With their innumerable rhymed proverbs, their chatty propensities, their happy clime, fine country, facility of procuring a livelihood, few wants, and lively and happy temperaments, the Andaluçian peasants afford suitable subjects to Fernan Caballero's pencil. {30} They see in the many natural advantages they possess, the goodness of God and the favors of the saints; and their pious legends, in connection with every object round them, are innumerable. "Toads and serpents are useful in absorbing the poisonous exhalations of the earth; the serpent attempted to bite the Holy Infant on the journey into Egypt, so Saint Joseph appointed him to creep on his belly thenceforth. Some trees have the privilege of permanent foliage because they sheltered the HOLY FAMILY on the same journey. The Blessed Virgin hung the clothes of the Infant Jesus on a rosemary bush to dry, so its sweetest perfume and brightest blossoms are reserved for Friday. The swallow plucked some of the thorns out of the Saviour's crown, therefore he is a favorite bird with all Christians, while the owl is obliged to keep his eyes shut and whimper out, '_cruz, cruz,_' because he irreverently stared at our suffering Lord on the cross. The hedgehog should be well treated, because he presented to the Blessed Virgin some sweet apples on the tips of his prickles, while the earwig is deservedly hated for boring his way into, and effectually spoiling the nicest of them." Most of these poetically develop fancies are or were familiar with the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, and probably amongst the populace of moat continental countries. Perhaps the most powerful of our authoress's stories is La Gaviota (the sea-gull), giving the career of a selfish, ill-disposed country girl, gifted with some beauty and a fine voice. She obtains a gentle German doctor for husband, is patronized by a duke, trained for the office of a prima donna, becomes fascinated by a bull fighter, proves false to her estimable husband, and ends badly of course. Devout and moral as the authoress undoubtedly is, she does not avoid strong and exciting situations no more than Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Oliphant. Such is the scene where the betrayed husband sees her seated beside the bullfighter among his unedifying associates, and that other of the death of her paramour by a furious animal in the arena before her eyes, and these are matched by passages in the Alvareda Family.[Footnote 6] This story, which is entirely occupied with country folk, and incidents of the war in Buonaparte's time, and scenes of brigandage, is next to La Gaviota in power. The match-making scene between the garrulous and saving Pedro and his relative that is to be, the _Tia_ Maria, fully as provident as himself, might have happened in a country farmhouse in Wexford or Carlow, and would have been described by Banim or Griffin or Carleton, nearly in the same terms.