"This Letter is not so well written as I could wish,but I hope you will be able to read it.
"Your affectionate Papa,"JOHN STERLING."
These Letters go from June 9th to August 2d,at which latter date vacation-time arrived,and the Boy returned to him.The Letters are preserved;and surely well worth preserving.
In this manner he wore the slow doomed months away.Day after day his little period of Library went on waning,shrinking into less and less;but I think it never altogether ended till the general end came.--For courage,for active audacity we had all known Sterling;but such a fund of mild stoicism,of devout patience and heroic composure,we did not hitherto know in him.His sufferings,his sorrows,all his unutterabilities in this slow agony,he held right manfully down;marched loyally,as at the bidding of the Eternal,into the dread Kingdoms,and no voice of weakness was heard from him.Poor noble Sterling,he had struggled so high and gained so little here!But this also he did gain,to be a brave man;and it was much.
Summer passed into Autumn:Sterling's earthly businesses,to the last detail of them,were now all as good as done:his strength too was wearing to its end,his daily turn in the Library shrunk now to a span.He had to hold himself as if in readiness for the great voyage at any moment.One other Letter I must give;not quite the last message I had from Sterling,but the last that can be inserted here:a brief Letter,fit to be forever memorable to the receiver of it:--"_To Thomas Carlyle,Esq.,Chelsea,London_.
"HILLSIDE,VENTNOR,10th August,1844.
MY DEAR CARLYLE,--For the first time for many months it seems possible to send you a few words;merely,however,for Remembrance and Farewell.On higher matters there is nothing to say.I tread the common road into the great darkness,without any thought of fear,and with very much of hope.Certainty indeed I have none.With regard to You and Me I cannot begin to write;having nothing for it but to keep shut the lid of those secrets with all the iron weights that are in my power.Towards me it is still more true than towards England that no man has been and done like you.Heaven bless you!If I can lend a hand when THERE,that will not be wanting.It is all very strange,but not one hundredth part so sad as it seems to the standers-by.