AR LOW,--Your success has been immense. I wish your letter had come
two days ago: _Otto_, alas! has been disposed of a good while ago; but
it was only day before yesterday that I settled the new volume of Arabs.
However, for the future, you and the sons of the deified Scribner are
the men for me. Really they have behaved most handsomely. I cannot lay
my hand on the papers, or I would tell you exactly how it compares with
my English bargain; but it compares well. Ah, if we had that copyright,
I do believe it would go far to make me solvent, ill-health and all.

I wrote you a letter to the Rembrandt, in which I stated my views about
the dedication in a very brief form. It will give me sincere pleasure,
and will make the second dedication I have received, the other being
from John Addington Symonds. It is a compliment I value much; I don't
know any that I should prefer.

I am glad to hear you have windows to do; that is a fine business, I
think; but, alas! the glass is so bad nowadays; realism invading even
that, as well as the huge inferiority of our technical resource
corrupting every tint. Still, anything that keeps a man to decoration
is, in this age, good for the artist's spirit.

By the way, have you seen James and me on the novel? James, I think in
the August or September--R. L. S. in the December Longman. I own I think
the _ecole bete_, of which I am the champion, has the whip hand of the
argument; but as James is to make a rejoinder, I must not boast. Anyway
the controversy is amusing to see. I was terribly tied down to space,
which has made the end congested and dull. I shall see if I can afford
to send you the April Contemporary--but I dare say you see it anyway--as
it will contain a paper of mine on style, a sort of continuation of old
arguments on art in which you have wagged a most effective tongue. It is
a sort of start upon my Treatise on the Art of Literature: a small, arid
book that shall some day appear.

With every good wish from me and mine (should I not say "she and hers"?)
to you and yours, believe me yours ever,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO P.G. HAMERTON

The work of his correspondent's which R. L. S. notices in the
following is the sumptuous volume _Landscape_: Seeley & Co., 1885.
The passages specially referred to will be found pp. 46-62 of that
work.

_Bournemouth, March 16, 1885._

MY DEAR HAMERTON,--Various things have been reminding me of my
misconduct: