A pious soul we may justly call him;devoutly submissive to the will of the Supreme in all things:the highest and sole essential form which Religion can assume in man,and without which all forms of religion are a mockery and a delusion in man.Doubtless,in so clear and filial a heart there must have dwelt the perennial feeling of silent worship;which silent feeling,as we have seen,he was eager enough to express by all good ways of utterance;zealously adopting such appointed forms and creeds as the dignitaries of the World had fixed upon and solemnly named recommendable;prostrating his heart in such Church,by such accredited rituals and seemingly fit or half-fit methods,as his poor time and country had to offer him,--not rejecting the said methods till they stood convicted of palpable unfitness and then doing it right gently withal,rather letting them drop as pitiably dead for him,than angrily hurling them out of doors as needing to be killed.By few Englishmen of his epoch had the thing called Church of England been more loyally appealed to as a spiritual mother.
And yet,as I said before,it may be questioned whether piety,what we call devotion or worship,was the principle deepest in him.In spite of his Coleridge discipleship,and his once headlong operations following thereon,I used to judge that his piety was prompt and pure rather than great or intense;that,on the whole,religious devotion was not the deepest element of him.His reverence was ardent and just,ever ready for the thing or man that deserved revering,or seemed to deserve it:but he was of too joyful,light and hoping a nature to go to the depths of that feeling,much more to dwell perennially in it.He had no fear in his composition;terror and awe did not blend with his respect of anything.In no scene or epoch could he have been a Church Saint,a fanatic enthusiast,or have worn out his life in passive martyrdom,sitting patient in his grim coal-mine,looking at the "three ells"of Heaven high overhead there.
In sorrow he would not dwell;all sorrow he swiftly subdued,and shook away from him.How could you have made an Indian Fakir of the Greek Apollo,"whose bright eye lends brightness,and never yet saw a shadow"?--I should say,not religious reverence,rather artistic admiration was the essential character of him:a fact connected with all other facts in the physiognomy of his life and self,and giving a tragic enough character to much of the history he had among us.
Poor Sterling,he was by nature appointed for a Poet,then,--a Poet after his sort,or recognizer and delineator of the Beautiful;and not for a Priest at all?Striving towards the sunny heights,out of such a level and through such an element as ours in these days is,he had strange aberrations appointed him,and painful wanderings amid the miserable gaslights,bog-fires,dancing meteors and putrid phosphorescences which form the guidance of a young human soul at present!Not till after trying all manner of sublimely illuminated places,and finding that the basis of them was putridity,artificial gas and quaking bog,did he,when his strength was all done,discover his true sacred hill,and passionately climb thither while life was fast ebbing!--A tragic history,as all histories are;yet a gallant,brave and noble one,as not many are.It is what,to a radiant son of the Muses,and bright messenger of the harmonious Wisdoms,this poor world--if he himself have not strength enough,and _inertia_enough,and amid his harmonious eloquences silence enough--has provided at present.Many a high-striving,too hasty soul,seeking guidance towards eternal excellence from the official Black-artists,and successful Professors of political,ecclesiastical,philosophical,commercial,general and particular Legerdemain,will recognize his own history in this image of a fellow-pilgrim's.
