"We have seen the France of the seventeenth century enthusiastic for the Astrea and the Clelia, [Footnote 10] and the England of the eighteenth assume shield and spear for Clarissa Harlowe, [Footnote 11] but in 1598 and in Spain, the extraordinary popularity of the Amadises resembled a brain fever at which no one dared laugh. One day a certain nobleman coming home found his wife in tears. 'What is the matter? What bad news have you heard?' 'My dear, Amadis is dead.' They could not suffer the writers to put their heroes to death. The infant Don Alonzo personally interceded with the author of the Portuguese Amadis to rewrite the chapter in which the Signora Briolana was sacrificed. These creatures of the imagination assumed a personal reality among the people of that era in the mind of every one. Every one was convinced that Arthur of Britain would one day return among men. Julian of Castile, who wrote in 1587, affirmed (could we believe him) that when Philip II. espoused Mary of England, he was obliged to reserve the claims of King Arthur, and engage to yield him the throne when he returned. Chivalric fictions became an article of faith. A certain gentleman, Simon de Silveyra, swore one day on the Holy Gospel that he held the history of Amadis de Gaul [Footnote 12] for true and certain." [Footnote 10: For information concerning these slow romances and their contemporaries, and the great Honore d'Urfy. see University Magazine for February, 1844.] [Footnote 11: A school of simple and warm-hearted working-class folk nightly assembled at a forge in Windsor to hear the perilous trials of Pamela read out to them. They watched with unflagging interest her progress through her ticklish trials, and showed their joy in her final triumph by running in a body to the church and ringing the bells.] [Footnote 12: This first and best of the chivalric romances was composed by Vasco de Lobeira of Oporto, who died in 1406. It was written between 1342 and 1367, and first printed between 1492 and 1500. There is some uncertainty concerning the given dates.] Such were a few characteristics of Spanish life when Cervantes thought of writing his Don Quixote. In his numerous works he had it in purpose to improve the state of things in his native country, and to correct this or that abuse, but he obtained no striking success till the publication of this his greatest work. Alas! while it established his character as master in literature, it excited enmities and troubles in abundance. YOUTH OF CERVANTES.