ion to it; William Burton, not then
holding a commission, was entirely without pecuniary resources.

His strongest talent seems to have been for painting, and by such
occupation as he could get in drawing and painting in London he was
barely able to maintain himself. The old grandfather and his lieutenant,
aunt Mary, have been described to the writer in the darkest colours as
having constantly interposed between the true lovers, William Burton and
his beloved Eliza Paton, who, in spite of all advice to the contrary,
soon became his wife. What the laird of Grandholm and his daughter Mary
did was no doubt done in the harshest manner, but their actions
themselves seem hardly blamable. When William Burton found it impossible
to maintain his wife in London, she was received again into her paternal
home with her infant, William, John Hill Burton's elder brother. The
wife, of course, earnestly and constantly desired to rejoin her husband.
The father and sister declined to facilitate her doing so by paying the
expense of her return journey, concluding that if her husband was unable
to meet that outlay, he was not in a position to maintain her beside
himself.

After some six or eight years of mutual longing for each other's
society, separated by the distance of London from Aberdeen, William
Burton succeeded in exchanging his position in the Fencibles for a
lieutenancy in a line regiment under orders for India. There also he
went unaccompanied by his wife. After brief service in India he had to
return home in ill health. Then at last the husband and wife were
reunited; first to live together for a time in Aberdeen--afterwards to
go with their two sons to Jersey.

The eldest son, William, ten years older than John, afterwards went into
the Indian army, and died in India, leaving a son and daughter.

John Hill Burton's earliest recollections dated from his stay with his
parents in garrison in Jersey. This must have been about the year 1811
or 1812, when he was therefore two or three years old. He used to say he
remembered the relieving of guard in Jersey; that he had an infantine
recollection of a military guard-room by night; and remembered a "Lady
Fanny," the wife, as he believed, of the colonel of the regiment, who
showed some slight kindness towards him and other garrison children.

The greatest adventure of Dr Burton's unadventurous life occurred when
he was returning with his parents from Jersey, in a troop-ship. The
ves