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 feeling a much older person than you, my dear
friend, as well as in look, however the acknowledgment of age (I
am 48) may stand between us; and belonging to a most sanguine and
conf