long become the great Irish question, of even more interest than the
ecclesiastical one...."

And in March he gives more news of his "Berber":--

"I am again at work at the Berber MS., which I have not touched since the
1st October. The Royal Asiatic Society have accepted my offer to edit it.
At present their pages are occupied with the history of Darius Hystaspis
from the rocks at (I think) Besittoon, near Hemadon--the most curious
document which recent research has brought to light, and, I am told,
confirming in detail the accounts of Herodotus."

The two following letters to Dr. Nicholson deal chiefly with matters
connected with John Sterling (who had recently died) and with Newman's
arrangements for adopting one of his children.

Perhaps most people are familiar with Carlyle's biography of Sterling, but
it may be as well to say here that he was a brilliant writer, a Liberal in
politics, and interested himself keenly in General Torrijos and his group
of Spanish exiles. When at college, at the age of nineteen, he came under
the influence of Julius Hare, his tutor. When he was twenty-six he again
fell in with Hare at Bonn, and here came to pass one of the mistakes of
his life. Chiefly through Hare's influence he took deacon's orders, and he
worked under Hare at Hurstmonceaux for the best part of a year. Very soon
afterwards he began to feel the breach growing wider between his own
convictions and those taught by the Church. He never, consequently, took
priest's orders. Through grievous ill-health his winters were passed at
Bordeaux, in Italy, or at Madeira. He died at Ventnor 18th Sept., 1843.