rainy climate, on that wild-wooded rocky coast, with its gnarled
mountains and green silent valleys, with its seething rain-storms and
many-sounding seas, was young Sterling ushered into his first
schooling in this world. I remember one little anecdote his Father
told me of those first years: One of the cows had calved; young John,
still in petticoats, was permitted to go, holding by his father's
hand, and look at the newly arrived calf; a mystery which he surveyed
with open intent eyes, and the silent exercise of all the scientific
faculties he had;--very strange mystery indeed, this new arrival, and
fresh denizen of our Universe: "Wull't eat a-body?" said John in his
first practical Scotch, inquiring into the tendencies this mystery
might have to fall upon a little fellow and consume him as provision:
"Will it eat one, Father?"--Poor little open-eyed John: the family
long bantered him with this anecdote; and we, in far other years,
laughed heartily on hearing it.--Simple peasant laborers, ploughers,
house-servants, occasional fisher-people too; and the sight of ships,
and crops, and Nature's doings where Art has little meddled with her:
this was the kind of schooling our young friend had, first of all; on
this bench of the grand world-school did he sit, for the first four
years of his life.

Edward Sterling his Father, a man who subsequently came to
considerable notice in the world, was originally of Waterford in
Munster; son of the Episcopalian Clergyman there; and chief
representative of a family of some standing in those parts. Family
founded, it appears, by a Colonel Robert Sterling, called also Sir
Robert Sterling; a Scottish Gustavus-Adolphus soldier, whom the
breaking out of the Civil War had recalled from his German
campaignings, and had before long, though not till after some
waverings on his part, attached firmly to the Duke of Ormond and to