afterwards, in speech with his Brother, he compared his case in this

time to that of "a young lady who has tragically lost her lover, and
is willing to be half-hoodwinked into a convent, or in any noble or

quasi-noble way to escape from a world which has become intolerable."
During the summer of 1832, I find traces of attempts towards

Anti-Slavery Philanthropy; shadows of extensiveschemes in that
direction. Half-desperate outlooks, it is likely, towards the refuge

of Philanthropism, as a new chivalry of life. These took no serious
hold of so clear an intellect; but they hovered now and afterwards as

day-dreams, when life otherwise was shorn of aim;--mirages in the
desert, which are found not to be lakes when you put your bucket into

them. One thing was clear, the sojourn in St. Vincent was not to last
much longer.

Perhaps one might get some scheme raised into life, in Downing Street,
for universal Education to the Blacks, preparatory to emancipating

them? There were a noble work for a man! Then again poor Mrs.
Sterling's health, contrary to his own, did not agree with warm moist

climates. And again, &c. &c. These were the outer surfaces of the
measure; the unconscious pretexts under which it showed itself to

Sterling and was shown by him: but the inner heart and determining
cause of it (as frequently in Sterling's life, and in all our lives)

was not these. In brief, he had had enough of St. Vincent. The
strangling oppressions of his soul were too heavy for him there.

Solution lay in Europe, or might lie; not in these remotesolitudes of
the sea,--where no shrine or saint's well is to be looked for, no

communing of pious pilgrims journeying together towards a shrine.
CHAPTER XV.

BONN; HERSTMONCEUX.
After a residence of perhaps fifteen months Sterling quitted St.

Vincent, and never returned. He reappeared at his Father's house, to
the joy of English friends, in August, 1832; well improved in health,

and eager for English news; but, beyond vague schemes and
possibilities, considerablyuncertain what was next to be done.

After no long stay in this scene,--finding Downing Street dead as
stone to the Slave-Education and to all other schemes,--he went

across, with his wife and child, to Germany; purposing to make not so
much a tour as some loose ramble, or desultory residence in that

country, in the Rhineland first of all. Here was to be hoped the
picturesque in scenery, which he much affected; here the new and true

in speculation, which he inwardly longed for and wanted greatly more;
at all events, here as readily as elsewhere might a temporary

household be struck up, under interesting circumstances.--I conclude
he went across in the Spring of 1833; perhaps directly after _Arthur

Coningsby_ had got through the press. This Novel, which, as we have
said, was begun two or three years ago, probably on his cessation from

the _Athenaeum_, and was mainly finished, I think, before the removal
to St. Vincent, had by this time fallen as good as obsolete to his own

mind; and its destination now, whether to the press or to the fire,
was in some sort a matter at once of difficulty and of insignificance

to him. At length deciding for the milder alternative, he had thrown
in some completing touches here and there,--especially, as I

conjecture, a proportion of Coleridgean moonshine at the end; and so
sent it forth.

It was in the sunny days, perhaps in May or June of this year, that
_Arthur Coningsby_ reached my own hand, far off amid the heathy

wildernesses; sent by John Mill: and I can still recollect the
pleasant little episode it made in my solitude there. The general

impression it left on me, which has never since been renewed by a
second reading in whole or in part, was the certain prefigurement to

myself, more or less distinct, of an opulent, genial and sunny mind,
but misdirected, disappointed, experienced in misery;--nay crude and

hasty; mistaking for a solid outcome from its woes what was only to me
a gilded vacuity. The hero an ardent youth, representing Sterling

himself, plunges into life such as we now have it in these anarchic
times, with the radical, utilitarian, or mutinous heathen theory,

which is the readiest for inquiring souls; finds, by various courses
of adventure, utter shipwreck in this; lies broken, very wretched:

that is the tragic nodus, or apogee of his life-course. In this mood
of mind, he clutches desperately towards some new method (recognizable

as Coleridge's) of laying hand again on the old Church, which has
hitherto been extraneous and as if non-extant to his way of thought;

makes out, by some Coleridgean legedermain, that there actually is
still a Church for him; that this extant Church, which he long took

