It would not be fair to apply to this writer’s work the standard by which we judge an English work, because in Spain there is a frankness, to call it by no other name, in discussing in mixed company subjects which it would not be thought good taste to mention under the same circumstances with us. Una Cristiana and La Prueba, its sequel, are founded on the sex problem, and, probably without any intention of offence, Pardo Bazan has worked with a very full brush and a free hand, if I may borrow the terms from a sister art.  Her articles on intellectual and social questions show an amount of education and a breadth of view which place her among the best writers of her nation.  She is not in the least blinded by her patriotism to the faults of her country, especially to the hitherto narrow education of its women.  She holds up an ideal of a higher type—­a woman who shall be man’s intellectual companion, and his helper in the battle of life.  She is by no means the only woman writer in Spain at the present time; but she is the most talented, and occupies certainly the highest place.  Her writings are somewhat difficult for anyone not conversant with Portuguese, or, rather, with the Galician variety of the Spanish language, for the number of words not to be found in the Spanish dictionary interfere with the pleasure experienced by a foreigner, and even some Castilians, in reading her novels.  Pardo Bazan was an enthusiastic friend and admirer of Castelar, and belongs to his political party.  A united Iberian republic, with Gibraltar restored to Spain, is, or was, its programme.

Hermana San Sulpicio, by Armando Palacio Valdes, is one of the charming, purely Spanish novels which has made a name for its author beyond the confines of his own country; but since that was produced he has gone for his inspiration to the French naturalistic school, and, like some English writers, he thinks that repulsive and indecent incidents, powerfully drawn, add to the artistic value of his work.  Padre Luis Coloma, a Jesuit, obtained a good deal of attention at one time by his Pequeneces, studies, written in gall, of Madrid society.  His stories are too narrowly bigoted in tone to have any lasting vogue, and his views of life too much coloured by his ultramontane tendencies to be even true.  Nunez de Arce is, like so many Spaniards of the last few decades, at once a poet and a politician.  He played a stirring part from the time of the Revolution to the Restoration, always on the side of liberty, but never believing in the idea of a republic.  His Gritos del Combate were the agonised expression of a fighter in his country’s battle for freedom and for light.  Since the more settled state of affairs, Nunez de Arce has written many charming idyls and short poems.  In the Idilio is a wonderful picture of the, to some of us, barren scenery of Castile, in which the eye of the artist sees, and makes his readers see, a beauty all the more striking because it is hidden from the ordinary gaze.