certain terms? What is indispensable let us not
omit to say. The history of a man's childhood is the description of his
parents and environment: this is his inarticulate but highly important
history, in those first times, while of articulate he has yet none.

Edward Sterling had now just entered on his thirty-fourth year; and was
already a man experienced in fortunes and changes. A native of Waterford
in Munster, as already mentioned; born in the "Deanery House of
Waterford, 27th February, 1773," say the registers. For his Father, as
we learn, resided in the Deanery House, though he was not himself Dean,
but only "Curate of the Cathedral" (whatever that may mean); he was
withal rector of two other livings, and the Dean's friend,--friend
indeed of the Dean's kinsmen the Beresfords generally; whose grand house
of Curraghmore, near by Waterford, was a familiar haunt of his and his
children's. This reverend gentleman, along with his three livings and
high acquaintanceships, had inherited political connections;--inherited
especially a Government Pension, with survivorship for still one life
beyond his own; his father having been Clerk of the Irish House of
Commons at the time of the Union, of which office the lost salary was
compensated in this way. The Pension was of two hundred pounds; and only
expired with the life of Edward, John's Father, in 1847. There were,
and still are, daughters of the family; but Edward was the only
son;--descended, too, from the Scottish hero Wallace, as the old
gentleman would sometimes admonish him; his own wife, Edward's mother,
being of that name, and boasting herself, as most Scotch Wallaces do, to
have that blood in her veins.

This Edward had picked up, at Waterford, and among the young Beresfords
of Curraghmore and elsewhere, a thoroughly Irish form of character: fire
and fervor, vitality of all kinds, in genial abundance; but in a much
more loquacious, ostentatious, much _louder_ style than is freely
patronized on this side of the Channel. Of Irish accent in speech he had
entirely divested himself, so as not to be traced by any vestige in that
respect; but his Irish accent of character, in all manner of other more
important respects, was very recognizable. An impetuous man, full
of real energy, and immensely conscious of the same; who transacted
everything not with the minimum of fuss and noise, but with the maximum:
a very Captain Whirlwind, as one was tempted to call him.

In youth,