for an extinct shadow, is not such, but a substance; upon which he can
anchor himself amid the storms of fate;--and he does so, even taking

orders in it, I think. Such could by no means seem to me the true or
tenable solution. Here clearly, struggling amid the tumults, was a

lovable young fellow-soul; who had by no means yet got to land; but of
whom much might be hoped, if he ever did. Some of the delineations

are highly pictorial, flooded with a deep ruddy effulgence; betokening
much wealth, in the crude or the ripe state. The hope of perhaps, one

day, knowing Sterling, was welcome and interesting to me. _Arthur
Coningsby_, struggling imperfectly in a sphere high above

circulating-library novels, gained no notice whatever in that quarter;
gained, I suppose in a few scattered heads, some such recognition as

the above; and there rested. Sterling never mentioned the name of it
in my hearing, or would hear it mentioned.

In those very days while _Arthur Coningsby_ was getting read amid the
Scottish moors, "in June, 1833," Sterling, at Bonn in the

Rhine-country, fell in with his old tutor and friend, the Reverend
Julius Hare; one with whom he always delighted to communicate,

especially on such topics as then altogether occupied him. A man of
cheerful serious character, of much approved accomplishment, of

perfect courtesy; surely of much piety, in all senses of that word.
Mr. Hare had quitted his scholastic labors and distinctions, some time

ago; the call or opportunity for taking orders having come; and as
Rector of Herstmonceux in Sussex, a place patrimonially and otherwise

endeared to him, was about entering, under the best omens, on a new
course of life. He was now on his return from Rome, and a visit of

some length to Italy. Such a meeting could not but be welcome and
important to Sterling in such a mood. They had much earnest

conversation, freely communing on the highest matters; especially of
Sterling's purpose to undertake the clericalprofession, in which

course his reverend friend could not but bid him good speed.
It appears, Sterling already intimated his intention to become a

clergyman: He would study theology, biblicalities, perfect himself in
the knowledge seemly or essential for his new course;--read diligently

"for a year or two in some good German University," then seek to
obtain orders: that was his plan. To which Mr. Hare gave his hearty

_Euge_; adding that if his own curacy happened then to be vacant, he
should be well pleased to have Sterling in that office. So they

parted.
"A year or two" of serious reflection "in some good German

University," or anywhere in the world, might have thrown much
elucidation upon these confused strugglings and purposings of

Sterling's, and probably have spared him some confusion in his
subsequent life. But the talent of waiting was, of all others, the

one he wanted most. Impetuous velocity, all-hoping headlong alacrity,
what we must call rashness and impatience, characterized him in most

of his important and unimportant procedures; from the purpose to the
execution there was usually but one big leap with him. A few months

after Mr. Hare was gone, Sterling wrote that his purposes were a
little changed by the late meeting at Bonn; that he now longed to

enter the Church straightway: that if the Herstmonceux Curacy was
still vacant, and the Rector's kind thought towards him still held, he

would instantly endeavor to qualify himself for that office.
Answer being in the affirmative on both heads, Sterling returned to

England; took orders,--"ordained deacon at Chichester on Trinity
Sunday in 1834" (he never became technically priest):--and so, having

fitted himself and family with a reasonable house, in one of those
leafy lanes in quiet Herstmonceux, on the edge of Pevensey Level, he

commenced the duties of his Curacy.
The bereaved young lady has _taken_ the veil, then! Even so. "Life

is growing all so dark and brutal; must be redeemed into human, if it
will continue life. Some pious heroism, to give a human color to life

again, on any terms,"--even on impossible ones!
To such length can transcendental moonshine, cast by some morbidly

radiating Coleridge into the chaos of a fermenting life, act magically
there, and produce divulsions and convulsions and diseased

developments. So dark and abstruse, without lamp or authentic
finger-post, is the course of pious genius towards the Eternal

Kingdoms grown. No fixed highway more; the old spiritualhighways and
recognized paths to the Eternal, now all torn up and flung in heaps,

submerged in unutterable boiling mud-oceans of Hypocrisy and
Unbelievability, of brutal living Atheism and damnable dead putrescent