A MODERN SPANISH TRAGEDY.* IT would probably be an impertinence

to the author of Gloria to style him the Spanish Victor Hugo, for, to all appearance, that would be attributing to him a literary ambition of which he is, no doubt, unconscious. But this remarkable story

• Gleri4. k. Novel. By B. Perez Gald6a. From the Spanish by Clara Bel. 2 vols. New York : WilLam B.Gottoberger. London : Tillbaer and Co. 1283. belongs undoubtedly to the Hugoesque school of fiction. It presents the combination of tragedy and comedy, the spectacle of humours luxuriating in the midst of horrors, with which the author of Qaasimodo and Les Miserable has ren- dered us familiar. Senor Geld6s, like Hugo, holds up life as a hopeless tragedy. With him, at all events in Gloria, the world, especially the world of creed and motive, is irremediably out of joint. Some of his characters, too, talk what to English ears sounds only like Scholastic jargon and moon-struck rhodo- montade, and seem prepared to tell us on the smallest provoca-

tion that,—

" The raging rocks And shivering shocks Will break the locks Of prison gates."

Nor is it too much to say that there are passages in this story— the representation of the struggles between the hapless lovers, the narrative of the agonised conflict between the faith and the heart of the unfortunate man whom Fate and superstition convert into n combination of hero and villain—that will, for intensity and still more for purity of passion, compare not unfavourably with Hugo at his youngest, and what some of us still think

his best. Senor Geld& has not attained the stature of his French contemporary ; Gloria is not in any sense a grand novel. But there is a vein of softness in him which will recommend him to English readers, and which in Gloria is best shown in the pathetic, closing scene. Circumstances have, indeed, been rather

cruel to Senor Galdos, for nature seems to have intended him to be an English novelist, and to have painted for us a whole gallery of bright girls who lead happy lives, because with them "love is an unerring light, and joy its own security."

The translator of Gloria says she has been prompted to place it before an English-reading public both because it is a

sketch of Spanish life of the present day, and because it is a study from nature. These reasons for the translation are sufficiently good. But a third might have been given, in the extraordinary

character of the plot. Gloria is really the representation of a duel between fanatical Catholicism and fanatical Judaism—the

fanaticism in the latter case is none the less strong that it is racial rather than theological—which ends in the ruin and death of the unfortunates who fight for their creeds. Gloria, a Biscayan Maggie Tolliver, is the daughter of Don Juan de Lantigua, a high-minded, but pedantically Catholic Spanish squire. A peculiar course of reading, chiefly fiction and theology, has made her at the age of eighteen a combination of romance, filial duty, and superstition. Here she is, as she prattles to her father in the beginning of the story, while she -waits for the arrival of her uncle, the Bishop :—

"'Well, and what about the chapel ?'—' Nothing; but his Reverence will want to perform mass there, as he did last time. And a pretty state the chapel was in ! We had to wash the Christ three times, for the flies bad done his sacred person more dishonor than the Jews. The Virgin's robe was ruined. I had to burn it and make her a new one out of the velvet you bought for me. I thought we should never get the stains out of the candlesticks with all the whitening we had in the house, but luckily Caifais and I could rub hard, and it has all come as bright as gold. But, do you know, the rats have begun to eat away the feet of St. John ! '—' Abominable brutes ! ' exclaimed Don Juan, laughing. There is no knowing what they will not do ! But thanks to Cailas, who is so clever, he has filled up the wounds in the saint's feet with some sort of paste or putty, and with a touch of paint they have come out very well. But those rascally vermin, that respect nothing, will not do any more mischief ! In three days after the rat-trap was set and baited eleven were caught, as big as wolves ! And you still think I have little to do !'—' I think you have plenty to dz.'—' Well, then, there are the clothes I had to make for Caifis's children, that they might turn out decently to receive my uncle— and you wonder that I am incessantly in and out, and up and down. It is my way, dear papa.'—' It is your way—I know that ; God bless you I love my uncle dearly ; he is a saint, and I am so happy to think that he is going to live under the same roof with me ! All that we have seems to me too little to do him honour and give him pleasure, and I should like to bring him all the wonders of a king's palace; not having these, I rack my brain to devise every luxury and prodigality to arrange a worthy reception for a man who in God's eyes Oh! I cannot bear myself !—I cannot keep quiet—I lie awake in a perfect fever—I pass the night without sleep, thinking of Fran- cisca's dawdling, of the chapel, of poor St. John being gnawed away, of the spotted candlesticks, of the rats, the smallness of our house for such an illustrious guest.'"

