“Now, without tormenting you with any details, my idea would be to take this theme as the groundwork of a story, whose scene should lie alternatively in Ireland and abroad, the characters being home and foreign as occasion required. My priest (Machiavellian, of course) would be the _cheval de bataille_--not attempted, I need scarcely say, in any rivalry with Eugene Sue, whose vast superiority in every way as a writer refutes such a presumption, but because the object would open up a very different class of character and interest. My people would be enlisted from various ranks and conditions of men, and afford contrasts of country as well as of individuality.
“This meagre outline it is I would ask your opinion of. Indeed, I scarce knew how shadowy and vague it was till I wrote it down here, and yet there is that _within_ it which a really strong hand might turn to account. Will you kindly say if this be the kind of material that such [? a hand] as mine could work out with interest?
“I told you I would not inflict a MS. upon you, and here I have been doing something so very like it that I am ashamed to look back. However, if you knew how much more prosy and tedious I could have been, and on the very same subject, too, you would be gratified to be let off so easily.
“My best thanks for the hints about the two books. I have already written for them. Strange enough you should have suggested Spain as a likely _locale_ for interest, at a time when I was actually meditating a visit to the Peninsula, my former chief being made Ambassador at the Court of Lisbon, and having pressed me to visit him.
“Your last letter put me into such good-humour with my ‘Knight,’ that I set about writing a new No., and with your criticism so fully in my head, I believe I did better than at any previous stage of his monthly existence.
“There is no part of your praise I set more value on than what you observe as to the good-breeding of certain characters, for while our fashionable (!) writers depict ladies and gentlemen by a hundred distinctive traits of manners and taste, all evidencing the most vulgar views of life, there is another class who love to represent every person of station as a species of moral monster, made of sensuality, deceit, and utter selfishness. If I have avoided these opposite errors, I wish I may have hit the middle course without at the same time making good manners insipid. Your praise lets me hope this, and I could not wish for a more competent authority. I need not now say with what eagerness I will read any remarks you are so kind as to make on my ‘Knight.’ The book only occupies any place in my esteem by reason of your opinion. If you see cause to continue it, I am but too happy to be reconciled to my unworthy offspring.