Thereafter for some years there was comparatively little political literature put forth in Cuba, but other departments of letters greatly flourished. A noteworthy volume of poems by four authors was published in 1853 under the title of "Cuatro Laudes." One of the authors was Dr. Ramon Zambrana, a physician and scientist of high attainments, whose poems were chiefly metaphysical, speculative and imaginative. He was married to Dona Luisa Perez, perhaps the foremost of the women poets of Cuba; to whom he was attracted by the reading of her poems. Many critics rate her verses more highly than his, and they were certainly more popular. [Illustration: LUISA PEREZ DE ZAMBRANA] LUISA PEREZ DE ZAMBRANA One of Cuba's greatest poets, Luisa Perez, was born near El Cobre in 1837, and was married in 1858 to Dr. Ramon Zambrana, an eminent man of letters of Havana. She wrote much in youth, and published a volume of poems in 1856. In addition to her poems she wrote "Angelica and Estrella" and other novels, and translated much from the French and Italian. When Gertrudis Avellanda returned to Cuba, Luisa Perez was chosen to place upon her brow a golden laurel wreath. The second of the four authors was José Gonzalo Roldan, whose best work was in poems of tender sentiment. The third, Rafael Maria de Mendive, devoted himself almost exclusively to poems of melancholy or at least pensive sentiment. He was a passionate admirer and to some extent a disciple if not an imitator of Byron and Moore, many of whose poems he translated into Spanish with much success. Beside his poetical work however, he cooperated with Quintiliano Garcia in founding and conducting _The Havana Review_, a meritorious fortnightly literary journal. His career in Cuba was cut short early in the Ten Years' War by banishment for treason. He was at that time the head of a boys' school, in Havana, and was suspected by the authorities of inculcating in his pupils forbidden ideas of freedom and democracy. One night in January, 1869, when there was much popular indignation against the Spanish government on account of a very drastic proclamation which had been issued against the insurgent patriots, a number of Cuban women marched to a theatre in Havana, wearing dresses of red, blue and white adorned with stars, obviously representing the colors of the revolutionary Cuban flag. Some of Mendive's boys were present, and they applauded and cheered the women so vigorously that a riot arose, in which the notorious Volunteers caused some bloodshed. For this Mendive was held responsible, and he was arrested and exiled to Spain for a term of four years. The influence of the American poet Longfellow and other literary men, however, procured his release, on condition that he would not reenter Cuba. He accordingly went to New York and there lived until the general amnesty after the Ten Years' War permitted his return to Cuba.