midnight
In any case it is one of the outcomes of the movement just touched upon . At present , being more ennuye in our tastes for fiction than were our forefathers , and the pretence of piety being less a convention , we incline to insist more firmly that the pill at least be sugar-coated , -- if indeed we submit to physic at all . There was also a tendency during the second half of the eighteenth century -- very likely only half serious and hardly more than a literary fad -- toward the romance of mystery and horror . Horace Walpole , the last man on earth from whom one would expect the romantic and sentimental , produced in his `` Castle of Otranto '' such a book ; and Mrs. Radcliffe 's `` The Mystery of Udolpho '' -LRB- standing for numerous others -RRB- manipulated the stage machinery of this pseudo-romantic revival and reaction ; moonlit castles , medieval accessories , weird sounds and lights at the dread midnight hour , -- an attack upon the reader 's nerves rather than his sensibilities , much the sort of paraphernalia employed with a more spiritual purpose and effect in our own day by the dramatist , Maeterlinck . Beckford 's `` Vathek '' and Lewis ' `` The Monk '' are variations upon this theme , which for a while was very popular and is decidedly to be seen in the work of the first novelist upon American soil , Charles Brockden Brown , whose somber `` Wieland , '' read with the Radcliffe school in mind , will reveal its probable parentage . We have seen how the movement was happily satirized by its natural enemy , Jane Austen . Few more enjoyable things can be quoted than this conversation from `` Northanger Abbey '' between two typical young ladies of the time : -- ` But , my dearest Catherine , what have you been doing with yourself all this morning ?