skill in forensic eloquence; his biographer, above, states that he cannot put four words together in public, nor in private either. A reticent man, he is forced to write in order to find expression. He wrote his first book in 1867 and '68, but it was not published till 1871. In the mean time the revolution of 1868 took place, which enlarged the boundaries of freedom in literature as in many other directions; and Galdos at Barcelona had some small part in it. The book was 'La Fontana de Oro' (The Fount of Gold). It treats of the aspirations of the "ardent youth" of 1820, who rebelled against the reactionary policy brought in by Ferdinand VII. after the expulsion of the French from the country; and in the student hero Lazaro he perhaps displays his own ideas at the period. Violent political clubs were formed, on the model of the Jacobin Clubs of the French Revolution, and it is from the name of a cafe that was the meeting-place of the most famous of these clubs that the name of the story is derived. His next book was 'El Audaz' (The Fearless: 1872). The period is the same. The hero is an utterly fearless young radical, who has been driven to revolt through wrongs done his family by the Count de Cerezuelo. By a peculiar hazard, though far below her in social station, he meets the daughter of the count, a very proud and disdainful beauty. It is her caprice to fall in love with him, and she remains true to him to the end, when he dies in a street tumult, having first gone mad with his superheated enthusiasm. These early books are conceived upon conventional romantic lines, and hardly gave promise of their author's future fame. They contain however passages of strong character-drawing, like that of the Porrenos, three ancient spinster sisters of a fallen patrician house in 'El Audaz,' which are equal to his later work.