with General Torrijos and other Spanish refugees who were planning an expedition to Spain to overthrow the tyranny of Ferdinand VII, and it was at his suggestion that an Irish cousin, Lieutenant Boyd, formerly of the East India service (‘My victim,’ he remorsefully says in a letter to Trench), found funds, a ship, and arms, for this generous but wild undertaking. Sterling himself was to have accompanied it, but upon the point of departure discovered that he had inspired a strong interest in Susannah, eldest daughter of Lieutenant-general Barton of the life-guards, and that the ‘stately blooming black-eyed young woman, full of gay softness’ (Carlyle), would by no means let him go. He therefore stayed behind and married her, 2 Nov. 1830, thus escaping the disastrous fate which overtook Boyd, Torrijos himself, and most of the other associates in the unfortunate enterprise. Trench and Mitchell Kemble, who had actually accompanied the expedition, fortunately returned before its catastrophe. Almost immediately after his marriage he had a dangerous pulmonary attack, which decided him to accept a proposal to go out to St. Vincent, and undertake the management of a sugar estate which had belonged to a deceased uncle of his mother's, and in which he himself had an interest. Sugar-planting in the West Indies failed to prove congenial to a man born for the intellectual life, and as the state of his own health had sent him out, the state of his wife's served to send him back in August 1832. A son had been born to him in St. Vincent in October 1831, and in the previous August he had had experience of a tremendous hurricane, graphically described in a letter printed by Carlyle.
His return to England seems to have been vaguely connected in his own mind with a project for the government education of the negroes, now on the eve of emancipation. This was promptly extinguished by the colonial office, and Sterling had for the time nothing else to do than to resume the train of thought into which he had been directed by Coleridge. This led him to Germany to study German philosophy at its source, and at Bonn, in July 1833, an encounter with his former tutor, Julius Hare, now rector of Hurstmonceaux in Sussex, gave definite shape to an idea which had been dimly growing up in his mind of the church as a possible sphere for him. Hare's cordial encouragement clenched the matter, and on Trinity Sunday 1834 Sterling received deacon's orders and became Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux, where he remained, fulfilling his professional duties in the most exemplary manner, until ill-health compelled, or was supposed to compel, his retirement in February 1835. Carlyle is no doubt correct in deeming the real reason to have been Sterling's perception that he was out of place, and his ordination was without question an ill-judged and precipitate step.
Yet Sterling certainly did not meditate forsaking the clerical profession when he resigned his curacy. He wished to edit Coleridge's theological works, and would have taken the English chaplaincy at Rome if he could have got it. He continued to reside at Hurstmonceaux until the autumn, when he settled at Bayswater, and constant intercourse with Carlyle, whose acquaintance he had made in the previous February, greatly influenced him. He nevertheless remained constant to the study of German divinity as long as he was in England. Not until his arrival in Bordeaux, whither ill-health drove him in the autumn of 1836, are there indications of his conviction that literature was his vocation.
Upon his return in 1837 he wrote his poem of ‘The Sexton's Daughter,’ much in the style of Wordsworth, which was published in 1839 with miscellaneous ‘Poems’ (London, 12mo; Philadelphia, 1842). At the same time he formed a connection with ‘Blackwood,’ in which appeared prose pieces more distinctively original. Chief among them in merit is ‘The Palace of Morgana,’ one of the most beautiful of prose poems. The most elaborate is ‘The Onyx Ring’ (Blackwood, vols. xliv. xlv.; separately published, Boston, 1856, 16mo), a romance showing decided German influence, and perhaps on this account acceptable to Carlyle, who is apparently idealised in it as ‘Collins,’ while Hare figures as ‘Musgrave.’ The connection with ‘Blackwood’ continued during 1837–8, despite friction caused by the neglect of the contributors' notes and the mislaying of his manuscripts by the erratic ‘Christopher North’ (Mrs. Oliphant, William Blackwood and his Sons, ii. 186–92). During these years appeared in ‘Maga’ the detached thoughts entitled ‘Crystals from a Cavern.’ To the ‘London and Westminster Review,’ conducted by Stuart Mill, now a very intimate friend, Sterling contributed an essay on Montaigne, evincing more clearly than heretofore his detachment from theology; and another on Simonides, with translations exhibiting his poetical talent at its best.
In the autumn of 1837 Sterling, again driven abroad by ill-health, repaired to Madeira, where he made the acquaintance of Dr. Calvert, another invalid exile. On his return in 1838 the Sterling Club was in-