Gloria's father has a lover ready for her, a gallant and orthodox gentleman. But Gloria only likes him, and waits for the arrival of "the other one." Him a storm in the Bay of Biscay throws at her feet, in the person of Daniel Morton, a member of a Spanish Jewish family that has settled and amassed enormous wealth first in Hamburg and then in London. He is nursed back to health in Don Juan's house ; his Christ-like face, his

secret philanthropies, above all, his real goodness of heart, prove too much for poor Gloria's loyalty to Church and father. Clandestine meetings lead to seduction, or to be just to Morton, to what he considered a natural marriage. Meanwhile, he is weak enough to conceal his

religion, and to pretend to be nothing worse than a Pro- testant. At last all is discovered, and the report of Gloria's dishonour kills her father. The crisis of the story is reached when Morton, with the connivance of one of Gloria's uncles,—a banker, a man of the world, and a rationalised Catholic— appears once more on the scene. He finds Gloria secretly visiting their child, and on his pretending to be converted to Catholicism, her relatives, and above all herself, open their arms to him. How the fair prospect of a happy marriage is once more, and finally, overcast through the intervention of Morton's mother, it would be unfair to tell. Such a plot naturally leads to a number of strong situations. Gloria and Morton, in particular, live in a state of per- petual conflict with each other, with those around them, and above all with their own natures, which are rent alternately by passion and fanaticism. The theological argumentations in which the- book abounds become occasionally tedious ; and the winds of

passion in it have a tendency, as we have hinted, not only to blow, but to crack their cheeks. Yet there is no weakness in Gloria, as regards either plot or style.

With the translator, however, we like Gloria most as a study from nature, and as a sketch from actual Spanish life. Senor Geld& has not made the mistake of crowding his canvas, and so every one of his characters is carefully drawn. Among- the most likeable are Caifas, a luckless, but loyal Spanish retainer of Gloria, and a boastful, but physically powerful and courageous curd, who is not much of a saint, but is a great force in political elections, who saves Morton's life, and then

trembles with delight as he reads a newspaper account of his feat. Serior Galdos reproduces the intolerable but spontane- ous prattle of the female gossips of preseut day Spain in a style whose vivacious fidelity to truth recalls Theocritus..

His masterpieces in portraiture, however, are the four Lantiguas, Don Juan, the father of Gloria ; Serafinita, his sister, equally good and equally superstitious ; and their two more easy-going brothers, Don Angel, the bishop ; and Don Buenaventura, the banker, who while he is latitudinarian enough to see no difficulty in a Jew becoming a Catholic for the sake of love, cannot con- ceive himself becoming a Jew for the same reason. We cannot refrain from giving the portrait of the Bishop :—

" The Bishop was just a grown-np child. His plump and rosy fea- tures, with their constant, gentle smile, were framed, as it were, between his flowing episcopal robes and the brim of 'his green som. brero, radiant of spiritual joy, benevolence, perfect peace of con- science and a happy frame of mind towards God and man. He was one of those men who, by the simple impulse of a healthy nature, are prepared to take good for granted in all that surrounds them. His studies, and his experience in the confessional had taught him that there was wickedness in the world ; still, whenever he had been talk- ing to any one, he would always say, What a good soul! What an excellent fellow !' Just as a lamp throws its light on all that come near it, his warm, bright spirit radiated goodness on to all who ap- proached him. He was incapable of harbouring an evil thought of any one whom he knew, and when he heard of the iniquities of those whom he did not know, he never failed to say something in defence of the absent. His intellect was perhaps inferior to that of his brother Don Juan, who was in fact a remarkable man ; but he was his superior in genuine piety and sweetness of character ; and even with regard to matters of dogma, be held the doctrine of intolerance of error in its purely theological sense, and not in the vulgar acceptation of that misused word ; his keen compassion for all the failings and shortcomings a humanity seemed to temper the severity of his opinions. What Don Angel might have done if he could have held in the hollow of his hand the whole mass of modern society, with its vices and heresies, it is impossible to say ; as to Don Juan, it ie quite certain that he would have flung it unhesitatingly into the fire, and have enjoyed afterwards a perfectly quiet conscience—indeed, a sense of satisfaction at having done a good deed."

