. The virtuous Julia marries the
chaste Hippolytus, and, says the author, "in reviewing this story, we
perceive a singular and striking instance of moral retribution."

We also remark the futility of locking up an inconvenient wife, fabled to
be defunct, in one's own country house. Had Mr. Rochester, in "Jane
Eyre," studied the "Sicilian Romance," he would have shunned an obsolete
system, inconvenient at best, and apt, in the long run, to be disastrous.

In the "Romance of the Forest" (1791), Mrs. Radcliffe remained true to
Mr. Stanley Weyman's favourite period, the end of the sixteenth century.
But there are no historical characters or costumes in the story, and all
the persons, as far as language and dress go, might have been alive in
1791.

The story runs thus: one de la Motte, who appears to have fallen from
dissipation to swindling, is, on the first page, discovered flying from
Paris and the law, with his wife, in a carriage. Lost in the dark on a
moor, he follows a light, and enters an old lonely house. He is seized
by ruffians, locked in, and expects to be murdered, which he knows that
he cannot stand, for he is timid by nature. In fact, a ruffian puts a
pistol to La Motte's breast with one hand, while with the other he drags
along a beautiful girl of eighteen. "Swear that you will convey this
girl where I may never see her more," exclaims the bully, and La Motte,
with the young lady, is taken back to his carriage. "If you return
within an hour you will be welcomed with a brace of bullets," is the
ruffian's parting threat.

So La Motte, Madame La Motte, and the beautiful girl drive away, La
Motte's one desire being to find a retreat safe from the police of an
offended justice.

Is this not a very original, striking, and affecting situation;
provocative, too, of the utmost curiosity? A fugitive from justice, in a
strange, small, dark, ancient house, is seized, threatened, and presented
with a young and lovely female stranger. In this opening we recognise
the hand of a master genius. There _must_ be an explanation of
proceedings so highly unconventional, and what can the reason be? The
reader is _empoigne_ in the first page, and eagerly follows the flight of
La Motte, also of Peter, his coachman, an attached, comic, and familiar
domestic. After a few days, the party observe, in the recesses of a
gloomy forest, the remains of a Gothic abbey. They enter; by the light
of a flickering lamp they penetr