assage Spainward from the Thames; well
if arrestment do not suddenly come from the Thames! It was on this
occasion, I suppose, that the passage in the open boat to St. Valery
occurred;--speedy flight in what boat or boats, open or shut, could
be got at Deal on the sudden. Sterling himself, according to Hare's
authority, actually went with them so far. Enough, they got shipping,
as private passengers in one craft or the other; and, by degrees or at
once, arrived all at Gibraltar,--Boyd, one or two young democrats of
Regent Street, the fifty picked Spaniards, and Torrijos,--safe, though
without arms; still in the early part of the year.

CHAPTER XI. MARRIAGE: ILL-HEALTH; WEST-INDIES.

Sterling's outlooks and occupations, now that his Spanish friends were
gone, must have been of a rather miscellaneous confused description.
He had the enterprise of a married life close before him; and as yet
no profession, no fixed pursuit whatever. His health was already very
threatening; often such as to disable him from present activity,
and occasion the gravest apprehensions; practically blocking up all
important courses whatsoever, and rendering the future, if even
life were lengthened and he had any future, an insolubility for him.
Parliament was shut, public life was shut: Literature,--if, alas, any
solid fruit could lie in literature!

Or perhaps one's health would mend, after all; and many things be better
than was hoped! Sterling was not of a despondent temper, or given in
any measure to lie down and indolently moan: I fancy he walked briskly
enough into this tempestuous-looking future; not heeding too much its
thunderous aspects; doing swiftly, for the day, what his hand found to
do. _Arthur Coningsby_, I suppose, lay on the anvil at present; visits
to Coleridge were now again more possible; grand news from Torrijos
might be looked for, though only small yet came:--nay here, in the hot
July, is France, at least, all thrown into volcano again! Here are the
miraculous Three Days; heralding, in thunder, great things to Torrijos
and others; filling with babblement and vaticination the mouths and
hearts of all democratic men.

So rolled along, in tumult of chaotic remembrance and uncertain hope,
in manifold emotion, and the confused struggle (for Sterling as for
the world) to extricate the New from the falling ruins of the Old, the
summer and autumn of 1830. From Gibraltar and Torrijos the tidings were
vague, unimportant and d