e last words are characteristic of his
attitude when he was lured into society,--he went a willing victim,
with no affectation of martyrdom. The few who met him in Edinburgh
drawing-rooms found him prodigal of tongue, somewhat puzzling with
his wholesale enthusiasms, absurd flights of fancy, theories he had
to propound, and ever ready to change like a chameleon to tone with
his surroundings. The spritish, fantastic youth impressed those he
encountered, even when he was one of the unfledged eaglets hatched
in the ancient eyrie of his precipitous city, whom Browning tells us
are not counted "till there is a rush of wings, and lo! they are
flown," "What was so taking in him, and how is one to analyse that
dazzling surface of pleasantry, that changeful, shining humour, wit,
wisdom, recklessness, beneath which beat the most kind and tolerant
of hearts?" asks Andrew Lang. But not only through the magnetism of
his personal presence did he attract even strangers, but through his
pen has he held in thrall all the reading public who liked his work.
"He has put into his books a great deal of all that went to the
making of his life," wrote his cousin, "though he had the art of
confiding a good deal, but not telling everything." It would have
been interesting to see, if Stevenson had taken it into his elfin-locked
head to learn to shine in debate, and, instead of incubating
a budding Scott, as he said, "the Spec." had trained an able
advocate, if the glamour of his personality would have extended to
the judges, and made him, with his well-chosen words, a successful
pleader. The boards of the Parliament House were too well worn a
road for so tramp-blooded a man. The tune "Over the Hills and Far
Away" was for ever humming in his head. He left the venerable city
of his birth, which he vowed he must always think of as home, and
steered a course on his way to fame "far ayont the muckle sea" which
led him from the Bar to Burial.

ACROSS THE SEAS

As an advocate, Stevenson found ample time to pursue his chosen
profession of letters, for, during the winters in Edinburgh, he
wrote much, and gradually his essays, etc., appeared in magazines,
and are now gathered into happily named volumes. He spent the long
vacations, when the Courts had risen, abroad, mostly frequenting an
artist-colony in Fontainebleau. At that time he was full of a
project, in company with some congenial spirits, to form a
peripatetic club, buy a barge, and glid