第38章 PAUSE(1)

These thoughts dwelt long with Sterling;and for a good while,Ifancy,kept possession of the proscenium of his mind;madly parading there,to the exclusion of all else,--coloring all else with their own black hues.He was young,rich in the power to be miserable or otherwise;and this was his first grand sorrow which had now fallen upon him.

An important spiritual crisis,coming at any rate in some form,had hereby suddenly in a very sad form come.No doubt,as youth was passing into manhood in these Tropical seclusions,and higher wants were awakening in his mind,and years and reflection were adding new insight and admonition,much in his young way of thought and action lay already under ban with him,and repentances enough over many things were not wanting.But here on a sudden had all repentances,as it were,dashed themselves together into one grand whirlwind of repentance;and his past life was fallen wholly as into a state of reprobation.A great remorseful misery had come upon him.Suddenly,as with a sudden lightning-stroke,it had kindled into conflagration all the ruined structure of his past life;such ruin had to blaze and flame round him,in the painfulest manner,till it went out in black ashes.His democratic philosophies,and mutinous radicalisms,already falling doomed in his thoughts,had reached their consummation and final condemnation here.It was all so rash,imprudent,arrogant,all that;false,or but half true;inapplicable wholly as a rule of noble conduct;--and it has ended _thus_.Woe on it!Another guidance must be found in life,or life is impossible!--It is evident,Sterling's thoughts had already,since the old days of the "black dragoon,"much modified themselves.We perceive that,by mere increase of experience and length of time,the opposite and much deeper side of the question,which also has its adamantine basis of truth,was in turn coming into play;and in fine that a Philosophy of Denial,and world illuminated merely by the flames of Destruction,could never have permanently been the resting-place of such a man.

Those pilgrimings to Coleridge,years ago,indicate deeper wants beginning to be felt,and important ulterior resolutions becoming inevitable for him.If in your own soul there is any tone of the "Eternal Melodies,"you cannot live forever in those poor outer,transitory grindings and discords;you will have to struggle inwards and upwards,in search of some diviner home for yourself!--Coleridge's prophetic moonshine,Torrijos's sad tragedy:those were important occurrences in Sterling's life.But,on the whole,there was a big Ocean for him,with impetuous Gulf-streams,and a doomed voyage in quest of the Atlantis,_before_either of those arose as lights on the horizon.As important beacon-lights let us count them nevertheless;--signal-dates they form to us,at lowest.We may reckon this Torrijos tragedy the crisis of Sterling's history;the turning-point,which modified,in the most important and by no means wholly in the most favorable manner,all the subsequent stages of it.