sea that day;--and in the afternoon we
went on the Thames Putney-ward together, we two with my Wife; under
the sunny skies, on the quiet water, and with copious cheery talk, the
remembrance of which is still present enough to me.

This was properly my only specimen of Sterling's preaching. Another
time, late in the same autumn, I did indeed attend him one evening to
some Church in the City,--a big Church behind Cheapside, "built by Wren"
as he carefully informed me;--but there, in my wearied mood, the chief
subject of reflection was the almost total vacancy of the place, and how
an eloquent soul was preaching to mere lamps and prayer-books; and of
the sermon I retain no image. It came up in the way of banter, if he
ever urged the duty of "Church extension," which already he very seldom
did and at length never, what a specimen we once had of bright lamps,
gilt prayer-books, baize-lined pews, Wren-built architecture; and how,
in almost all directions, you might have fired a musket through the
church, and hit no Christian life. A terrible outlook indeed for the
Apostolic laborer in the brick-and-mortar line!--

In the Autumn of this same 1835, he removed permanently to London,
whither all summer he had been evidently tending; took a house in
Bayswater, an airy suburb, half town, half country, near his Father's,
and within fair distance of his other friends and objects; and decided
to await there what the ultimate developments of his course might be.
His house was in Orme Square, close by the corner of that little place
(which has only _three_ sides of houses); its windows looking to the
east: the Number was, and I believe still is, No. 5. A sufficiently
commodious, by no means sumptuous, small mansion; where, with the means
sure to him, he could calculate on finding adequate shelter for his
family, his books and himself, and live in a decent manner, in no terror
of debt, for one thing. His income, I suppose, was not large; but he
lived generally a safe distance within it; and showed himself always as
a man bountiful in money matters, and taking no thought that way.

His study-room in this house was perhaps mainly the drawing-room;
looking out safe, over the little dingy grassplot in front, and the
quiet little row of houses opposite, with the huge dust-whirl of
Oxford Street and London far enough ahead of you as background,--as
back-curtain, blotting out only _half_ your blue hemisphere with dust
and smoke. On the righ