Here was a strange new "school"for our friend John now in his eighth year!Out of which the little Anthony and he drank doubtless at all pores,vigorously as they had done in no school before.A change total and immediate.Somniferous green Llanblethian has suddenly been blotted out;presto,here are wakeful Passy and the noises of paved Paris instead.Innocent ingenious Mr.Reece in drab breeches and white stockings,he with his mild Christmas galas and peaceable rules of Dilworth and Butterworth,has given place to such a saturnalia of panoramic,symbolic and other teachers and monitors,addressing all the five senses at once.Who John's express tutors were,at Passy,Inever heard;nor indeed,especially in his case,was it much worth inquiring.To him and to all of us,the expressly appointed schoolmasters and schoolings we get are as nothing,compared with the unappointed incidental and continual ones,whose school-hours are all the days and nights of our existence,and whose lessons,noticed or unnoticed,stream in upon us with every breath we draw.Anthony says they attended a French school,though only for about three months;and he well remembers the last scene of it,"the boys shouting _Vive l'Empereur_when Napoleon came back."Of John Sterling's express schooling,perhaps the most important feature,and by no means a favorable one to him,was the excessive fluctuation that prevailed in it.Change of scene,change of teacher,_both_express and implied,was incessant with him;and gave his young life a nomadic character,--which surely,of all the adventitious tendencies that could have been impressed upon him,so volatile,swift and airy a being as him,was the one he needed least.His gentle pious-hearted Mother,ever watching over him in all outward changes,and assiduously keeping human pieties and good affections alive in him,was probably the best counteracting element in his lot.And on the whole,have we not all to run our chance in that respect;and take,the most victoriously we can,such schooling as pleases to be attainable in our year and place?Not very victoriously,the most of us!A wise well-calculated breeding of a young genial soul in this world,or alas of any young soul in it,lies fatally over the horizon in these epochs!--This French scene of things,a grand school of its sort,and also a perpetual banquet for the young soul,naturally captivated John Sterling;he said afterwards,"New things and experiences here were poured upon his mind and sense,not in streams,but in a Niagara cataract."This too,however,was but a scene;lasted only some six or seven months;and in the spring of the next year terminated as abruptly as any of the rest could do.
For in the spring of the next year,Napoleon abruptly emerged from Elba;and set all the populations of the world in motion,in a strange manner;--set the Sterling household afloat,in particular;the big European tide rushing into all smallest creeks,at Passy and elsewhere.In brief,on the 20th of March,1815,the family had to shift,almost to fly,towards home and the sea-coast;and for a day or two were under apprehension of being detained and not reaching home.
Mrs.Sterling,with her children and effects,all in one big carriage with two horses,made the journey to Dieppe;in perfect safety,though in continual tremor:here they were joined by Captain Sterling,who had stayed behind at Paris to see the actual advent of Napoleon,and to report what the aspect of affairs was,"Downcast looks of citizens,with fierce saturnalian acclaim of soldiery:"after which they proceeded together to London without farther apprehension;--there to witness,in due time,the tar-barrels of Waterloo,and other phenomena that followed.
Captain Sterling never quitted London as a residence any more;and indeed was never absent from it,except on autumnal or other excursions of a few weeks,till the end of his life.Nevertheless his course there was as yet by no means clear;nor had his relations with the heads of the _Times_,or with other high heads,assumed a form which could be called definite,but were hanging as a cloudy maze of possibilities,firm substance not yet divided from shadow.It continued so for some years.The Sterling household shifted twice or thrice to new streets or localities,--Russell Square or Queen Square,Blackfriars Road,and longest at the Grove,Blackheath,--before the vapors of Wellesley promotions and such like slowly sank as useless precipitate,and the firm rock,which was definite employment,ending in lucrative co-proprietorship and more and more important connection with the _Times_Newspaper,slowly disclosed itself.
