. Henry
Fitzowen loves Adeline de Montfort, but has a powerful and
diabolical rival--Walleran--whose character combines the most
dangerous qualities of Mrs. Radcliffe's villains with the magical
gifts of a wizard. Fitzowen, not long before the day fixed for
his wedding, is led astray, while hunting, by an elusive stag, a
spectral monk and a "wandering fire," and arrives home in a
thunderstorm to find his castle enveloped in total darkness and
two of his servants stretched dead at his feet. He learns from
his mother and sister, who are shut in a distant room, that
Adeline has been carried off by armed ruffians. Believing
Walleran to be responsible for this outrage, Fitzowen sets out
the next day in search of him. After weary wanderings he is
beguiled into a Gothic castle by a foul witch, who resembles one
of Spenser's loathly hags, and on his entrance hears peals of
diabolical laughter. He sees spectres, blue lights, and the
corpse of Horror herself. When he slays Walleran the enchantments
disappear. At the end of a winding passage he finds a cavern
illuminated by a globe of light, and discovers Adeline asleep on
a couch. He awakes her with a kiss. Thunder shakes the earth, a
raging whirlwind tears the castle from its foundations, and the
lovers awake from their trance in a beautiful, moonlit vale where
they hear enchanting music and see knights, nymphs and spirits. A
beauteous queen tells them that the spirits of the blest have
freed them from Horror's dread agents. The music dies away, the
spirits flee and the lovers find themselves in a country road. A
story of the same type is told by De La Motte Fouque in _The
Field of Terror_.[33] Before the steadfast courage of the
labourer who strives to till the field, diabolical enchantments
disappear. It is an ancient legend turned into moral allegory.
In the essay on _Objects of Terror_, which precedes _Montmorenci,
a Fragment_, Drake discusses that type of terror, which is
"excited by the interference of a simple, material causation,"
and which "requires no small degree of skill and arrangement to
prevent its operating more pain than pleasure." He condemns
Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_ on the ground that the catastrophe
is only productive of horror and aversion, and regards the old
ballad, _Edward_, as intolerable to any person of sensibility,
but praises Dante and Shakespeare for keeping within the "bounds
of salutary and grateful pleasure." The scene in _The Italian_,
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