I have all the north-country superstition flowing through my veins, and do really believe in the exploded doctrine of sympathies.
That is to say, I believe in all _genial_ superstitions, and don't like this steam-packet railway world of ours, which puts aside with so much scorn that which for certain Shakespeare and Ben Jonson held for true.

I am charmed at your own account of yourself and your doings.
Mr.Edward Kenyon--( whose 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.