y and the "machinery" of Mrs. Radcliffe that Miss Bronte
adapted. These passages in "Jane Eyre" have been censured, but it is not
easy to see how the novel could do without them. Mrs. Radcliffe's tale
entirely depends on its machinery. Her wicked Marquis, having secretly
immured Number One, has now a new and beautiful Number Two, whose
character does not bear inspection. This domestic position, as Number
Two, we know, was declined by the austere virtue of Jane Eyre.

"Phenomena" begin in the first chapter of "A Sicilian Romance,"
mysterious lights wander about uninhabited parts of the castle, and are
vainly investigated by young Ferdinand, son of the Marquis. This
Hippolytus the Chaste, loved all in vain by the reigning Marchioness, is
adored by, and adores, her stepdaughter, Julia. Jealousy and revenge are
clearly indicated. But, in chasing mysterious lights and figures through
mouldering towers, Ferdinand gets into the very undesirable position of
David Balfour, when he climbs, in the dark, the broken turret stair in
his uncle's house of Shaws (in "Kidnapped"). Here is a _fourth_ author
indebted to Mrs. Radcliffe: her disciples are Miss Austen, Byron, Miss
Bronte, and Mr. Louis Stevenson! Ferdinand "began the ascent. He had
not proceeded very far, when the stones of a step which his foot had just
quitted gave way, and, dragging with them those adjoining, formed a chasm
in the staircase that terrified even Ferdinand, who was left tottering on
the suspended half of the steps, in momentary expectation of falling to
the bottom with the stone on which he rested. In the terror which this
occasioned, he attempted to save himself by catching at a kind of beam
which suspended over the stairs, when the lamp dropped from his hand, and
he was left in total darkness."

Can anything be more "amazing horrid," above all as there are mysterious
figures in and about the tower? Mrs. Radcliffe's lamps always fall, or
are blown out, in the nick of time, an expedient already used by Clara
Reeve in that very mild but once popular ghost story, "The Old English
Baron" (1777). All authors have such favourite devices, and I wonder how
many fights Mr. Stanley Weyman's heroes have fought, from the cellar to
their favourite tilting ground, the roof of a strange house!

Ferdinand hung on to the beam for an hour, when the ladies came with a
light, and he scrambled back to solid earth. In his next nocturnal
research, "a sullen groan ar