It is plain that, but for the serious character, if not purpose of his work, Senor Geld& would excel as a landscape painter. His style, as such, is a combination of Mr. Hardy's and Mr. Black's. Here is Ficobriga, which represents a typical fown on the Biscayan coast :— "It is June, a delicious month in this seaboard district when the storm spares it the visitation of its terrific hand. To-day even the lashing and turbulent Bay of Biscay is at rest. It allows the passing vessels to ride unmolested on its calm surface and plashes sleepily on the shore; while in the depths of the hollows, up the narrow oreeks„ through the rifts and over the rocks, its myriad tongues murmur sounds of peace. The undulating hills rise gently from the sea to the mountains, each one asserting itself against the rest as though they vied with each other as to which should reach the summit. Little country-houses of quaint aspect are scattered throughout the whole ittent of the landscape, but at one point they seem to concentrate and combine, one sheltering itself against another, uniting, in short, to form that noble civic community which is to be known to future ages as FicObriga. In the midst of it rises an unfinished tower, like a head bereft of its hat ; nevertheless, its two belfry windows are a pair of keen and watchful eyes, and within are three metal tongues which call the congregation to mass in the morning, and lift their voices in prayer as night swiftly falls. All round the little town— for we have now reached it and can see—luxuriant harvest-fields and smiling pastures argue a considerable amount of agricultural skill. Wild brushwood and undergrowth enclose here and there an orchard —with honeysuckle covered with perfumed bunches of pale blossom like spread hands, thorny furze, enormous clumps of fern waving and fanning each other, a few green-crowned pines, and fig-trees innu- merable—to which it no doubt owes its name of Fic6briga. And beyond, what a lovely spectacle is offered by the mountains ! a vast staircase mounting to the skies. The most remote, in their pale hues, are lost among the clouds, and in the nearest we can detect many red scars looking like bleeding wounds ; which, in fact, they are—cuts made by the miner's tool, as day by day he eats into the sturdy flanks of those giant forms. They rise precipitously towards the west, and in their remoter summits the play of light calls up the semblance of strange humps and crenellations, of towers and out- works, wens and rifts, till the monstrous pile is lost in the clouds. After crossing a timber bridge, of which the rotting piles are half submerged in brackish mud, we mount a hill-side—we are now actually in Fic6briga—down which the brook rushes, leaping as though not knowing whither it goes nor where the sea lies waiting t3 devour it ; flinging itself into all the pools at high tide, and rushing out again as the sea ebbs. A few small boats float on its shallow waters, and God alone knows the toil its costs them to make a few yards of progress in the narrow passage when the breeze is sleeping and the tide bears the current downwards, toward the perilous bar. The first houses we come to are miserable enough, and the next not much better. Ficblariga is a poor community of fisher- men and labourers; a few wealthy natives repose on their commercial laurels in a dozen or so of pretty and convenient residences. But what streets! good heavens ! The crowded and squalid houses seem ready to tumble down, and from the miserable balconies hang nets, blue shirts, wet capes, and a thousand varieties of discoloured and ragged raiment, while from the rotting eaves hang bunches of maize and of cuttle-fish left to dry, and long strings of garlic."

A storm at sea is also depicted with great power.

We have not had the opportunity of comparing the translation of Gloria with the original, but we should say it is faithful, from the general excellence of the English in which it is rendered.