Sterling, for causes which Archdeacon Hare does not clearly state, but which Carlyle in a rather mystical way indicates, left his curacy at Herstmorceux, and removed to London, where he took a house at Bayswater. At this time he was, in personal appearance, thin and careless-lookinghis eyes kindly, but restless in their glances -his features animated and brilliant when talking-and he was always full of bright speech and argument. He did not give you He did not give you the idea of ill-health; indeed his life seemed to be bounding, and full of vitality; his whole being was usually in full play; it was his vehemence and rapidity of life which struck one on first seeing him. Carlyle says, that he wore holes in the outer case of his body, by this restless vitality, which could not otherwise find vent. He seems now to have been in the thick of doubts and mental discussions-probing the foundations of his faith-and, it is to be suspected, losing one by one the pillars on which it had rested. It is a terrible "valley of the shadow of death," this which so many young minds have to pass through in these days of restless inquiry into all subjects-religious, social and political. As Shelley writes: "If I have erred, there was no joy in error, But pain, and insult, and unrest, and terror." "Tholuck, Schleiermacher, and the war of Sterling set about working at various literary enterprises. Poetry occupied his attention, and while at Bordeaux he wrote The Sexton's Daughter; he also stored up a number of notes and memoranda respecting Montaigne, whose old country house he visited, and these shortly after appeared, in a very able article from his pen, in the London and Westminster Review. After a year's stay, he returned to England again, and engaged himself in writing occasional articles for Blackwood's Magazine. His health being still delicate, he wintered at Madeira in 1837; speaking of it in one of his letters, he says that," as a temporary refuge, a niche in an Sterling's views began to diverge more and old ruin, where one is sheltered from the more from those formerly held by him, yet shower, the place has great merit." this never interfered with a single one of his continued writing papers for Blackwood, of friendships. Tolerant and charitable, there which the best was the "Onyx Ring." was an agreement to differ; and certainly it Wilson early recognized Sterling's merit as is better for men to differ openly and honest- a writer, and lavished great storms of praise ly, than hypocritically to agree and conform upon him in his editorial comments. -even for "peace sake.' And why seems to have possessed the gift of literary should men quarrel about such matters, re-improvising, to a great extent. He was a specting which no one man can have more positive or certain knowledge than any other man? "What am I? An infant crying in the night: TENNYSON. He He swift genius-Carlyle likened him to." sheetlightning." He had an incredible facility of labor, flashing with most piercing glance into a subject, and throwing his thoughts upon it together upon paper with remarkable felicity, brilliancy, and general excellence. While at Madeira, Sterling busied himself with reading Goethe, of whom he gives the following striking opinion, in many respects Sterling read many German books at this true: "There must, as I think, have been time, such as Tholuck and Schleiermacher, some prodigious defect in his mind, to let from which he diverged into Goethe and him hold such views as his about women and Jean Paul Richter. But his health was still some other things; and in another respect, delicate, and a residence in the south of I find so much coldness and hollowness as France was determined on. He went to to the highest truths, and feel so strongly Bordeaux accordingly, and, while there, his that the heaven he looks up to is but a vault theological tumult" decidedly abated. of ice-that these two indications, leading to I the same conclusion, go far to convince me he was a profoundly immoral and irreligious spirit, with as rare faculties of intelligence as ever belonged to any one.' fuller of music in every line. These are a few stanzas :— "Wail for Dædalus, all that is fairest, Shapes whose beauty is truest and rarest, "Statues bend your heads in sorrow, 66 Ye that glance amid ruins old, That know not a past, nor expect a morrow, By sculptured cave, and speaking river, "Ever thy phantoms arise before us, The volume of poems, however, attracted no notice; yet Sterling labored on, determined to conquer success. He met with some delightful friends at Falmouth, among others, with John Stuart Mill, and an intelligent Quaker family-the Foxes-with whom he spent many happy hours. In the follow His health improved by Madeira, he returned to England, still fragile, but radiant with cheerfulness. "Both his activity and his composure he bore with him, through all weathers, to the final close; and on the whole, right manfully he walked his wild stern way towards the goal, and like a Roman wrapt his mantle round him when he fell." He went on writing for Blackwood, contributing