I am ever, dearest Mother, "Your grateful and affectionate "JOHN STERLING." This Letter, I observe, is dated 28th August, 1831; which is otherwise a day of mark to the world and me,--the Poet Goethe's last birthday.

While Sterling sat in the Tropical solitudes, penning this history, little European Weimar had its carriages and state-carriages busy on the streets, and was astir with compliments and visiting-cards, doing its best, as heretofore, on behalf of a remarkable day; and was not, for centuries or tens of centuries, to see the like of it again!-- At Brighton, the hospitable home of those Munros, our friends continued for above two months.

Their first child, Edward, as above noticed, was born here, "14th October, 1831;"-- and now the poor lady, safe from all her various perils, could return to Colonarie under good auspices.
It was in this year that I first heard definitely of Sterling as a contemporary existence; and laid up some note and outline of him in my memory, as of one whom I might yet hope to know.

John Mill, Mrs.Austin and perhaps other friends, spoke of him with great affection and much pitying admiration; and hoped to see him home again, under better omens, from over the seas.

As a gifted amiable being, of a certain radiant tenuity and velocity, too thin and rapid and diffusive, in danger of dissipating himself into the vague, or alas into death itself: it was so that, like a spot of bright colors, rather than a portrait with features, he hung occasionally visible in my imagination..