s
nothing but welcome for such memorable figures as John Silver, the
Admiral in _The Story of a Lie_, Master Francis Villon, and a goodly
company beside.

It is impossible even in such a cursory estimate of Stevenson as this to
pass over his vignettes of Nature. And it is the more necessary to
emphasize these, inasmuch as the Vagabond's passion for the Earth is
clearly discernible in these pictures. They are no Nature sketches as
imagined by a mere "ink-bottle feller"--to use a phrase of one of Mr.
Hardy's rustics. One of Stevenson's happiest recollections was an "open
air" experience when he slept on the earth. He loved the largeness of
the open air, and his intense joy in natural sights and sounds bespeaks
the man of fine, even hectic sensibility, whose nerves quiver for the
benison of the winds and sunshine.

Ever since the days of Mrs. Radcliffe, who used the stormier aspects of
Nature with such effect in her stories, down to Mr. Thomas Hardy, whose
massive scenic effects are so remarkable, Nature has been regarded as a
kind of "stage property" by the novelist.

To the great writers the Song of the Earth has proved an inspiration only
second to the "Song of Songs," and the lesser writer has imitated as best
he could so effective a decoration. But there is no mistaking the
genuine lover of the Earth. He does not--as Oscar Wilde wittily said of
a certain popular novelist--"frighten the evening sky into violent
chromo-lithographic effects"; he paints the sunrises and sunsets with a
loving fidelity which there is no mistaking. Nor are all the times and
seasons of equal interest in his eyes. If we look back at the masters of
fiction (ay, and mistresses too) in the past age, we shall note how each
one has his favourite aspect, how each responds more readily to one
special mood of the ancient Earth.

Mention has been made of Mrs. Radcliffe. Extravagant and absurd as her
stories are in many ways, she was a genuine lover of Nature, especially
of its grand and sublime aspects. Her influence may be traced in Scott,
still more in Byron. The mystic side of Nature finds its lovers chiefly
in the poets, in Coleridge and in Shelley. But at a later date Nathaniel
Hawthorne found in the mysticism of the Earth his finest inspiration;
while throughout the novels of Charlotte and Emily Bronte wail the bleak
winds of the North, and the grey storm-clouds are always hurrying past.
Even in Dickens there is more snow than sun