is home among them, near Santander. Valera stands
apart in a different way, and would occupy himself by preference with
the opposite class of society. He is the most learned and scholarly of
the quartette, and his writing is the most carefully polished in
style. He is a scholarly critic and essayist as well as a novelist. He
is a realist like the rest, yet eschews, for instance, the imitation
of dialect: he is not a realist in quite the same energetic and
conscientious way; his atmosphere, while no doubt equally true, is
rather dreamy and poetic. Valdes and Galdos are much more vividly
modern, and they treat many of the same kind of subjects, the events
of real life such as we see it all around us. Of the four, Valdes has
perhaps, in certain passages, the truest tenderness and most delicate
pathos, and the most genuine humor, of that sunny kind which allows us
to laugh without bitterness. He can sometimes be bitter too, and such
a severe social satire as 'Froth' and such books as 'The Grandee' and
'The Origin of Thought' leave, like many of those of Galdos, an
impression of gloom; yet even in these we are charmed on the way by
his light touch and easy grace of treatment. Galdos is he who takes
the gravest attitude; many great problems of life and destiny occupy
him seriously; he not only is very earnest, but seems so,--which does
not however preclude a plentiful use of humor, as will be seen in the
examples given. Furthermore, he is much the most prolific of the
distinguished group, and to that extent he may be said to have the
widest range.

These writers are a highly beneficent influence in Spain at the
present time, spreading over it as they do a multitude of stimulating
pictures and liberalizing ideas, cast into charming literary form.
They cannot fail to have a considerable effect upon conduct. In its
manner, its aversion to obscurity, and fondness for floods of daylight
that almost abolish shadow, this fiction is like the Spanish-Roman
school of art, the painting of Fortuny, the two Madrazos, and others:
the two seem but manifestations of a common impulse. On another side
it is to be recommended to foreigners, as affording a body of
information about Spain such as the mere traveler could never attain,
and which it is useless to look for in fiction depending for its
interest upon clever devices of plot and fantastic adventure. It lets
an illumination into the heart of what has been the most reserved and
mysterious