lightning
add to the horror of a journey, which resembles Mrs. Radcliffe's
description of Emily's approach to Udolpho. When Count Fathom
takes refuge in a robber's hut, he discovers in his room, which
has no bolt on the inside of the door, the body of a recently
murdered man, concealed beneath some bundles of straw. Effecting
his escape by placing the corpse in his own bed to deceive the
robbers, the count is mistaken for a phantom by the old woman who
waits upon him. In carrying out his designs upon Celinda, the
count aggravates her natural timidity by relating dismal stories
of omens and apparitions, and then groans piteously outside her
door and causes the mysterious music of an AEolian harp to sound
upon the midnight air. Celinda sleeps, too, like the ill-starred
heroine of the novel of terror, "at the end of a long gallery,
scarce within hearing of any other inhabited part of the
house."[28] The scene in _Count Fathom_, in which Renaldo, at
midnight, visits, as he thinks, the tomb of Monimia, is
surrounded with circumstances of gloom and mystery:

"The uncommon darkness of the night, the solemn silence
and lonely situation of the place, conspired with the
occasion of his coming and the dismal images of his
fancy, to produce a real rapture of gloomy
expectation... The clock struck twelve, the owl
screeched from the ruined battlement, the door was
opened by the sexton, who, by the light of a glimmering
taper, conducted the despairing lover to a dreary
aisle."

As he watches again on a second night:

"His ear was suddenly invaded with the sound of some
few, solemn notes, issuing from the organ which seemed
to feel the impulse of an invisible hand ... reason
shrunk before the thronging ideas of his fancy, which
represented this music as the prelude to something
strange and supernatural."[29]

The figure of a woman, arrayed in a flowing robe and veil,
approaches--and proves to be Monimia in the flesh. Although
Smollett precedes Walpole, in point of time, he is, in these
scenes, nearer in spirit to Udolpho than Otranto. His use of
terror, however, is merely incidental; he strays inadvertently
into the history of Gothic romance. The suspicions and
forebodings, with which Smollett plays occasionally upon the
nerves of his readers, become part of the ordinary routine in the
tale of terror.

Clara Reeve's Gothic story, first issued under t