consists of the château of the Dukes of Mendoza. And here, upon a table of lapis lazuli and covered with a glass globe, was placed the doll of Charles V. On holidays all the children in the castle were allowed to admire her. The glass cover was removed, the mechanism was set in motion, and the fascinating doll proceeded to entrance the company with her dancing and playing and singing.

And so the Lady Olympia went on through two centuries in her unchanging, immaculate beauty, regarded ever with pride and affection by all the young folks of the house of Mendoza,

When Joseph Bonaparte ascended the throne of Spain, or rather when he was set thereon by his all-powerful brother, the great family of Mendoza had been reduced to a single individual who, like his ancestors, resided in the ancient Moorish-Spanish castle at Guadalajara, where once his forefather had offered to the unfortunate Francis I of France, whose courteous jailer he was, the spectacle of an elaborate and magnificent tournament.

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This last Duke of Mendoza was a peculiar character. He could not bring himself to marry, and lived in lonely, friendless bachelorhood, leading a dreary existence in the midst of magnificent pictures, costly bronzes, and wonderful books, the enjoyment of which no woman should shareleast no living woman. He wrote many verses in the old Spanish forms and rhythms, in many of which he celebrated the charms of Lady Olympia, the hereditary puppet-genius of his family. Over and over he dreamed of breathing into her the breath of life, like a new Pygmalion. His bitterest sorrow sprang from the fact that, in the course of the centuries, Olympia had lost her voice. She walked, she played her mandolin, she nodded as sweetly as ever with her pretty head, but she sang

no more. Never in his life had the Duke himself heard her voice, whose sweetness his father had so often described to him.

The evil rule of Joseph Bonaparte stirred in the Duke of Mendoza the glowing patriotism of his race, and roused him from his slothful mode of life. With frenzied ardor and the purest self-sacrifice he threw himself into the revolt against the French which ran through Spain like wildfire. He equipped many companies of guerillas with his own money, and gave both himself and all he possessed to the cause of his country. When the war of liberation ended in triumph, and after three years of bloody fighting the French abandoned the soil of the peninsula, no small part of the glorious result was due to the example and efforts of the Duke of Mendoza.

As a national hero, but a beggar, he returned once more to his castle at Guadalajara. He found it nothing but a pitiful ruin. The glorious garden was a trampled waste. The beautiful tapestries and leather screens dangled in shreds from the walls. The magnificently carved furniture and ornaments of wood had been burned up as fuel. The costly gold-and silver-ware had disappeared. Yes, even the family mausoleum of the Mendozas, a veritable marble pantheon, had been ruthlessly violated, and the bones of many generations lay about in filthy piles, while the leaden coffins had been melted into bullets. Great holes, made by cannon balls, gaped in the carved ceilings of the castle, leaving the demolished rooms open to the icy blasts of the somosierra, or the blazing shafts of the summer sun.

As in a dream the Duke wandered through the wretched ruins of his home, following with sinking heart the path of the incendiary torch and the streaks made by torrents of rain. He saw the

tracks of horses in the living-rooms and the still more disgusting signs of human brutishness.

At last, passing through room after room, the Duke came to the green cabinet at the end of the house; and there, on the table of lapis lazuli, snugly ensconced under her glass covering that showed not even the vestige of a crack, stood, in the midst of débris but unharmed and untouched, his dear little Lady Olympia, smiling at him with the old, mysterious smile!

In this small room the Duke placed his bed, and in this room he solemnly made up his mind to pass the remainder of his life. He became his own carpenter, his own cook, his own gardener. He lived on gourds and cabbages from his garden, on figs and grapes and nuts. On winter days, when the icy winds blew and the rain poured in through the dilapidated ceilings so that the floor was covered with puddles, he made shift to warm himself by making a fire from what was left of the gorgeously carved ceilings.

He never went among men, and no man ever came to the castle. 'A saint and a fool as well,' said the good people of Guadalajara. But once in a while, on moonlit evenings, a group of them would stand listening without the walls of the castle, for they heard something that sounded very much as if the Duke was carrying on a conversation with a lady. And they seemed to hear words of passion and pleading, and sometimes they caught the sound of the old man's thin voice raised in song.

