his characters develop, he knows them from within, and penetrates into the depths of their instinct and impulses. He puts in the mouth of one of his most admirable types, Angel Guerra, a significant word of his own coining : impulsologia. No better name could be given to the branch of psychology that he knew best. There is little of the human underworld which he did not fathom and express with Wordsworthian penetration and felicity, and, in a sense, the whole of his work may be interpreted as the drama of impulse lurking under the comedy of action.

This central idea explains several of the most prominent features of his art, and particularly his frequent recourse to dreams and apparitions. With Galdes, dreams are not mere tricks for melodramatic effect. They are intimately linked up with the psychology of the character who dreams them, and act as small explosions from the subconscious, which throw up to the surface of consciousness shapeless fragments of the material below. In this, of course, GalclOs anticipates the modern views of psycho-analysis. His treatment of dreams must be related to that of forebodings, or, as the Spanish language admirably says, corazonadas. The most famous instance of this is perhaps the secret expectancy with which Gloria, in the novel of this name, feels the arrival of Daniel, the unknown chosen of her heart who, without her knowing it, is being saved from the tempest by the priest of the parish while she is at prayer in the church. Another aspect of GaldOs's impulsological ' manner is his tendency to picture those revulsions of character which take place when a natural group of tendencies has been repressed by education, environment, or self-deception and is suddenly released by a shock of fact giving back in one second all the energy locked up for years in the under-soul. Such dramatic reversions to type occur in practically every book of GalclOs. In his very first

novel, written when he was twenty-five, there is an admirable instance in Dona Paulita, the mystical bigot who has wasted her youth in what she thought to be divine love only to find her bigotry suddenly burnt away in the fire of her worldly love for Lazaro. The case of Angel Guerra is similar in its essentials though treated with more subtlety. Angel Guerra begins with worldly love, deviates towards mysticism under the fascination of his platonic mistress, the beautiful nun Lere, then, on his death-bed, murdered while in the exercise of a beautiful act of charity, he confesses that he has been the victim of self-delusion and that, all through, he loved Lere with earthly love. In the same novel, most skilfully arranged in parallel pattern with the case of Angel Guerra, will be found the case of Don Tome, the innocent, almost uncorporeal saint, who dies, also assisted by Lere, also in love with her, confessing his pure unearthly love to Angel Guerra in terms of singular warmth expressive of ardent desire.

It is this wealth of impulse which gives his world its wonderful vigour. With him, weakness itself seems overflowing with vitality. In one of his best novels, Fortunata y Jacinto, GalclOs has left us a type of a neurotic assistant chemist, of delicate body, average mind, and but little will, a type which it would seem almost impossible to endow with interest. Yet, he has made it live and move so admirably, with such abundance of motive and impulse, such variety of shades of feeling and passion, that Maxi is one of the great creations of the nineteenth century.

This creative miracle is due to the magic power of love. GaldOs loved his characters, and that is why he saw into them. The people, quick to seize spiritual facts, had nicknamed him ' El Abuelo ' (the Grandfather). It was a true instinct which gave him that name. In the eyes of the Spanish people, GaldOs stands surrounded ,by a crowd of living progeny-