ing even the
hothouse product's virtue of being good to look upon.

Reduced to a definite form, the wish of the more thoughtful in the
new generation of Filipino leaders that was growing up was that the
Philippine Islands be made a province of Spain with representation in
the Cortes and the concomitant freedom of expression and criticism. All
that was directly asked was some substantial participation in the
management of local affairs, and the curtailment of the arbitrary power
of petty officials, especially of the friar curates, who constituted
the chief obstacle to the education and development of the people.

The friar orders were, however, all-powerful, not only in the
Philippines, but also in Madrid, where they were not chary of making
use of a part of their wealth to maintain their influence. The
efforts of the Filipinos in Spain, while closely watched, do not
seem to have been given any very serious attention, for the Spanish
authorities no doubt realized that as long as the young men stayed
in Madrid writing manifestoes in a language which less than one
per cent of their countrymen could read and spending their money
on members of the Cortes, there could be little danger of trouble
in the Philippines. Moreover, the Spanish ministers themselves
appear to have been in sympathy with the more moderate wishes of
the Filipinos, a fact indicated by the number of changes ordered
from time to time in the Philippine administration, but they were
powerless before the strength and local influence of the religious
orders. So matters dragged their weary way along until there was an
unexpected and startling development, a David-Goliath contest, and
certainly no one but a genius could have polished the "smooth stone"
that was to smite the giant.

It is said that the idea of writing a novel depicting conditions in
his native land first came to Rizal from a perusal of Eugene Sue's
_The Wandering Jew_, while he was a student in Madrid, although the
model for the greater part of it is plainly the delectable sketches
in _Don Quixote_, for the author himself possessed in a remarkable
degree that Cervantic touch which raises the commonplace, even the
mean, into the highest regions of art. Not, however, until he had
spent some time in Paris continuing his medical studies, and later in
Germany, did anything definite result. But in 1887 _Noli Me Tangere_
was printed in Berlin, in an establishment where the author is said
to have work