hers, dark-browed villains, scheming monks,
chattering domestics and fierce banditti are thrust aside by a
motley crowd of living beings--soldiers, lawyers, smugglers,
gypsies, shepherds, outlaws and beggars. The wax-work figures,
guaranteed to thrill with nervous suspense or overflow with
sensibility at the appropriate moments, are replaced by real folk
like "Old Mortality," Andrew Fairservice, Dugald Dalgetty and
Peter Peebles, whose humour and pathos are those of our own
world. The historical background, faint, misty and unreal in Mrs.
Radcliffe's novels, becomes, in those of Scott, arresting and
substantial. The grave, artificial dialogue in which Mrs.
Radcliffe's characters habitually discourse descends to some of
Scott's personages, but is often exchanged for the natural idiom
of simple people. The Gothic abbey, dropped down in an uncertain,
haphazard fashion, in some foreign land, is deserted for huts,
barns inns, cottages and castles, solidly built on Scottish soil.
We leave the mouldy air of the subterranean vault for the keen
winds of the moorland. The terrors of the invisible world only
fill the stray corners of his huge scene. He creates romance out
of the stuff of real life.

CHAPTER IX - LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE TALE OF TERROR.

As the novel of terror passes from the hands of Mrs. Radcliffe to
those of "Monk" Lewis, Maturin and their imitators, there is a
crashing crescendo of emotion. The villain's sardonic smile is
replaced by wild outbursts of diabolical laughter, his scowl
grows darker and darker, and as his designs become more bloody
and more dangerous, his victims no longer sigh plaintively, but
give utterance to piercing shrieks and despairing yells; tearful
Amandas are unceremoniously thrust into the background by
vindictive Matildas, whose passions rage in all their primitive
savagery; the fearful ghost "fresh courage takes," and stands
forth audaciously in the light of day; the very devil stalks
shamelessly abroad in manifold disguises. We are caught up from
first to last in the very tempest, torrent and whirlwind of
passion. When the novel of terror thus throws restraint to the
winds, outrageously o'ersteps the modesty of nature and indulges
in a farrago of frightfulness, it begins to defeat its own
purposes and to fail in its object of freezing the blood. The
limit of human endurance has been reached--and passed. Emphasis
and exaggeration have done their worst. Battle, murder, and