Their subjects are various, and they are very unequal in length; but, amidst all their varieties, one principle gave them a prevailing character and insured their success. They are founded on the manners of the middling and lower classes of the city, which they reflect freshly and faithfully, whether their materials are sought in the _tertulias_ or evening parties of persons in a decent condition of life, where the demure _Abate_ and the authorized lover of the mistress of the house contend for influence; or in the trim walks of the Prado, and among the loungers of the Puerta del Sol, where the fashion of the court is jostled by the humors of the people; or in the _Lavapies_ and the _Maravillas_, where the lowest classes, with their picturesque dresses and unchanging manners, reign supreme and unquestioned. But, under all circumstances and in all situations, Ramon de la Cruz, in this class of his dramas, is attractive and amusing; and, though there is seldom any thought of dramatic skill in his combinations, and often no attempt at a catastrophe,--though his style is any thing but correct, and he is wholly careless of finish in his versification,--yet his farces so abound in wit and faithful delineations of character, they are so true to the manners they intend to represent, and so entirely national in their tone, that they seem expressly made for a pleasant and appropriate accompaniment to the longer dramas of Lope and Calderon, in whose popular spirit they are most successfully written.[380] [380] Teatro de Don Ramon de la Cruz. In the Preface, he replies to Signorelli, who, in the seventh chapter of the ninth book of his “Storia dei Teatri,” makes a rude attack upon him, chiefly for sundry translations, which La Cruz does not seem to have printed. The “Coleccion de Sainetes tanto impresos como inéditos de Don Ramon de la Cruz, con un Discurso Preliminar de Don Agustin Duran,” etc., was printed at Madrid in 1843, 2 tom. 8vo. A notice of the life of the author is in Baena, Hijos, etc., Tom. IV., p. 280. At about the same time that Ramon de la Cruz was amusing the society of Madrid with his popular dramas and farces, Juan Ignacio Gonzalez del Castillo was equally successful in the same way at Cadiz. He was, however, little known beyond the limits of Andalusia till 1845, when Don Adolfo de Castro published, in his native city, a collection of his “Saynetes,” filling two volumes, 12mo. In the variety of their tone, in their faithfulness to the national manners, and in the gayety of their satire, they resemble those of La Cruz; but they are a little more carefully finished than his, and somewhat less rich and genial.