nsition from moods of
gloom or sternness to those of tender or freakish gaiety, and commanding
a gift of humorous and figurative speech second only to that of his more
famous son.

Thomas Stevenson was married to Margaret Isabella, youngest daughter of
the Rev. Lewis Balfour, for many years minister of the parish of
Colinton in Midlothian. This Mr. Balfour (described by his grandson in
the essay called _The Manse_) was of the stock of the Balfours of
Pilrig, and grandson to that James Balfour, professor first of moral
philosophy and afterwards of the law of nature and of nations, who was
held in particular esteem as a philosophical controversialist by David
Hume. His wife, Henrietta Smith, a daughter of the Rev. George Smith of
Galston, to whose gift as a preacher Burns refers scoffingly in the
_Holy Fair_, is said to have been a woman of uncommon beauty and charm
of manner. Their daughter, Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, suffered in early and
middle life from chest and nerve troubles, and her son may have
inherited from her some of his constitutional weakness. Capable,
cultivated, companionable, affectionate, she was a determined looker at
the bright side of things, and hence better skilled, perhaps, to shut
her eyes to troubles or differences among those she loved than
understandingly to compose or heal them. Conventionally minded one might
have thought her, but for the surprising readiness with which in later
life she adapted herself to conditions of life and travel the most
unconventional possible. The son and only child of these two, Robert
Louis (baptized Robert Lewis Balfour[3]), was born on November 13, 1850,
at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh. His health was infirm from the first, and
he was with difficulty kept alive by the combined care of his mother and
a most devoted nurse, Alison Cunningham; to whom his lifelong gratitude
will be found touchingly expressed in the course of the following
letters. In 1858 he was near dying of a gastric fever, and was at all
times subject to acute catarrhal and bronchial affections and extreme
nervous excitability.

In January 1853 Stevenson's parents moved to Inverleith Terrace, and in
May 1857 to 17 Heriot Row, which continued to be their Edinburgh home
until the death of Thomas Stevenson in 1887. Much of the boy's time was
also spent in the manse of Colinton on the Water of Leith, the home of
his maternal grandfather. Ill-health prevented him getting much regular
or continuous schoolin