But in all Sterling’s sorrows and illnesses, he never seems to have lost his interest in life and thought, in ideas, questions, and problems.  Again and again he came back to the surface, with an irrepressible zest and freshness, and even gaiety, until at last all hope of life was extinguished.  He lay dying for many weeks, and it was then that he wrote his last letter to Carlyle, which must be given in full:—­

Hillside, Ventnor,
10th August 1844.

My dear Carlyle,—­For the first time for many months it seems possible to send you a few words; merely, however, for Remembrance and Farewell.  On higher matters there is nothing to say.  I tread the common road into the great darkness, without any thought of fear, and with very much of hope.  Certainty indeed I have none.  With regard to you and me I cannot begin to write; having nothing for it but to keep shut the lid of those secrets with all the iron weights that are in my power.  Towards me it is still more true than towards England that no man has been and done like you.  Heaven bless you!  If I can lend a hand when there, that will not be wanting.  It is all very strange, but not one hundredth part so sad as it seems to the standers-by.

Your Wife knows my mind towards her, and will believe it without asseverations.—­Yours to the last, John Sterling.

That letter may speak for itself.  In its dignity, its nobleness, its fearlessness, it is one of the finest human documents I know.  But let it be remembered that it is not the letter of a mournful and heart-broken man, turning his back on life in an ecstasy of despair; but the letter of one who had taken a boundless delight in life, had known upon equal terms most of the finest intellects of the day, and had been frankly recognised by them as a chosen spirit.  All Sterling’s designs for life and work had been slowly and surely thwarted by the pressure of hopeless illness; yet he had never complained or fretted or brooded, or indulged in any bitter recriminations against his destiny.  That seems to me a very heroic attitude; while the letter itself, in its perfect frankness and courage, without a touch of solemnity or affectation, or any trace of craven shrinking from his doom, makes it in its noble simplicity one of the finest “last words” that I have ever read, and finer, I verily believe, than any flight of poetical imagination.

A few days later he sent Carlyle some stanzas of verse, “written,” says Carlyle, “as if in star-fire and immortal tears; which are among my sacred possessions, to be kept for myself alone.”

A few weeks before he wrote his last letter to Carlyle, Sterling had written a letter to his son, who was then a boy at school in London.  In that he says: