I passed my examination with some credit, and was appointed assistant-surgeon to my ship, then lying at Portsmouth. As she was expected, however, to sail every tide to join the fleet off Cherbourg,[A] I was not sent down at once, but received instructions to be on board the Gull tender, at Sheerness, in eight days. In the mean time, with my appointment, and twenty guineas in my pocket, a light heart and a tolerable figure, I went down into Surrey, to Bromley Hall, the seat of an excellent friend, from whom I had long had an invitation. I found the house fall of visitants, chiefly young people about my own age, all making merry, and had little difficulty in being admitted of their crew. I never saw so many happy, fair and handsome faces together, as were there assembled for the next week--but by far the loveliest of the fair faces was that of a young lady from the west, called Fane; and none, perhaps, was happier than my own, when beside her. She delighted in botany; and although I at that time knew little more of the science than would have enabled me to make a tolerable guess at the dried drug in a medicine-chest, yet the temptation was so great that I could not resist the opportunity of becoming her more constant companion, by undertaking the office of her tutor. My inadequacy must have been soon betrayed; nevertheless, we continued to pursue our studies, with as regular attendance as ever on my part, and as implicit attention on hers, till mutually we arrived at the tacit understanding that, provided we looked at the flower together, it mattered little whether I assigned it a right or a wrong place in our rare classification. We soon exchanged the garden for the fields and green lanes; and often before the others had risen to their daily vocations of riding or sailing, we would contrive a ramble in search of some unknown species of an unheard-of genus, to the romantic borders of Holmsdale, which lay within a half mile of Bromley, with the apology of the children for our guides, who rarely failed to find inducement enough in the rabbit-warren or rookery to leave us alone in our search through the glades and avenues of the old holm oak and the furze. It cannot be expected that, with these occasions constantly falling out, an ardent youth of nineteen, as I then was, should long conceal feelings fostered by such appliances of time and circumstance; nor need it be wondered at that, before even the week had elapsed, I had avowed my passion, and had not been altogether unsuccessful in eliciting a confession of its return. My exultation on that evening must have been very apparent, for next morning, as I came down stairs, having lain much later than usual, my host Mr Blundell met me, and took my arm as he bade me good morning, then led me into the library, and, "Harry, my fine fellow," said he, in his good-natured way, "you must get the M.D. to your name, and make something handsome of your