xy, for a moment. The soul of his own
creed, in those days, was far other than this indifference to Pot or Pan
in such departments of inquiry.

To me his sentiments for most part were lovable and admirable, though in
the logical outcome there was everywhere room for opposition. I admired
the temper, the longing towards antique heroism, in this young man of
the nineteenth century; but saw not how, except in some German-English
empire of the air, he was ever to realize it on those terms. In fact,
it became clear to me more and more that here was nobleness of heart
striving towards all nobleness; here was ardent recognition of the worth
of Christianity, for one thing; but no belief in it at all, in my sense
of the word belief,--no belief but one definable as mere theoretic
moonshine, which would never stand the wind and weather of fact. Nay it
struck me farther that Sterling's was not intrinsically, nor had ever
been in the highest or chief degree, a devotional mind. Of course all
excellence in man, and worship as the supreme excellence, was part
of the inheritance of this gifted man: but if called to define him,
I should say, Artist not Saint was the real bent of his being. He had
endless admiration, but intrinsically rather a deficiency of reverence
in comparison. Fear, with its corollaries, on the religious side, he
appeared to have none, nor ever to have had any.

In short, it was a strange enough symptom to me of the bewildered
condition of the world, to behold a man of this temper, and of this
veracity and nobleness, self-consecrated here, by free volition and
deliberate selection, to be a Christian Priest; and zealously struggling
to fancy himself such in very truth. Undoubtedly a singular present
fact;--from which, as from their point of intersection, great
perplexities and aberrations in the past, and considerable confusions in
the future might be seen ominously radiating. Happily our friend, as I
said, needed little hope. To-day with its activities was always bright
and rich to him. His unmanageable, dislocated, devastated world,
spiritual or economical, lay all illuminated in living sunshine, making
it almost beautiful to his eyes, and gave him no hypochondria. A richer
soul, in the way of natural outfit for felicity, for joyful activity in
this world, so far as his strength would go, was nowhere to be met with.

The Letters which Mr. Hare has printed, Letters addressed, I imagine,
mostly to himself, in this