Of the three learned Professions none offered any likelihood for Sterling.From the Church his notions of the "black dragoon,"had there been no other obstacle,were sufficient to exclude him.Law he had just renounced,his own Radical philosophies disheartening him,in face of the ponderous impediments,continual up-hill struggles and formidable toils inherent in such a pursuit:with Medicine he had never been in any contiguity,that he should dream of it as a course for him.Clearly enough the professions were unsuitable;they to him,he to them.Professions,built so largely on speciosity instead of performance;clogged,in this bad epoch,and defaced under such suspicions of fatal imposture,were hateful not lovable to the young radical soul,scornful of gross profit,and intent on ideals and human noblenesses.Again,the professions,were they never so perfect and veracious,will require slow steady pulling,to which this individual young radical,with his swift,far-darting brilliancies,and nomadic desultory ways,is of all men the most averse and unfitted.No profession could,in any case,have well gained the early love of Sterling.And perhaps withal the most tragic element of his life is even this,That there now was none to which he could fitly,by those wiser than himself,have been bound and constrained,that he might learn to love it.So swift,light-limbed and fiery an Arab courser ought,for all manner of reasons,to have been trained to saddle and harness.Roaming at full gallop over the heaths,--especially when your heath was London,and English and European life,in the nineteenth century,--he suffered much,and did comparatively little.
I have known few creatures whom it was more wasteful to send forth with the bridle thrown up,and to set to steeple-hunting instead of running on highways!But it is the lot of many such,in this dislocated time,--Heaven mend it!In a better time there will be other "professions"than those three extremely cramp,confused and indeed almost obsolete ones:professions,if possible,that are true,and do _not_require you at the threshold to constitute yourself an impostor.Human association,--which will mean discipline,vigorous wise subordination and co-ordination,--is so unspeakably important.