done their best work earlier in their careers. But, however this may be, our expectations were not fulfilled in Alarcón’s case. A few short stories represent him to posterity: like M. Bourget, he ‘found salvation,’ lost much of his art, and, in his more elaborate novels, became tedious. Fortunately, about ten years before the publication of _El Sombrero de tres picos_, a new talent had revealed itself to those who had eyes to see; and, as always happens everywhere, these were not many. While Trueba was writing the rose-coloured tales which endeared him to the general public, José María de Pereda was growing up to manhood in the north of Spain.[107] Though the verdict of the capital still counts for much, it would not be true nowadays to say that the rest of Spain accepts without question the dictation of Madrid in matters of literary taste and fashion; but it was true enough of all the provinces—with the possible exception of Cataluña—in the late fifties and early sixties, when Pereda began to write for a Santander newspaper, _La Abeja montañesa_. Though he was over thirty, he had then no wide experience of life; he had been reared in a simple, old-fashioned circle where everybody stood fast in the ancient ways, and where there was no literary chatter. He seems to have had the usual traditional stock of knowledge flogged into him in the old familiar way by the irascible pedagogue whose portrait he has drawn not too kindly. From Santander Pereda went to Madrid, studied there a short while, joyfully returned home, and, till his health failed, scarcely ever left Polanco again, except during the short period when he was sent as a deputy to the Cortes. He hated the life of the capital, and remained till the end of his days an incorrigibly faithful _montañesuco_.