A much superior talent is that of the ex-soldier, MANUEL BRETÓN DE LOS HERREROS (1796-1873), whose humour and fancy are his own, while his system is that of the younger Moratín. His _Escuela del Matrimonio_ is the most ambitious, as it is the best, of those innumerable pieces in which he aims at presenting a picture of average society, relieved by alternate touches of ironic and didactic purpose. Bretón de los Herreros wrote far too much, and weakens his effects by the obtrusion of a flagrant moral; but even if we convict him as a caricaturist of obvious Philistinism, there is abundant recompense in the jovial wit and graceful versification of his quips. To him succeeds Tomás Rodríguez Rubí (1817-1890), who aimed at amusing a facile public in such a trifle as _El Tejado de Vidrio_ (The Glass Roof), or at satirising political and social intriguers in _La Rueda de Fortuna_ (Fortune's Wheel). A Cuban like GERTRUDIS GÓMEZ DE AVELLANEDA (1816-1873), who spent most of her life in Spain, may for our purposes be accounted a Spanish writer. The proverbial gallantry of the nation and the sex of the writer account for her vogue and her repute. If such a novel as _Sab_, with its protest against slavery and its idealised presentation of subject races, be held for literature, then we must so enlarge the scope of the word as to include _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. Another novel, _Espatolino_, reproduces George Sand's philippics against the injustice of social arrangements, and re-echoes her lyrical advocacy of freedom in the matter of marriage. The Sra. Avellaneda is too passionate to be dexterous, and too preoccupied to be impressive; hence her novels have fallen out of sight. That she had real gifts of fancy and melody is shown by her early volume of poems (1841), and by her two plays, _Alfonso Munio_ and _Baltasar_; yet, on the boards as in her stories, she is inopportune, or, in plainer words, is a gifted imitator, following the changes of popular taste with some hesitation, though with a gracefulness not devoid of charm. With her may be mentioned Carolina Coronado (b. 1823), a refined poetess with mystic tendencies, whose vogue has so diminished that to the most of Spaniards she is scarcely more than an agreeable reminiscence.