Stephenson was elected member of parliament for Whitby, and gave his support to the conservative party. From 1854 till 1856 he was president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and of other scientific bodies. His excessive and long-continued labours having told upon his health, he endeavoured during the latter years of his life to obtain a little rest occasionally, and used to amuse himself with yachting; but his constitution had already suffered fatal injury, and he died at the early age of fifty-six. He had been married in 1829 to Miss Frances Sanderson, who died in 1842; but he left no children. In person, Robert Stephenson was handsome and commanding; larger than his father, but not so athletic and wiry. In mind he possessed all the amiable and generous moral qualities of George Stephenson, and much of his intellectual vigour, but with a shade less of originality and liveliness. His premature death was lamented by the whole nation; and the public respect for his memory was shown by a grave in Westminster abbey.—(See Smiles' Lives of the Engineers, vol. iii.; Edwin Clark On the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges; Fairbairn On the Conway and Britannia Tubular Bridges; Hodges' Account of the Victoria Bridge; Encyclopædia Britannica, article "Iron Bridges," written by Robert Stephenson.)—W. J. M. R.
STEPNEY, George, a mediocre poet and an excellent diplomatist, was born in 1663, being descended from the Stepneys of Pendigrast in Pembrokeshire. He was educated at Westminster school and Cambridge university. He owed his success in life mainly to the friendship of the duke of Dorset. From 1692 to 1706 he held the post of British envoy successively at the courts of Brandenburg, Vienna, Dresden, Mentz, Cologne, Warsaw, and the Hague. "His life was busy," says Dr. Johnson, "and not long." He died in 1707, and was buried in Westminster abbey, where a flattering Latin epitaph was inscribed on his tomb. His poems are to be found in the miscellaneous collections of the time. He was a member of the celebrated Kit Cat club.—R. H.
STERLING, Edward, the "Thunderer" of the Times, was born at Waterford on the 27th February, 1773, the son of a clergyman whose father had been clerk to the Irish house of commons. Educated at Trinity college, Dublin, he was called to the Irish bar; but joining the volunteers when the rebellion broke out, he afterwards received a commission in the Lancashire militia, volunteered into the line, became a captain in 1803, and was placed on half-pay in 1805. In 1810 he published a pamphlet on military reform, and in 1812 began to contribute to the Times letters under the signature of "Vetus," which excited considerable attention. Gradually his connection with that journal deepened, until he became one of its principal proprietors and the principal contributor of its political articles. Giving an ardent support to the whigs during the reform agitation, he transferred that support to Sir Robert Peel on the accession of the latter to the premiership in 1834—a turning-point in the political biography of the leading journal. Captain Sterling's contributions to the Times had ceased for some time before he died, on the 3rd September, 1847, at his house in Knightsbridge, London. There are some interesting notices of him in Mr. Carlyle's life of his son, John Sterling.—F. E.
