lict that went on
between the religious orders and the Spanish political administrators,
who were at every turn thwarted in their efforts to keep the government
abreast of the times.

The shock of the affair of 1872 had apparently stunned the Filipinos,
but it had at the same time brought them to the parting of the ways and
induced a vague feeling that there was something radically wrong, which
could only be righted by a closer union among themselves. They began
to consider that their interests and those of the governing powers were
not the same. In these feelings of distrust toward the friars they were
stimulated by the great numbers of immigrant Spaniards who were then
entering the country, many of whom had taken part in the republican
movements at home and who, upon the restoration of the monarchy,
no doubt thought it safer for them to be at as great a distance as
possible from the throne. The young Filipinos studying in Spain came
from different parts of the islands, and by their association there
in a foreign land were learning to forget their narrow sectionalism;
hence the way was being prepared for some concerted action. Thus,
aided and encouraged by the anti-clerical Spaniards in the mother
country, there was growing up a new generation of native leaders,
who looked toward something better than the old system.

It is with this period in the history of the country--the author's
boyhood--that the story of _Noli Me Tangere_ deals. Typical scenes and
characters are sketched from life with wonderful accuracy, and the
picture presented is that of a master-mind, who knew and loved his
subject. Terror and repression were the order of the day, with ever
a growing unrest in the higher circles, while the native population
at large seemed to be completely _cowed_--"brutalized" is the term
repeatedly used by Rizal in his political essays. Spanish writers of
the period, observing only the superficial movements,--some of which
were indeed fantastical enough, for

"they,
Who in oppression's darkness caved have dwelt,
They are not eagles, nourished with the day;
What marvel, then, at times, if they mistake their way?"

--and not heeding the currents at work below, take great delight in
ridiculing the pretensions of the young men seeking advancement,
while they indulge in coarse ribaldry over the wretched condition
of the great mass of the "Indians." The author, h