1848 ENGAGEMENT 53 



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 dis- 

 played 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. Before coming to Australia, 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 



scientific pursuits. His fivefold or " circular " system was a 

 " forcedly artificial attempt at a system of natural classification." 



