atious, absurdity.

His next reform was the army. After the peace of 1763, he fixed it at
30,000 men, whom he equipped effectually, and brought into practical
discipline.

A succession of laws, made for the promotion of European and colonial
trade, next opened the resources of Portugal to an extent unknown
before. Pombal next abolished the "Index Expurgitorius"--an
extraordinary achievement, not merely beyond his age, but against the
whole superstitious spirit of his age. He was not content with
abolishing the restraint; he attempted to _restore_ the PRESS in
Portugal. Hitherto nearly all Portuguese books had been printed in
foreign counties. He established a "Royal Press," and gave its
superintendence to Pagliarini, a Roman printer, who had been
expatriated for printing works against the Jesuits. Such, in value
and extent, were the acts which Portugal owed to this indefatigable
and powerful mind, that when, in 1766, he suffered a paralytic
stroke, the king and the people were alike thrown into consternation.

At length Don Joseph, the king, and faithful friend of Pombal, died,
after a reign of twenty-seven years of honour and usefulness. Pombal
requested to resign, and the Donna Maria accepted the resignation,
and conferred various marks of honour upon him. He now retired to his
country-seat, where Wraxall saw him in 1772, and thus describes his
appearance. "At this time he had attained his seventy-third year, but
age seemed to have diminished neither the freshness nor the activity
of his faculties. In his person he was very tall and slender, his
face long, pale, and meagre, but full of intelligence."

But Pombal had been too magnanimous for the court and nobles; and the
loss of his power as minister produced a succession of intrigues
against him, by the relatives of the Tavora family, and doubtless
also by the ecclesiastical influence, which has always been at once
so powerful and so prejudicial in Portugal. He was insulted by a
trial, at which, however, the only sentence inflicted was an order to
retire twenty leagues from the court. The Queen was, at that time,
probably suffering under the first access of that derangement, which,
in a few years after, utterly incapacitated her, and condemned the
remainder of her life to melancholy and total solitude. But the last
praise is not given to the great minister, while his personal
disinterestedness is forgotten. One of the final acts of his life was
to present to the