ciations
in a mind nourished on the Radcliffe school. When Cherubina
visits a shop she buys a diamond cross, which at once turns our
thoughts to _The Sicilian Romance_. In Westminster Abbey she is
disappointed to find "no cowled monks with scapulars"--a phrase
which flashes across our memory the sinister figure of Schedoni
in _The Italian_. At the masquerade she plans to wear a Tuscan
dress from _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, and, when furnishing
Monkton Castle she bids Jerry, the Irish comic servant, bring
"flags stained with the best old blood--feudal, if possible, an
old lute, lyre or harp, black hangings, curtains, and a velvet
pall." Even the banditti and condottieri, who enliven so many
novels of terror, cannot be ignored, and are represented by a
troop of Irish ruffians. Barrett lets nothing escape him.
Rousseau's theories are irreverently travestied. The thunder
rolls "in an awful and Ossianly manner"; the sun, "that
well-known gilder of eastern turrets," rises in empurpled
splendour; the hero utters tremendous imprecations, ejaculates
superlatives or frames elaborately poised, Johnsonian periods;
the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears
"spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding,
flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches
torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of
romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are
exhibited for our derision. The caricature is entertaining in
itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar
with the romances ridiculed; but the interest of identifying the
booty, which Barrett rifles unceremoniously from his victims, is
a fascinating pastime.

Miss Austen, with her swift stiletto, and Barrett, with his
brutal bludgeon--to use a metaphor of "terror"--had each
delivered an attack; and in 1818, if we may judge by Peacock's
_Nightmare Abbey_, there is a change of fashion in fiction. How
far this change is due to the satirists it is impossible to
determine. Mr. Flosky, "who has seen too many ghosts himself to
believe in their external appearance," through whose lips Peacock
reviles "that part of the reading public which shuns the solid
food of reason," probably gives the true cause for the waning
popularity of the novel of terror:

"It lived upon ghosts, goblins and skeletons till even
the devil himself ... became too base, common and
popular for its surfeited appetite.