Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/554

 of the examinations approached, he was again living alone for a few months, Mrs. Darwall being in England; and his domestic habits having rendered the solitude of his evenings irksome to him, I and my family had, very frequently, the pleasure and advantage of his society. With the ambition of a student might now be perceived the ambition of one conscious of his own power, and eager to enter the lists with those who were candidates for actual practice, in the large town of which he was a native, and which he never ceased to consider his fixed home. He passed his examinations with the highest credit, and, even, honour; but was so impatient of the mere ceremonials of the graduation, and so anxious to feel himself settled, that all the persuasions of his fellow-students could not dissuade him from leaving Edinburgh on the very; day on which he attained the doctorate. And if he left the place of his studies with too sanguine an expectation of a long life of success, he at least so continued, and even increased his industrious labours during the twelve years more of life allotted to him, as to have left nothing undone to deserve it.

My own intercourse with him seemed, at that time, to have terminated, in all probability, for ever; but various accidental circumstances, such as so often influence our most important determinations, very unexpectedly caused me, within two years from that time, to settle at Stratford, little more than twenty miles from Birmingham; and gave occasion to a renewal of that friendly intimacy which never ceased until his lamented death.