Ten more long years passed by, and the Duke became daily more feeble and helpless. His face was brownish-yellow, like old leather, and his nose thrust itself out from the wrinkled skin like the beak of an eagle. His crown had become perfectly bald, and his eyes, the whites of which had become yellow, rolled wildly hither and thither, like

those of a sick lion. He looked like an Egyptian mummy of royal blood, just unwrapped from the folds of linen and newly brought to life.

With all his remaining strength the Duke gathered and heaped upon the table beside his primitive couch as much fruit as he could gather, and filled with water a jug of porous stone that kept it cool. Then he barricaded the entrance to the château as well as he was able and likewise that to the wing where his room was. He had closed accounts with the world and wanted nothing further of mankind.

Under his bed and round about he heaped as much straw and dry rushes as he could get, and at the foot of the bed he placed the table of lapis lazuli with the figure of his beloved Lady Olympia. When at last all his preparations were finished, he laid himself down shivering with ague, and drew over his emaciated body an ancient tapestry that once was worth a king's ransom.

At last, raising himself laboriously on his elbow, he gazed at the Lady Olympia with an expression of mingled love and hatred.

proachable. Thou

'Year after year, all my life,' he exclaimed with shaking voice, 'I have wooed thee! No other woman have I ever touched, but kept the troth that I swore to thee when I was a child, and yet thou hast remained silent-unapproachable. Thou sangest for my father but not for me, and yet I have loved thee so devotedly-thee, the only woman of my lifetime! Not one other have I ever so much as looked upon. I have waited for thee, but thou wouldst not be mine, and so I must dieloveless, forlorn. Cold, distant, thou hast stood there with that mocking smile on thy lips, watching my agony without a word. But hear me shall another listen to thee or even see thee! Never shalt thou beguile another with the witchery of thy smile as thou

- never

hast tricked me! Thy time has come, like unto mine. I die, but thou shalt die with me! All is prepared-wood, straw, oil. We will build a glorious funeral pyre, our own auto-da-fé, and thou and I shall chant the Te Deum for the glory of the Lord. And then through the flaming portals we shall enter into the glorious bliss of eternity.'

And so saying the Duke, with the very last vestige of his physical strength, piled high the inflammable material that he had collected around the table and cot, poured the oil over it, and set the mass afire. Then he lay down tranquilly upon his bed and watched the flames mount higher and higher and creep nearer and nearer. Suddenly, with a crash, the glass covering of the puppet flew into pieces and the tongues of fire crept slowly around the pedestal. But oh, what wonder! As the heat began to melt the lubricant of the toy, which had remained in a hardened state

for generations, the mechanism suddenly began to work again of its ow accord. Lady Olympia moved slowly? across the lapis lazuli table toward the 1 dying nobleman, her pretty little head nodding graciously and her delicate fingers stroking the mandolin that gave forth its tinkling twang.

And suddenly through the crackling of the creeping fire rose that little, thin. sweet voice that had been so long silent; and it sang again that old Spanish

song:

'When the golden day seems long,
When in sadness sunk thou art,
Hark, oh, harken to my song:

I am thine with all my heart!'

With a cry of delight the Duke > raised himself up and gazed with ecstasy upon his beloved lady, drinking the sweet tones into his very soul. Then, with a last smile of gratitude and joy, he sank back upon his cot, and awoke, let us hope, in Paradise.

THE centenary of the death of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe may perhaps lead some of the many who have read about, but have not read, her notorious if not famous romances, to sample her writings for themselves. They will be agreeably surprised, for they will discover not only all the absurdities scathingly set forth in manuals of English literature, but also unmistakable genius too often ignored or minimized by critics.

Much of the reputation of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels appears to have been produced by commentators who have never read them; and the present writer agrees with Andrew Lang that 'the student who gives her a fair chance is carried away by the spell of this great enchantress,' and The Italian is by far the best romantic novel that ever was written before Scott. Others have held The Mysteries of Udolpho to be her masterpiece. There would be little to choose between the two novels, were it not that through The Italian stalks that magnificently melodramatic villain, the detestably wicked monk, Schedoni, the prototype of Byron's Giaour and his other lurid heroes, a veritably Satanic ogre.

