“Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?""The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.”

Jane Austen

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“You have been abroad then?” said Henry, a little surprised.“Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father traveled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?”“Why not?”“Because they are not clever enough for you — gentlemen read better books.”“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days — my hair standing on end the whole time.”“Yes,” added Miss Tilney, “and I remember that you undertook to read it aloud to me, and that when I was called away for only five minutes to answer a note, instead of waiting for me, you took the volume into the Hermitage Walk, and I was obliged to stay till you had finished it.”


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