oad had constantly ascended, conducting the
travellers into the higher regions of the air, where immense
glaciers exhibited their frozen horrors, and eternal snow whitened
the summits of the mountains. They often paused to contemplate
these stupendous scenes, and, seated on some wild cliff, where only
the ilex or the larch could flourish, looked over dark forests of
fir, and precipices where human foot had never wandered, into the
glen--so deep that the thunder of the torrent, which was seen to
foam along the bottom was scarcely heard to murmur. Over these
crags rose others of stupendous height and fantastic shape; some
shooting into cones; others impending far over their base, in huge
masses of granite, along whose broken ridges was often lodged a
weight of snow, that, trembling even to the vibration of a sound,
threatened to bear destruction in its course to the vale. Around on
every side, far as the eye could penetrate, were seen only forms of
grandeur the long perspective of mountain tops, tinged with
ethereal blue, or white with snow; valleys of ice, and forests of
gloomy fir. * * * The deep silence of these solitudes was broken
only at intervals by the scream of the vultures, seen cowering
round some cliff below, or by the cry of the eagle sailing high in
the air; except when the travellers listened to the hollow thunder
that sometimes muttered at their feet.[202]

Lewis in "The Monk," and Maturin in "The Family of Montorio," carried
the principles of the Radcliffe school beyond the verge of absurdity.
Their novels are wild melodramas, the product of distorted
imaginations, in which endless horrors are mingled with gross
violations of decency. "The Monk" and "The Family of Montorio" had a
great reputation in their day, and in contemporary criticism we find
their praise sung and their immortality predicted. But, while they
illustrate, on the one hand, the temporary vogue an author may acquire
by highly-wrought clap-trap and flashy flights of imagination, they
show very plainly, in the oblivion which has overtaken them, how little
such characteristics avail in the race for enduring fame.

[Footnote 201: "The Mysteries of Udolpho," chap. xix.]

[Footnote 202: "The Mysteries of Udolpho," ch. iv.]

V.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the novel had become established
as a popular form of literature, and the number of its