STERLING, John, was born at Kaimes castle, in the Isle of Bute, on the 20th July, 1806. He was descended from an ancient Scottish family, which had for a considerable time been settled in Ireland. His father, Edward Sterling, a native of Waterford, had served in the army, risen to the rank of captain, and at the reform bill period and subsequently obtained high reputation as the chief writer in the Times newspaper. When in his third year John Sterling accompanied his parents to a new abode, a lovely Welsh village. When in his eighth year he went with them to Paris. The return of Napoleon from Elba drove them back to England. After various changes of residence they finally settled at Blackheath, where John Sterling attended school. Having spent a year at the Glasgow university, he completed his education at Cambridge, where he was remarkable for his talking and debating powers, and where he formed friendships with many men afterwards distinguished. He left Cambridge in 1827. The following year the Athenæum came into his hands, but he speedily broke his connection with it. In 1830 he married; and ere long, having been attacked by pulmonary disease, he fled from this terrible foe to the island of St. Vincent, where his family had some property. A wanderer in more senses than one, Sterling having once again set foot on the English shore, became in 1834 a clergyman of the Anglican church. For eight months he was, at Hertsmonceaux, the curate of Archdeacon Hare. It was on the plea of ill health, but it was probably more from conscious unfitness for the clerical profession that Sterling quitted Hertsmonceaux. His career thenceforth was wholly that of a literary man. The state of his health compelled him often to seek a fresh home. When, in the spring of 1841, Sterling was on his way from Clifton to Falmouth, two of these temporary homes, the author of this notice had the pleasure of meeting him; that pleasure was not destined to be renewed. Sterling died at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, on the 15th September, 1844. A strange tragedy foreboded the quenching of his own light. Two hours after he had received the news of his mother's death, his wife, quickly stricken, closed her eyes for ever. John Sterling's brother. Colonel Anthony Sterling, is eminent as a soldier and otherwise, and braved the Crimean and the Indian campaigns with Lord Clyde, at once a faithful follower and a devoted friend. A frequent contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, both in prose and verse, John Sterling wrote a brilliant and elaborate notice on Carlyle in the Westminster Review. Sterling published a novel called "Arthur Coningsby;" Poems; "The Election," a satire; "Strafford," a tragedy. In 1848, Archdeacon Hare collected into two volumes Sterling's miscellaneous prose productions. A biographical sketch served as introduction. In 1851 appeared Carlyle's well-known Life of John Sterling. We believe that Sterling left numerous manuscripts, and that at one time there was an intention of giving these, and his no less numerous letters, to the world. Sterling's fragile frame, his incessant sufferings as an invalid, prevented him from accomplishing anything sustained and complete. But perhaps, even in the most fortunate circumstances, his productions would have been more remarkable for rhetorical fire and fluency than for poetical weight and worth. He was a beautiful meteor—attractive from its very eccentricity, rather than a star calmly and commandingly shining.—W. M—l.
STERNBERG, Gaspar, Count, a distinguished patron of science, died in 1839. He was founder and president of the Royal Museum of Natural History at Prague; and he published a valuable work on fossil plants, which were chiefly obtained from his own coal mines in Bohemia. He also published a monograph of the genus Saxifraga, illustrated by coloured figures. Under his auspices was published, Reliquiæ Hænkeanæ, or an account of the plants collected by Hænke in Peru, Cochabamba, and the Philippines. The count was distinguished for his urbanity and liberality. He left his collection of books of natural history to the museum of Prague.—J. H. B.
STERNE, Laurence, the prince of English humorists, sprang from a Suffolk family, and was the great-grandson of Roger Sterne (or Stearne), a grave and solid prelate, who died archbishop of York in 1683. Simon, son of the archbishop, married the heiress of Elvington, near York, and his second son, Roger, was the father of the author of "Tristram Shandy." Roger entered the army, and fought under Marlborough in Flanders, where, in 1711, he married Sterne's mother, the widow of a captain and stepdaughter of a "noted sutler" (says Sterne in his brief autobiography), adding characteristically—"N.B.—He was in debt to him." Roger was a lieutenant in Handaside's regiment, and at Clonmel on the 24th of November, 1713, the day after the arrival there of the regiment with his father and mother from Dunkirk, Laurence Sterne was born. "His earliest world was the barrack-yard," and for ten years his life was passed with the regiment in its frequent wanderings from place to place, chiefly in Ireland, an existence fruitful of hints for the characters of Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. Roger Sterne is understood to have been the original of Uncle Toby; "he was," says Sterne, "a little smart man, active to the last degree in all exercises, most patient of fatigue and disappointments, of which it pleased God to give him full measure; he was in his temper somewhat rapid and hasty, but of a kindly sweet disposition, void of all design, and so innocent in his own intentions that he suspected no one; so that you might have cheated him ten times a day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose." Roger Sterne died in 1731 in Jamaica, where he had been sent on military duty. Eight years or so before, at the age of ten, Laurence had been placed at school near Halifax, the scene of a well-known incident. The ceiling of the school had been newly white-washed, and the ladder was left standing. The boy mounted it and wrote with a brush, in large letters, "Lau Sterne." The usher having severely
