hese circumstances:--

_To his Mother_.

"_December 21st_, 1839.--The Tin box came quite safe, with all its
miscellaneous contents. I suppose we are to thank you for the _Comic
Almanac_, which, as usual, is very amusing; and for the Book on _Watt_,
which disappointed me. The scientific part is no doubt very good, and
particularly clear and simple; but there is nothing remarkable in
the account of Watt's character; and it is an absurd piece of French
impertinence in Arago to say, that England has not yet learnt to
appreciate men like Watt, because he was not made a peer; which, were
our peerage an institution like that of France, would have been very
proper.

"I have now finished correcting the proofs of my little Volume of
Poems. It has been a great plague to me, and one that I would not have
incurred, had I expected to be laid up as I have been; but the
matter was begun before I had any notion of being disabled by such an
illness,--the severest I have suffered since I went to the West Indies.
The Book will, after all, be a botched business in many respects; and I
much doubt whether it will pay its expenses: but I try to consider it
as out of my hands, and not to fret myself about it. I shall be very
curious to see Carlyle's Tractate on _Chartism_; which"--But we need not
enter upon that.

Sterling's little Book was printed at his own expense; [23] published by
Moxon in the very end of this year. It carries an appropriate and pretty
Epigraph:--

"Feeling, Thought, and Fancy be
Gentle sister Graces three:
If these prove averse to me,
They will punish,--pardon Ye!"

He had dedicated the little Volume to Mr. Hare;--and he submitted very
patiently to the discouraging neglect with which it was received by the
world; for indeed the "Ye" said nothing audible, in the way of pardon
or other doom; so that whether the "sister Graces" were averse or not,
remained as doubtful as ever.

CHAPTER II. TWO WINTERS.

As we said above, it had been hoped by Sterling's friends, not very
confidently by himself, that in the gentler air of Clifton his health
might so far recover as to enable him to dispense with autumnal voyages,
and to spend the year all round in a house of his own. These hopes,
favorable while the warm season lasted, broke down when winter came. In
November of this same year, while his little Volume was passing through
the press, bad and worse symptoms, spitting o