clue to the reasons which led Stevenson to choose this
particular date, in the year preceding Waterloo, for a story which, in
regard to some of its features at least, might seem more naturally
placed some quarter or even half a century earlier.

If the reader seeks, further, to know whether the scenery of Hermiston
can be identified with any one special place familiar to the writer's
early experience, the answer, I think, must be in the negative. Rather
it is distilled from a number of different haunts and associations among
the moorlands of southern Scotland. In the dedication and in a letter
to me he indicates the Lammermuirs as the scene of his tragedy. And Mrs.
Stevenson (his mother) told me that she thought he was inspired by
recollections of a visit paid in boyhood to an uncle living at a remote
farmhouse in that district called Overshiels, in the parish of Stow. But
though he may have thought of the Lammermuirs in the first instance, we
have already found him drawing his description of the kirk and manse
from another haunt of his youth, namely, Glencorse in the Pentlands;
while passages in chapters v. and viii. point explicitly to a third
district, that is, Upper Tweeddale, with the country stretching thence
towards the wells of Clyde. With this country also holiday rides and
excursions from Peebles had made him familiar as a boy: and on the whole
it is this which best answers the geographical indications of the story.
Some of the place-names are clearly not meant to furnish literal
indications. The Spango, for instance, is a water running, I believe,
not into the Tweed but into the Nith. Crossmichael as the name of a town
is borrowed from Galloway; but it may be taken to all intents and
purposes as standing for Peebles, where I am told by Sir George Douglas
there existed in the early years of the century a well-known club of the
same character as that described in the story. Lastly, the name
Hermiston itself is taken from a farm on the Water of Ale, between
Ettrick and Teviotdale, and close to the proper country of the Elliotts.

But it is with the general and essential that the artist deals, and
questions of strict historical perspective or local definition are
beside the mark in considering his work. Nor will any reader expect, or
be grateful for, comment in this place on matters which are more
properly to the point--on the seizing and penetrating power of the
author's ripened art as exhibited in the foregoing