To the displeasure of his father, an official in the post office, the youth refused to enter the seminary, and escaped to Madrid, where he obtained employment on the staff of El Observador, a Liberal newspaper.

He afterwards founded El Bachiller Honduras, a journal in which he advocated a policy of Liberal concentration, and he attracted sufficient notice to justify his appointment as governor of Logroño, and his nomination as deputy for Valladolid in 1865.

[2] He was imprisoned at Cáceres for his violent attacks on the reactionary ministry of Narváez, acted as secretary to the revolutionary Junta of Catalonia when Isabella II was dethroned, and wrote the "Manifesto to the Nation" published by the provisional government on 26 October 1868.

[2] But Núñez de Arce's talent was more lyrical than dramatic, and his celebrity dates from the appearance of Gritos del combate (1875), a collection of poems exhorting Spaniards to lay aside domestic quarrels and to save their country from anarchy, more dangerous than a foreign foe.

His strength lies in the graciousness of his vision, his sincerity and command of his instrument; his weakness derives from his divided sympathies, his moods of obvious sentiment and his rhetorical facility.