to claim except the birth and genealogy,
for he left it almost before the years of memory; and in his mature days
regarded it, if with a little more recognition and intelligence, yet
without more participation in any of its accents outward or inward,
than others natives of Middlesex or Surrey, where the scene of his chief
education lay.

The climate of Bute is rainy, soft of temperature; with skies of unusual
depth and brilliancy, while the weather is fair. In that soft rainy
climate, on that wild-wooded rocky coast, with its gnarled mountains and
green silent valleys, with its seething rain-storms and many-sounding
seas, was young Sterling ushered into his first schooling in this world.
I remember one little anecdote his Father told me of those first
years: One of the cows had calved; young John, still in petticoats, was
permitted to go, holding by his father's hand, and look at the newly
arrived calf; a mystery which he surveyed with open intent eyes, and the
silent exercise of all the scientific faculties he had;--very strange
mystery indeed, this new arrival, and fresh denizen of our Universe:
"Wull't eat a-body?" said John in his first practical Scotch, inquiring
into the tendencies this mystery might have to fall upon a little fellow
and consume him as provision: "Will it eat one, Father?"--Poor little
open-eyed John: the family long bantered him with this anecdote; and
we, in far other years, laughed heartily on hearing it.--Simple peasant
laborers, ploughers, house-servants, occasional fisher-people too; and
the sight of ships, and crops, and Nature's doings where Art has little
meddled with her: this was the kind of schooling our young friend had,
first of all; on this bench of the grand world-school did he sit, for
the first four years of his life.

Edward Sterling his Father, a man who subsequently came to considerable
notice in the world, was originally of Waterford in Munster; son of the
Episcopalian Clergyman there; and chief representative of a family of
some standing in those parts. Family founded, it appears, by a
Colonel Robert Sterling, called also Sir Robert Sterling; a Scottish
Gustavus-Adolphus soldier, whom the breaking out of the Civil War had
recalled from his German campaignings, and had before long, though not
till after some waverings on his part, attached firmly to the Duke
of Ormond and to the King's Party in that quarrel. A little bit of
genealogy, since it lies ready to my hand, gathere