The influence of Victor Hugo’s _Les Châtiments_ was great throughout South America and in Brazil brought fruit chiefly in Tobias Barreto and Castro Alves, the salient representatives of the so-called _condoreirismo_; like the condor their language flew to grandiloquent heights, whence the name, for which in English we have a somewhat less flattering counterpart in the adjective “spread-eagle.” Barreto (1839-1889) belongs rather to the history of Brazilian culture; he was largely responsible for the introduction of modern German thought and exerted a deep influence upon Sylvio Romero. Alves was less educated--his whole life covers but a span of twenty-four years--but what he lacked in learning he made up in sensitivity and imagination. Though he can be tender with the yearnings of a sad youth, he becomes a pillar of fire when he is inspired by the cause of abolition. Romero, with his customary appetite for a fight, has, despite his denials of preoccupation with mere questions of priority, given himself no little trouble to prove Barreto’s precedence in the founding of the _condoreiro_ school;[14] we shall leave that matter to the historians. Brazilians themselves, as far as concerns the esthetic element involved, have made a choice of Alves. He is one of the national poets. His chief works are three in number: _Espumas Fluctuantes_, _Gonzaga_ (a play) and _O Poema dos Escravos_ (unfinished). Issued separately, the _Poem of the Slaves_, is not, as its title would imply, a single hymn to the subjected race; it is a collection of poems centering around the theme of servitude. He does not dwell upon the details of that subjection; he is, fundamentally, the orator. The abolition of slavery did not come until 1888; on September 28, 1871, all persons born in Brazil were declared free by law; it was such poems as Alves’s _Vozes d’Africa_ and _O Navio Negreiro_ that prepared the way for legislation which, for that matter, economic change was already fast rendering inevitable.[15] III The Brazilian novel is a product of the Romantic movement. Such precursors as Teixeira e Souza (1812-1861) and Joaquim Noberto de Souza Silva (1820-1891) belong rather to the leisurely investigator of origins. The real beginnings are to be appreciated in the work of Joaquim Manoel de Macedo (1820-1882) and José de Alencar (1829-1877).