The Grandee

The latest novel which Valdés has published is that which we present here under the title of The Grandee («El Maestrante»). Here, as it will be seen, the author is no longer engaged in the jarring notes of satire, but, with more lightness and a greater effusion of humor, he dissects the quaint elements which make up old-fashioned society in a provincial city of Spain. This is one of those books which peculiarly appeal to the foreign reader who desires to enter into a phase of life from which his own experience absolutely excludes him. We may suppose that a limited number of Englishmen can penetrate to the palaces and the club-rooms of Madrid, and see something, however superficially, of the life described in Froth. But the grim and ancient mansions which look down through ancient mullioned windows on the narrow streets of such a town as is brought before us in The Grandee—what can the most privileged Englishman possibly know of the manners and customs of their stately inhabitants?