ABSTRACT
T HROUGHOUT his life Dom Pedro was an avid stu-dent, partly to qualify himself better as head teacher of his nation and to render other service to it. But he
turned to intellectual matters also as a rest from the "miasma of politics," and for escape from the worries and disappointments connected with his position. Most of all, he studied because he delighted in doing so: his chief interest was things of the mind. "I was born to occupy myself with letters and science," he wrote in his diary on December 3 I, 1861.1 This natural bent, which he inherited from his mother, was well developed by efficient teachers during his early boyhood, and when he ascended the throne the habit of study was already fixed.
