knew better
how to use it than our own glorious Tieck in many of his tales? I need
only instance the 'Love-Spell.' The leading idea of that story cannot
but make everybody's blood run cold, and the end of it is full of the
utmost fear and horror; but still the colours are blended so admirably
that, in spite of all the terror and dismay, the mysterious magic charm
so seizes upon us that we yield ourselves up to it without an effort to
resist. How true is what Tieck puts in the mouth of his Manfred in
answer to women's objections to the element of the awe-inspiring in
fiction. Of course, what is the fact is that whatsoever of the terrible
encounters us in our daily life is just what tortures and tears our
hearts with irresistible pain. And, indeed, the cruelty of mankind, as
exercised by tyrants, great and small, without pity or mercy, and with
the diabolical malignity of hell itself, produces misery on a par with
anything told of in fiction. And how finely the author says: 'In those
imaginary legends the misery cannot reach the world with its rays until
they have been broken up into prismatic colours,' and I should have
supposed that in that condition they would have been endurable by eyes
even not very strong."

"We have often spoken already," said Lothair, "of this most genial
writer; the full recognition of whom, in all his grand super-excellence
and variety, is reserved for posterity, whilst Wills o' the Wisp
rapidly scintillating into our ken and blinding the eye for a moment
with borrowed light, go out into darkness just as speedily. On the
whole, I believe that the imagination can be moved by very simple
means, and that it is often more the _idea_ of the thing than the thing
itself which causes our fear. Kleist's tale of the 'Beggar Woman of
Lucarno' has in it, at least to me, the most frightening idea that I
can think of, and yet how simple it is. A beggar woman is sent
contemptuously, as if she were a dog, to lie behind the stove, and dies
there. She is heard every night hobbling across the floor towards the
stove, but nothing is seen. It is, no doubt, the wonderful colouring of
the whole affair Which produces the effect. Not only could Kleist 'dip'
into the aforesaid colour-box, but he could lay the colours on, with
the power and the genius of the most finished master. He did not need
to raise a vampire out of the grave, all he needed was an old woman."

"This discussion about vampirism," said Cyprian, "remind