had been removed to the Maurices' since the beginning of this illness,
he addressed, every day or two, sometimes daily, for eight or
nine weeks, a Letter, of general paternal advice and exhortation;
interspersing sparingly, now and then, such notices of his own feelings
and condition as could be addressed to a boy. These Letters, I have
lately read: they give, beyond any he has written, a noble image of the
intrinsic Sterling;--the same face we had long known; but painted now
as on the azure of Eternity, serene, victorious, divinely sad; the dusts
and extraneous disfigurements imprinted on it by the world, now
washed away. One little Excerpt, not the best, but the fittest for its
neighborhood here, will be welcome to the reader:--

"_To Master Edward C. Sterling, London_.
"HILLSIDE, VENTNOR, 29th June, 1844.

"MY DEAR BOY,--We have been going on here as quietly as possible, with
no event that I know of. There is nothing except books to occupy me.
But you may suppose that my thoughts often move towards you, and that
I fancy what you may be doing in the great City,--the greatest on the
Earth,--where I spent so many years of my life. I first saw London when
I was between eight and nine years old, and then lived in or near it for
the whole of the next ten, and more there than anywhere else for seven
years longer. Since then I have hardly ever been a year without seeing
the place, and have often lived in it for a considerable time. There
I grew from childhood to be a man. My little Brothers and Sisters, and
since, my Mother, died and are buried there. There I first saw your
Mamma, and was there married. It seems as if, in some strange way,
London were a part of Me or I of London. I think of it often, not as
full of noise and dust and confusion, but as something silent, grand and
everlasting.

"When I fancy how you are walking in the same streets, and moving along
the same river, that I used to watch so intently, as if in a dream, when
younger than you are,--I could gladly burst into tears, not of
grief, but with a feeling that there is no name for. Everything is so
wonderful, great and holy, so sad and yet not bitter, so full of Death
and so bordering on Heaven. Can you understand anything of this? If
you can, you will begin to know what a serious matter our Life is;
how unworthy and stupid it is to trifle it away without heed; what a
wretched, insignificant, worthless creat