of traceable infusion: he was more purely Lowland than Sir Walter Scott.
His paternal line could be traced back to a West Country Stevenson of
1675; probably a tenant farmer, who was contemporary with the Whig
rising at Bothwell Bridge, with the murder of Archbishop Sharp, with
Claverhouse, and Sir George Mackenzie, called "the bluidy Advocate." An
earnest student of Mr. Wodrow's "History of the Sufferings," Louis did
not find "James Stevenson in Nether Carsewell" among the many martyrs
who live in the _Libre d'Or_ of the Remnant. But he had "a Covenanting
childhood;" his father, Mr. Thomas Stevenson, was loyal to the positions
of John Knox (the theological positions); and, brought up in these,
Louis had a taste, when the tenets of Calvin ceased to convince his
reason, of what non-Covenanters endured at the hands of the godly in
their day of power.

Every little Presbyterian, fifty years ago, was compelled to be familiar
with the Genevan creed, as expressed in "The Shorter Catechism," but
most little Presbyterians regarded that document as a necessary but
unintelligible evil--the sorrow that haunted the Sabbath. I knew it by
rote, Effectual Calling and all, but did not perceive that it possessed
either meaning or actuality. Nobody was so unkind as to interpret the
significance of the questions and answers; but somebody did interpret
them for Stevenson, or his early genius enabled him to discover what it
is all about, as he told me once, and it seems that the tendency of the
theology is terribly depressing. A happier though more or less
theological influence on his childhood he found in the adventures and
sufferings of the Covenanters. It is curious (and shows how much early
education can do) that he never was a little Royalist: always his heart,
like Lockhart's, which is no less strange, was with the true blue
Remnant. I can remember no proof that he was fascinated by the greatness
of Montrose.

As is well known, at about the age of sixteen he perverted a romance of
his own making, "Hackston of Rathillet" (a fanatic of Fife), into a
treatise: "The Pentland Rising, a Page of History," published in 1866.
One would rather have possessed the romance.

Stevenson came from the Balfours of Pilrig, and was of gentle blood, on
the spindle side. An ancestress of his mother was a granddaughter of Sir
Gilbert Elliot (as a "law lord," or judge, Lord Minto), and so he could
say: "I have shaken a spear in the debatable land, and sh