John, a man whose reputation will rest henceforth much more on the fact of his having had Thomas Carlyle for his biographer than on any high merit of his own, was born at Kaimes Castle, Isle of Bute, Scotland, on the 20th July 1806. His father, Edward Sterling, originally from the county Waterford, in Ireland, but of Scottish descent, who had been educated for the Irish bar, but who had subsequently taken to soldiering, was now located among the shaggy mountains and sunny mists of Bute, as a sort of gentleman-farmer; and who became afterwards co-proprietor and chief editor of the Times newspaper. His mother, Hester Coningham, a native of Sterling, Londonderry, and likewise of Scottish origin, was a beautiful, pious woman, from whom Sterling inherited the "delicate aroma" of his nature. He was the second child of seven, five of whom died while he was still a youth. In 1809, the Sterling family moved south to Llanblethian, in Wales. Here Edward Sterling began to write letters to the Times, when his interest in politics induced him to remove his family to Paris during the peace of 1814. Driven from the French capital next year by the return of Napoleon from Elba, he settled down with his family in London, and engaged in the profession of journalism. This brave, blustering, noisy individual, whom Carlyle was accustomed to call "Captain Whirlwind," has been thus graphically delineated by the same hand. "He was broad, well built, stout of stature; had a long, lowish head, sharp grey eyes, with large, strong aquiline face to match; and walked or sat in an erect decisive manner. A remarkable man."

After having attended various schools in London or the neighbourhood, John Sterling was sent, when he was turned of sixteen, to the University of Glasgow, whence he was removed next year to Trinity College, Cambridge. He did not distinguish himself as a scholar in any particular branch while he resided at Cambridge, but under the tutelage of Julius C. Hare (subsequently Archdeacon of Lewes), he made very considerable progress, and displayed a quick, keen, piercing intellect, and great nobility of character. He particularly shone in connection with the Union Debating Club of Cambridge, of which Maurice, Trench, Spedding, J. M. Kemble, Venables, Charles Buller, and Monckton Milnes, were members. It is reported of Sterling, that he was the acknowledged chief of this club in all matters pertaining to speaking and arguing. Sterling left Cambridge without having taken his degree, and joined his friend Maurice in the intention of studying law. These two aspiring youths, in 1828, became possessors of the Athenæum, which they laboured hard to write into public favour, but the enterprise did not succeed, and the journal came into the hands of the present proprietor. Sterling about this period gained the friendship of Coleridge, whose influence over his mind was great and abiding, as Sterling's novel of Arthur Coningsby still testifies. Regarding this, his first regular contribution to literature, Carlyle remarks—

"It was in the sunny days, perhaps in May or June of this year, (1833), that Arthur Coningsby reached my own mind, far off amid the healthy wilderness I sent by John Mill and I could recollect the pleasant little episode it made in my solitude there. The general impression it left on me, which has never since been renewed by a second reading in whole or in part, was the certain prefiguration to myself, more or less distinct, of an opulent, genial, and sunny mind, but misdirected, disappointed, experienced in misery,—nay crude and hasty; mistaking for a solid outcome from its woes what was only to me a gilded vacuity. The hero an ardent youth, representing Sterling himself, plunges into life such as we now have it in these anarchic times, with the radical, utilitarian, or mutinous heathen theory, which is the readiest for inquiring souls; finds by various courses of adventure, utter shipwreck in every branch, very wrecked; this is the tragic nodus, or apogee of his lifework. In this mood of mind he rushes desperately towards some new method (recognisable as Coleridge's) of laying hand again on the old Church, which has hitherto been extravagant and as if non-extant to his way of thought; makes out, by some Coleridgean legerdemain, that there actually is still a Church for him; that this extant Church, which he long took for an extinct shadow, is not such, but a substance; upon which he can anchor himself amidst the storms of fate;—and he does so, even taking orders in it, I think. Such could by no means seem to me the true or tenable solution. Here clearly, struggling amid the tumults, was a loveable young fellow-soul; who had by no means yet got to land; but of whom much might be hoped, if he ever did. Some of the delineations are highly pictorial, flooded with a deep Sterling's means did not compel him to adopt a profession, and from the nature of his talents, which were airy, graceful, and light-flowing; and from slight symptoms of pulmonary disease, he was withheld from binding himself down to any form of steady labour. He married in November 1830, and, taking suddenly ill shortly afterwards, he was forced to seek a more genial climate than England afforded. He accordingly started for the Island of St Vincent in the West Indies, where part of a valuable sugar estate had been bequeathed to him by a maternal uncle. Returning again to England in August 1832, he resolved to make a short tour in Germany. Chancing to meet his old tutor, the Rev. Julius C. Hare, at Bonn, he was persuaded to enter the English Church, and he was accordingly ordained deacon at Chichester in 1834, and immediately afterwards became curate of Herstmonceaux in Sussex, where his friend Hare was rector. Sterling remained in the Church for eight months, when, on the plea of ill health, he gave up his curacy, and possibly from some radical change in his opinions, real or imaginary, bade good-bye to the Church for ever.

