he had studied at Trinity College, Dublin; visited the Inns
of Court here, and trained himself for the Irish Bar. To the Bar he
had been duly called, and was waiting for the results,--when, in his
twenty-fifth year, the Irish Rebellion broke out; whereupon the Irish
Barristers decided to raise a corps of loyal Volunteers, and a complete
change introduced itself into Edward Sterling's way of life. For,
naturally, he had joined the array of Volunteers;--fought, I have
heard, "in three actions with the rebels" (Vinegar Hill, for one); and
doubtless fought well: but in the mess-rooms, among the young military
and civil officials, with all of whom he was a favorite, he had acquired
a taste for soldier life, and perhaps high hopes of succeeding in it: at
all events, having a commission in the Lancashire Militia offered
him, he accepted that; altogether quitted the Bar, and became Captain
Sterling thenceforth. From the Militia, it appears, he had volunteered
with his Company into the Line; and, under some disappointments, and
official delays of expected promotion, was continuing to serve as
Captain there, "Captain of the Eighth Battalion of Reserve," say the
Military Almanacs of 1803,--in which year the quarters happened to be
Derry, where new events awaited him. At a ball in Derry he met with Miss
Hester Coningham, the queen of the scene, and of the fair world in Derry
at that time. The acquaintance, in spite of some Opposition, grew with
vigor, and rapidly ripened: and "at Fehan Church, Diocese of Derry,"
where the Bride's father had a country-house, "on Thursday 5th April,
1804, Hester Coningham, only daughter of John Coningham, Esquire,
Merchant in Derry, and of Elizabeth Campbell his wife," was wedded to
Captain Sterling; she happiest to him happiest,--as by Nature's kind law
it is arranged.

Mrs. Sterling, even in her later days, had still traces of the old
beauty: then and always she was a woman of delicate, pious, affectionate
character; exemplary as a wife, a mother and a friend. A refined female
nature; something tremulous in it, timid, and with a certain rural
freshness still unweakened by long converse with the world. The tall
slim figure, always of a kind of quaker neatness; the innocent anxious
face, anxious bright hazel eyes; the timid, yet gracefully cordial
ways, the natural intelligence, instinctive sense and worth, were very
characteristic. Her voice too; with its something of soft querulousness,
easily ada