few years, and in 1837, she married for the third time Herr von Arrom, or Señor de Arrom. He was of German extraction and Spanish consul in Australia. He went thither, leaving her behind; and after the death of her father, Doña Cecilia Faber y Böhl, as she was more generally called, took up her residence in apartments assigned to her by Queen Isabella in the Royal Palace of the Alcazar of Seville. Ever a staunch Royalist, as well as a staunch Catholic, she was at the time governess to the royal children, and a good deal at court. By far the greater part of her life was spent in her beloved Andalusia; though, as we find from her collected works, she travelled considerably, at different periods visiting England, Belgium, and other countries. An excellent linguist, understanding besides her two mother tongues of Spanish and German, Latin, French, English, and Italian, she was also a volu

minous reader, though these cosmopolitan. tastes never for one moment interfered with her rigid Catholicism and somewhat narrow Españolisimo, or nationality. English letters and life seem to have had peculiar attractions for her, and the occasional bits of an insular character introduced into her novels are cleverly, nay, brilliantly done.

We first hear of her as an authoress in 1849, that is to say, when she was fifty years of age, a fact worthy of note in literary biography. Before the publication of the "Gaviota," however, the novel which made her famous, we learn that she had shown her powerful story of peasant life, "La Familia de Alvareda," which was written in German, to Washington Irving, then in Spain. The graceful American littérateur was charmed with the freshness of this work, and very prudently advised the author to go on, and to write in Spanish only. The advice was taken,

with what result we know. The publication. of "La Gaviota; or, the Seagull," brought her immediate popularity at home, and widespread notice abroad. Its brilliance and charm of style, its picturesqueness, knowledge of human nature, lastly, its intense nationality, made Fernan Caballero, a pseudonym taken from a little town in Andalusia, famous throughout the length and breadth of her native land. Paul Heyse early proclaimed the new writer in Germany. M. de Mazade dedicated an eulogistic paper to her in the Revue des deux Mondes.

The Edinburgh Review took up the theme here, whilst various foreign editions and translations were not slow to make their

appearance in different places. In Spain, her later works were published at the cost of Queen Isabella, the reason whereof is not plain, seeing that their enormous popularity must have made the publication of them a

lucrative matter.

Perhaps this step was

simply taken by the Queen out of a desire to do honour to her friend. Be this as it may, there is no lack of editions now of these charming novels, a little library of fiction in themselves, Brockhaus' edition, published at Leipzig, being among the most attractive.

The publication of "La Gaviota" was rapidly followed by that of "Clemencia," "Lagrimas," "Elia," and the goodly list of novels and popular stories which appeared between her fiftieth and seventy-seventh year. Never did a late writer so industriously atone for past silence. Never was old age more vigorous, sympathetic, and animated! It is a cheering fact to dwell upon, this fresh and fruitful period of intellectual activity, at a time when most of us are in the sere and

yellow leaf. Fernan Caballero was young to the last, and when she died in April, 1877, she was mourned for as a writer from whom

much had yet been expected. Her death happened at Seville, just after the triumphant progress of the young King Alphonso XII., and we can fancy how the last hours of the great novelist were cheered by that event. The prince, now reinstated in his right, was not only dear to her as a former pupil, and the son of her friend and patroness Queen Isabella; he represented in his person those principles of the divine right of kings and Ultramontanism for which we can but believe she would willingly have laid down her life. As she lay in the royal apartment she had occupied so many years, her feeble frame must have thrilled with joy at the loud vivats without.

And she must have gone to her rest full of blissful hopes and visions concerning her beloved Spain, that Spain with whose literary history she would ever be identified.

Scattered here and there through the pages