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And all describe recent conditions, except the tale, partly historical and partly legendary, by Bécquer, which goes back to the invasion of Spain by the French under Napoleon in the early years of the nineteenth century; the story by Larra, which, however, is nearly as true of Castile to-day as it was when written; and Trueba's story, which is partly legendary, partly symbolic, and partly realistic.

In enumerating the plays of Lope which were still well known and represented in Spain in the nineteenth century, Gil de Zárate names La Moza de Cántaro among the first, and doubtless on this authority Ticknor speaks of it as one of the plays of Lope which "have continued to be favorites down to our own times."

For almost half a century after the publication of the Propaladia the Spanish theater advanced but little, for this was the period when Carlos Quinto ruled Spain and kept the national interest fixed on his military achievements, which were for the most part outside of the peninsula.

These Spanish Short Stories are, for the most part, realistic pictures of the manners and customs of modern Spain, written by masters of Spanish prose. All were written in the second half of the nineteenth century or in the first decade of the twentieth, except the story by Larra, which was written about seventy-five years ago.

These two works were followed in 1605 by his epic, Jerusalén Conquistada, an untrustworthy narration of the achievements of Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Alfonso VIII in the crusade at the close of the twelfth century.

But in 1610 they moved to Madrid, where Lope bought the little house in what is now the Calle de Cervantes, and in this house the great poet passed the last quarter of a century of his long and eventful life.

Although it is doubtless quite true that there has been in modern Spain no writer of short stories who rivals Guy de Maupassant, nor has there been any writer of longer stories who may compare favorably with Honoré de Balzac, yet, as a whole, the Spain of the nineteenth century has probably been pictured as faithfully as France by native authors.