EV. Ay, now for the secret—the _materiel_ of this wild vision. The
truth was, I had dropped asleep in the dissecting-room—the candle had
burned out; and thus, with a copious supply of dead bodies, the howling
of a tempest, the purple storm-clouds, the blue gleams of moonshine, and
bats, and screech-owls, and the screams of patients in the surgical
wards, and withal the hoarse voices of those croaking comforters, the
night-nurses,—I have placed before you a harmony of horrors, that might
not shame a legend of Lewis, or a Radcliffian romance.
Simple as this will be the explanation of many and many a tale of
mystery, although fraught with accumulated horrors, like those of the
“Castle of Udolpho;” and if, putting aside that ultraromantic appetite
for the marvellous, we have courage to attempt their analysis, the pages
of demonology will be shorn of half their terrors, the gulph of
superstition will be illumined by the light of philosophy, and creation
stand forth in all its harmonious and beautiful nature.