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The Life Of John Sterling. INTRODUCTORY. NEAR seven years ago, a short while before his death in 1844, John Sterling committed the care of his literary character and printed Writings to two friends, Archdeacon Hare and myself. His estimate of the bequest was far from overweening to few men could the smalI sum total of his activities in this world seem more inconsiderable than, in those last solemn days, it did to him. He had burnt much found much unworthy looking steadfastly into the silent continents of Death and Eternity, a brave mans judgments about his own sorry work in the field of Time are not apt to be too lenient. But, in fine, here was some portion of his work which the world had already got hold of, and which he could not burn. This too, since it was not to be abolished and annihilated, but must still for some time live and act, he wished to be wisely settled, as the rest had been. And so it was left in charge to us, the survivors to do for it what we judged fittest, if indeed doing nothing did not seem the fittest to us. This message, communicated after his decease, was naturally a sacred one to Mr. Hare and me. After some consultation on it, and survey of the difficulties and delicate considerations involved in it, Archdeacon Hare and I agreed that the whole task, of selecting what Writings were to be reprinted, and of drawing up a Biography to introduce them, should be left to him alone and done without interference of mine as accordiligly it was, in a manner surely far superior to the common, in every good quality of editing and visibly everywhere bearing testimony to the friendliness, the piety, perspicacity and other gifts and virtues of that eminent and amiable man. Inone respect, however, if in one only, the arrangement had been unfortunate. Archdeacon Hare, both by natural tendency and by his position as a Churchman, had been led, in editing a Work not free from ecclesiastical heresies, and especially in writing a Life very full of such, to dwell with preponderating emphasis on that part of his subject by no means extenuating the fact, nor yet passing lightly over it which a layman could have done as needing no extenuation but carefully searching into it, with the view of escusing and explaining it dwelling on it, presenting all the documents of it, and as it were spreading it over thc whole field of his delineation as if religious heterodoxy had been the grand fact of Sterlings life, which even to the Archdeacons...

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