Poor Sterling, even I now begin to fear, is in a very bad way.  He had two successive attacks of spitting of blood, some three months ago or more; the second attack of such violence, and his previous condition then so weak, that the Doctor as good as gave up hope,—­the poor Patient himself had from the first given it up.  Our poor Friend has had so many attacks of that nature, and so rapidly always rallied from them, I gave no ear to these sinister prognostics; but now that I see the summer influences passing over him without visible improvement, and our good weather looking towards a close without so much strength added as will authorize even a new voyage to Madeira;—­I too am at last joining in the general discouragement; all the sadder to me that I shut it out so long.  Sir James Clark, our best-accredited Physician for such diseases, declares that Life, for certain months, may linger, with great pain; but that recovery is not to be expected.  Great part of the lungs, it appears, is totally unserviceable for respiration; from the remainder, especially in times of coughing, it is with the greatest difficulty that breath enough is obtained.  Our poor Patient passes the night in a sitting posture; cannot lie down:  that fact sticks with me ever since I heard it!  He is very weak, very pale; still “writes a great deal daily”; but does not wish to see anybody; declines to “see even Carlyle,” who offered to go to him.  His only Brother, Anthony Sterling, a hardy soldier, lately withdrawn from the Army, and settled in this quarter, whom we often communicate with, is about going down to the Isle of Wight this week:  he saw John four days ago, and brings nothing but bad news,—­of which indeed this removal of his to the neighborhood of the scene is a practical testimony.  The old Father, a Widower for the last two years, and very lonely and dispirited, seems getting feebler and feebler:  he was here yesterday:  a pathetic kind of spectacle to us.  Alas, alas!  But what can be said?  I say Nothing; I have written only one Note to Sterling:  I feel it probable that I shall never see him more,—­nor his like again in this world.  His disease, as I have from of old construed it, is a burning of him up by his own fire.  The restless vehemence of the man, struggling in all ways these many years to find a legitimate outlet, and finding, except for transitory, unsatisfactory coruscations, none, has undermined its Clay Prison in the weakest point (which proves to be the lungs), and will make outlet there. My poor Sterling!  It is an old tragedy; and very stern whenever it repeats itself of new.