Abstract

In the following letter Doin Pedro II appears to the reader as historians most frequently have painted him: a kindly man, a man of simnple tastes, a humble and sincere person, with intellectual gifts not limited to statecraft. Dom Pedro was truly a monarch of unusual talents, and no facet of his personality has beeni more consistently revealed than his love of erudition. Archaeology, philosophy, astronomiiy -these were some of Pedro's favorite studies which caused him, in the search for knowledge, to attend French scientific gatherings and to maintain a wide correspondence with European scholars. Perhaps it may not be amiss to repeat what has been so often stated, that Dom Pedro would have been a teacher had his birth not destined him for another calling. Pedro's undated letter to the Baron Cloquet,1 of the Institute of which is hereinafter published, will be received by students as an interesting, and very personal, contribution to the emperor's biography. Dom Pedro may have doted on the empty honors of Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, as Eca de Queiroz has wittily observed,2 but it is well to remember the better qualities of a sovereign who never seems to have been overpowered by the aura of najesty.

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