ABSTRACT
I F I were not an emperor, I should like to be a school teacher. I know of no calling greater or nobler than that of directing young minds and of training the men of the
future.m Thus wrote Dom Pedro in the last years of his reign when
vacationing in Cannes. In reality, he was both a sovereign and a teacher, for the Brazilian nation was his school. And it was badly in need of education, general and special. When he came to the throne the great majority of the people were illiterate, and the nation's experts in the fields of scholarship and the fine arts were few indeed. Since the Emperor was, intellectually, perhaps the most emancipated person in the country, and likewise the most cultivated, he was well qualified to be its instructor and its leader in things of the mind. The educational backwardness of the nation was a matter constantly in his thoughts. But in his efforts to remedy it he was much handicapped by the indifference of politicians, and the distractions of war, and by an almost constant shortage of money in local and national treasuries. Nevertheless, under Dom Pedro's leadership considerable intellectual progress was made. His ablest assistant in this work was perhaps his life-long friend the Visconde do Born Retiro,2 who was for some years Minister of Empire.
