which has lain down promiscuously in the
picture gallery. Most appalling, however, of all is the adventure which
happened to Count Frederick in the oratory. Kneeling before the altar
was a tall figure in a long cloak. As he approached it rose, and,
turning round, disclosed to him the fleshless jaws and empty eye-sockets
of a skeleton. The ghost disappeared, as ghosts generally do, after
giving a perfectly unnecessary warning and the catastrophe is soon
reached by the final appearance of the whole suit of armour with the
ghost inside it, who bursts the castle to bits like an egg-shell, and,
towering towards the sky, exclaims, 'Theodore is the true heir of
Alphonso!' This proceeding fortunately made a lawsuit unnecessary, and
if the castle was ruined at once, it is not quite impossible that the
same result might have been attained more slowly by litigation. The
whole machinery strikes us as simply babyish, unless we charitably
assume the whole to be intentionally burlesque. The intention is pretty
evident in the solemn scene in the chapel, which closes thus:--'As he
spake these words, three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alphonso's
statue' (Alphonso is the spectre in armour). 'Manfred turned pale, and
the princess sank on her knees. "Behold!" said the friar, "mark this
miraculous indication that the blood of Alphonso will never mix with
that of Manfred!"' Nor can we think that the story is rendered much more
interesting by Walpole's simple expedient of introducing into the midst
of these portents a set of waiting-maids and peasants, who talk in the
familiar style of the smart valets in Congreve's or Sheridan's comedies.

Yet, babyish as this mass of nursery tales may appear to us, it is
curious that the theory which Walpole advocated has been exactly carried
out. He wished to relieve the prosaic realism of the school of Fielding
and Smollett by making use of romantic associations, without altogether
taking leave of the language of common life. He sought to make real men
and women out of mediaeval knights and ladies, or, in other words, he
made a first experimental trip into the province afterwards occupied by
Scott. The 'Mysterious Mother' is in the same taste; and his interest in
Ossian, in Chatterton, and in Percy's Relics, is another proof of his
anticipation of the coming change of sentiment. He was an arrant
trifler, it is true; too delicately constituted for real work in
literature and politics, and inclined to