During a great part of this happy vacation I remained on a visit with my young friend [Beresford] Burston, at his father’s country seat; and there, in reading Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, and listening, while I read, to Haydn’s music, — for my friend’s sisters played tolerably on the harpsichord, — dreamt away my time in that sort of vague happiness which a young mind conjures up for itself so easily, — “pleased, it knows not why, and cares not wherefore.” Among the pieces played by the Miss Burstons, there was one of Haydn’s first simple overtures, and a sonata by him, old-fashioned enough, beginning

[music quotation follows the opening of Haydn’s Sonata No. 50 in D major, Hob. XVI/37]

These pieces, as well as a certain lesson of Nicolai’s of the same simple cast, I sometimes even to this day play over to myself, to remind me of my young reveries.