had boldly introduced a
skeleton monk, and had crushed one of his characters by a gigantic
helmet which fell from the sky. Clara Reeve's sense of congruity was
shocked by so strong a contrast between the usual and the
extraordinary, and therefore limited herself to a single supernatural
effect, which might inspire fear while yet remaining within the bounds
of superstitious credulity. The next and greatest contributor to the
romantic revival still further modified the methods of her
predecessors, and in so modifying them, testified her doubts of their
efficacy. Mrs. Radcliffe's plan was not to summon a spectre from his
resting-place and to make him move among flesh and blood personages.
She simply described the superstitious fears of her heroes and
heroines, and sought to make her reader share in them. She excited the
imagination by highly wrought scenes of horror, but instead of
ascribing those scenes to the intervention of supernatural beings, she
showed them to proceed from natural causes. The terror felt, by her
fictitious characters and shared by the reader, was not so much
inspired by real dangers from without, as by superstitious fear within.
The following passage will illustrate Mrs. Radcliffe's method of
dealing with the supernatural:

From the disturbed slumber into which she then sunk, she was soon
awakened by a noise, which seemed to arise within her chamber; but
the silence that prevailed, as she tearfully listened, inclined her
to believe that she had been alarmed by such sounds as sometimes
occur in dreams, and she laid her head again upon the pillow.

A return of the noise again disturbed her, it seemed to come from
that part of the room which communicated with the private
staircase, and she instantly remembered the odd circumstance of the
door having been fastened during the preceding night by some
unknown hand. The late alarming suspicion concerning its
communication also occurred to her. Her heart became faint with
terror. Half raising herself from the bed, and gently drawing aside
the curtain, she looked toward the door of the staircase, but the
lamp that burnt on the hearth spread so feeble a light through the
apartment, that the remote parts of it were lost in shadow. The
noise, however, which she was convinced came from the door,
continued. It seemed like that made by the undrawing of rusty
bolts, and often ceased, and was t