frame[24]--appears, "dilated to an immense magnitude,"[25] and
demands that Manfred shall surrender Otranto to the rightful
heir, Theodore, who has been duly identified by the mark of a
"bloody arrow." Alfonso, thus pacified, ascends into heaven,
where he is received into glory by St. Nicholas. As Matilda, who
was beloved of Theodore, has incidentally been slain by her
father, Theodore consoles himself with Isabella. Manfred and his
wife meekly retire to neighbouring convents. With this
anti-climax the story closes. To present the "dry bones" of a
romantic story is often misleading, but the method is perhaps
justifiable in the case of _The Castle of Otranto_, because
Walpole himself scorned embellishments and declared in his
grandiloquent fashion:

"If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader
will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. There
is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions or
unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to
the catastrophe."[26]

But with all its faults _The Castle of Otranto_ did not fall
fruitless on the earth. The characters are mere puppets, yet we
meet the same types again and again in later Gothic romances.
Though Clara Reeve renounced such "obvious improbabilities" as a
ghost in a hermit's cowl and a walking picture, she was an
acknowledged disciple of Walpole, and, like him, made an
"interesting peasant" the hero of her story, _The Old English
Baron_. Jerome is the prototype of many a count disguised as
father confessor, Bianca the pattern of many a chattering
servant. The imprisoned wife reappears in countless romances,