This was, with modifications such as might be, the humor and creed of College Radicalism five-and-twenty years ago.

Rather horrible at that time; seen to be not so horrible now, at least to have grown very universal, and to need no concealment now.

The natural humor and attitude, we may well regret to say,--and honorable not dishonorable, for a brave young soul such as Sterling's, in those years in those localities! I do not find that Sterling had, at that stage, adopted the then prevalent Utilitarian theory of human things.

But neither, apparently, had he rejected it; still less did he yet at all denounce it with the damnatory vehemence we were used to in him at a later period.

Probably he, so much occupied with the negative side of things, had not yet thought seriously of any positive basis for his world; or asked himself, too earnestly, What, then, is the noble rule of living for a man?
In this world so eclipsed and scandalously overhung with fable and hypocrisy, what is the eternal fact, on which a man may front the Destinies and the Immensities?
The day for such questions, sure enough to come in his case, was still but coming.