o London, Aubrey is horrified to behold the
figure of Lord Ruthven almost on the very spot where he had first
seen him. He dare not break his oath, and soon becomes almost
demented. The news of his sister's marriage seems to rouse him
momentarily from his lethargy, and when he discovers that Ruthven
is to be the bridegroom he urges her to delay the marriage. His
warnings are disregarded, and the ceremony takes place. Aubrey
relates to his sister's guardians all that he knows of Ruthven,
but it is too late. Ruthven has disappeared, and she has "glutted
the thirst of a vampyre."

Polidori's manner of telling the story is curiously matter of
fact and restrained. He relates the incidents as they occur, and
leaves the reader to form his own conclusions. If Lewis had been
handling the theme he would have wallowed in gory details, and
would have expatiated on the agonies of his victims. Polidori
wisely keeps his story in a quiet key, depending for his effect
on the terror of the bare facts. He realises that he is on the
verge of the unspeakable.

Polidori's story set a fashion in vampires, who appear as
characters in fiction all through the nineteenth century. A
writer in the _Dublin University Magazine_ tells of a vampire who
plays an admirable game of whist! There is an "explained" vampire
in one of George Macdonald's stories, _Adela Cathcart_. The
prince of vampires is, however, Bram Stoker's _Dracula_, round
whom centres a story of absorbing interest.

De Quincey, who might have selected from the novel of terror many
admirable illustrations for his essay on _Murder, Considered as
one of the Fine Arts_, and who seems to have been attracted by
the German type of horrific story, shows some facility in
sensational fiction. In _Klosterheim_, a one-volumed novel
published in 1832, the interest circles round the machinations of
an elusive, ubiquitous "Masque," eventually revealed to be none
other than the son of the late Landgrave, who, like many a man
before him in the tale of terror, has been done to death by a
usurper. Disappearances through trap-doors, and escapes down
subterranean passages are effected with a dexterity suggestive of
Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; and the inexplicable murders, with the
exception of that of an aged seneschal accidentally betrayed, are
not real. In certain of his moods and habits, the Masque bears a
likeness to Lewis's "Bravo," but the setting of De Quincey's
story is very different. The adven