The "high canopied tester of dark green damask" and the "counterpane of black velvet" which illustrate the introduction of the famous chapter of the Black Pall in Chateau le Blanc may be mere inventory goods now: but, once more, they were not so then.

And this faculty of description (which, as noted above, could hardly have been, and pretty certainly was not, got from books, though it may have been, to some extent and quite legitimately, got from pictures) was applied in many minor ways--touches of really or supposedly horrible objects in the dark, faint suggestions of sound, or of appeals to the other senses--hints of all sorts, which were to become common tricks of the trade, but were then quite new.
At any rate, by these and other means she attained that great result of the novel which has been noted in Defoe, in Richardson, and in others--the result of what the French vividly call _enfisting_ the reader--getting hold of his attention, absorbing him in a pleasant fashion.

The mechanism was often too mechanical: taken with the author's steady and honest, but somewhat inartistic determination to explain everything it sometimes produces effects positively ridiculous to us.

With the proviso of _valeat quantum_, it is not quite unfair to dwell, as has often been dwelt, on the fact that the grand triumph of Mrs.Radcliffe's terrormongering--the famous incident of the Black Veil--is produced by a piece of wax-work.

But the result resulted--the effect _was_ produced: and it was left to those who were clever enough to improve upon the means.