October 7/44

    My dear Nicholson,

        Edward Sterling will probably come to us to-day; his trunk is here already. I do not think you know that his father’s earthly career is over. . . . Sterling's will is like himself. He has so strong a feeling of the wrong and absurdity of laying responsibility on people, and yet fettering their discretion, that he has left the fullest powers possible both to his brother as executor to manage his property and the other children, and to me over Edward. He has directed £300 a year to be paid me for Edward. . . . He was indeed a noble soul, and few know what a loss it is; but those few rate it high. As Captain Sterling (his brother) said, he had been accumulating wisdom all his life, and could he have lived twenty years more to pour it out he would indeed have left behind him a precious legacy. . . . Thomas Carlyle wrote a beautiful letter over him. His little son knows not at all what a father he has lost; and as for me, I want to tell him, but feel how hard it is.

        You perhaps know that the Liberals at Oxford are likely to side with Ward against the Heads. I do not see what else they can do; and I devoutly hope that the tangle will be irremovable except by abolishing subscriptions. Price of Rugby is all in a bristle about it. I much admire his spirit. Baden Powell protests in toto against the statute.