[ANTONIO TRUEBA, who is still alive, was born on Christmas Eve,
1821, at Sopuerta, in Spain. As in the case of Burns, his father
was a peasant, and Antonio, as a child, played in the gutters
with the other village urchins, or worked with his father in the
fields. But at fifteen, one of his relations, who kept a shop
at Madrid, made him his assistant. By day he waited on the
customers; by night he studied in his room. Genius like that of
Burns and of Trueba cannot be kept down. Like Burns, the boy
began to put forth songs, strong, sweet, and simple, which
stirred the people's hearts like music, and soon were hummed in
every village street. His fame spread; it reached the Court; and
Queen Isabella bestowed upon him the lofty title of Queen's
Poet. He wrote also, and still writes, prose stories of all
kinds, but mostly such as, like the following, belong to the
romance of history, and are rather truth than fiction.]