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 312 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. they occurred. In May most of the students leave Edhiburgh ; and the ensuing summer was an eventful one to Gooch. He returned to Yarmouth, and passed a part of the vacation at Norwich, with Mr. William Taylor, with whose aid he began the study of German ; but during this summer he had other occupations besides that study. He became acquainted with Miss Emily Boling- broke, and soon formed an attachment which became mutual. She was an elegant, accom- plished, sensitive, and fragile creature ; one of those beings who shrink from notice, and can only be appreciated by those who know them inti- mately. To a man of Gooch's temperament, ahvays disposed to take a gloomy view of his own affairs, an engagement, the accomplishment of which depended upon his professional success, did not contribute to immediate happiness ; nothing, however, could be more liberal than the conduct of the young lady's friends ; they looked to the pro- bability of his success with far more confidence than he did, and allowed a correspondence to con- tinue, which, under the relative circumstances of the parties, more worldly-minded parents would have forbidden. When he returned to Edinburgh the following autumn, after a loss of some weeks at Cambridge, (whither he had gone, upon er- roneous information respecting the probability of his obtaining a medical fellowship,) Gooch first evinced that disposition to melancholy which never afterwards left him. He was, at times, as cheerful as any man, but the habitual every day tendency of his mind was to despondency ; he never spoke of his own prospects in Hfe without