Old Radicalism and mutinous audacious Ethnici** having thus fallen to wreck,and a mere black world of misery and remorse now disclosing itself,whatsoever of natural piety to God and man,whatsoever of pity and reverence,of awe and devout hope was in Sterling's heart now awoke into new activity;and strove for some due utterance and predominance.His Letters,in these months,speak of earnest religious studies and efforts;--of attempts by prayer and longing endeavor of all kinds,to struggle his way into the temple,if temple there were,and there find sanctuary.[10]The realities were grown so haggard;life a field of black ashes,if there rose no temple anywhere on it!
Why,like a fated Orestes,is man so whipt by the Furies,and driven madly hither and thither,if it is not even that he may seek some shrine,and there make expiation and find deliverance?
In these circumstances,what a scope for Coleridge's philosophy,above all!"If the bottled moonshine _be_actually substance?Ah,could one but believe in a Church while finding it incredible!What is faith;what is conviction,credibility,insight?Can a thing be at once known for true,and known for false?'Reason,''Understanding:'
is there,then,such an internecine war between these two?It was so Coleridge imagined it,the wisest of existing men!"--No,it is not an easy matter (according to Sir Kenelm Digby),this of getting up your "astral spirit"of a thing,and setting it in action,when the thing itself is well burnt to ashes.Poor Sterling;poor sons of Adam in general,in this sad age of cobwebs,worn-out symbolisms,reminiscences and simulacra!Who can tell the struggles of poor Sterling,and his pathless wanderings through these things!Long afterwards,in speech with his Brother,he compared his case in this time to that of "a young lady who has tragically lost her lover,and is willing to be half-hoodwinked into a convent,or in any noble or quasi-noble way to escape from a world which has become intolerable."During the summer of 1832,I find traces of attempts towards Anti-Slavery Philanthropy;shadows of extensive schemes in that direction.Half-desperate outlooks,it is likely,towards the refuge of Philanthropism,as a new chivalry of life.These took no serious hold of so clear an intellect;but they hovered now and afterwards as day-dreams,when life otherwise was shorn of aim;--mirages in the desert,which are found not to be lakes when you put your bucket into them.One thing was clear,the sojourn in St.Vincent was not to last much longer.
Perhaps one might get some scheme raised into life,in Downing Street,for universal Education to the Blacks,preparatory to emancipating them?There were a noble work for a man!Then again poor Mrs.
Sterling's health,contrary to his own,did not agree with warm moist climates.And again,&c.&c.These were the outer surfaces of the measure;the unconscious pretexts under which it showed itself to Sterling and was shown by him:but the inner heart and determining cause of it (as frequently in Sterling's life,and in all our lives)was not these.In brief,he had had enough of St.Vincent.The strangling oppressions of his soul were too heavy for him there.
Solution lay in Europe,or might lie;not in these remote solitudes of the sea,--where no shrine or saint's well is to be looked for,no communing of pious pilgrims journeying together towards a shrine.
