brother, John Kenyon, of Harley Place, the most delightful man in London—­of course you know him—­is my especial friend)—­Mr. Edward Kenyon, who lives chiefly at Vienna, although, I believe, in great retirement, spending 200_l_. upon himself, and giving away 2,000_l_.—­Mr. Edward Kenyon spoke of you to me as having such opportunities of knowing both the city and the country as rarely befell even a resident, and what you say of the peasantry gives me a strong desire to see your book.

“A happy subject is in my mind, a great thing, especially for you whose descriptions are so graphic.  The thing that would interest me in Austria, and for the maintenance of which one almost pardons (not quite) their retaining that other old-fashioned thing, the State prisons, is their having kept up in their splendour those grand old monasteries, which are swept away now in Spain and Portugal.  I have a passion for Gothic architecture, and a leaning towards the magnificence of the old religion, the foster-mother of all that is finest and highest in art, and if I have such a thing as a literary project, it is to write a romance, of which Reading Abbey in its primal magnificence should form a part, not the least about forms of faith, understand, but as an element of the picturesque, and as embodying a very grand and influential part of bygone days.  At present I have just finished (since writing Country Stories, which people seem so good as to like) writing all the prose (except one story about the fashionable subject of Egyptian magicians, furnished to me by your admirer, Henry Chorley; I wish you had seen him taking off his hat to the walls as I showed him your father’s old residence at Heckfield), all the prose of the most splendid of the annuals, Finden’s Tableaux, of which my longest and best story—­a Young Pretender story—­I have been obliged to omit in consequence of not calculating on the length of my poetical contributors.  But my poetry, especially that by that wonderful young creature Miss Barrett, Mr. Kenyon, and Mr. Procter, is certainly such as has seldom before been seen in an annual, and joined with Finden’s magnificent engravings ought to make an attractive work.

“I am now going to my novel, if it please God to grant me health.  For the last two months I have only once crossed the outer threshold, and, indeed, I have never been a day well since the united effects of the tragedy and the influenza ... [word destroyed by the seal].  What will become of that poor play is in the womb of time.  But its being by universal admission a far more striking drama than Rienzi, and by very far the best thing I ever wrote, it follows almost of course, that it will share the fate of its predecessor, and be tossed about the theatres for three or four years to come.  Of course I should be only too happy that it should be brought out at Covent Garden under the united auspices of Mr. Macready and Mr. Bartley.[1] But I am in constitution and in