The true Canaan and Mount Zion of a Talking Era must ever be Literature: the extraneous, miscellaneous, self-elected, indescribable _Parliamentum_, or Talking Apparatus, which talks by books and printed papers.
A literary Newspaper called _The Athenaeum_, the same which still subsists, had been founded in those years by Mr.Buckingham; James Silk Buckingham, who has since continued notable under various figures.
Mr.Buckingham's _Athenaeum_ had not as yet got into a flourishing condition; and he was willing to sell the copyright of it for a consideration.

Perhaps Sterling and old Cambridge friends of his had been already writing for it.

At all events, Sterling, who had already privately begun writing a Novel, and was clearly looking towards Literature, perceived that his gifted Cambridge friend, Frederic Maurice, was now also at large in a somewhat similar situation; and that here was an opening for both of them, and for other gifted friends.

The copyright was purchased for I know not what sum, nor with whose money, but guess it may have been Sterling's, and no great sum;--and so, under free auspices, themselves their own captains, Maurice and he spread sail for this new voyage of adventure into all the world.

It was about the end of 1828 that readers of periodical literature, and quidnuncs in those departments, began to report the appearance, in a Paper called the _Athenaeum, of_ writings showing a superior brilliancy, and height of aim; one or perhaps two slight specimens of which came into my own hands, in my remote corner, about that time, and were duly recognized by me, while the authors were still far off and hidden behind deep veils.
Some of Sterling's best Papers from the _Athenaeum_ have been published by Archdeacon Hare: first-fruits by a young man of twenty-two; crude, imperfect, yet singularly beautiful and attractive; which will still testify what high literary promise lay in him.