e,
his fourth. This also is, since Bayswater, the fourth time his family
has had to shift on his account. Bayswater; then to Bordeaux, to
Blackheath and Knightsbridge (during the Madeira time), to Hastings
(Roman time); and now to Clifton, not to stay there either: a sadly
nomadic life to be prescribed to a civilized man!

At Clifton his habitation was speedily enough set up; household
conveniences, methods of work, daily promenades on foot or horseback,
and before long even a circle of friends, or of kindly neighborhoods
ripening into intimacy, were established round him. In all this no man
could be more expert or expeditious, in such cases. It was with singular
facility, in a loving, hoping manner, that he threw himself open to
the new interests and capabilities of the new place; snatched out of
it whatsoever of human or material would suit him; and in brief, in
all senses had pitched his tent-habitation, and grew to look on it as a
house. It was beautiful too, as well as pathetic. This man saw himself
reduced to be a dweller in tents, his house is but a stone tent; and he
can so kindly accommodate himself to that arrangement;--healthy faculty
and diseased necessity, nature and habit, and all manner of things
primary and secondary, original and incidental, conspiring now to make
it easy for him. With the evils of nomadism, he participated to the full
in whatever benefits lie in it for a man.

He had friends enough, old and new, at Clifton, whose intercourse made
the place human for him. Perhaps among the most valued of the former
sort may be mentioned Mrs. Edward Strachey, Widow of the late Indian
Judge, who now resided here; a cultivated, graceful, most devout and
high-minded lady; whom he had known in old years, first probably as
Charles Buller's Aunt, and whose esteem was constant for him, and always
precious to him. She was some ten or twelve years older than he; she
survived him some years, but is now also gone from us. Of new friends
acquired here, besides a skilful and ingenious Dr. Symonds, physician
as well as friend, the principal was Francis Newman, then and still an
ardently inquiring soul, of fine University and other attainments, of
sharp-cutting, restlessly advancing intellect, and the mildest pious
enthusiasm; whose worth, since better known to all the world, Sterling
highly estimated;--and indeed practically testified the same; having by
will appointed him, some years hence, guardian to his eldest