table on the foot
of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ears
of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad's alarm so bewildered his
senses that missing the door he threw up one of the
windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head
and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterias and his son, who
were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by
the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to
land."

In Melincourt Castle a very spacious wing was left free to the
settlement of a colony of ghosts, and the Rev. Mr. Portpipe often
passed the night in one of the dreaded apartments over a blazing
fire, with the same invariable exorcising apparatus of a large
venison pasty, a little prayer-book, and three bottles of
Madeira. Yet despite this excellent mockery, Peacock in _Gryll
Grange_ devotes a chapter to tales of terror and wonder, singling
out the works of Charles Brockden Brown for praise, especially
his _Wieland_, "one of the few tales in which the final
explanation of the apparently supernatural does not destroy or
diminish the original effect."

The title _Nightmare Abbey_ in a catalogue would undoubtedly have
caught the eye of Isabella Thorp or her friend Miss Andrews,
searching eagerly for "horrid mysteries," but they would perhaps
have detected the note of mockery in the name. They would,
however, have been completely deceived by the title, _The Mystery
of the Abbey_, published in Liverpool in 1819 by T.B. Johnson,
and we can imagine their consternation and disgust on the arrival
of the book from the circulating library. The abbey is "haunted"
by the proprietors of a distillery; and the spectre, described in
horrible detail, proves to be a harmless idiot, with a red
handkerchief round her neck. Apart from these gibes, there is not
a hint of the supernatural in the whole book. It is a
_picaresque_ novel, written by a sportsman. The title is merely a
hoax.

Belinda Waters, the heroine of one of Crabbe's tales, who was "by
nature negatively good," is a portrait after Miss Austen's own
heart. Languidly reclining on her sofa with "half a shelf of
circulating books" on a table at her elbow, Belinda tosses
wearily aside a half-read volume of _Clarissa_, commended by her
maid, "who had _Clarissa_ for her heart's dear friend."

"Give me," she said, "for I would laugh or cry,
'Scenes from the Life,' and 'Sensibility,'
'Winters at Bath': I would that I had one!
'The Cons