A notable departure has been the foundation of the Folklore Society, and the publication up to the present time of eleven volumes under the name of _Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares Españolas_, under the direction of Señor Don Antonio Machado y Alvarez. In the introduction to the first volume, the Director tells us that, with the help of the editor of _El Folklore Andaluz_ and his friends, D. Alejandro Guichot y Sierra and D. Luis Montolo y Raustentrauch, he has undertaken this great work, which arose out of the _Bases del Folklore Español_, published in 1881, and the two societies established in 1882, the Folklore Andaluz and Folklore Extremeño. These societies have for object the gathering together, copying, and publishing of the popular beliefs, proverbs, songs, stories, poems, the old customs and superstitions of all parts of the Peninsula, including Portugal, as indispensable materials for the knowledge and scientific reconstruction of Spanish culture. In this patriotic and historical work many writers have joined, each bringing his quota of garnered treasure-trove, presenting thus, in a series of handy little volumes, a most interesting collection of the ancient customs, beliefs, and, in fact, the folklore of a country exceptionally rich in widely differing nationalities. Many of the tales, which it would seem even at the present time, especially in Portugal and Galicia, are told in the evening, and have rarely found their way into print, have the strong stamp of the legitimate Eastern fable, and bear a great family resemblance to those of the _Arabian Nights_. As, in fact, the _Thousand and One Nights_ was very early published in Spanish, it is probable that its marvellous histories were known verbally to the people of the Iberian continent for many centuries, and have coloured much of its folklore. _The Ingenious Student_ is certainly one of these. Barbers also play an important part in many of these tales. It is quite common for the Court barber to marry the King's daughter, and to succeed him as ruler; but the barber was, of course, surgeon or blood-letter as well as the principal news-agent--the forerunner of the daily newspaper of our times. The transmutation of human beings into mules, and _vice versa_, is a common fable, and we meet with wolf-children and the curious superstition that unbaptised people can penetrate into the domains of the enchanted Moors, and that these have no power to injure them. The story of the Black Slave, who eventually married the King's daughter and had a white mule for his Prime Minister, is very Eastern in character. "From so wise a King and so good a Queen the people derived great benefit; disputes never went beyond the ears of the Chief Minister, and, in the words of the immortal barber and poet of the city, 'the kingdom flourished under the guidance of a mule: which proves that there are qualities in the irrational beings which even wisest ministers would do well to