the Hymns of a Hermit, Crystals from a Cavern, Thoughts and Images, and other papers of this sort. Then he engaged as contributor to the London and Westminster Review, for which he wrote several fine papers. The raw, winter air of England proving too much for his weak lungs, he went abroad again-this time to Italywhere he revelled in its picture galleries, and collections of fine art. He did not like the religious aspect of things there, and spoke freely about it. He was home again in 1839, considerably improved in health; but still he continued to lead a nomadic life, for the sake of his health. Now at Hastings, then at Clifton; and again he had to flying spring, he was by his own hearth again at before worse symptoms than had yet shown themselves-spitting of blood and such like taking flight, late in the season, for Madeira. But when he reached Falmouth, the weather was so rough that he could not set sail, so he rested there for the winter, the mild climate suiting his feeble lungs better than Clifton had done. By this time, during his residence in the last-named place, he had written his fine paper on Carlyle, for the Westminster Review, and also published a little volume of poems, containing some noble pieces. Carlyle speaks in rather a slighting strain of poetry in general, and has a strong dislike to what he calls "the fiddling talent." "Why sing," he asks, "your bits of thoughts; if you can contrive to speak them? By your thought, not by your mode of delivering it, you must live or die." Besides, he denies to Sterling that indispensable quality of successful poetry--depth of tune; his verses "had a monotonous rub-a-dub, instead of tune; no trace of music deeper than that of a well-beaten drum." This opinion we think decidedly wrong, even though Carlyle be the critic. Let any one read Sterling's Daedalus, and they will be satisfied of his tunefulness, as well as his true poetic feeling. We know no verses Clifton, now engaged on a long poem called as poem called Caur-de-Lion, not yet published, of which Carlyle, who has read it, speaks very highly. Sterling visited London, for the last time, in 1843, when Carlyle dined with him. "I remember it," says he, " one of the saddest of dinners; though Sterling talked copiously, and our friends-Theodore Parker one of them-were pleasant and distinguished men. All was so haggard in one's memory, and half-consciously in one's anticipations; sad, as if one had been dining in a ruin, in the crypt of a mausoleum." Carlyle saw Sterling afterwards at his apartments in town, and the following is the conclusion of his last interview with him We parted before long; bed-time for invalids being come, he escorted me down certain carpeted back stairs, and would not be forbidden; we took leave under the dim skies; and, alas! little as I then dreamt of it, this, so far as I can calculate, must have been the last time I ever saw him in the world. Softly as a common evening, the last of the evenings had passed away, and no other would come for me for evermore." Sterling returned to Ventnor, and proceeded with his Cœur-de-Lion. But the light of his life had gone. "I am going on quietly here, rather than happily," he wrote to his friend Newman; "sometimes quite helpless, not from distinct illness, but from sad thoughts, and a ghastly dreaminess. The heart is gone out of my life." This brittle existence of his was at length about to be shivered. Another breakage of a blood-vessel occured, and he lay prostrate for the last time. The great change was at hand-the final act of the tragedy of life. He gathered his strength together, to quit life piously and manfully. For six months he had sat looking at the approaches of the foe, and he blanched not nor quailed before him. He had continued working, and setting all his worldly affairs in order. He wrote some noble letters to his eldest boy, then at school in London, full of affectionate counsel. "These letters," says Carlyle, "I have lately read: they give, beyond any he has written, a noble image of the intrinsic Sterling-the same face we had long known; but painted now as on the azure of eternity, serene, victorious, divinely sad; the dusts and extraneous disfigurements imprinted on it by the world, now washed away." About a month before his death, he wrote a last letter to Carlyle, of "Remembrance and Farewell," wherein he says: "On higher matters there is nothing to say. I tread the common road into the great darkness, without any thought of fear, and with very much of hope. Certainty, indeed, I have none. With regard to You and Me I cannot begin to write; having nothing for it but to keep shut the lid of those secrets with all the iron weights that are in my power. Towards me it is still more true than towards England, that no man has been and done like you. Heaven bless you! If I can lend a hand when THERE, that will not be wanting. It is all very strange, but not one hundreth part so sad as it seems to the standers by." "It was a bright Sunday morning when this letter came to me," says Carlyle; "and if in the great Cathedral of Immensity I did no worship that day, the fault surely was my own. Sterling affectionately refused to see. me; which also was kind and wise. And four days before his death, there are some stanzas of verse for me, written as if in starfire. and immortal tears; which are among my sacred possessions, to be kept for myself alone. His business with the world was done; the one business now to await silently what may lie in other grander worlds. 