detail which could enhance the sense of hidden danger which it was her purpose to excite.  While the reader follows such portions of her writings, he is carried by the force and picturesqueness of Mrs. Radcliffe’s language into a condition of sympathy with the fears of the fictitious personage.  But the moment that the scene of horror is past, that the hidden danger is revealed, that, it turns out to be no ghost but only a Count Morano, all Mrs. Radcliffe’s power is required to prevent an anti-climax.  This weakness is very different from that of Walpole or Reeve.  They failed to excite the feeling of superstitious fear.  Mrs. Radcliffe excited it, but she destroyed its effect by revealing the inadequacy of its cause.  The works of Walpole, Clara Reeve, and particularly of Mrs. Radcliffe, contain very decided merits.  They made a school which has found many admirers and has given a vast deal of pleasure.  But the school was founded on wrong principles and could not endure.  It is impossible for the mind to enjoy the supernatural while it is chained down to every-day life by realistic descriptions of scenes and persons.  And it is equally impossible to permanently please by fear-inspiring narratives, when the reader is aware that all the while there is no sufficient cause for the hero’s terror.

But what Mrs. Radcliffe attempted, she carried out with a very great skill.  She placed the scenes of her narratives in Sicily, in Italy, or the south of France, and made good use of the warm natures and vivid imaginations which are born of southern climates.  Every aid which an effective mise en scene could supply to her supernatural effects was most skilfully brought into play.  Lonely castles, secret passages, gloomy churches, and monkish superstitions,—­all were adapted to the tale of unknown dangers and fearful predicaments which Mrs. Radcliffe had to tell.  She kept up with remarkable strength a supernatural tone which insensibly aids the imagination.  In her descriptions of scenery, she chose nature in its most awe-inspiring forms, and instilled into the reader’s mind the same sense of the insignificance of man, under the influence of which her heroes and heroines so continually remain.  We are reminded of Buckle’s description of the effect of nature upon human imagination and credulity when we notice the striking manner in which Mrs. Radcliffe moulded the surroundings of her heroes and heroines, and made their minds susceptible to superstitious terror.

From Beaujeu the road had constantly ascended, conducting the travellers into the higher regions of the air, where immense glaciers exhibited their frozen horrors, and eternal snow whitened the summits of the mountains.  They often paused to contemplate these stupendous scenes, and, seated on some wild cliff, where only the ilex or the larch could flourish, looked over dark forests of fir, and precipices where human foot had never wandered, into the glen—­so deep that