Ghosts begin to crowd upon each others' heels in later Gothic novels. No romance is so poor as not to have a retinue of specters, or at least, a ghost-of-all-work. Emboldened by their success as individuals, spooks appear in groups and mobs. William Beckford in his _Vathek_ presents two thousand specters in one assembly. Beckford was no niggard! In Maturin's _The Albigenses_, de Montfort, passing alone through a dark forest, meets the phantoms of countless victims of his religious persecution. Men, women, young maidens, babes at the breast, all move toward him with unspeakable reproach, with "clattering bones, eyeless sockets, bare and grinning jaws." Aside from Dante the most impressive description of unhappy spirits in a large number is given in _Vathek_ in that immortal picture of the Hall of Eblis. Beckford shows here a concourse of doomed souls, each with his hand forever pressed above his burning heart, each carrying his own hell within him, having lost heaven's most precious boon, the soul's hope! In the Hall of Eblis there are the still living corpses, "the fleshless forms of the pre-adamite kings, who still possess enough life to be conscious of their deplorable condition; they regard one another with looks of the deepest dejection, each holding his right hand motionless above his heart." The prophet Soliman is there, from whose livid lips come tragic words of his sin and punishment. Through his breast, transparent as glass, the beholder can see his heart enveloped in flames. In James Hogg's _The Wool-Gatherer_, a man of very evil life is haunted by the wraiths of those he has wronged. As he lies on his death-bed, not only he, but those around him as well, hear the pleading voices of women, the pitiful cries of babes around his bed, though nothing is visible. We have here a suggestion of the invisible supernaturalism that becomes so frequent and effective a motif in later fiction. After the man is dead, the supernatural sounds become so dreadful that "the corpse sits up in the bed, pawls wi' its hands and stares round wi' its dead face!" When the watchers leave the room for a few moments, the body mysteriously disappears and is never found. A somewhat similar instance occurs in one of Ambrose Bierce's modern stories of dead bodies. There is some attempt to exorcise restless spirits in a number of Gothic novels. On various occasions the priests come forth with bell, book, and candle to pronounce anathema against the troublesome visitants. In one story a monk crosses his legs to scare away the specter, but forgets and presently tumbles over. In another,[14] the priest peremptorily bids the ghosts depart and breaks the news firmly to them that they cannot return for a thousand years. But one bogle, whether of feeble understanding or strong will, comes in to break up the ceremonies of incantation, and scares the priest into hysterics. [14] _The Spirit of Turrettville._