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.
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