But by far the most important foreign home he visited was that of Coleridge on the Hill of Highgate,--if it were not rather a foreign shrine and Dodona-Oracle, as he then reckoned,--to which (onwards from 1828, as would appear) he was already an assiduous pilgrim.

Concerning whom, and Sterling's all-important connection with him, there will be much to say anon.
Here, from this period, is a Letter of Sterling's, which the glimpses it affords of bright scenes and figures now sunk, so many of them, sorrowfully to the realm of shadows, will render interesting to some of my readers.

To me on the mere Letter, not on its contents alone, there is accidentally a kind of fateful stamp.

A few months after Charles Buller's death, while his loss was mourned by many hearts, and to his poor Mother all light except what hung upon his memory had gone out in the world, a certain delicate and friendly hand, hoping to give the poor bereaved lady a good moment, sought out this Letter of Sterling's, one morning, and called, with intent to read it to her:--alas, the poor lady had herself fallen suddenly into the languors of death, help of another grander sort now close at hand; and to her this Letter was never read! On "Fanny Kemble," it appears, there is an Essay by Sterling in the _Athenaeum_ of this year: "16th December, 1829." Very laudatory, I conclude.

He much admired her genius, nay was thought at one time to be vaguely on the edge of still more chivalrous feelings.