Dear Sir, I was in town yesterday, and found the parcel arrived very safe.  I give you a thousand thanks, dear Sir, for all the contents; but when I sent you the list of heads I wanted, it was for Mr. Jackson, not at all meaning to rob you; but your generosity much outruns my prudence, and I must be upon my guard with you.  The Catherine Bolen was particularly welcome; I had never seen it—­it is a treasure, though I am persuaded not genuine, but taken from a French print of the Queen of Scots, which I have.  I wish you could tell me from whence it was taken; I mean from what book:  I imagine the same in which are two prints, which Mr. Granger mentions, and has himself (with Italian inscriptions, too), of a Duke of Northumberland and an Earl of Arundel.  Mr. Bernardiston I never saw before—­I do not know in what reign he lived—­I suppose lately:  nor do I know the era of the Master of Benet.  When I come back, I must beg you to satisfy these questions.  The Countess of Kent is very curious, too; I have lately got a very dirty one, so that I shall return yours again.  Mrs. Wooley I could not get high or low.  But there is no end of thanking you--and yet I must for Sir J. Finet, though Mr. ; but I am sure they will be very useful to me.  I hope he will not forget me in October.  It will be a good opportunity of sending you some good acacias, or any thing you Want
     from hence.  I am sure you ought to ask me for any thing in
my power, so much I am in your debt:  I must beg to be a little more, by entreating you to pay Mr. Essex whatever he asks for his drawing, which is just what I wished.  The iron gates I have.

With regard to a history of Gothic architecture, in which he desires my advices, the plan, I think, should lie in a very simple compass.  Was I to execute it, it should be thus:—­I would give a series of plates, even from the conclusion of Saxon architecture, beginning with the round Roman arch, and going on to show how they plaistered and zigzagged it, and then how better ornaments crept in till the beautiful Gothic arrived at its perfection:  then how it deceased in Henry the Eighth’s reign—­Abp.  Wareham’s tomb at Canterbury, being I believe the last example of unbastardized Gothic.  A very few plates more would demonstrate its change:  though Holbein embroidered it with some morsels of true architecture.  In Queen Elizabeth’s reign there was scarce any architecture at all:  I mean no pillars, or seldom, buildings then becoming quite plain.  Under James a barbarous composition succeeded.  A single plate of something of Inigo Jones, in his heaviest and worst style, should terminate the work; for he soon stepped into the true and perfect Grecian.