There was a time--of no great duration--when Lewis' "Monk" was
the most popular book in England. At the end of the eighteenth
century the vogue of the "Gothic" romance of ghosts and
mysteries was at its height; and this work, written in ten
weeks by a young man of nineteen, caught the public fancy
tremendously, and Matthew Gregory Lewis was straightway
accepted as an adept at making the flesh creep. Taste changes
in horrors, as in other things, and "Ambrosio, or The Monk,"
would give nightmares to few modern readers. Its author, who
was born in London on July 9, 1775, and published "The Monk"
in 1795, wrote many supernatural tales and poems, and also
several plays--one of which, "The Castle Spectre," caused the
hair of Drury Lane audiences to stand on end for sixty
successive nights, a long run in those days. Lewis, who was a
wealthy man, sat for some years in Parliament; he had many
distinguished friends among men of letters--Scott and Southey
contributed largely to the first volume of his "Tales of
Wonder." He died on May 13, 1818.


_I.--The Recluse_


The Church of the Capuchins in Madrid had never witnessed a more
numerous assembly than that which gathered to hear the sermon of
Ambrosio, the abbot. All Madrid rang with his praises. Brought
mysteriously to the abbey door while yet an infant, he had remained for
all the thirty years of his life within its precincts. All his days had