Mrs. Radcliffe now returned to London, where she shortly afterward published "The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents." We can, in our day, realize to ourselves very little of the effect produced by Anne Radcliffe's romances at the time of their appearance. All the contemporary critics agree in testifying to their immense success, only inferior to that of the Waverley novels in more recent times. Now they appear nothing more than the efflux of a morbid imagination, full of hallucinations and absurdities, and insufferably tedious to our modern tastes, accustomed to the condensed writing of the present day. Their unconnected plots are nevertheless not altogether devoid of a certain sort of interest, and are fraught with picturesque situations and melodramatic surprises. The living characters therein introduced present few natural features. We recognize every where the caprices of an unbridled fancy, and a prevailing vitiation of sense and taste. Anne Radcliffe died near London, on the 7th February, 1823, at the age of 63. The "New Monthly Magazine," for May of that year, announces her decease, and affirms that her death was accompanied by singular visions, which had pursued her ever since a romantic event of her youth. MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[5] CHAPTER XVII.--CONTINUED. [Footnote 5: Continued from the March Number.] "Your flatterers will tell you, Signorina, that you are much improved since then, but I liked you better as you were; not but what I hope to return some day what you then so generously pressed upon me." "Pressed upon you!--I? Signor, you are under some strange mistake." "Alas! no; but the female heart is so capricious and fickle! You pressed it upon me, I assure you. I own that I was not loth to accept it." "Pressed it? Pressed, what?" "Your kiss, my child," said Harley; and then added with a serious tenderness, "And I again say that I hope to return it some day--when I see you, by the side of father and of husband, in your native land--the fairest bride on whom the skies of Italy ever smiled! And now, pardon a hermit and a soldier for his rude jests, and give your hand in token of that pardon, to--Harley L'Estrange."