nd 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 suppos