s 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 Valdes, 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 _Pequeneces_, 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. Nunez 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, Nunez 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