Sterling's outlooks and occupations,now that his Spanish friends were gone,must have been of a rather miscellaneous confused deion.
He had the enterprise of a married life close before him;and as yet no profession,no fixed pursuit whatever.His health was already very threatening;often such as to disable him from present activity,and occasion the gravest apprehensions;practically blocking up all important courses whatsoever,and rendering the future,if even life were lengthened and he had any future,an insolubility for him.
Parliament was shut,public life was shut:Literature,--if,alas,any solid fruit could lie in literature!
Or perhaps one's health would mend,after all;and many things be better than was hoped!Sterling was not of a despondent temper,or given in any measure to lie down and indolently moan:I fancy he walked briskly enough into this tempestuous-looking future;not heeding too much its thunderous aspects;doing swiftly,for the day,what his hand found to do._Arthur Coningsby_,I suppose,lay on the anvil at present;visits to Coleridge were now again more possible;grand news from Torrijos might be looked for,though only small yet came:--nay here,in the hot July,is France,at least,all thrown into volcano again!Here are the miraculous Three Days;heralding,in thunder,great things to Torrijos and others;filling with babblement and vaticination the mouths and hearts of all democratic men.
So rolled along,in tumult of chaotic remembrance and uncertain hope,in manifold emotion,and the confused struggle (for Sterling as for the world)to extricate the New from the falling ruins of the Old,the summer and autumn of 1830.From Gibraltar and Torrijos the tidings were vague,unimportant and discouraging:attempt on Cadiz,attempt on the lines of St.Roch,those attempts,or rather resolutions to attempt,had died in the birth,or almost before it.Men blamed Torrijos,little knowing his impediments.Boyd was still patient at his post:others of the young English (on the strength of the subscribed moneys)were said to be thinking of tours,--perhaps in the Sierra Morena and neighboring Quixote regions.From that Torrijos enterprise it did not seem that anything considerable would come.
On the edge of winter,here at home,Sterling was married:"at Christchurch,Marylebone,2d November,1830,"say the records.His blooming,kindly and true-hearted Wife had not much money,nor had he as yet any:but friends on both sides were bountiful and hopeful;had made up,for the young couple,the foundations of a modestly effective household;and in the future there lay more substantial prospects.On the finance side Sterling never had anything to suffer.His Wife,though somewhat languid,and of indolent humor,was a graceful,pious-minded,honorable and affectionate woman;she could not much support him in the ever-shifting struggles of his life,but she faithfully attended him in them,and loyally marched by his side through the changes and nomadic pilgrimings,of which many were appointed him in his short course.