Advocate, philosopher, journalist and revolutionist, José Manuel Mestre was born in Havana in 1832. He was a professor of both law and philosophy in the University until he resigned because of governmental injustice to a colleague. For a time he taught on La Luz's school of El Salvador, and as a lawyer he defended Abad Torres who was charged with trying to murder the Archbishop of Santiago. During the Ten Years' War he was in New York, a member of the Cuban Junta, a diplomatic agent at Washington, and one of the editors of "El Nuevo Mundo." After the Treaty of Zanjon he returned to Cuba, and died in Havana in 1886. Three more writers of note and of real merit must be mentioned as members of the company gathered about him by Domingo del Monte. These were Anselmo Suarez y Romero, who lived from 1818 to 1878, and who as a delineator of Cuban life and customs in fiction and essays ranks among the best Cuban writers of prose; Cirillo Villaverde, who lived from 1812 to 1894, and who also depicted in romances the life and manners of his countrymen, dealing much, moreover, with African slavery; and Ramon de Palma y Romay, who dates from 1812 to 1860, who assisted Echeverria in the editing of "El Plantel," and who was an accomplished writer of verse and of dramas, and who is said to have been the first native Cuban dramatist to have a play of his produced upon the stage. The work of his thus honored was "La Prueba o la Vuelta del Cruzado," in 1837. Palma also wrote some strongly patriotic poems, which excited the suspicion and enmity of the Spanish authorities, and in consequence in 1852 he was arrested and imprisoned for a time on charge of complicity in the revolutionary movements of that time. We may reckon him to have been the last of the earlier school of Cuban writers, who had been more or less unconsciously inspired by the revolutionary era of the beginning of the century. Next came a new school, of the writers of the final and triumphant revolution. We may indeed regard José Antonio Saco, to whom we have already referred, as one of the writers and intellectual leaders of the final revolution. In his earlier years he was an advocate of reforms in the Spanish administration of the island which would make continued union acceptable. In 1848 he had written a strong pamphlet against incorporation of Cuba in the United States, largely on the ground that thus Cuban nationality and the individuality of the Cuban people would be extinguished. Three years later he wrote again on "The Cuban Situation and Its Remedy," in which he pointed out the necessity of Spain's granting fully the just demands of the Cuban people, the alternative being separation and independence; and he indicated pretty clearly that he regarded the latter course as all but inevitable.