The name of Pascual de Gayangos is known far beyond the confines of his own country as a scholar, historian, philologist, biographer, and critic. Although now a man of very advanced age, he is one of the most distinguished of modern Orientalists, and his History of the Arabs in Spain, Vocabulary of the Arabic Words in Spanish, and his Catalogue of Spanish MSS. in the British Museum are known wherever the language is known or studied. He has published in Spanish an edition of Ticknor's great work on Spanish literature, and has edited several valuable works in the Spanish Old Text Society besides innumerable other historical and philological books and papers, which have given him a European reputation. His immense store of knowledge, his modesty, and his genuine kindness to all who seek his aid endear him as much for his personal qualities as for his learning.

Next to Gayangos in the same class of work, Marcelino Menendez y Palayo may perhaps be mentioned. His History of Æsthetic Ideas in Spain has been left unfinished so far, owing to the demands made on his time by his position in the political world as one of the Conservative leaders. Don Modesto Lafuente, though scarcely possessing the qualities of a great historian, is accurate and painstaking to a great degree; but in the field of history many workers are searching the archives and documents in which the country is so rich, and throwing light on particular periods. CÁnovas del Castillo, in spite of his great political duties, was one of the most valuable of these; and the eminent jurist, Don Francisco de Cardenas, and the learned Jesuit, Fidel Fita, and other members of the Academy of History are constantly working in the rich mine at Simancas. New papers and books are continually being brought out under the auspices of this society, throwing light on the past history of the country.

Fernan Caballero, a German by race, but married successively to three Spanish husbands, may be said to have inaugurated the modern Spanish novel de costumbres, and her books are perhaps better known in England than those of some of the later novelists. By far the greater writer of the day in Spain, however, in light literature, is Juan Valera, at once poet, critic, essayist, and novelist. His Pepita Jimenez is a remarkable novel, full of delicate characterisation and exquisite style, second to none produced in any country—a novel full of fire, and yet irreproachable in taste, handling a difficult subject with the mastery of genius. It has been translated into English; but however well it may have been done, it must lose immensely in the transition, because the Spanish of Valera is the perfection of a perfectly beautiful language. In this novel we have the character of a priest, who, while we know him only through the letters addressed to him by the young student of theology, the extremely sympathetic hero of the story, lives in one's memory, showing us the best side of the Spanish priest. Other novels of Valera's, DoÑa Luis and El Comendador Mendoza, a number of essays on all sorts of subjects, critical and other, and poems which show great grace and correctness of style, have given this writer a high place in the literature of the age.

Perez GaldÓs is a writer of a wholly different class, although he enjoys a very wide reputation in his own country and wherever Spanish is read. His Episodes Nacionales, some fifty-six in number, attract by their close attention to detail, which gives an air of actuality to the most diffuse of his stories. They are careful and very accurate studies of different episodes of national life, in which the author introduces, among the fictitious characters round whom the story moves, the real actors on the stage of history of the time. Thus MendizÁbal, Espartero, Serrano, Narvaez, the Queen of Ferdinand VII., Cristina, and many other persons appear in the books, giving one the impression that history is alive, and not the record of long-dead actors we are accustomed to find it. GaldÓs appears to despise any kind of plot; the events run on, as they did in fact run on, only there are one or two people who take part in them whom we may suppose to be creations of the author's brain. Certainly, one learns more contemporary history by reading these Episodes of Perez GaldÓs, and realises all the scenes of it much more vividly than one would ever do by the reading of ordinary records of events. As the tendency and the sympathy of the writer is always Liberal, one fancies that GaldÓs has written with the determined intention to tempt a class of readers to become acquainted with the recent history of their country who would never do so under any less attractive form than that of the novel. His works must do good, since they are very widely read, and are extremely accurate as history. His play, Electra, which is just now giving him such wide celebrity, is of the actual time, and the scene is laid wholly in Madrid. The freedom that he advocates for women is merely that which Englishwomen have always enjoyed, or, at least, since mediÆval times, and has nothing in common with the emancipation which our "new women" claim for themselves. GaldÓs, also, is fond of introducing the simple-minded and honest, if not very cultivated, priest. His style is pure, without any great pretention to brilliancy, or any of the straining after effect which so many of the English writers seem to think gives distinction.Pedro AlarcÓn is novelist first, and historian, poet, and critic afterwards. That is to say, his novels are his best-known and most widely read works. He has two distinct styles. His Sombrero de Tres Picos is a fascinating sketch of quaint old village life, full of quiet grace, while El EscÁndalo and La PrÓdiga are of the sensational order. He writes, like GaldÓs, in series, such as Historietas Nacionales, Narraciones InverosÍmiles, and Viajes por EspaÑa. Parada is a native of Santander, and writes of his beloved countrymen. Sotilezas, his best-known, and perhaps best, novel, treats of life among the fisher-folk of Santander, before it became an industrial town. Writing in dialect makes many of his stories puzzling, if not impossible for foreign readers.

The lady who writes under the pseudonym of "Emelia Pardo Bazan" may be said to be the leader or the pioneer of women's emancipation in the sense in which we use the words. She is a native of Galicia, and is imbued with that intense love of her native province which distinguishes the people of the mountains. Her novels are chiefly pictures of its scenery and the life of its people, though in at least one she does not hesitate to take her readers behind the scenes of student life in Madrid. It would not be fair to apply to this writer's work the standard by which we judge an English work, because in Spain there is a frankness, to call it by no other name, in discussing in mixed company subjects which it would not be thought good taste to mention under the same circumstances with us. Una Cristiana and La Prueba, its sequel, are founded on the sex problem, and, probably without any intention of offence, Pardo Bazan has worked with a very full brush and a free hand, if I may borrow the terms from a sister art. Her articles on intellectual and social questions show an amount of education and a breadth of view which place her among the best writers of her nation. She is not in the least blinded by her patriotism to the faults of her country, especially to the hitherto narrow education of its women. She holds up an ideal of a higher type—a woman who shall be man's intellectual companion, and his helper in the battle of life. She is by no means the only woman writer in Spain at the present time; but she is the most talented, and occupies certainly the highest place. Her writings are somewhat difficult for anyone not conversant with Portuguese, or, rather, with the Galician variety of the Spanish language, for the number of words not to be found in the Spanish dictionary interfere with the pleasure experienced by a foreigner, and even some Castilians, in reading her novels. Pardo Bazan was an enthusiastic friend and admirer of Castelar, and belongs to his political party. A united Iberian republic, with Gibraltar restored to Spain, is, or was, its programme.

Hermana San Sulpicio, by Armando Palacio ValdÉs, is one of the charming, purely Spanish novels which has made a name for its author beyond the confines of his own country; but since that was produced he has gone for his inspiration to the French naturalistic school, and, like some English writers, he thinks that repulsive and indecent incidents, powerfully drawn, add to the artistic value of his work. Padre Luis Coloma, a Jesuit, obtained a good deal of attention at one time by his PequeÑeces, studies, written in gall, of Madrid society. His stories are too narrowly bigoted in tone to have any lasting vogue, and his views of life too much coloured by his ultramontane tendencies to be even true. NuÑez de Arce is, like so many Spaniards of the last few decades, at once a poet and a politician. He played a stirring part from the time of the Revolution to the Restoration, always on the side of liberty, but never believing in the idea of a republic. His Gritos del Combate were the agonised expression of a fighter in his country's battle for freedom and for light. Since the more settled state of affairs, NuÑez de Arce has written many charming idyls and short poems. In the Idilio is a wonderful picture of the, to some of us, barren scenery of Castile, in which the eye of the artist sees, and makes his readers see, a beauty all the more striking because it is hidden from the ordinary gaze.

Of JosÉ Zorilla as a poet there is little need to speak. His countrymen read his voluminous works, but they are not of any real value. Campoamor describes his Dorloras as "poetic compositions combining lightness, sentiment, and brevity with philosophic importance." His earlier works were studied from Shakespeare and from Byron, who was the star of the age when Campoamor began to write. His most ambitious work, the Universal Drama, is "after Dante and Milton." He is a great favourite with his fellow-countrymen, both as poet and companion. He is a member of the Academy and a Senator.

It is impossible, however, to do more than indicate a few of the writers who are leaders in the literature of Spain to-day. There has, in fact, been an immense impulse in the production of books of all classes within the last twenty or thirty years. In fiction, Spain once more aspires to have a characteristic literature of her own, in place of relying on translations from the French, as was the case for a brief time before her political renaissance began.

A notable departure has been the foundation of the Folklore Society, and the publication up to the present time of eleven volumes under the name of Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares EspaÑolas, under the direction of SeÑor Don Antonio Machado y Alvarez. In the introduction to the first volume, the Director tells us that, with the help of the editor of El Folklore Andaluz and his friends, D. Alejandro Guichot y Sierra and D. Luis Montolo y Raustentrauch, he has undertaken this great work, which arose out of the Bases del Folklore EspaÑol, published in 1881, and the two societies established in 1882, the Folklore Andaluz and Folklore ExtremeÑo. These societies have for object the gathering together, copying, and publishing of the popular beliefs, proverbs, songs, stories, poems, the old customs and superstitions of all parts of the Peninsula, including Portugal, as indispensable materials for the knowledge and scientific reconstruction of Spanish culture. In this patriotic and historical work many writers have joined, each bringing his quota of garnered treasure-trove, presenting thus, in a series of handy little volumes, a most interesting collection of the ancient customs, beliefs, and, in fact, the folklore of a country exceptionally rich in widely differing nationalities.

