idle long.
Some of his best Pieces--the Onyx _Ring_, for one, as we perceive--were
written here this winter. Out of the turbid whirlpool of the days he
strives assiduously to snatch what he can.

Sterling's communications with _Blackwood's Magazine_ had now issued
in some open sanction of him by Professor Wilson, the distinguished
presiding spirit of that Periodical; a fact naturally of high importance
to him under the literary point of view. For Wilson, with his clear
flashing eye and great genial heart, had at once recognized Sterling;
and lavished stormily, in his wild generous way, torrents of praise
on him in the editorial comments: which undoubtedly was one of the
gratefulest literary baptisms, by fire or by water, that could befall a
soul like Sterling's. He bore it very gently, being indeed past the
age to have his head turned by anybody's praises: nor do I think the
exaggeration that was in these eulogies did him any ill whatever; while
surely their generous encouragement did him much good, in his solitary
struggle towards new activity under such impediments as his. _Laudari a
laudato_; to be called noble by one whom you and the world recognize as
noble: this great satisfaction, never perhaps in such a degree before
or after had now been vouchsafed to Sterling; and was, as I compute, an
important fact for him. He proceeded on his pilgrimage with new energy,
and felt more and more as if authentically consecrated to the same.

The _Onyx Ring_, a curious Tale, with wild improbable basis, but with
a noble glow of coloring and with other high merits in it, a Tale still
worth reading, in which, among the imaginary characters, various friends
of Sterling's are shadowed forth, not always in the truest manner, came
out in _Blackwood_ in the winter of this year. Surely a very high talent
for painting, both of scenery and persons, is visible in this Fiction;
the promise of a Novel such as we have few. But there wants maturing,
wants purifying of clear from unclear;--properly there want patience
and steady depth. The basis, as we said, is wild and loose; and in the
details, lucent often with fine color, and dipt in beautiful sunshine,
there are several things mis_seen_, untrue, which is the worst species
of mispainting. Witness, as Sterling himself would have by and by
admitted, the "empty clockcase" (so we called it) which he has labelled
Goethe,--which puts all other untruths in the Piece to silence.

One of the gre