ssive and awe-inspiring, that the
reader's mind should be insensibly prepared by strange surroundings for
extraordinary incidents. In his selection of age and scene, Walpole was
highly judicious. He chose the feudal period, when superstition
accorded the most ready belief to supernatural agencies. He introduced
his reader to a huge, gloomy castle, furnished with towers, donjons,
subterranean passages, and trapdoors. He took for his hero, Manfred, a
fierce and cruel knight, who had obtained his lands by duplicity and
blood; whose chief aim in life was to continue his posterity in
possession of wrongfully acquired power. He added subordinate
characters of a kind to aid the effect of supernatural phenomena: a
monk in a neighboring convent, who threatened Manfred with divine
visitation for his crimes; superstitious servants, whose easy fears
exaggerated every unusual sound or foot-fall. He gave an interest to
his narrative by the love passages of Manfred's daughters which were
perpetually at the mercy of the fate which hung over the castle. He
introduced his supernatural effects in the form of a gigantic gauntlet
seen on the stair-rail; a gigantic helmet which crushed the son and
heir of the house as he was about to be married and to carry out his
father's hopes; a skeleton monk who urged the rightful owner of the
castle to take his own from the usurper's hands.

In attempting to make a regularly constructed narrative depend on
supernatural agencies, Walpole undoubtedly succeeded as far as success
was possible. But it may be said without hesitation that real success
was unattainable. The very merits of "The Castle of Otranto" sustain
this decision. The experiment had a fair trial. The narrative of
Manfred's crimes and the punishments visited upon them, the characters
and actions of subordinate personages are all managed with skill; while
the supernatural agencies are introduced at the proper times and have
the expected effects. But the real test of success in such an attempt
must lie in the impression made on the reader's mind. And this
impression may be of two kinds. Let us imagine a group of young people
sitting about the dying embers of a fire on a winter's evening,
listening to a ghost story. The black darkness, the sound of the wind
howling without, accord with the low tones, the dim light, and the tale
of horror within. The minds of the listeners insensibly cast off their
ordinary trains of thought, and give themselve