Going to London in February 1835, he chanced to meet Thomas Carlyle for the first time, who had settled in London the previous summer. Carlyle describes Sterling as he then appeared, as follows: "A loose, careless-looking, thin figure, in careless dim costume, sat in a lounging posture, carelessly and copiously talking. I was struck with the kindly but restless, swift-glancing eyes, which looked as if the spirits were all out coursing like a pack of merry eager beagles, beating every bush. The brow rather sloping in form, was not of imposing character, though, again, the head was longish, which is always the best sign of intellect; the physiognomy in general indicated animation rather than strength." From this time Carlyle began to occupy the place of Mentor to Sterling, which had been so long held by Coleridge. Art, as Carlyle has remarked, was Sterling's forte, and most devotion in any form. Literature was henceforward his chief pursuit. His exceedingly precarious state of health caused him to lead a nomadic kind of life, which alternated between London and some warmer climate. In 1836 he went to the south of France; next year to Madeira, which he revisited again in 1840. Part of 1838 and 1839 he spent in Italy, and on his return to England he sought Clifton, and ultimately Falmouth. Carlyle, in his Life of John Sterling, says—

"Sterling's bodily disease was the expression, under physical conditions, of the too vehement life which, under the moral, the intellectual, and other aspects, incessantly struggled within him. Too vehement—which would have required a frame of oak and iron to contain it: in a thin though most wary body of flesh and bone, it incessantly 'wore holes,' and so found outlet for itself. He could take no rest, he had never learned that art; he often reproached him, fatally incapable of sitting still. Rapidity, as of pulsing auroras, as of dancing lightning, rapidity in all forms characterised him. That which was his bane, in many senses, being the real origin of his disorder, and of such continual necessity to motion and change,—was also his antidote, so far as antidote there might be; enabling him to love change, and to snatch, as few others could have done, from the waste chaotic years, all tumbled into ruin by incessant change, what hours and minutes of available turned up."

Sterling had meanwhile contributed to Blackwood's Magazine and to the Westminster Review, then under the charge of John Stuart Mill. "He had," says Carlyle, "an incredible facility of labour. He flashed with most piercing glance into a subject; gathered it up into organic utterability with truly wonderful despatch, considering the success and truth attained, and threw it on paper with a swift felicity, ingenuity, brilliancy, and general excellence, of which, under such conditions of swiftness, I have never seen a parallel." In order to meet a number of his literary friends on occasion of his hasty visits to London, the "Sterling Sterneberg Club" was formed, of which Carlyle, J.C. Hare, G.C. Lewis, John S. Mill, Tennyson, and others, were members. In 1839 he published a small volume of poems, which were almost ignored by the public, and in 1841 he again tried it with the Election, a Poem in seven books. In 1843 he published Strafford, a Tragedy. He had the great affliction during the same year to lose both his mother and his wife, who died within two hours of each other.

"If Sterling," says Carlyle, "has done little in literature, we may ask, What other man than he, in such circumstances, could have done anything? In virtue of these rapid faculties, which otherwise cost him so dear, he has built together, out of those wavering boiling quicksands of his few later years, a result which may justly surprise us. There is actually some result in those poor two volumes gathered from him, such as they are; he that reads there will not wholly lose his time, nor rise with a malison instead of a blessing on the writer. Here actually is a real seer-glace, of some compass, into the world of our day; blessed glance, once more, of an eye that is human; truer than one of a thousand, and beautifully capable of making others see with it. I have known considerable temporary reputations gained, considerable piles of temporary praise, with half reviewing and the like to match on a far less basis than lies in these two volumes. Thus also, I suspect, will be held in memory in the future, in any or other till the world has extracted all its benefit from them. Graceful, ingenious, and illuminative reading, of their sort, for all manner of inquiring souls. A little verdant flowery island of poetic intellect, of melodious human verity; sunlit island founded on the rocks—which the enormous circumambient continents of mown reedgrass and floating lumber, with their mountain-ranges of ejected stable-litter however alpine, cannot by any means or chance submerge: nay, I expect, they will not even quite hide it, this modest little island, from the well-discerning; but will float past it towards the place appointed for them, and leave said island standing."

He was engaged during his last days on another poem, entitled Coeur de Lion, which he did not survive to complete. Sterling died at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, on the 18th September 1844, aged thirty-eight years.

Carlyle has the following remarks on Sterling's general appearance and manner:—

"Sterling was of rather slim but well-boned wiry figure, perhaps an inch or two from six feet in height; of blonde complexion, without colour, yet not pale or sickly; dark-blonde hair, copious enough, which he usually wore short. The general aspect of him indicated freedom, perfect spontaneity, with a certain careless natural grace. In his apparel, you could notice, he affected dim colours, easy shapes; cleanly always, yet even in this not fantastic or conspicuous: he sat or stood, oftentimes, in loose slopping postures; walked with long strides, body carelessly bent, head flung eagerly forward, right hand perhaps grasping a cane, and rather hanging to the middle to swing it, than by the side to use it casually. An attitude of frank, easy, impetuous, of hopeful speed, and alacrity; which indeed his physiological, on all sides of it, offered as the chief expression. Alacrity, velocity, joyous ardour, dwelt in the eyes too, which were of brownish grey, full of bright kindly life, rapid and frank rather than deep or strong. A smile, half of kindly impatience, half of real mirth, often sat on his face."

To Archdeacon Hare and Thomas Carlyle were committed the care of Sterling's literary character and printed writings. In 1848 appeared accordingly Essays and Tales, in two vols., by John Sterling, with a memoir prefixed by Archdeacon Hare. This biography had the misfortune to represent merely the character of Sterling as a clergyman; and Carlyle, who had loved the man with all the depth and fervour of no ordinary nature, resolved to re-write his biography, taking care to present Sterling in something like the human aspect which he wore among men. This work was published in one vol. in 1851. It is perhaps the greatest biographical achievement of this century.

STERNEBERG, a town of the Austrian Empire, Moravia, in the circle and 10 miles N.N.E. of Olmütz. It is for the most part well built; and has an old castle of the princes of Liechtenstein, a church, Augustinian convent, military school, &c. Cotton and hosiery are manufactured here; and as the town stands at the junction of several roads, there is a considerable trade, chiefly in linen. Pop. 12,400.