son--all these were such distinct characters, the incidents
were so entertaining, and the scenery so fine, that the whole would have
made a novelist's fortune.

MY DEAR FATHER,--No landing to-day, as the sea runs high on the rock.
They are at the second course of the first story on the rock. I have as
yet had no time here; so this is [Greek: a] and [Greek: o] of my
business news.--Your affectionate son,

R. L. STEVENSON.

TO MRS. CHURCHILL BABINGTON

This is addressed to a favourite cousin of the Balfour clan, married
to a Cambridge colleague of mine, Professor Churchill Babington of
learned and amiable memory, whose home was at the college living of
Cockfield near Bury St. Edmunds. Here Stevenson had visited them in
the previous year. "Mrs. Hutchinson" is, of course, Lucy Hutchinson's
famous _Life_ of her husband the regicide.

[_Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Summer 1871._]

MY DEAR MAUD,--If you have forgotten the handwriting--as is like
enough--you will find the name of a former correspondent (don't know how
to spell that word) at the end. I have begun to write to you before now,
but always stuck somehow, and left it to drown in a drawerful of like
fiascos. This time I am determined to carry through, though I have
nothing specially to say.

We look fairly like summer this morning; the trees are blackening out of
their spring greens; the warmer suns have melted the hoarfrost of
daisies of the paddock; and the blackbird, I fear, already beginning to
"stint his pipe of mellower days"--which is very apposite (I can't spell
anything to-day--_one_ p or _two_?) and pretty. All the same, we have
been having shocking weather--cold winds and grey skies.

I have been reading heaps of nice books; but I can't go back so far. I
am reading Clarendon's _Hist. Rebell._ at present, with which I am more
pleased than I expected, which is saying a good deal. It is a pet idea
of mine that one gets more real truth out of one avowed partisan than
out of a dozen of your sham impartialists--wolves in sheep's
clothing--simpering honesty as they suppress documents. After all, what
one wants to know is not what people did, but why they did it--or
rather, why they _thought_ they did it; and to learn that, you should go
to the men themselves. Their very falsehood is often more than another
man's truth.

I have possessed myself of Mrs. Hutchinson, which, of course, I admire,
etc. But is there not an i