country of Europe. It shows the true Spain, and not merely
the conventional one of strumming guitars and jingling mule bells.
With all its strangeness, we see it full of that genuine human nature
that makes the world akin; and we see, with pleasure and hope, the
breaking up of the forces of mediaevalism, the working of a mental and
moral turmoil that is preparing the way for a general betterment.

It would not be reasonable to suppose that Spanish literature remained
wholly unaffected by the vigorous French movement just across the
border. On the contrary, it clearly shows the trace of the robust
modern style that has prevailed in France from Balzac to Zola. This
trace, however, is in the style and not in the matter. It may possibly
have aided the plainness of speech in the Spanish work, which is
greater than in English books; and yet this plainness of speech is
probably not greater than all books should be allowed, in the interest
of their own usefulness, and in order not to be narrow instead of
broad pictures of life. The tone towards sexual problems is never
flippant; immorality is never put in an attractive light; there is
hardly anywhere a more severe homily on the text that "the wages of
sin is death" than is found in the wretched career of the
transgressors in such books as Galdos's 'Lo Prohibido,' 'Tormento,'
and 'La Desheredada.'

Just as in English books, the young girl, her aspirations and her
innocent love affairs before marriage, figure largely in these novels.
It is not necessary for her to wait until she is married in order to
become a suitable heroine for fiction. Religious revolt or dissent,
again, is one of the features most often used. There is still a very
close union of Church and State in Spain, and life has a very
ecclesiastical coloring. Nearly every family has ties of relationship
or intimacy with some ecclesiastical person of either sex. This brings
it about that such figures are as frequent in books as,
correspondingly, in real life. In Valera's 'Pepita Ximenez' we find an
earnest young student, a candidate for the priesthood, son of a noble
house, turned aside from his holy career--through his father's
connivance--by the fascinations of a most charming woman, their
neighbor. In Valdes's 'Sister San Sulpicio' it is a young novice, a
delightfully gay and bright creature, whom love and matrimony withdraw
from her convent. In the same author's 'Marta y Maria' a fair young
girl is seen endeavor