'God is great,' he was wont to say: 'God is great.' The Mauriees were now constantly near him; Mrs. Maurice (his sister) assiduously watching over him. On the evening of Wednesday, the 18th of September, his brother-as he did every two or three days-came down ; found him in the old temper, weak in strength, but not. very sensibly weaker; they talked calmly together for an hour; then Anthony left his bedside, and retired for the night, not expecting any change. But suddenly about eleven o'clock, there came a summons and alarm; hurrying to his brother's room, he found his brother dying; and in a short while more, the faint last struggle was ended, and all those struggles and strenuous oftenfoiled endeavors of eight-and-thirty years lay hushed in death." From the Examiner." PERIODICALS AND SERIAL PUBLICATIONS FOR 1852. THE number of periodicals seems, by its increase, to indicate an increase in the number of cursory readers. A book done up. in the small pill of a review, appears to be now in almost every case more popular than the book itself; and opinions, as presented by the original thinker or investigator, are found to have no chance against opinions presented like soup in the condensed form, and portable, to be diluted for use in the water of common conversation. The character of the new periodicals, and the change of tone visible in some old ones, indicate however, on the part of their proprietors, an improved opinion of the public taste. indignation at the "rebel attorney Kossuth," tries the good humor of its readers. The Westminster Review comes out with a new face from the hands of Mr. Chapman, and discusses with some boldness and some vigor (though with hardly as much of either as the announcements might have led us to expect) the most interesting questions of the day. It does not claim assent to its opinions, but the right of free inquiry. It lightens its intelligent and moderate essays on the relation between employers and employed, and the general troubles of humanity, with pleasant talk about molluscous animals and the happiness of oysters. MoreIn our old friends the Quarterly and Edin- over, to supply the demand of those who burgh Reviews we have not much change to wish, in these book-writing days, to know report. The change which does appear in what is being written in all places on all them arises from the altered temper of the themes, it closes with summaries of the contimes without, not of the minds within. The temporary literature in England, America, Edinburgh Review, established from the first Germany, and France. For the same class upon the basis of liberal opinions, which of readers (certainly a large one) the New have in this country, if not elsewhere, since Quarterly Review presents us this month been steadily gaining ground, continues to be with its number One, being a half-crown dipolitically speaking in harmony with an in-gest of current English literature, with a creasing public. The Quarterly, adhering to a political standard around which the whole mind of the country becomes every year less disposed to rally, has long ago judiciously accepted the necessity of finding compensation for the unpopularity of its political in the increased pleasantness of its literary character. The article on Junius in the present number, however, which endeavors to make out a case in favor of Thomas Lord Lyttleton, (the "wicked" Lord,) is more ingenious than powerful in argument; and we are clearly of opinion, even making the large concessions demanded by the writer's theory, that the controversy is left by this paper much as it was before. Upon one political subject, concerning which the most opposite parties in England sympathize, we have to thank the Quarterly for an able paper-the French Autocrat. The notice of Mr. Gladstone's translation of Farini, on the other hand, written in a spirit of affection for the King of Naples, and including an episode of short notice of French books, and a shorter one of German publications. This new Quarterly Review contains a large amount of matter in double columns of tolerably close print, and its criticisms seem to be written with ability. We descend from the quarterly to monthly publications. Blackwood opens the new year with a great deal of light reading; and, among other matter, Mr. Albert Smith's account of his journey up Mont Blanc is to be found in it. But My Novel is still the chief attraction, and many readers will deplore those revolving moons (to quote Mr. Puff) which appear destined very shortly to bring this delightful tale of Sir Edward Lytton's to a close. Blackwood avoids French politics; but he has an extremely dismal political article, a wail over free