My first love was naturally much older than myself (being nearly fourteen), and very tall, a very handsome black-eyed fellow, the son of my father’s dear friend and colleague, the Port Admiral. He was by fits and starts very good and condescending to me, and accepted my devotion in rather a patronizing manner. In fact, he was the one _qui tendait la joue_. I blush to acknowledge that on the Sunday of my first appearance in church (I was then not much more than five years old) I spent nearly the whole of the sermon weighing in my own mind the probability of walking home with George. My wildest hope was fulfilled, little as I deserved it. Hand-in-hand we returned from church, where I had been an inattentive worshipper. My love often passed our nursery windows, of which there were four—two looking round the respective corners—and I invariably ran from one to the other, about the hour I expected his appearance, to watch that beloved, and to me gigantic, form, and follow it with my eyes out of sight. But my attachment though ardent, was not of very long duration; in my juvenile, if fickle, heart, George was ere long supplanted by no less a personage than the Commanding Officer of the Depôt. A man of his years, a soldier, a hero, who wore a Waterloo Medal and a brilliant uniform—a lover full of compliments—for “A winning tongue had he,” [Sidenote: CHILDISH FLIRTATIONS] what chance had poor George the school-boy with such a rival? I used to walk with my sweetheart on the ramparts to hear the band play, and was often allowed to choose the air. To this very day I am not quite sure whether gratified vanity or real affection preponderated in my childish breast. I am inclined, at this distance of time, to decide in favour of the first-named feeling, for I was most decidedly puffed up and elated by my military conquest. He often assured me he could never part from me, and would ask my father to give me to him, and that he would place me under a glass case on the chimney-piece of his barrack-room in whatever quarters he found himself, with divers similar compliments of the kind, which, I doubt not, he had addressed before and since to other ears. I listened with intense delight to his declarations, for I had a very low opinion of my own personal appearance, as the other members of my family surpassed me greatly in comeliness. He also presented me with frequent gifts, two of which I yet possess, and I still remember him after the lapse of more than half a century, with feelings of real regard. I never saw him again, but I read of his death, which occurred at a very advanced age, with some emotion, and rejoiced at the encomiums which were passed on him as a man and a soldier. I had also an adorer of quite another stamp, age, and profession. He was a contemporary of my father’s, and a full admiral. I tolerated his attentions, and I am bound to say accepted many gifts, which was scarcely honourable in one whose