were intensified by the fact that he grew up in surroundings not wholly congenial.  One member alone of his family felt with him that complete and vivid sympathy which is so necessary to the full development of such a nature.  When he was fourteen this sister married and left home, but the bond between them was not broken.  In some ways it was strengthened by the lad’s love for her children; by his grief, scarcely less than her own, at the death of her eldest little girl.  Moreover they were brought into close companionship for a considerable time when, after his dismal period of apprenticeship at Rotherhithe—­to which he could never look back without a shudder—­he came to work under her husband.  She had encouraged him in his studies; had urged him to work for the Botanical prize at Sydenham College; had brightened his life with her sympathy, and believed firmly in the brilliant future which awaited him—­a belief which for her sake, if for nothing else, he was eager to justify by his best exertions.

He had not had, so far, much opportunity of entering the social world; but his visit to Sydney gave him an opportunity of entering a good society to which his commission in the navy was a sufficient introduction.  He was eager to find friendships if he could, for his reserve was anything but misanthropic.  It was not long before he made the acquaintance of William Macleay, a naturalist of wide research and great speculative ability; and struck up a close friendship with William Fanning, one of the leading merchants of the town, a friendship which was to have momentous consequences.  For it was at Fanning’s house that he met his future wife, Miss Henrietta Anne Heathorn, for whom he was to serve longer and harder than Jacob thought to serve for Rachel, but who was to be his help and stay for forty years, in his struggles ready to counsel, in adversity to comfort; the critic whose judgment he valued above almost any, and whose praise he cared most to win; his first care and his latest thought, the other self, whose union with him was a supreme example of mutual sincerity and devotion.

It was a case of love, if not actually at first sight, yet of very rapid growth when he came to learn the quiet strength and tenderness of her nature as displayed in the management of her sister’s household.  A certain simplicity and directness united with an unusual degree of cultivation, had attracted him from the first.  She had been two years at school in Germany, and her knowledge of German and of German literature brought them together on common ground.  Things ran very smoothly at the beginning, and the young couple, whose united ages amounted to forty-four years, became engaged.

The marriage was to take place on his promotion to the rank of full surgeon—­a promotion he hoped to attain speedily at the conclusion of the voyage on the strength of his scientific work, for this was the inducement held out by the Admiralty to energetic subalterns.  The following letter to his sister describes the situation:—­]