Horace Walpole, the third son of Sir Robert Walpole, was born in 1717.  After finishing his education at Eton and Cambridge, he travelled abroad for some years, principally in Italy, where he seems to have acquired those tastes for which he afterwards became so well known.  He returned to England in 1741, and took his seat in parliament, but he had no taste for politics, and six years later he purchased a piece of ground near Twickenham, and made the principal occupation of his life the erection and decoration of his famous mansion—­“Strawberry.  Hill.”  “The Castle of Otranto” appeared in 1764.  It was described as a “Gothic Story translated by William Marshal Gent, from the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto.”  But, emboldened by the success of the work, Walpole in the second edition acknowledged that he himself was the author.  The theme of the story was suggested to him by a dream, of which he said, “All I could recover was that I thought myself in an ancient castle, and that on the uppermost baluster of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour.  In the evening I sat down and began to write without knowing in the least what I intended to relate.”  The tale was the precursor of a whole series of Gothic romances, and for fifty years afterwards English readers were afforded an unfailing supply of the supernatural and the horrible.  A more important if less direct achievement of Walpole’s was that by “The Castle of Otranto” he heralded the romantic revival that culminated in the masterpieces of Scott.  Walpole died on March 2, 1797.

I.—­The Helmet

Manfred, Prince of Otranto, had contracted a marriage for his son Conrad with the Marquis of Vicenza’s daughter, Isabella.  Young Conrad’s birthday was fixed for his espousal, and Manfred’s impatience for this ceremonial was marked by everyone.  His tenants and subjects attributed this haste to the Prince’s dread of seeing accomplished an ancient prophecy that the Castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it.  It was difficult to make any sense of this prophecy; yet this mystery did not make the populace adhere the less to their opinion.

On the wedding-day, when the company was assembled in the chapel of the castle, Conrad himself was missing.  Manfred, impatient of the least delay, sent an attendant to summon the young Prince.  In less than a minute the attendant came back breathless, in a frantic manner, and foaming at the mouth.  At last, after repeated questions, he cried out, “Oh! the helmet! the helmet!” Manfred and most of the company ran out into the court, from whence was heard a confused noise of shrieks, horror, and surprise.

What a sight for a father’s eyes!  Manfred beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers.