ratum of society, and where his reception for
Charles's sake and his own was of the kindest, he liked very well to be;
and spent, I suppose, many of his vacant half-hours, lightly chatting
with the elders or the youngsters,--doubtless with the young lady too,
though as yet without particular intentions on either side.

Nor, with all the Coleridge fermentation, was democratic Radicalism
by any means given up;--though how it was to live if the Coleridgean
moonshine took effect, might have been an abtruse question. Hitherto,
while said moonshine was but taking effect, and coloring the outer
surface of things without quite penetrating into the heart, democratic
Liberalism, revolt against superstition and oppression, and help to
whosoever would revolt, was still the grand element in Sterling's creed;
and practically he stood, not ready only, but full of alacrity to fulfil
all its behests. We heard long since of the "black dragoons,"--whom
doubtless the new moonshine had considerably silvered-over into new
hues, by this time;--but here now, while Radicalism is tottering for him
and threatening to crumble, comes suddenly the grand consummation and
explosion of Radicalism in his life; whereby, all at once, Radicalism
exhausted and ended itself, and appeared no more there.

In those years a visible section of the London population, and
conspicuous out of all proportion to its size or value, was a small
knot of Spaniards, who had sought shelter here as Political Refugees.
"Political Refugees:" a tragic succession of that class is one of the
possessions of England in our time. Six-and-twenty years ago, when I
first saw London, I remember those unfortunate Spaniards among the new
phenomena. Daily in the cold spring air, under skies so unlike their
own, you could see a group of fifty or a hundred stately tragic figures,
in proud threadbare cloaks; perambulating, mostly with closed lips, the
broad pavements of Euston Square and the regions about St. Pancras new
Church. Their lodging was chiefly in Somers Town, as I understood: and
those open pavements about St. Pancras Church were the general place of
rendezvous. They spoke little or no English; knew nobody, could employ
themselves on nothing, in this new scene. Old steel-gray heads, many
of them; the shaggy, thick, blue-black hair of others struck you; their
brown complexion, dusky look of suppressed fire, in general their tragic
condition as of caged Numidian lions.

That parti