Thus it went on for some months at Herstmonceux; but thus it could not last. We said there were already as to health, &c. in September: 12 that was but the fourth month, for it had begun only in June. The like clouds of , flights of dark , chequering more and more the bright sky of this promised land, rose heavier and rifer month after month; till in February following, that is in the eighth month from starting, the sky had grown quite overshaded; and poor had to think practically of departure from his promised land again, finding that the goal of his pilgrimage was not there. Not there, wherever it may be! March again, therefore; the city, and post at which we can live and die, is still ahead of us, it would appear!  
"Ill-health" was the external cause; and, to all parties concerned, to Sterling himself I have no doubt as completely as to any, the one determining cause. Nor was the ill-health wanting; it was there in too sad reality. And yet properly it was not there as the burden; it was there as the last ounce which broke the camel's back. I take it, in this as in other cases known to me, ill-health was not the primary cause but rather the ultimate one, the summing-up of innumerable far deeper conscious and unconscious causes,—the cause which could boldly show itself on the surface, and give the casting vote. Such was often Sterling's way, as one could observe in such cases: though the most guileless, undeceptive and of men, he had a noticeable, almost childlike of self-deception, and usually substituted for the primary determining and set of , some ultimate one, and gave that out to himself and others as the ruling impulse for important changes in life. As is the way with much more and deliberate men;—as is the way, in a degree, with all men!
 
Enough, in February, 1835, Sterling came up to London, to consult with his physicians,—and in fact in all ways to consider with himself and friends,—what was to be done in regard to this Herstmonceux business. The of the physicians, like that of Delphi, was not exceedingly determinate: but it did bear, what was a undeniable fact, that Sterling's constitution, with a tendency to pulmonary , was ill-suited for the office of a preacher; that total abstinence from preaching for a year or two would clearly be the safer course. To which effect he writes to Mr. Hare with a tone of sorrowful ; gives up his clerical duties at Herstmonceux;—and never resumed them there or elsewhere. He had been in the Church eight months in all: a brief section of his life, but an important one, which colored several of his subsequent years, and now strangely colors all his years in the memory of some.
 
This we may account the second grand crisis of his History. , not long since, had come to its consummation, and vanished from him in a manner. "Not by Radicalism is the path to Human Nobleness for me!" And here now had English Priesthood risen like a sun, over the waste ruins and extinct volcanoes of his dead world, with promise of new blessedness and healing under its Wings; and this too has soon found itself an illusion: "Not by Priesthood either lies the way, then. Once more, where does the way lie!"—To follow illusions till they burst and vanish is the lot of all new souls who, luckily or lucklessly, are left to their own choice in starting on this Earth. The roads are many; the finger-posts are few,—never fewer than in this era, when in so many senses the waters are out. Sterling of all men had the quickest sense for nobleness, and the human summum bonum; the liveliest headlong spirit of adventure and ; few gifted living men less stubbornness of . Illusions, in his chase of the summum bonum, were not likely to be wanting; , and changes of course, were likely to be many! It is in the history of such , , far-shining and yet intrinsically light and souls, missioned into this to seek their way there, that we best see what a confused epoch it is.
 
This clerical ,—for such it was in Sterling,—we have ascribed to Coleridge; and do clearly think that had there been no Coleridge, neither had this been,—nor had English Puseyism or some other strange enough universal been. Nevertheless, let us say farther that it lay partly in the general bearing of the world for such a man. This battle, universal in our sad epoch of "all old things passing away" against "all things becoming new," has its summary and heart in that of Radicalism against Church; there, as in its flaming core, and point of focal , does the heroic worth that lies in each side of the quarrel most clearly disclose itself; and Sterling was the man, above many, to recognize such worth on both sides. Natural enough, in such a one, that the light of Radicalism having gone out in darkness for him, the opposite splendor should next rise as the chief, and invite his till it also failed. In one form or the other, such an aberration was not unlikely for him. But an aberration, especially in this form, we may certainly call it. No man of Sterling's , had he clearly consulted his own heart, or had his own heart been capable of clearly responding, and not been dazzled and bewildered by transient fantasies and theosophic moonshine, could have undertaken this function. His heart would have answered: "No, thou canst not. What is incredible to thee, thou shalt not, at thy soul's , attempt to believe!—Elsewhither for a refuge, or die here. Go to Perdition if thou must,—but not with a lie in thy mouth; by the Eternal , no!"
 
, once more! How are poor mortals whirled hither and in the tumultuous of our era; and, under the thick smoke-canopy which has eclipsed all stars, how do they fly now after this poor meteor, now after that!—Sterling abandoned his clerical office in February, 1835; having held it, and followed it, so long as we say,—eight calendar months in all.
 
It was on this his February expedition to London that I first saw Sterling,—at the India House incidentally, one afternoon, where I found him in company with John Mill, whom I happened like himself to be visiting for a few minutes. The sight of one whose fine qualities I had often heard of lately, was interesting enough; and, on the whole, proved not disappointing, though it was the translation of dream into fact, that is of poetry into prose, and showed its unrhymed ............