At present, being more ennuye in our tastes for fiction than were our forefathers, and the pretence of piety being less a convention, we incline to insist more firmly that the pill at least be sugar-coated,—­if indeed we submit to physic at all.

There was also a tendency during the second half of the eighteenth century—­very likely only half serious and hardly more than a literary fad—­toward the romance of mystery and horror.  Horace Walpole, the last man on earth from whom one would expect the romantic and sentimental, produced in his “Castle of Otranto” such a book; and Mrs. Radcliffe’s “The Mystery of Udolpho” (standing for numerous others) manipulated the stage machinery of this pseudo-romantic revival and reaction; moonlit castles, medieval accessories, weird sounds and lights at the dread midnight hour,—­an attack upon the reader’s nerves rather than his sensibilities, much the sort of paraphernalia employed with a more spiritual purpose and effect in our own day by the dramatist, Maeterlinck.  Beckford’s “Vathek” and Lewis’ “The Monk” are variations upon this theme, which for a while was very popular and is decidedly to be seen in the work of the first novelist upon American soil, Charles Brockden Brown, whose somber “Wieland,” read with the Radcliffe school in mind, will reveal its probable parentage.  We have seen how the movement was happily satirized by its natural enemy, Jane Austen.  Few more enjoyable things can be quoted than this conversation from “Northanger Abbey” between two typical young ladies of the time:—­

     ’But, my dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with
     yourself all this morning?  Have you gone on with Udolpho?’

     ’Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am
     got to the black veil.’

     ’Are you, indeed?  How delightful!  Oh!  I would not tell you
     what is behind the black veil for the world!  Are you not
     wild to know?’

’Oh! yes, quite; what can it be?  But do not tell me; I would not be told upon any account.  I know it must be a skeleton; I am sure it is Laurentina’s skeleton.  Oh!  I am delighted with the book!  I should like to spend my whole life in reading it, I assure you; if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.’

’Dear creature! how much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.’

     ‘Have you, indeed!  How glad I am!  What are they all?’

’I will read you their names directly; here they are in my pocket-book.  “Castle of Wolfenbach,” “Clermont,” “Mysterious Warnings,” “Necromancer of the Black Forest,” “Midnight Bell,” “Orphan of the Rhine,” and “Horrid Mysteries.”  Those will last us some time.’

     ’Yes; pretty well; but are they all horrid?  Are you sure
     they are all horrid?’