ing Society
called The Union; where on stated evenings was much logic, and other
spiritual fencing and ingenuous collision,--probably of a really
superior quality in that kind; for not a few of the then disputants have
since proved themselves men of parts, and attained distinction in the
intellectual walks of life. Frederic Maurice, Richard Trench, John
Kemble, Spedding, Venables, Charles Buller, Richard Milnes and
others:--I have heard that in speaking and arguing, Sterling was the
acknowledged chief in this Union Club; and that "none even came near
him, except the late Charles Buller," whose distinction in this and
higher respects was also already notable.

The questions agitated seem occasionally to have touched on the
political department, and even on the ecclesiastical. I have heard one
trait of Sterling's eloquence, which survived on the wings of grinning
rumor, and had evidently borne upon Church Conservatism in some form:
"Have they not,"--or perhaps it was, Has she (the Church) not,--"a
black dragoon in every parish, on good pay and rations, horse-meat and
man's-meat, to patrol and battle for these things?" The "black dragoon,"
which naturally at the moment ruffled the general young imagination
into stormy laughter, points towards important conclusions in respect
to Sterling at this time. I conclude he had, with his usual alacrity and
impetuous daring, frankly adopted the anti-superstitious side of things;
and stood scornfully prepared to repel all aggressions or pretensions
from the opposite quarter. In short, that he was already, what
afterwards there is no doubt about his being, at all points a Radical,
as the name or nickname then went. In other words, a young ardent soul
looking with hope and joy into a world which was infinitely beautiful to
him, though overhung with falsities and foul cobwebs as world never was
before; overloaded, overclouded, to the zenith and the nadir of it,
by incredible uncredited traditions, solemnly sordid hypocrisies, and
beggarly deliriums old and new; which latter class of objects it was
clearly the part of every noble heart to expend all its lightnings and
energies in burning up without delay, and sweeping into their native
Chaos out of such a Cosmos as this. Which process, it did not then seem
to him could be very difficult; or attended with much other than heroic
joy, and enthusiasm of victory or of battle, to the gallant operator, in
his part of it. This was, with modificat