writings are somewhat difficult for anyone not conversant with Portuguese, or, rather, with the Galician variety of the Spanish language, for the number of words not to be found in the Spanish dictionary interfere with the pleasure experienced by a foreigner, and even some Castilians, in reading her novels. Pardo Bazan was an enthusiastic friend and admirer of Castelar, and belongs to his political party. A united Iberian republic, with Gibraltar restored to Spain, is, or was, its programme. _Hermana San Sulpicio_, by Armando Palacio Valdés, is one of the charming, purely Spanish novels which has made a name for its author beyond the confines of his own country; but since that was produced he has gone for his inspiration to the French naturalistic school, and, like some English writers, he thinks that repulsive and indecent incidents, powerfully drawn, add to the artistic value of his work. Padre Luis Coloma, a Jesuit, obtained a good deal of attention at one time by his _Pequeñeces_, studies, written in gall, of Madrid society. His stories are too narrowly bigoted in tone to have any lasting vogue, and his views of life too much coloured by his ultramontane tendencies to be even true. Nuñez de Arce is, like so many Spaniards of the last few decades, at once a poet and a politician. He played a stirring part from the time of the Revolution to the Restoration, always on the side of liberty, but never believing in the idea of a republic. His _Gritos del Combate_ were the agonised expression of a fighter in his country's battle for freedom and for light. Since the more settled state of affairs, Nuñez de Arce has written many charming idyls and short poems. In the _Idilio_ is a wonderful picture of the, to some of us, barren scenery of Castile, in which the eye of the artist sees, and makes his readers see, a beauty all the more striking because it is hidden from the ordinary gaze. Of José Zorilla as a poet there is little need to speak. His countrymen read his voluminous works, but they are not of any real value. Campoamor describes his _Dorloras_ as "poetic compositions combining lightness, sentiment, and brevity with philosophic importance." His earlier works were studied from Shakespeare and from Byron, who was the star of the age when Campoamor began to write. His most ambitious work, the _Universal Drama_, is "after Dante and Milton." He is a great favourite with his fellow-countrymen, both as poet and companion. He is a member of the Academy and a Senator. It is impossible, however, to do more than indicate a few of the writers who are leaders in the literature of Spain to-day. There has, in fact, been an immense impulse in the production of books of all classes within the last twenty or thirty years. In fiction, Spain once more aspires to have a characteristic literature of her own, in place of relying on translations from the French, as was the case for a brief time before her political renaissance began.