The object of "The Castle of Otranto" was to unite the characteristic elements of the ancient romance with those of the modern novel. It was attempted to introduce into a narrative constructed with modern order and sequence, such supernatural events as controlled the incidents of romantic fiction. To accomplish this result, it was necessary that the _mise en scene_ should be impressive and awe-inspiring, that the reader's mind should be insensibly prepared by strange surroundings for extraordinary incidents. In his selection of age and scene, Walpole was highly judicious. He chose the feudal period, when superstition accorded the most ready belief to supernatural agencies. He introduced his reader to a huge, gloomy castle, furnished with towers, donjons, subterranean passages, and trapdoors. He took for his hero, Manfred, a fierce and cruel knight, who had obtained his lands by duplicity and blood; whose chief aim in life was to continue his posterity in possession of wrongfully acquired power. He added subordinate characters of a kind to aid the effect of supernatural phenomena: a monk in a neighboring convent, who threatened Manfred with divine visitation for his crimes; superstitious servants, whose easy fears exaggerated every unusual sound or foot-fall. He gave an interest to his narrative by the love passages of Manfred's daughters which were perpetually at the mercy of the fate which hung over the castle. He introduced his supernatural effects in the form of a gigantic gauntlet seen on the stair-rail; a gigantic helmet which crushed the son and heir of the house as he was about to be married and to carry out his father's hopes; a skeleton monk who urged the rightful owner of the castle to take his own from the usurper's hands.