bathe Adeline's hand with his tears, in a moment of painful uncertainty; and Hippolitus, who would have scorned to be stabbed like an ordinary mortal, "received a sword through his body,"—precisely as though it were a present,—"and, uttering a deep sigh, fell to the ground," on which, true to her principles, "Julia shrieked and fainted." We read of the Empress Octavia swooning when Virgil recited to her his description of the death of Marcellus; and we know that Shelley fainted when he heard Cristabel read; but Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines, though equally sensitive, are kept too busy with their own disasters to show this sympathetic interest in literature. Their adventures strike us now as being, on the whole, more amusing than thrilling; but we should remember that they were no laughing matter to the readers of fifty years ago. People did not then object to the interminable length of a story, and they followed its intricate windings and counter-windings with a trembling zest which we can only envy. One of the earliest recollections of my own childhood is a little book depicting the awful results of Mrs. Radcliffe's terror-inspiring romances upon the
