Page:Library of the World's Best Literature vol 19.djvu/521

 as these are by friendly admiration, they yet state convincingly the reasons for their opinions; and these reasons can be accurately verified by whoever will have recourse to the text. Pereda's literary work began in 1859 with the publication, in a local journal, of the sketches of manners and customs afterwards gathered into a volume called ^Escenas Montaiieses* (Scenes in Montana). A number of these are marked by the triviality of their origin; but several others, like *La Leva* (The Conscription) and ^El Fin de Una Raza* (The Last of his Race), are esteemed equal to the best of his later work. ^La Leva* is a picture, both touching and humorous, of the poor fisherman Tuerto—an Adam Bede of a rougher sort—and his drunken wife. The naval conscription finally takes him out of his misery, but leaves his children to the mercies of a cold world. The second story is in a measure a continuation of the first, showing the return of Tuerto to find his children vagrants and outcasts; but it is chiefly devoted to Uncle Tremontorio, an oldschool tar of a type that has now disappeared. The province of Santander is an almost equal combination of the mountains belonging to the Cantabrian chain, and the coasts of the formidable Bay of Biscay: both are affectionately referred to in the literary phraseology as Cantabria, from the old Roman name of the province. Pereda divides his interest impartially between sea and shore; between the life of the farmers in the hilly interior and that of the hardy fisherman on the co£St; and notably Santander, with its tall squalid tenement houses clustering round the park, which is the capital and the centre of all the enterprises of these latter. This is the domain which the author has chosen so exclusively for his own that he scarce wishes ever to make any excursion outside it, literary or personal; for he will not even live outside of it. He is hailed with especial pride by its inhabitants, as the vindicator of the Northern race of people, who had had no champion in literature from the very earliest times. The grateful inhabitants of Santander paid him the compliment of naming a fine street after one of his books, ^Sotileza* (Fine Spun), choosing for the purpose the site at which a principal part of the action of the book took place; and also presented him a large painting, showing a scene from the book; while Torrelavega, the small town nearest his village, presented him with a piece of plate. Though literature may not bring very large money returns in a country with comparatively so few readers as Spain, it receives many places and preferments, and graceful honors of this kind. In like manner Zorilla, the poet, was publicly crowned, with a crown made of gold from the sands of the Darro at Granada.

Pereda's first novel, ^Los Hombres de Pro* (Respectable Folks), was completed in 1874. It describes the rise in the world of Simon