But you may suppose that my thoughts often move towards you,and that I fancy what you may be doing in the great City,--the greatest on the Earth,--where I spent so many years of my life.I first saw London when I was between eight and nine years old,and then lived in or near it for the whole of the next ten,and more there than anywhere else for seven years longer.Since then I have hardly ever been a year without seeing the place,and have often lived in it for a considerable time.There I grew from childhood to be a man.My little Brothers and Sisters,and since,my Mother,died and are buried there.There I first saw your Mamma,and was there married.It seems as if,in some strange way,London were a part of Me or I of London.
I think of it often,not as full of noise and dust and confusion,but as something silent,grand and everlasting.
"When I fancy how you are walking in the same streets,and moving along the same river,that I used to watch so intently,as if in a dream,when younger than you are,--I could gladly burst into tears,not of grief,but with a feeling that there is no name for.
Everything is so wonderful,great and holy,so sad and yet not bitter,so full of Death and so bordering on Heaven.Can you understand anything of this?If you can,you will begin to know what a serious matter our Life is;how unworthy and stupid it is to trifle it away without heed;what a wretched,insignificant,worthless creature any one comes to be,who does not as soon as possible bend his whole strength,as in stringing a stiff bow,to doing whatever task lies first before him....
"We have a mist here to-day from the sea.It reminds me of that which I used to see from my house in St,Vincent,rolling over the great volcano and the mountains round it.I used to look at it from our windows with your Mamma,and you a little baby in her arms.
"This Letter is not so well written as I could wish,but I hope you will be able to read it.
"Your affectionate Papa,"JOHN STERLING."
These Letters go from June 9th to August 2d,at which latter date vacation-time arrived,and the Boy returned to him.The Letters are preserved;and surely well worth preserving.
In this manner he wore the slow doomed months away.Day after day his little period of Library went on waning,shrinking into less and less;but I think it never altogether ended till the general end came.--For courage,for active audacity we had all known Sterling;but such a fund of mild stoicism,of devout patience and heroic composure,we did not hitherto know in him.His sufferings,his sorrows,all his unutterabilities in this slow agony,he held right manfully down;marched loyally,as at the bidding of the Eternal,into the dread Kingdoms,and no voice of weakness was heard from him.Poor noble Sterling,he had struggled so high and gained so little here!But this also he did gain,to be a brave man;and it was much.
Summer passed into Autumn:Sterling's earthly businesses,to the last detail of them,were now all as good as done:his strength too was wearing to its end,his daily turn in the Library shrunk now to a span.He had to hold himself as if in readiness for the great voyage at any moment.One other Letter I must give;not quite the last message I had from Sterling,but the last that can be inserted here:a brief Letter,fit to be forever memorable to the receiver of it:--"_To Thomas Carlyle,Esq.,Chelsea,London_.
"HILLSIDE,VENTNOR,10th August,1844.
MY DEAR CARLYLE,--For the first time for many months it seems possible to send you a few words;merely,however,for Remembrance and Farewell.On higher matters there is nothing to say.I tread the common road into the great darkness,without any thought of fear,and with very much of hope.Certainty indeed I have none.With regard to You and Me I cannot begin to write;having nothing for it but to keep shut the lid of those secrets with all the iron weights that are in my power.Towards me it is still more true than towards England that no man has been and done like you.Heaven bless you!If I can lend a hand when THERE,that will not be wanting.It is all very strange,but not one hundredth part so sad as it seems to the standers-by.
"Your Wife knows my mind towards her,and will believe it without asseverations.
"Yours to the last,"JOHN STERLING."
It was a bright Sunday morning when this letter came to me:if in the great Cathedral of Immensity I did no worship that day,the fault surely was my own.Sterling affectionately refused to see me;which also was kind and wise.And four days before his death,there are some stanzas of verse for me,written as if in star-fire and immortal tears;which are among my sacred possessions,to be kept for myself alone.
His business with the world was done;the one business now to await silently what may lie in other grander worlds."God is great,"he was wont to say:"God is great."The Maurices were now constantly near him;Mrs.Maurice assiduously watching over him.On the evening of Wednesday the 18th of September,his Brother,as he did every two or three days,came down;found him in the old temper,weak in strength but not very sensibly weaker;they talked calmly together for an hour;then Anthony left his bedside,and retired for the night,not expecting any change.But suddenly,about eleven o'clock,there came a summons and alarm:hurrying to his Brother's room,he found his Brother dying;and in a short while more the faint last struggle was ended,and all those struggles and strenuous often-foiled endeavors of eight-and-thirty years lay hushed in death.
