ames, and Adeline
is perhaps a shade more emotional and passionless than Emily and
Ellena in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ and _The Italian_. The
lachrymose maiden in _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, who
can assume at need "an air of offended dignity," is a preliminary
sketch of Julia, Emily and Ellena in the later novels. Mrs.
Radcliffe's heroines resemble nothing more than a composite
photograph in which all distinctive traits are merged into an
expressionless "type." They owe something no doubt to
Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_, but their feelings are not so
minutely analysed. Their lady-like accomplishments vary slightly.
In reflective mood one may lightly throw off a sonnet to the
sunset or to the nocturnal gale, while another may seek refuge in
her water-colours or her lute. They are all dignified and
resolute in the most distressing situations, yet they weep and
faint with wearisome frequency. Their health and spirits are as
precarious as their easily extinguished candles. Yet these
exquisitely sensitive, well-bred heroines alienate our sympathy
by their impregnable self-esteem, a disconcerting trait which
would certainly have exasperated heroes less perfect and more
human than Mrs. Radcliffe's Theodores and Valancourts. Their
sorrows never rise to tragic heights, because they are only
passive sufferers, and the sympathy they would win as pathetic
figures is obliterated by their unfailing consciousness of their
own rectitude. In describing Adeline, Mrs. Radcliffe attempts an
unusually acute analysis:

"For many hours she busied herself upon a piece of work
which she had undertaken for Madame La Motte, but this
she did without the least intention of conciliating her
favour, but because she felt there was something in
thus repaying unkindness, which was suited to her own
temper, her sentiments and her pride. Self-love may be
the centre around which human affections move, for
whatever motive conduces to self-gratification may be
resolved into self-love, yet, some of these affections
are in their nature so refined that, though we cannot
deny their origin, they almost deserve the name of
virtue: of this species was that of Adeline."

It is characteristic of Mrs. Radcliffe's tendency to overlook the
obvious in searching for the subtle, that the girl who feels
these recondite emotions expresses slight embarrassment when
unceremoniously flung on the pro