one of the houses of West Kensington.
In one at least of the houses of that brick wilderness human spirits were
being tested as on an anvil, and most of them tossed aside. So also, in,
_The Rajah's Diamond_, it was a quiet suburban garden that witnessed the
sudden apparition of Mr. Harry Hartley and his treasures precipitated
over the wall; it was in the same garden that the Rev. Simon Rolles
suddenly, to his own surprise, became a thief. A monotony of bad
building is no doubt a bad thing, but it cannot paralyse the activities
or frustrate the agonies of the mind of man.

To a man with Stevenson's live and searching imagination, every work of
human hands became vocal with possible associations. Buildings
positively chattered to him; the little inn at Queensferry, which even
for Scott had meant only mutton and currant jelly, with cranberries 'vera
weel preserved,' gave him the cardinal incident of _Kidnapped_. How
should the world ever seem dull or sordid to one whom a railway-station
would take into its confidence, to whom the very flagstones of the
pavement told their story, in whose mind 'the effect of night, of any
flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the
open ocean,' called up 'an army of anonymous desires and pleasures'? To
have the 'golden-tongued Romance with serene lute' for a mistress and
familiar is to be fortified against the assaults of tedium.

His attitude towards the surprising and momentous gifts of life was one
prolonged passion of praise and joy. There is none of his books that
reads like the meditations of an invalid. He has the readiest sympathy
for all exhibitions of impulsive energy; his heart goes out to a sailor,
and leaps into ecstasy over a generous adventurer or buccaneer. Of one
of his earlier books he says: 'From the negative point of view I flatter
myself this volume has a certain stamp. Although it runs to considerably
upwards of two hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the
imbecility of God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could
have made a better one myself.' And this was an omission that he never
remedied in his later works. Indeed, his zest in life, whether lived in
the back gardens of a town or on the high seas, was so great that it
seems probable the writer would have been lost had the man been dowered
with better health.

'Whereas my birth and spirit rather took
The way that takes the town,
Thou