therwise were prosperous in outward
circumstances; the Father's position more and more developing itself
into affluent security, an agreeable circle of acquaintance, and a
certain real influence, though of a peculiar sort, according to his
gifts for work in this world.

Sterling's Tutor at Trinity College was Julius Hare, now the
distinguished Archdeacon of Lewes:--who soon conceived a great esteem
for him, and continued ever afterwards, in looser or closer connection,
his loved and loving friend. As the Biographical and Editorial work
above alluded to abundantly evinces. Mr. Hare celebrates the wonderful
and beautiful gifts, the sparkling ingenuity, ready logic, eloquent
utterance, and noble generosities and pieties of his pupil;--records
in particular how once, on a sudden alarm of fire in some neighboring
College edifice while his lecture was proceeding, all hands rushed out
to help; how the undergraduates instantly formed themselves in lines
from the fire to the river, and in swift continuance kept passing
buckets as was needful, till the enemy was visibly fast yielding,--when
Mr. Hare, going along the line, was astonished to find Sterling, at the
river-end of it, standing up to his waist in water, deftly dealing with
the buckets as they came and went. You in the river, Sterling; you with
your coughs, and dangerous tendencies of health!--"Somebody must be
in it," answered Sterling; "why not I, as well as another?" Sterling's
friends may remember many traits of that kind. The swiftest in all
things, he was apt to be found at the head of the column, whithersoever
the march might be; if towards any brunt of danger, there was he surest
to be at the head; and of himself and his peculiar risks or impediments
he was negligent at all times, even to an excessive and plainly
unreasonable degree.

Mr. Hare justly refuses him the character of an exact scholar, or
technical proficient at any time in either of the ancient literatures.
But he freely read in Greek and Latin, as in various modern languages;
and in all fields, in the classical as well, his lively faculty of
recognition and assimilation had given him large booty in proportion to
his labor. One cannot under any circumstances conceive of Sterling as
a steady dictionary philologue, historian, or archaeologist; nor did he
here, nor could he well, attempt that course. At the same time, Greek
and the Greeks being here before him, he could not fail to gather
somewhat fro