Almost daily did I look out for his usual hour of coming to me,and watch his tall slender form walking rapidly across the hill in front of my window;with the assurance that he was coming to cheer and brighten,to rouse and stir me,to call me up to some height of feeling,or down to some depth of thought.His lively spirit,responding instantaneously to every impulse of Nature and Art;his generous ardor in behalf of whatever is noble and true;his scorn of all meanness,of all false pretences and conventional beliefs,softened as it was by compassion for the victims of those besetting sins of a cultivated age;his never-flagging impetuosity in pushing onward to some unattained point of duty or of knowledge:all this,along with his gentle,almost reverential affectionateness towards his former tutor,rendered my intercourse with him an unspeakable blessing;and time after time has it seemed to me that his visit had been like a shower of rain,bringing down freshness and brightness on a dusty roadside hedge.By him too the recollection of these our daily meetings was cherished till the last."[11]
There are many poor people still at Herstmonceux who affectionately remember him:Mr.Hare especially makes mention of one good man there,in his young days "a poor cobbler,"and now advanced to a much better position,who gratefully ascribes this outward and the other improvements in his life to Sterling's generous encouragement and charitable care for him.Such was the curate life at Herstmonceux.
So,in those actual leafy lanes,on the edge of Pevensey Level,in this new age,did our poor New Paul (on hest of certain oracles)diligently study to comport himself,--and struggle with all his might _not_to be a moonshine shadow of the First Paul.
It was in this summer of 1834,--month of May,shortly after arriving in London,--that I first saw Sterling's Father.A stout broad gentleman of sixty,perpendicular in attitude,rather showily dressed,and of gracious,ingenious and slightly elaborate manners.It was at Mrs.Austin's in Bayswater;he was just taking leave as I entered,so our interview lasted only a moment:but the figure of the man,as Sterling's father,had already an interest for me,and I remember the time well.Captain Edward Sterling,as we formerly called him,had now quite dropt the military title,nobody even of his friends now remembering it;and was known,according to his wish,in political and other circles,as Mr.Sterling,a private gentleman of some figure.
Over whom hung,moreover,a kind of mysterious nimbus as the principal or one of the principal writers in the _Times_,which gave an interesting chiaroscuro to his character in society.A potent,profitable,but somewhat questionable position;of which,though he affected,and sometimes with anger,altogether to disown it,and rigorously insisted on the rights of anonymity,he was not unwilling to take the honors too:the private pecuniary advantages were very undeniable;and his reception in the Clubs,and occasionally in higher quarters,was a good deal modelled on the universal belief in it.
John Sterling at Herstmonceux that afternoon,and his Father here in London,would have offered strange contrasts to an eye that had seen them both.Contrasts,and yet concordances.They were two very different-looking men,and were following two very different modes of activity that afternoon.And yet with a strange family likeness,too,both in the men and their activities;the central impulse in each,the faculties applied to fulfil said impulse,not at all dissimilar,--as grew visible to me on farther knowledge.