Rizal was in London when the news reached him of the petty vengeance wreaked upon the body of his brother-in-law. There had been launched some months before by the Filipino colony in Madrid a semimonthly magazine called “La Solidaridad,” the object of which was to arouse and unify the Filipinos and wrest reforms from the Spanish Government. With impunity it could be published in Madrid but could not have lived a day in Manila, a fact sufficiently indicating the power and value of publicity. Spain, with the eyes of Europe upon her, did not dare to do at home the things she did daily in the Philippines; dared not to do them or dared not to avow them. Distance, creating an impenetrable screen, created also in effect a transition from the modern to the antique world. There was much freedom of the press in Spain, a freedom, as we have remarked, partly sustained by the incessant threat of rebellion in Barcelona. Therefore, as a singular fact and almost comically incongruous, “La Solidaridad,” [114] with its acrid criticism of the Spanish Government, circulated freely in Spain and was not allowed to enter the Philippines. One of its editors was Marcelo H. del Pilar, a resolute and restless man, type of the intransigent, the indomitable and professional revolutionist. Before long he and Rizal quarreled, [115] for he was all for revolution by physical force and Rizal was always asserting its futility. A few years later del Pilar died on his way home to start his long meditated uprising. Untimely was his death if any man’s ever was. He would have reached the Philippines to find in full swing a revolution wherein his tireless energies and fiery spirit would have found an outlet at which men might have wondered. But before they quarreled Rizal had written much for del Pilar and “La Solidaridad;” poems, articles, editorials, all directed toward Philippine reforms. When he heard of the indignity put for his sake upon the name and clay of Herbosa, he took up his pen and poured out for his journal an account of the incident and his feelings about it that scalded the church authorities with a flood of the short, hot sentences he knew so well how to write—scoriæ and hot lava from the volcano. When the news of the attack upon his father came he was living in Ghent, whither he had retired to write his new novel “El Filibusterismo.” The effect upon him of the persecution of his family is to be observed in the work he was doing at the time; in one place he makes direct reference to it. He has been telling the story of Cabesang Tales, a peaceful Filipino farmer, driven to brigandage by the extortions of the friars and the savageries of the Civil Guards. Then he says, with mingled rage and sarcasm: