is not a peasant, but a member of an ancient family of Mallorcan nobles, hemmed in by tradition and inherited instincts. The background, however, of descriptions of Mallorca and lawless peasant life in Ibiza, with its woods and orchards and white farms girt by a green transparent sea, contribute more powerfully to the charm of the book than the wrestling of Don Jaime against the clinging influence of the innumerable dead, who still prevail. But, indeed, Blasco Ibáñez’ presentation of any strenuous life-struggle is forcible and imposing. It reflects his own personality. His creed is one of restless striving and discontent with the apathy too frequent in Spain. His activity is immense: though little over forty years of age, his novels are already many in number, short stories and articles are continually appearing from his pen, he lectures, travels, translates, publishes, controls a Valencian paper, _El Pueblo_, and till the autumn of 1908 represented Valencia in Parliament as a Republican; now his energies are occupied in founding two towns--to be called New Valencia and Cervantes--for colonies of Valencians in the Argentine. Blasco Ibáñez once wrote a long novel of the French Revolution, “Viva la República!” and in his ideas and in his art the influence of France has, no doubt, been very strong. His ideas sometimes trespass on his art, as in “La Catedral,” where, in the person of Gabriel Luna, he declaims tediously and without mercy. His novels, as a rule, show an admirable unity. In each of his heroes we see Blasco Ibáñez: but Blasco Ibáñez entirely identified with the peasant Batiste (in “La Barraca”), or the painter Renovales (in “La Maja Desnuda”), or the Socialist Luna (in “La Catedral”), or the bull-fighter Gallardo (in “Sangre y Arena”). His very manner catches the atmosphere and colour of the surroundings he describes. He becomes vulgar in the descriptions of commercial, crowded Valencia, wearisome in details of the feasts of its _bourgeois_ and the various foods of its market-place (in “Arroz y Tartana”); he can be magnificently simple, with the soul of a peasant or a fisherman (in “La Barraca” and “Flor de Mayo”), and the fertile Huerta gives free scope to his luxuriant art, his overflow of poetry and imagination. This power of concentration, which Blasco Ibáñez possesses in so high a degree, is rare in Spanish literature. The heroes of Blasco Ibáñez’ novels are men strong to labour, persistent before defeat. They are almost always defeated and die, Gallardo in the arena, Luna assassinated in Toledo Cathedral, the Pascuals, fishermen of three generations, drowned in storms off the Valencian coast. But the dominant note of his novels is still “E pur si muove,” and in spirit his heroes are as unconquerable as Don Quixote. He has Zola’s power of describing crowds; in “La Horda” appears the multitude of hucksters and street-sellers that haunt the Madrid _Rastro_; and similarly the background of “Luna Benamor” (1909)