for an ancient castle, she throws herself on the protection of a third-rate actor, Grundy.  He readily falls in with her humour, assuming the name of Montmorenci, and a suit of tin armour and a plumed helmet for her delight.  Later, Cherubina is entertained by Lady Gwyn, who, for the amusement of her guests, heartlessly indulges her propensity for the romantic, and poses as her aunt.  She is introduced in a gruesome scene, which recalls the fate of Agnes in Lewis’s Monk, to her supposed mother, Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs, under the title Il Castello di Grimgothico, are inserted, after the manner of Mrs. Radcliffe and M.G.  Lewis, who love an inset tale, into the midst of the heroine’s adventures.  Cherubina determines to live in an abandoned castle, and gathers a band of vassals.  These include Jerry, the lively retainer, inherited from a long line of comic servants, of whom Sancho Panza is a famous example, and Higginson, a struggling poet, who in virtue of his office of minstrel, addresses the mob, beginning his harangue with the time-honoured apology:  “Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking.”  The story ends with the return of Cherubina to real life, where she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart.  The incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, are foolish and extravagant, but the reminiscences they awaken lend them piquancy.  The trappings and furniture of a dozen Gothic castles are here accumulated in generous profusion.  Mouldering manuscripts, antique beds of decayed damask, a four-horsed barouche, and fluttering tapestry rejoice the heart of Cherubina, for each item in this curious medley revives moving associations in a mind nourished on the Radcliffe school.  When Cherubina visits a shop she buys a diamond cross, which at once turns our thoughts to The Sicilian Romance.  In Westminster Abbey she is disappointed to find “no cowled monks with scapulars”—­a phrase which flashes across our memory the sinister figure of Schedoni in The Italian.  At the masquerade she plans to wear a Tuscan dress from The Mysteries of Udolpho, and, when furnishing Monkton Castle she bids Jerry, the Irish comic servant, bring “flags stained with the best old blood—­feudal, if possible, an old lute, lyre or harp, black hangings, curtains, and a velvet pall.”  Even the banditti and condottieri, who enliven so many novels of terror, cannot be ignored, and are represented by a troop of Irish ruffians.  Barrett lets nothing escape him.  Rousseau’s theories are irreverently travestied.  The thunder rolls “in an awful and Ossianly manner”; the sun, “that well-known gilder of eastern turrets,” rises in empurpled splendour; the hero utters tremendous imprecations, ejaculates superlatives or frames elaborately poised, Johnsonian periods; the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears “spangled muslin,” and has “practised tripping, gliding, flitting, and tottering, with great success.”  Shreds and patches torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are exhibited for our derision.  The caricature is entertaining in itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar with the romances ridiculed; but the interest of identifying the booty, which Barrett rifles unceremoniously from his victims, is a fascinating pastime.