There is no space to trace the development of the 'Gothic' tale of terror in our literature. Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto at any rate started the fashion for these romances, and Ann

Ward, the daughter of a London merchant, was born in the year of its publication, 1764. When she was thirteen appeared Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron, the second 'Gothic' romance of any importance, in which supernatural effects were employed with timid economy, while the puerilities of Walpole were repeated, becoming exceedingly tedious. When she was twenty-three Ann Ward married William Radcliffe, a law student, who became proprietor and editor of the English Chronicle.

The lonely young wife of the busy journalist distracted herself by composing a fantastic tale of Scotland in the dark ages, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, which attracted no attention and merited none, for her ignorance of the manners of the country and period was complete, and she exhibited no ingenuity in invention to compensate. But she was exercising and testing her powers to good effect, for in 1790, three years after her marriage, appeared The Sicilian Romance. It attained at once extraordinary popularity, and each of the three succeeding novels surpassed its predecessors in the enthusiasm with which it was welcomed. For the last two she received £500 and £800 respectively.

'Adventures heaped on adventures,' says Sir Walter Scott of The Sicilian Romance, 'in quick and brilliant suc

cession, with all the hairbreadth charms of escape or capture, hurry the reader along with them, and the imagery and scenery by which the action is relieved are like those of a splendid Oriental tale.' But with this exuberance of imagination went a highly artificial plot and characterization devoid of originality desperate villains and passionate lovers and hard-hearted parents all after the patterns which had served before and have served since a host of romancers. Still, the fertility of thrilling incident and occasional touches of genius in description redeem it from worthlessness.

In 1791 appeared a much better book, The Romance of the Forest, a story of French history, far more skillful in plot and characterization. The character of La Motte is a creation not unworthy of Scott or Dumas - the weak, indecisive man who in adversity lacks scope for talents that might have brought him honor and happiness, and is drawn reluctantly into villainy through the domination of a stronger spirit.

In 1794 The Mysteries of Udolpho was published, and in 1797 The Italian. Before writing the former Mrs. Radcliffe had traveled through the country of the Rhine, as well as visited the Lake District. Her power of describing romantic scenery immensely improved. She learned to color her scenes more correctly and vividly, as well as draw them with bolder lines, from the wild beauty of the Lakes, still more from the ancient castles of robber-barons that frowned across the flowing Rhine.

The Mysteries of Udolpho is a tale of the sixteenth century. The heroine is confined in a vast feudal castle, garrisoned by mercenaries. Montoni, the villain, is a captain of condottieri. Thrilling attacks and desperate defenses take place amid the majestic loveliness of Italian mountains. The plot is often improbable, the characterization is in

consistent, the description is sometimes st too highly colored; but it is only after f the story has been read that we make these comments. We cannot stay dur e ing its course to criticize. That is a just indication of its power.

The same may be said of The Italian, a story of the eighteenth century, in which Mrs. Radcliffe employed with striking effect not only the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church, but all that mysterious machinery associated with it in many minds-'monks, spies, dungeons, the mute obedience of the bigot, the dark and dominating spirit of the crafty priest, all the thunders of the Vatican, and all the terrors of the Inquisition.'

Hints of obscure horror, breathless moments of suspense there are in plenty, and they seldom fail to make the reader shiver with anticipation of he knows not what. Is there anything in this kind of writing to surpass that scene where the monk, profligate without a profligate's weaknesses, a monster of pitiless evil, has carried off his innocent and beautiful victim to a dark and dismal den and is about to murder her? As she lies asleep he raises his arm to strike, and, in the fraction of a second before perpetrating this foul crime, he recognizes her as his own child.

Mrs. Radcliffe provided at the end of each novel natural explanations of all the strange and awful occurrences, except indeed the few she forgot not only to explain but to weave into the plot at all. This has often been accounted a defect, and attributed to deference to the rationalism of the eighteenth century. It was undoubtedly the right method, as the writings of her successors, both inferior imitators and master mysterymongers like Poe and Stevenson, show. What was wrong was that her explanations were often not adequate, not credible, that they were kept until the end of the

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