written, I find I have not nearly done justice
to my own sense of the genius and moral energy of the book; but this
is what you will best excuse.--Believe me most sincerely and faithfully
yours,

"JOHN STERLING."

Here are sufficient points of "discrepancy with agreement," here is
material for talk and argument enough; and an expanse of free discussion
open, which requires rather to be speedily restricted for convenience'
sake, than allowed to widen itself into the boundless, as it tends to
do!--

In all Sterling's Letters to myself and others, a large collection of
which now lies before me, duly copied and indexed, there is, to one that
knew his speech as well, a perhaps unusual likeness between the speech
and the Letters; and yet, for most part, with a great inferiority on
the part of these. These, thrown off, one and all of them, without
premeditation, and with most rapid-flowing pen, are naturally as like
his speech as writing can well be; this is their grand merit to us:
but on the other hand, the want of the living tones, swift looks and
motions, and manifold dramatic accompaniments, tells heavily, more
heavily than common. What can be done with champagne itself, much more
with soda-water, when the gaseous spirit is fled! The reader, in any
specimens he may see, must bear this in mind.

Meanwhile these Letters do excel in honesty, in candor and transparency;
their very carelessness secures their excellence in this respect. And in
another much deeper and more essential respect I must likewise call them
excellent,--in their childlike goodness, in the purity of heart, the
noble affection and fidelity they everywhere manifest in the writer.
This often touchingly strikes a familiar friend in reading them; and
will awaken reminiscences (when you have the commentary in your own
memory) which are sad and beautiful, and not without reproach to you on
occasion. To all friends, and all good causes, this man is true; behind
their back as before their face, the same man!--Such traits of the
autobiographic sort, from these Letters, as can serve to paint him
or his life, and promise not to weary the reader, I must endeavor to
select, in the sequel.

CHAPTER III. BAYSWATER

Sterling continued to reside at Herstmonceux through the spring and
summer; holding by the peaceable retired house he still had there, till
the vague future might more definitely shape itself, a