Many of the tales, which it would seem even at the present time, especially in Portugal and Galicia, are told in the evening, and have rarely found their way into print, have the strong stamp of the legitimate Eastern fable, and bear a great family resemblance to those of the Arabian Nights. As, in fact, the Thousand and One Nights was very early published in Spanish, it is probable that its marvellous histories were known verbally to the people of the Iberian continent for many centuries, and have coloured much of its folklore. The Ingenious Student is certainly one of these. Barbers also play an important part in many of these tales. It is quite common for the Court barber to marry the King's daughter, and to succeed him as ruler; but the barber was, of course, surgeon or blood-letter as well as the principal news-agent—the forerunner of the daily newspaper of our times. The transmutation of human beings into mules, and vice versa, is a common fable, and we meet with wolf-children and the curious superstition that unbaptised people can penetrate into the domains of the enchanted Moors, and that these have no power to injure them. The story of the Black Slave, who eventually married the King's daughter and had a white mule for his Prime Minister, is very Eastern in character. "From so wise a King and so good a Queen the people derived great benefit; disputes never went beyond the ears of the Chief Minister, and, in the words of the immortal barber and poet of the city, 'the kingdom flourished under the guidance of a mule: which proves that there are qualities in the irrational beings which even wisest ministers would do well to imitate.'" The Watchful Servant is, however, purely Spanish in character, and it closes with the proverb that "a jealous man on horseback is first cousin to a flash of lightning." King Robin, the story of how the beasts and birds revenged themselves on Sigli and his father, the chief of a band of robbers, recalls "Uncle Remus" and his animal tales; for the monkeys, at the suggestion of the fox, and with the delighted consent of the birds and the bees, made a figure wholly of birdlime to represent a sleeping beggar, being quite certain that Sigli would kick it the moment that he saw the intruder from the windows of his father's castle. In effect both father and son became fast to the birdlime figure, when they were stung to death by ten thousand bees. Then King Robin ordered the wolves to dig the grave, into which the monkeys rolled the man and the boy and the birdlime figure, and, after covering it up, all the beasts and birds and insects took possession of the robbers' castle, and lived there under the beneficent rule of King Robin.

Silver Bells is, again, a story of a wholly different type, and charmingly pretty it is, with its new development of the wicked step-mother—in this case a mother who had married again and hated her little girl by the first husband. Elvira, the Sainted Princess tells how the daughter of King Wamba, who had become a Christian unknown to her father, by her prayers and tears caused his staff to blossom in one night, after he had determined that unless this miracle were worked by the God of the Christians she and her lover should be burned.

One fault is to be found with these old stories as remembered and told by Mr. Sellers; that is, the introduction of modern ideas into the Old-World fables of a primitive race. Hits at the Jesuits, the Inquisition, and the government of recent kings take away much of the glamour of what is undoubtedly folklore. The story of the Black Hand seems to have many varieties. It is somewhat like our stories of Jack and the Bean Stalk and Bluebeard, but differs, to the advantage of the Spanish ideal, in that the enchanted prince who is forced to play the part of the terrible Bluebeard during the day voluntarily enters upon a second term of a hundred years' enchantment, so as to free the wife whom he loves, and who goes off safely with her two sisters and numerous other decapitated beauties, restored to life by the self-immolation of the prince. The White Dove is another curious and pretty fable which has many variations in different provinces—a story in which the King's promise cannot be broken, though it ties him to the hateful negress who has transformed his promised wife into a dove, and has usurped her place. Eventually, of course, the pet dove changes into a lovely girl again, when the King finds and draws out the pins which the negress has stuck into her head, and the usurper is "burnt" as punishment—an ending which savours of the Quemadero.

The making of folklore is not, however, extinct in Spain, a country where poetry seems to be an inherent faculty. One is constantly reminded of the Spanish proverb, De poetas y de locos, todos tenÉmos un poco (We have each of us somewhat of the poet and somewhat of the fool). No one can tell whence the rhymed jeux d'esprit come; they seem to spring spontaneously from the heart and lips of the people. Children are constantly heard singing coplas which are evidently of recent production, since they speak of recent events, and yet which have the air of old folklore ballads, of concentrated bits of history.

sums up and expresses in nine words the history of Goday's shameful bargain with Napoleon.

SeÑor Don Eugenio de Olavarria-y Huarte, in citing this copla (Folklore de Madrid), points out that it contains the very essence of folklore, since it gives a perfectly true account of the battle of AlcolÉa. Although Prim was not present, he was the liberator, and without him the battle would never have been fought, nor the joy of liberty have been sung in the streets of the capital. There is seldom, if ever, any grossness in these spontaneous songs of the people—never indecency or double meaning. No sooner has an event happened than it finds its history recorded in some of these popular coplas, and sung by the children at their play.

The Folklore Society has some interesting information to give about the innumerable rhymed games which Spanish children, like our own, are so fond of playing, many of them having an origin lost in prehistoric times. One finds, also, from some of the old stories, that the devils are much hurt in their feelings by having tails and horns ascribed to them. As a matter of fact, they have neither, and cannot understand where mortals picked up the idea! The question is an interesting one. Where did we obtain this notion?