compared with the immunity of the rich. Famishing men are dragged off to prison for rooting up onions on a rich man’s estate, and shot down by the Guardia Civil when they try to escape--the official report runs: “the prisoners attempted to escape, and were overtaken by an accident from which a natural death ensued.” There is perhaps a greater air of reality about the account of the rich _Caciques_, owners of vast estates or _latifundios_, who pay to the Treasury but a tenth part of the proper land-tax, who falsify returns at elections, protect criminals, and assault honest folk, while the judges are their creatures. This _Caciquismo_ is part of the deplorable administration of Spain. Señor Pérez Galdós who, as a native of the Canary Islands, has the double advantage of looking at Spain as it were from within and from without, returns to the question of words and deeds, the wealth of words and the scantiness of action, with an insistence which must be excessively annoying to a Spanish reader. Yet he does not despair of Spain’s future. He sees hope in the proved vitality of the race, in its quick recoveries after misfortune, its heroism even under self-inflicted sufferings: “The ineffable follies of my sons have plunged me (_i.e._ Spain) in despair, and in the darkness of despair my death has seemed certain and inevitable. And then in some terrible crisis that appeared to ensure my destruction, I have revived when they were carrying me from the death-bed to the grave.” The best work of Pereda was of the Mountain, Valera and Fernán Caballero write of Andalucía, Palacio Valdés of Astúrias, and similarly the Gallegans, Valle-Inclán and Señora Pardo Bazán have found their best inspiration in Galicia, and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez in his native Valencia. Valencia is a fertile land of fierce heat and dazzling light--the light so wonderfully reflected in the work of the Valencian painter Joaquín Sorolla. Blasco Ibánez has written some striking novels that have no connection with Valencia, but his best and most delightful work is steeped in the life of the immense Valencian plain (in “La Barraca,” an intense story of a boycott of the Huerta); of the city of Valencia (in “Arroz y Tartana”); of the rice-growing, fever-stricken marshes of the Albufera, famous for its fishing and shooting, near Valencia (“Cañas y Barro”); of the fishermen and smugglers of El Grao and the Valencian coastline (“Flor de Mayo”); of love among the oranges in the orchard of Spain (“Entre Naranjos”). Blasco Ibáñez excels in portraying the lives and thoughts and struggles of the simple fisherman and peasant--hardworking as Batiste, or magnificently idle as Pimentó; and in describing popular customs and traditions,--a simple procession in floodtime (as in “Entre Naranjos”) or the dances and _festeigs_, courtings, of the _atlóts_ and _atlotas_ of Ibiza (in “Los Muertos mandan”). The hero of “Los Muertos mandan” (1909), Don Jaime or Chaume,