These, all of them, were amiable, elegant and pleasant people;--such was especially an eldest daughter, Susannah Barton, a stately blooming black-eyed young woman, attractive enough in form and character; full of gay softness, of indolent sense and enthusiasm; about Sterling's own age, if not a little older.

In this house, which opened to him, more decisively than his Father's, a new stratum of society, and where his reception for Charles's sake and his own was of the kindest, he liked very well to be; and spent, I suppose, many of his vacant half-hours, lightly chatting with the elders or the youngsters,--doubtless with the young lady too, though as yet without particular intentions on either side.
Nor, with all the Coleridge fermentation, was democratic Radicalism by any means given up;--though how it was to live if the Coleridgean moonshine took effect, might have been an abtruse question.

Hitherto, while said moonshine was but taking effect, and coloring the outer surface of things without quite penetrating into the heart, democratic Liberalism, revolt against superstition and oppression, and help to whosoever would revolt, was still the grand element in Sterling's creed; and practically he stood, not ready only, but full of alacrity to fulfil all its behests.

We heard long since of the "black dragoons,"-- whom doubtless the new moonshine had considerably silvered-over into new hues, by this time;--but here now, while Radicalism is tottering for him and threatening to crumble, comes suddenly the grand consummation and explosion of Radicalism in his life; whereby, all at once, Radicalism exhausted and ended itself, and appeared no more there.
In those years a visible section of the London population, and conspicuous out of all proportion to its size or value, was a small knot of Spaniards, who had sought shelter here as Political Refugees.
"Political Refugees:" a tragic succession of that class is one of the possessions of England in our time.

Six-and-twenty years ago, when I first saw London, I remember those unfortunate Spaniards among the new phenomena.