In her own peculiar style of composition, Mrs. Radcliffe has never been approached. Her success naturally drew forth a crowd of imitators, who produced only cumbrous caricatures, in which the terrors were without decorum, and the explanations absolutely farcical. No successful writer has followed her without calling to aid other means, which she would not condescend to use. The Author of “The Monk” mingled a sickly voluptuousness with his terrors; and Maturin, full of “rich conceits,” approached the borders of the forbidden in speculation, and the paradoxical in morals. She only, of all writers of romance, who have awed and affected the public mind, by hints of things unseen, has employed enchantments purely innocent; has forborne to raise one questionable throb, or call forth a momentary blush. This is the great test not only of moral feeling, but of intellectual power; and in this will be found her highest praise. * * * * * The Editor of the present Publication, who is not the Writer of the preceding Memoir, is aware, that it would be unbecoming for him to say more of Works, written by one so dear to him, than may be necessary to give the Public an early assurance of their authenticity; and that fact, he apprehends, will be sufficiently proved by the distribution, which he has resolved to make, of the whole purchase-money of the copy-right. Every part of that produce will be paid, as it shall accrue to him, to some public charitable institution in England. The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Sir Walter Stirling, Bart. in consideration of the utility of this purpose, allow him the honour of saying, that they will audit his account of that distribution. GASTON DE BLONDEVILLE; OR THE COURT OF HENRY THE THIRD KEEPING FESTIVAL IN ARDEN. GASTON DE BLONDEVILLE. INTRODUCTION. “Well! now are we in Arden,” said an English traveller to his companion, as they passed between Coventry and Warwick, over ground, which his dear Shakspeare had made classic. As he uttered this exclamation of Rosalind, he looked forward with somewhat of the surprise and curiosity, which she may be supposed to have felt, and with an enthusiasm all his own, on beholding the very scene, into which the imagination of the poet had so often transported him with a faint degree of its own rapture. He was not, it appears, one of those critics, who think that the Arden of Shakspeare, lay in France. But he looked in vain for the thick and gloomy woods, which, in a former age, were the home of the doubtful fugitive, and so much the terror of the traveller, that it had been found necessary, on this very road, to clear the ground, for a breadth of six acres on each side, in order to protect the wayfaring part of his Majesty’s liege subjects.