the combined impetuosity and limitation of an intellect, which did
nevertheless continually gravitate towards what was loyal, true and
right on all manner of subjects. These, as I define them, were the mere
scoriae and pumice wreck of a steady central lava-flood, which truly was
volcanic and explosive to a strange degree, but did rest as few others
on the grand fire-depths of the world. Thus, if he stormed along, ten
thousand strong, in the time of the Reform Bill, indignantly denouncing
Toryism and its obsolete insane pretensions; and then if, after some
experience of Whig management, he discerned that Wellington and Peel,
by whatever name entitled, were the men to be depended on by
England,--there lay in all this, visible enough, a deeper consistency
far more important than the superficial one, so much clamored after by
the vulgar. Which is the lion's-skin; which is the real lion? Let a man,
if he is prudent, ascertain that before speaking;--but above and beyond
all things, _let_ him ascertain it, and stand valiantly to it when
ascertained! In the latter essential part of the operation Edward
Sterling was honorably successful to a really marked degree; in the
former, or prudential part, very much the reverse, as his history in the
Journalistic department at least, was continually teaching him.

An amazingly impetuous, hasty, explosive man, this "Captain Whirlwind,"
as I used to call him! Great sensibility lay in him, too; a real
sympathy, and affectionate pity and softness, which he had an
over-tendency to express even by tears,--a singular sight in so leonine
a man. Enemies called them maudlin and hypocritical, these tears; but
that was nowise the complete account of them. On the whole, there did
conspicuously lie a dash of ostentation, a self-consciousness apt to
become loud and braggart, over all he said and did and felt: this was
the alloy of the man, and you had to be thankful for the abundant gold
along with it.

Quizzing enough he got among us for all this, and for the singular
_chiaroscuro_ manner of procedure, like that of an Archimagus
Cagliostro, or Kaiser Joseph Incognito, which his anonymous
known-unknown thunderings in the _Times_ necessitated in him; and much
we laughed,--not without explosive counter-banterings on his part;--but,
in fine, one could not do without him; one knew him at heart for a right
brave man. "By Jove, sir!" thus he would swear to you, with radiant
face; sometimes, not often, by a