MARIA^ELA.— By B. Perez Gald^s, from the Spanish 

 by Clara Bell, in one vol. Paper, 50 cts. Cloth, 90 cts. 



"Galdos is not a novelist, in the sense that now attaches to 

 that much-abused word, but a romancer, pure and simple, as 

 much so as Hawthorne was, though his intentions are less spir- 

 itual, and his methods more material. Marianela is the story 

 of a poor, neglected outcast of a girl, an orphan who is tolerated 

 by a family of miners, as if she were a dog or a cat ; who is 

 fed when the humor takes them and there is any food that can 

 be spared, and who is looked down upon by everybody; and a 

 boy Pablo, who is older than she, the son of a well-to-do landed 

 proprietor, whose misfortune it is (the boy's, we mean) that 

 he was born blind. His deprivation of sight is almost supplied 

 by the eyes of Marianela, who waits upon him, and goes with 

 him in his daily wanderings about the mining country of Socartes, 

 until he knows the whole country by heart and can when need 

 is find his way everywhere alone. As beautiful as she is homely, 

 he forms an ideal of her looks, based upon her devotion to 

 him, colored by his sensitive, spiritual nature, and he loves her, 

 or what he imagines she is, and she returns his love — with fear 

 and trembling, for ignorant as she is she knows that she is not 

 what he believes her to be. They love as two children might, 

 naturally, fervently, entirely. The world contains no woman so 

 beautiful as she, and he will marry her. The idyl of this young 

 love is prettily told, with simplicity, freshness, and something 

 which, if not poetry, is yet poetic. While the course of true love 

 is running smooth with them (for it does sometimes in spite of 

 Shakespeare) there appears upon the scene a brother of the chief 

 engineer of the Socartes mines who is an oculist, and he, after a 

 careful examination of the blind eyes of Pablo, undertakes to per- 

 form an operation upon them which he thinks may enable the lad 

 to see. About this time there also comes upon the scene a brother 

 of Pablo's father, accompanied by his daughter, who is very beau- 

 tiful. The operation is successful, and Pablo is made to see. He 

 is enchanted with the loveliness of his cousin, and disenchanted of 

 his ideal of Marianela, who dies heart-broken at the fate which 

 she knew would be hers if he was permitted to see her as she was. 

 This is the story of Marianela, which would have grown into a 

 poetic romance under the creative mind and shaping hand of 

 Hawthorne, and which, as conceived and managed by Galdos, is 

 a realistic one of considerable grace and pathos. It possesses the 

 charm of directness and simplicity of narrative, is written with 

 great picturesqueness, and is colored throughout with impressions 

 of Spanish country life." — The Mail and Express, New York, 

 Thursday, April 12, 1883. 



William S. Gottsbei^ger, Publisher, Neiv York. 



