The dullness of the naturalistic novels of JULIO LOURENÇO PINTO (1842-1907) is not relieved by Eça de Queiroz’ pleasant irony and definite characterization. These ‘scenes of contemporary life’, while they display a praiseworthy restraint, give the idea rather of exercises in imitation of a French exemplar or of one of Eça de Queiroz’ early novels than of living stories. Their style is slovenly, the development of the plot prolix and monotonous. A certain interest attaches to _Margarida_ (1879)--although even here the author is too methodical in detailing the past lives of the four protagonists, the nonentity Luiz, the aspiring Adelina (a Portuguese Madame Bovary), Fernando, and Margarida, after they have been duly presented in the opening pages--and to the descriptions of a fair, a bull-fight, a flood, or provincial politics in _Vida Atribulada_ (1880), _O Senhor Deputado_ (1882), _Esboços do Natural_ (1882), and _O Homem Indispensavel_ (1884). Snr. JAIME DE MAGALHÃES LIMA (born in 1857) in _O Transviado_ (1899), _Na Paz do Senhor_ (1903), and _O Reino da Saudade_ (1904), has written novels _à thèse_ which are quite as interesting as naturalistic novels and more natural, but his art, especially in the presentation of contemporary politics, is a little too photographic. Snr. LUIZ DE MAGALHÃES (born in 1859), author of several volumes of verse, wrote a single novel, _O Brasileiro Soares_ (1886). It would offer little new in theme or treatment to distinguish it from other naturalistic novels were it not for the author’s success in drawing in Joaquim Soares a natural and attractive portrait of the Portuguese returned rich from Brazil (the _Brasileiro_). None of these novelists can rival the reputation of FRANCISCO TEIXEIRA DE QUEIROZ (1848-1919). He became prominent as a novelist of the realistic school over forty years ago when under the pseudonym of BENTO MORENO he inaugurated the series of his _Comedia do Campo_ (8 vols.), of which the last volume is _Ao Sol e á Chuva_ (1916), followed by a second series: _Comedia Burgueza_ (7 vols.), which began with _Os Noivos_ (1879). The obvious defects of his work--its laborious realism, its insistence on medical or physical details, its vain load of pedantry[687]--need not obscure its real merits. The careful style has occasional lapses, the psychology is thin, the conversations commonplace. His art, like a winter sunshine, fails to penetrate. Yet even in the _Comedia Burgueza_, where the interest must depend on the psychology, he succeeds in _D. Agostinho_ and _A Morte de D. Agostinho_ (1895) in giving individuality to that strange rickety figure of the old _fidalgo_ in his ruined Lisbon _palacio_. And in the Minho scenes of the _Comedia do Campo_ his scrupulous descriptions obtain their full effects. In the _romaria_ (pilgrimage), the _cantadeira_ (improvisator), the _diligencia_ with its load of priests (in _Amor Divino_), the girl shepherdess, the _abbade_ fond of hunting