that the scene of the romance was Scotland in the dark ages, and complains that the author evidently knew nothing of Scottish life or scenery.  This is true; her castles might have stood anywhere.  There is no mention of the pipes or the plaid.  Her rival chiefs are not Gaelic caterans, but just plain feudal lords.  Her baron of Dunbayne is like any other baron; or rather, he is unlike any baron that ever was on sea or land or anywhere else except in the pages of a Gothic romance.

“Gaston de Blondville” was begun in 1802 and published posthumously in 1826, edited by Sergeant Talfourd.  Its inspiring cause was a visit which the author made in the autumn of 1802 to Warwick Castle and the ruins of Kenilworth.  The introduction has the usual fiction of an old manuscript found in an oaken chest dug up from the foundation of a chapel of Black Canons at Kenilworth:  a manuscript richly illuminated with designs at the head of each chapter—­which are all duly described—­and containing a “trew chronique of what passed at Killingworth, in Ardenn, when our Soveren Lord the Kynge kept ther his Fest of Seynt Michel:  with ye marveylous accident that there befell at the solempnissacion of the marriage of Gaston de Blondeville.  With divers things curious to be known thereunto purtayning.  With an account of the grete Turney there held in the year MCCLVI.  Changed out of the Norman tongue by Grymbald, Monk of Senct Marie Priori in Killingworth.”  Chatterton’s forgeries had by this time familiarized the public with imitations of early English.  The finder of this manuscript pretends to publish a modernized version of it, while endeavoring “to preserve somewhat of the air of the old style.”  This he does by a poor reproduction, not of thirteenth-century, but of sixteenth-century English, consisting chiefly in inversions of phrase and the occasional use of a certes or naithless.  Two words in particular seem to have struck Mrs. Radcliffe as most excellent archaisms:  ychon and his-self, which she introduces at every turn.

“Gaston de Blondville,” then, is a tale of the time of Henry III.  The king himself is a leading figure and so is Prince Edward.  Other historical personages are brought in, such as Simon de Montfort and Marie de France, but little use is made of them.  The book is not indeed, in any sense, an historical novel like Scott’s “Kenilworth,” the scene of which is the same, and which was published in 1821, five years before Mrs. Radcliffe’s.  The story is entirely fictitious.  What differences it from her other romances is the conscious attempt to portray feudal manners.  There are elaborate descriptions of costumes, upholstery, architecture, heraldic bearings, ancient military array, a tournament, a royal hunt, a feast in the great hall at Kenilworth, a visit of state to Warwick Castle, and the session of a baronial court.  The ceremony of the “voide,” when the king took his spiced cup, is rehearsed with