honoured me more than I deserve.

I admit that my retrenchments have been numerous, and leave gaps in
the story, which, in your original manuscript, would have run
well-nigh to a fourth volume, as my printer assures me. I am sensible,
besides, that, in consequence of the liberty of curtailment you have
allowed me, some parts of the story have been huddled up without the
necessary details. But, after all, it is better that the travellers
should have to step over a ditch, than to wade through a morass--that
the reader should have to suppose what may easily be inferred, than be
obliged to creep through pages of dull explanation. I have struck out,
for example, the whole machinery of the White Lady, and the poetry by
which it is so ably supported, in the original manuscript. But you
must allow that the public taste gives little encouragement to those
legendary superstitions, which formed alternately the delight and the
terror of our predecessors. In like manner, much is omitted
illustrative of the impulse of enthusiasm in favour of the ancient
religion in Mother Magdalen and the Abbot. But we do not feel deep
sympathy at this period with what was once the most powerful and
animating principle in Europe, with the exception of that of the
Reformation, by which it was successfully opposed.

You rightly observe, that these retrenchments have rendered the title
no longer applicable to the subject, and that some other would have
been more suitable to the Work, in its present state, than that of THE
ABBOT, who made so much greater figure in the original, and for whom
your friend, the Benedictine, seems to have inspired you with a
sympathetic respect. I must plead guilty to this accusation,
observing, at the same time, in manner of extenuation, that though the
objection might have been easily removed, by giving a new title to the