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Updated: June 10, 2025
Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse. I would as lief have to do with a giant in my book a real giant, such as Goliath as with a murdering monk with a scowling eye. The age for such delights is, I think, gone. We may say historically of Mrs. Radcliffe's time that there were mysterious sorrows in those days. They are now as much out of date as are the giants.
"I do not say that spirits have appeared," she remarks, "but if several discreet unprejudiced persons were to assure me that they had seen one I should not be bold or proud enough to reply, it is impossible!" But Hume was bold and proud enough: he went further than Mrs. Radcliffe. Scott censures Mrs. Radcliffe's employment of explanations.
"You are interested in all you see?" she asked frankly. "Yes," said Wyllard. "In fact, I'd like to spend some hours here and look at everything. I'd begin at the pictures and work right around." Mrs. Radcliffe's smile suggested that she was not displeased. "But you have been in London?" "I have," said Wyllard. "I had one or two letters to persons there, and they did all they could to entertain me.
'I can well understand that, said the landlord, 'I was looking at it just now; it's as good as ruined, is that chaise. General rule, people don't like chaises with bullet-holes. 'Too much Romance of the Forest? I suggested, recalling my little friend of the morning, and what I was sure had been her favourite reading Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. 'Just so, said he.
The one who carried the lantern walked first, the king followed him, while the second masked figure closed the procession. In this manner they passed along a winding gallery of some length, with as many staircases leading out of it as are to be found in the mysterious and gloomy palaces of Ann Radcliffe's creation.
When we have once learnt what was the picture before which was hung Mrs Radcliffe's solemn curtain, we feel no further interest about either the frame or the veil. They are to us, merely a receptacle for old bones, and inappropriate coffin, which we would wish to have decently buried out of our sight.
'Half the simplicity of our day is only fashion; and Charlotte's letter, with a few stops, and signed Chloe, would have figured handsomely in Mrs. Radcliffe's time. 'It does not depend on me, said Isabel; 'James could not bear her going before, and I am sure he will not now. 'I think he ought not, said Louis. 'Poor girl!
Perhaps he would not come home until next spring, unless something called him; he could not tell. And in any case, his injured ankle prevented him making the journey at present, no matter how much he may desire to do so. Miss Radcliffe's letter had told him that everything had been done just as he would have had it done. There was nothing further to make it a necessity that he should come.
In one sense, indeed, the process will not stand even the slightest critical examination: for it is soon seen to consist of a succession of serious mystifications and non-comic much-ados-about-nothing. Radcliffe's great praise is that she induced her original readers to suspend their critical faculties sufficiently to enable them to take it all seriously.
Radcliffe's day, common sense was so tyrannical, that the poor lady's romances would have been excluded from families, if she had not provided normal explanations of her groans, moans, voices, lights, and wandering figures. The ghost-hunt in the castle finally brings Julia to a door, whose bolts, "strengthened by desperation, she forced back."
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