tory with
them!--

But now, Autumn approaching, Sterling had to quit Clubs, for matters
of sadder consideration. A new removal, what we call "his third
peregrinity," had to be decided on; and it was resolved that Rome should
be the goal of it, the journey to be done in company with Calvert, whom
also the Italian climate might be made to serve instead of Madeira. One
of the liveliest recollections I have, connected with the _Anonymous
Club_, is that of once escorting Sterling, after a certain meeting
there, which I had seen only towards the end, and now remember nothing
of,--except that, on breaking up, he proved to be encumbered with a
carpet-bag, and could not at once find a cab for Knightsbridge. Some
small bantering hereupon, during the instants of embargo. But we carried
his carpet-bag, slinging it on my stick, two or three of us alternately,
through dusty vacant streets, under the gaslights and the stars, towards
the surest cab-stand; still jesting, or pretending to jest, he and we,
not in the mirthfulest manner; and had (I suppose) our own feelings
about the poor Pilgrim, who was to go on the morrow, and had hurried to
meet us in this way, as the last thing before leaving England.

CHAPTER VII. ITALY.

The journey to Italy was undertaken by advice of Sir James Clark,
reckoned the chief authority in pulmonary therapeutics; who prophesied
important improvements from it, and perhaps even the possibility
henceforth of living all the year in some English home. Mrs. Sterling
and the children continued in a house avowedly temporary, a furnished
house at Hastings, through the winter. The two friends had set off
for Belgium, while the due warmth was still in the air. They traversed
Belgium, looking well at pictures and such objects; ascended the Rhine;
rapidly traversed Switzerland and the Alps; issuing upon Italy and
Milan, with immense appetite for pictures, and time still to gratify
themselves in that pursuit, and be deliberate in their approach to Rome.
We will take this free-flowing sketch of their passage over the Alps;
written amid "the rocks of Arona,"--Santo Borromeo's country, and poor
little Mignon's! The "elder Perdonnets" are opulent Lausanne people, to
whose late son Sterling had been very kind in Madeira the year before:--

"_To Mrs. Sterling, Knightsbridge, London_.
"ARONA on the LAGO MAGGIORE, 8th Oct., 1838.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I bring down the story of my