Of this Note I do not think there was the least whisper during Edward Sterling's lifetime;which fact also one likes to remember of him,so ostentatious and little-reticent a man.For the rest,his loyal admiration of Sir Robert Peel,--sanctioned,and as it were almost consecrated to his mind,by the great example of the Duke of Wellington,whom he reverenced always with true hero-worship,--was not a journalistic one,but a most intimate authentic feeling,sufficiently apparent in the very heart of his mind.Among the many opinions "liable to three hundred and sixty-five changes in the course of the year,"this in reference to Peel and Wellington was one which ever changed,but was the same all days and hours.To which,equally genuine,and coming still oftener to light in those times,there might one other be added,one and hardly more:fixed contempt,not unmingled with detestation,for Daniel O'Connell.This latter feeling,we used often laughingly to say,was his grand political principle,the one firm centre where all else went revolving.But internally the other also was deep and constant;and indeed these were properly his _two_centres,--poles of the same axis,negative and positive,the one presupposing the other.
O'Connell he had known in young Dublin days;--and surely no man could well venerate another less!It was his deliberate,unalterable opinion of the then Great O,that good would never come of him;that only mischief,and this in huge measure,would come.That however showy,and adroit in rhetoric and management,he was a man of incurably commonplace intellect,and of no character but a hollow,blustery,pusillanimous and unsound one;great only in maudlin patriotisms,in speciosities,astucities,--in the miserable gifts for becoming Chief _Demagogos_,Leader of a deep-sunk Populace towards _its_Lands of Promise;which trade,in any age or country,and especially in the Ireland of this age,our indignant friend regarded (and with reason)as an extremely ugly one for a man.He had himself zealously advocated Catholic Emancipation,and was not without his Irish patriotism,very different from the Orange sort;but the "Liberator"was not admirable to him,and grew daily less so to an extreme degree.Truly,his scorn of the said Liberator,now riding in supreme dominion on the wings of _blarney_,devil-ward of a surety,with the Liberated all following and huzzaing;his fierce gusts of wrath and abhorrence over him,--rose occasionally almost to the sublime.We laughed often at these vehemences:--and they were not wholly laughable;there was something very serious,and very true,in them!This creed of Edward Sterling's would not now,in either pole of its axis,look so strange as it then did in many quarters.
During those ten years which might be defined as the culminating period of Edward Sterling's life,his house at South Place,Knights bridge,had worn a gay and solid aspect,as if built at last on the high table-land of sunshine and success,the region of storms and dark weather now all victoriously traversed and lying safe below.Health,work,wages,whatever is needful to a man,he had,in rich measure;and a frank stout heart to guide the same:he lived in such style as pleased him;drove his own chariot up and down (himself often acting as Jehu,and reminding you a little of _Times_thunder even in driving);consorted,after a fashion,with the powerful of the world;saw in due vicissitude a miscellany of social faces round him,--pleasant parties,which he liked well enough to garnish by a lord;"Irish lord,if no better might be,"as the banter went.For the rest,he loved men of worth and intellect,and recognized them well,whatever their title:this was his own patent of worth which Nature had given him;a central light in the man,which illuminated into a kind of beauty,serious or humorous,all the artificialities he had accumulated on the surface of him.So rolled his days,not quietly,yet prosperously,in manifold commerce with men.At one in the morning,when all had vanished into sleep,his lamp was kindled in his library;and there,twice or thrice a week,for a three-hours'
space,he launched his bolts,which next morning were to shake the high places of the world.
John's relation to his Father,when one saw John here,was altogether frank,joyful and amiable:he ignored the _Times_thunder for most part,coldly taking the Anonymous for non-extant;spoke of it floutingly,if he spoke at all:indeed a pleasant half-bantering dialect was the common one between Father and Son;and they,especially with the gentle,simple-hearted,just-minded Mother for treble-voice between them,made a very pretty glee-harmony together.
So had it lasted,ever since poor John's voyagings began;his Father's house standing always as a fixed sunny islet with safe harbor for him.
So it could not always last.This sunny islet was now also to break and go down:so many firm islets,fixed pillars in his fluctuating world,pillar after pillar,were to break and go down;till swiftly all,so to speak,were sunk in the dark waters,and he with them!Our little History is now hastening to a close.
