] You see omens and portents of the French Revolution in everything, you know that you do! ;-)

I admit it! All the same, I think there may be resonances there (comparable to fears of Captain Tilney and the brickbat). However, I shall heroically refrain from blathering on about the anti-revolutionary spy network that was in place in England (unless anyone gives me merely the hint of wanting to know more, which should probably be done on the L&T board), and merely point to Henry's comment about being Christian and English. I think he's contrasting England with revolutionary France under what was seen as atheism, rather than the Mediterranean countries so often used as settings for Gothic novels, since these were Christian albeit not Church of England.