Narvaez, the Queen of Ferdinand VII., Cristina, and many other persons appear in the books, giving one the impression that history is alive, and not the record of long-dead actors we are accustomed to find it.  Galdos appears to despise any kind of plot; the events run on, as they did in fact run on, only there are one or two people who take part in them whom we may suppose to be creations of the author’s brain.  Certainly, one learns more contemporary history by reading these Episodes of Perez Galdos, and realises all the scenes of it much more vividly than one would ever do by the reading of ordinary records of events.  As the tendency and the sympathy of the writer is always Liberal, one fancies that Galdos has written with the determined intention to tempt a class of readers to become acquainted with the recent history of their country who would never do so under any less attractive form than that of the novel.  His works must do good, since they are very widely read, and are extremely accurate as history.  His play, Electra, which is just now giving him such wide celebrity, is of the actual time, and the scene is laid wholly in Madrid.  The freedom that he advocates for women is merely that which Englishwomen have always enjoyed, or, at least, since mediaeval times, and has nothing in common with the emancipation which our “new women” claim for themselves.  Galdos, also, is fond of introducing the simple-minded and honest, if not very cultivated, priest.  His style is pure, without any great pretention to brilliancy, or any of the straining after effect which so many of the English writers seem to think gives distinction.

Pedro Alarcon is novelist first, and historian, poet, and critic afterwards.  That is to say, his novels are his best-known and most widely read works.  He has two distinct styles.  His Sombrero de Tres Picos is a fascinating sketch of quaint old village life, full of quiet grace, while El Escandalo and La Prodiga are of the sensational order.  He writes, like Galdos, in series, such as Historietas Nacionales, Narraciones Inverosimiles, and Viajes por Espana.  Parada is a native of Santander, and writes of his beloved countrymen. Sotilezas, his best-known, and perhaps best, novel, treats of life among the fisher-folk of Santander, before it became an industrial town.  Writing in dialect makes many of his stories puzzling, if not impossible for foreign readers.

The lady who writes under the pseudonym of “Emelia Pardo Bazan” may be said to be the leader or the pioneer of women’s emancipation in the sense in which we use the words.  She is a native of Galicia, and is imbued with that intense love of her native province which distinguishes the people of the mountains.  Her novels are chiefly pictures of its scenery and the life of its people, though in at least one she does not hesitate to take her readers behind the scenes of student life in Madrid.