German romance at once responded to the Walpole influence, and soon became a byword for the weird and ghastly. In England, one of the first imitators was the celebrated Mr. Barbauld, then Miss Aiken, who in 1773 published an unfinished fragment called _Sir Bertrand_, in which the strings of genuine terror were truly touched with no clumsy hand. A nobleman on a dark and lonely moor, attracted by a tolling bell and distant light, enters a strange and ancient turreted castle whose doors open and close and whose bluish will-o'-the-wisps lead up mysterious staircases toward dead hands and animated black statues. A coffin with a dead lady, whom Sir Bertrand kisses, is finally reached; and upon the kiss, the scene dissolves to give place to a splendid apartment where the lady, restored to life, holds a banquet in honour of her rescuer. Walpole admired this tale, though he accorded less respect to an even more prominent off-spring of his Otranto--_The Old English Baron_, by Clara Reeve, published in 1777. Truly enough, this tale lacks the real vibration to the note of outer darkness and mystery which distinguishes Mrs. Barbauld's fragment and though less crude than Walpole's novel, and more artistically economical of horror in its possession of only one spectral figure, it is nevertheless too definitely insipid for greatness. Here again we have the virtuous heir to the castle disguised as a peasant and restored to his heritage through the ghost of his father; and here again we have a case of wide popularity leading to many editions, dramatizations, and ultimate translation into French. Miss Reeve wrote another weird novel, unfortunately unpublished and lost. [Illustration: continued next month] YOUR VIEWS "I should venture that the fascination of the weird is through a vaguely masochistic pleasure that derives delight from frightening one's self! I believe the simile is ancient that our gaze will often return to the ugliest person in a room rather than the most handsome. Perhaps it is that constant saccharine palls. I claim it is untrue that 'the beautiful, the good, is the aim of every true artist.'" --R. H. Barlow