His plays are very popular because they touch an audience even to tears, and he has several followers or imitators.  The comedies of manners and satirical plays are generally the work of Eusebio Blasco, Ramos Carrion, Echegaray the younger, Estremada, Alverez, though there are others whose names are legion.  Echegaray is really a man of genius.  A clever engineer and professor of mathematics, he was Minister of Finance during the early days of the Revolution.  His first play took the world of Madrid by surprise and even by storm. La Esposa del Vengador had an unprecedented success, and at least thirty subsequent dramas, in prose and in verse, have made this mathematician, engineer, and financier one of the most famous men of his day.  His art and his methods are purely Spanish.  I have already referred to the phenomenal success of Perez Galdos’s Electra within the last few months.  It must, however, be ascribed chiefly to the moment of its presentation rather than to any superlative merit in the drama.  It is well written, which is what may be said of almost all Spanish plays, for the language is in itself so dignified and so beautiful that, if it be only pure and not disfigured by foreign slang, it is always sonorous and charming.  To the state of the popular temper, however, and the coincidence of the political events already referred to must be ascribed the fact that a piece like Electra should cause the fall of a Government, and bring within dangerous distance the collapse of the monarchy itself.  The excitement which it still produces, wherever played, is now in a great part due to the foolish action of some of the bishops and the fact that individual clerics use their pulpits to condemn it, and attempt to forbid its being read or seen.

Spain is not particularly rich in great actors, although she has always a goodly number who come up to a fair standard of excellence.  The great actors of the day in Madrid are Maria Guerrero and Fernando Diaz de Mendoza.  They obtained a perfect ovation during the last season in the play, El loco Dios, of Echegaray—­a work which gives every opportunity for the display of first-class talent in both actors, and which led to a fury of enthusiasm for the popular dramatist, which must have recalled to him the early days of his great successes.

Since the beginning of the eighteenth century, Spain has had three great Academies, which, even in the troublous times of her history, have done good work in the domains of history, language, and the fine arts; but it is since the Revolution that they have become of real importance in the intellectual development of the nation, and other societies have been added for the encouragement of scientific research and music.  The earliest of her academies was that of language, known as the Royal Spanish Academy.  It is exactly on the lines of the Academie Francaise.  Founded in 1713, its statutes were somewhat modified in 1847, and again in 1859.  There are only thirty-six