A.G. Meyer (1898); and _La Relazione del Canova
con Napoli ... memorie con documenti inediti_, by Angelo Borzelli
(1901). (W. M. R.)

CANOVAS DEL CASTILLO, ANTONIO (1828-1897), Spanish statesman, was born
in Malaga on the 8th of February 1828. Educated in his native town, he
went to Madrid in 1845, bent upon finding means to complete his literary
and philosophical studies. His uncle, Don Serafin Estebanez Calderon,
found him a situation as clerk in the Madrid-Aranjuez railway, but
Canovas soon took to journalism and literature, earning enough to
support himself and pay for his law studies at the Madrid University.
During this period he published his two best works--an historical novel,
_Las Campanas de Huesca_, and the history of the decay of Spain from
Philip III. to Charles II. under the house of Austria. He became a
politician through his Junius-like letters to the "Murcielago"--_The
Bat_, a satirical political journal--and by drawing up the manifesto of
Manzanares in 1854 for Marshal O'Donnell, of whom he always remained a
loyal adherent. Canovas entered the Cortes in 1854; he was made governor
of Cadiz in 1857, sub-director of the state department in 1858,
under-secretary at the home office in 1860, minister of the interior in
1864, minister of the colonies in 1865, minister of finance in 1866, and
was exiled by Marshal Narvaez in the same year, afterwards becoming a
bitter opponent of all the reactionary cabinets until the revolution of
1868. He took no part in preparing that event. He sat in the Cortes
Constituyentes of 1869 as a doctrinaire Conservative, combating all
Radical and democratic reforms, and defending the exiled Bourbons; but
he abstained from voting when the Cortes elected Amadeus king on the
16th of November 1870. He did not object to some of his political
friends, like Silvela and Elduayen, entering the cabinets of King
Amadeus, and in 1872 declared that his attitude would depend on the
concessions which government would make to Conservative principles.
After the abdication of Amadeus and the proclamation of the federal
republic, Canovas took the lead of the propaganda in favour of the
restoration of the Bourbons, and was their principal agent and adviser.
He drew up the manifesto issued in 1874 by the young king Alphonso XII.,
at that time a cadet at Sandhurst; but he dissented from the military
men who were actively conspiring to organize an Alphonsist
_pronunciamiento_. Like Marsh