omise of new blessedness and healing under its Wings; and this too has
soon found itself an illusion: "Not by Priesthood either lies the way,
then. Once more, where does the way lie!"--To follow illusions till they
burst and vanish is the lot of all new souls who, luckily or lucklessly,
are left to their own choice in starting on this Earth. The roads are
many; the authentic finger-posts are few,--never fewer than in this era,
when in so many senses the waters are out. Sterling of all men had the
quickest sense for nobleness, heroism and the human _summum bonum_; the
liveliest headlong spirit of adventure and audacity; few gifted living
men less stubbornness of perseverance. Illusions, in his chase of the
_summum bonum_, were not likely to be wanting; aberrations, and wasteful
changes of course, were likely to be many! It is in the history of
such vehement, trenchant, far-shining and yet intrinsically light and
volatile souls, missioned into this epoch to seek their way there, that
we best see what a confused epoch it is.

This clerical aberration,--for such it undoubtedly was in Sterling,--we
have ascribed to Coleridge; and do clearly think that had there been
no Coleridge, neither had this been,--nor had English Puseyism or some
other strange enough universal portents been. Nevertheless, let us say
farther that it lay partly in the general bearing of the world for
such a man. This battle, universal in our sad epoch of "all old things
passing away" against "all things becoming new," has its summary and
animating heart in that of Radicalism against Church; there, as in its
flaming core, and point of focal splendor, does the heroic worth that
lies in each side of the quarrel most clearly disclose itself; and
Sterling was the man, above many, to recognize such worth on both sides.
Natural enough, in such a one, that the light of Radicalism having gone
out in darkness for him, the opposite splendor should next rise as the
chief, and invite his loyalty till it also failed. In one form or the
other, such an aberration was not unlikely for him. But an aberration,
especially in this form, we may certainly call it. No man of Sterling's
veracity, had he clearly consulted his own heart, or had his own heart
been capable of clearly responding, and not been dazzled and bewildered
by transient fantasies and theosophic moonshine, could have undertaken
this function. His heart would have answered: "No, thou canst not. What
is incredibl