t, you had the continuous growl of the Uxbridge
Road and its wheels, coming as lullaby not interruption. Leftward and
rearward, after some thin belt of houses, lay mere country; bright
sweeping green expanses, crowned by pleasant Hampstead, pleasant Harrow,
with their rustic steeples rising against the sky. Here on winter
evenings, the bustle of removal being all well ended, and family and
books got planted in their new places, friends could find Sterling, as
they often did, who was delighted to be found by them, and would give
and take, vividly as few others, an hour's good talk at any time.

His outlooks, it must be admitted, were sufficiently vague and
overshadowed; neither the past nor the future of a too joyful kind.
Public life, in any professional form, is quite forbidden; to work
with his fellows anywhere appears to be forbidden: nor can the humblest
solitary endeavor to work worthily as yet find an arena. How unfold
one's little bit of talent; and live, and not lie sleeping, while it
is called To-day? As Radical, as Reforming Politician in any public or
private form,--not only has this, in Sterling's case, received tragical
sentence and execution; but the opposite extreme, the Church whither he
had fled, likewise proves abortive: the Church also is not the haven for
him at all. What is to be done? Something must be done, and soon,--under
penalties. Whoever has received, on him there is an inexorable behest to
give. "_Fais ton fait_, Do thy little stroke of work:" this is Nature's
voice, and the sum of all the commandments, to each man!

A shepherd of the people, some small Agamemnon after his sort, doing
what little sovereignty and guidance he can in his day and generation:
such every gifted soul longs, and should long, to be. But how, in any
measure, is the small kingdom necessary for Sterling to be attained? Not
through newspapers and parliaments, not by rubrics and reading-desks:
none of the sceptres offered in the world's market-place, nor none of
the crosiers there, it seems, can be the shepherd's-crook for this man.
A most cheerful, hoping man; and full of swift faculty, though much
lamed,--considerably bewildered too; and tending rather towards the
wastes and solitary places for a home; the paved world not being
friendly to him hitherto! The paved world, in fact, both on its
practical and spiritual side, slams to its doors against him; indicates
that he cannot enter, and even must not,--that it will prov