John Sterling's character and writings, which had little business to be spoken of in any Church-court, have hereby been carried thither as if for an exclusive trial; and the mournfulest set of pleadings, out of which nothing but a misjudgment _can_ be formed, prevail there ever since.

The noble Sterling, a radiant child of the empyrean, clad in bright auroral hues in the memory of all that knew him,--what is he doing here in inquisitorial _sanbenito_, with nothing but ghastly spectralities prowling round him, and inarticulately screeching and gibbering what they call their judgment on him! "The sin of Hare's Book," says one of my Correspondents in those years, "is easily defined, and not very condemnable, but it is nevertheless ruinous to his task as Biographer.

He takes up Sterling as a clergyman merely.

Sterling, I find, was a curate for exactly eight months; during eight months and no more had he any special relation to the Church.

But he was a man, and had relation to the Universe, for eight-and-thirty years: and it is in this latter character, to which all the others were but features and transitory hues, that we wish to know him.