ending--of village rivalries and reconciliations in a land wooded with chestnuts and oaks and cider-apples, a land of maize and cool green fields of trefoil, and mountain paths hedged with honeysuckle. But in other works Palacio Veldés has not maintained this Spanish inspiration. In “La Espuma,” “Maximina,” “La Fe,” the influence is that of the French naturalistic School. _Clarín_ (Leopoldo Alas), though born at Zamora also an Asturian, was likewise deeply influenced by France in his long work “La Regenta.” In one of his critical essays _Clarín_ wrote that “Spanish realism is very Spanish; it is in the race. But it has its defects, _no todo en él es flores_; it is deficient in psychology and the poetry of passion.” In “La Regenta” we have passion and psychological analysis and epigrammatic wit. The scene is the old cathedral city of Vetusta (or rather Oviedo). The treatment is not characteristically Spanish. Vetusta is here a typical provincial town, such as Flaubert might have described and hated, and its inhabitants are almost all represented as ignorant, vulgar, or vicious. Their stupidity and vulgarity are lashed with an ingenious subtlety that is unsparing, and the motives guiding their actions are laid bare with an amazing skill. _Clarín’s_ humour is often a little cruel, and the novel is crowded with terse and biting phrases. One of the readers of the Vetusta _casino_--the worthiest of them, _Clarín_ is careful to assure us--is thus pilloried in a few lines: “He arrived at nine o’clock every evening without fail, took _Le Figaro_ and _The Times_, which he placed over _Le Figaro_, put on his gold spectacles, and, lulled by the sound of the gas, fell gently asleep over the foremost paper of the world, a privilege which no one sought to dispute. Shortly after his death of apoplexy, over _The Times_, it was discovered that he knew no English.”