the
_knife_ at dinner! Pombal introduced the _fork_. He brought this
novel addition to the table with him from England in 1745!

The nobility were remarkably ignorant. Pombal formed the "College of
Nobles" for their express education. There they were taught every
thing suitable to their rank. The only prohibition being, "that they
should _not converse in Latin_," the old pedantic custom of the
monks. The nobles were directed to converse in English, French,
Italian, or their native tongue; Pombal declaring, that the custom of
speaking Latin was only "to teach them to barbarize."

Another custom, though of a more private order, attracted the notice
of this rational and almost universal improver. It had been adopted
as a habit by the widows of the nobility, to spend the first years of
their widowhood in the most miserable seclusion; they shut up their
windows, retired to some gloomy chamber, slept on the floor, and,
suffering all kinds of voluntary and absurd mortifications, forbade
the approach of the world. As the custom was attended with danger to
health, and often with death, besides its general melancholy
influence on society, the minister publicly "enacted," that every
part of it should be abolished; and, moreover, that the widows should
always remove to another house; or, where this was not practicable,
that they "should _not_ close the shutters, nor '_mourn_' for more
than a week, nor remain at home for more than a month, nor sleep on
the ground." Doubtless, tens of thousands thanked him, and thank him
still, for this war against a popular, but most vex