h esteemed there. With
Madam Torrijos, who also was a person of amiable and distinguished
qualities, an affectionate friendship grew up on the part of Mrs.
Sterling, which ended only with the death of these two ladies. John
Sterling, on arriving in London from his University work, naturally
inherited what he liked to take up of this relation: and in the lodgings
in Regent Street, and the democratico-literary element there, Torrijos
became a very prominent, and at length almost the central object.

The man himself, it is well known, was a valiant, gallant man; of
lively intellect, of noble chivalrous character: fine talents, fine
accomplishments, all grounding themselves on a certain rugged veracity,
recommended him to the discerning. He had begun youth in the Court of
Ferdinand; had gone on in Wellington and other arduous, victorious
and unvictorious, soldierings; familiar in camps and council-rooms,
in presence-chambers and in prisons. He knew romantic Spain;--he was
himself, standing withal in the vanguard of Freedom's fight, a kind of
living romance. Infinitely interesting to John Sterling, for one.

It was to Torrijos that the poor Spaniards of Somers Town looked mainly,
in their helplessness, for every species of help. Torrijos, it was
hoped, would yet lead them into Spain and glorious victory there;
meanwhile here in England, under defeat, he was their captain and
sovereign in another painfully inverse sense. To whom, in extremity,
everybody might apply. When all present resources failed, and the
exchequer was quite out, there still remained Torrijos. Torrijos has to
find new resources for his destitute patriots, find loans, find Spanish
lessons for them among his English friends: in all which charitable
operations, it need not be said, John Sterling was his foremost man;
zealous to empty his own purse for the object; impetuous in rushing
hither or thither to enlist the aid of others, and find lessons or
something that would do. His friends, of course, had to assist; the
Bartons, among others, were wont to assist;--and I have heard that the
fair Susan, stirring up her indolent enthusiasm into practicality, was
very successful in finding Spanish lessons, and the like, for these
distressed men. Sterling and his friends were yet new in this business;
but Torrijos and the others were getting old in it?--and doubtless weary
and almost desperate of it. They had now been seven years in it, many of
them; and were asking,