trade, to begin his number, and a glorification of Disraeli's "Life of Bentinck" to conclude it. Blackwood is among the onemonthlies what the Quarterly is among the three-monthlies, and we might find a similar analogy between the Westminster and Fraser. Fraser's Magazine may now be accounted second to none, indeed superior to almost all, of its own class. More than tinged, as it no doubt is, with the opinions of that peculiar school in which Mr. Kingsley is a master, its political comments are at the same time characterized by an earnestness, and its literary papers by a grace, that satisfy the reader. We observe in its present number fresh intimations of this, and the commencement of a new and characteristic fiction by the author of Alton Locke. The Genileman's Magazine commences its new volume subject to that reform in his affairs which Mr. Urban instituted sundry months ago. The historian and the antiquary may now enjoy a magazine which shows all the information and experience, and not a trace of the decrepitude of age. Its editor, Mr. Bruce, is a representative of that class of literary inquirers, not only learned, careful, and painstaking, but also most agreeable. He keeps steadily in view, too, the rights and interests of his class; and has been the means of obtaining for them several valuable privileges and facilities of research, withheld till his intelligent agitation showed the absurdity of witholding them any longer. Bentley's Miscellany continues to court readers with the attraction of a monthly portrait and memoir of some distinguished man. It seems also to be gradually dropping the purely light character to which it formerly aspired, and to cater for that taste for information which has been increasing among readers generally. Sharpe's Magazine commences its fifteenth volume with the present month, and offers to its readers a considerable as well as very pleasant shilling's worth. A new monthly, the British Journal, launched with the year 1852, is offered to the public at the price of sixpence only. It includes among the contributors to its first number Mrs. Cowden Clarke and Miss Frances Brown, and apparently aims at combining, under one cover, solid, even scientific papers, with light reading. Another monthly which with the new year makes its first bow to the public, is the Cabinet, offering to provide in itself a fourpenny magazine of literature, history, poetry, information, biography, criticism, fiction, and correspondence. From the first number we are not able to form any opinion as to its chances of purpose. Here also we have new candidates for the attention and good-will of the public. The Biographical Magazine, a sixpenny journal, edited by J. Passmore Edwards, proposes to narrate the lives of celebrated men and women, particularly those whose words or deeds have any bearing on the present age. The opening number contains biographic sketches of Louis N. Bonaparte, Louis Kossuth, Marshal Soult, John Banim, and the late Bishop of Norwich; it commences also a sketch of Jean Paul. So far as we have dipped into this magazine we find its papers written with liberality of temper and good sense. Similar in form and price, published at the same office, and conducted by the same editor, is the Poetic Review, and Miscellany of Imaginative Literature. "It will show," says its prospectus, "the philosophy of poetry, and the poetry of philosophy." We doubt whether it will accomplish its design. Macphail's Edinburgh Journal continues to commend itself to Scotch ecclesiastical readers by papers of a limited order of criticism, but carefully written, and by bold and uncompromising denunciations of the Man and Woman of Sin. The Colonial Magazine is an old friend, devoted to a subject interesting 'to a large and important section of the public. It contains a series of very valuable papers.. Another large section of the community is addressed by the Journal of Design and Manufactures, with its usual array of illustrations and specimens of woven fabrics. The present number opens with an important paper by Mr. Dyce, on the education of artists and designers, and the remaining articles in every respect keep up the high character of the journal in which they appear. Then we have Paxton's Flower Garden, loved by all horticulturists, and often praised by us. From these monthlies we leap back to the quarterlies again, for the purpose of noticing two journals, devoted, like the magazines just noticed, to a special end. The Journal of Agriculture, in addition to a large mass of information valuable to farmers, contains a discussion on the Irish Land Question, an article on agricultural engineering, and other matters interesting beyond the circle of readers for which the Journal is more particularly designed. The Zoist, another quarterly journal conducted with much ability, should be read by those who wish to know what is being done and said by true believers We now come to a class of monthly maga- on the subjects of phrenology and mesmerzines devoted each of them to some especialism. The papers of Dr. Elliotson in particu success. |