lders, his massive head, his powerful face,
reminded one of that enduring grey Scotch stone from which he and his
ancestors raised round all our coasts, their lighthouses and harbours.

Strong, grey, silent, these solid blocks resist winds and waves, and so
one felt would that powerful reticent nature stand steadfast in life's
battle, a tower of strength to those who trusted him. Like his own
'Beacon Lights,' on cliff and headland brilliant gleams of humour bright
gems of genius flashed out now and then from the silence. One felt too
that safe as the ships in his splendid harbours, would rest family and
friends in the strong yet loving heart that could hold secure all that
it valued through the tests and changes of time and the conflicts of
varying thoughts and opposing opinions. A man of strong prejudices, a
man too of varying moods, Mr Stevenson knew what it was at times to
endure hours of depression, to suffer from an almost morbidly religious
conscience, but he always kept a courageous hold on life and found the
best cure for a shadowed soul lay in constant and varied work.

The charming dedication of _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_ is a
delightful tribute from the gifted son to the strength and nobility of
his father's character.

Highly favoured in his paternal heredity Mr R. L. Stevenson was no less
fortunate in his mother and his mother's family.

If strength and force of intellect characterised Mr Thomas Stevenson,
his wife, Margaret Balfour, had no less powerful an individuality; in
beauty of person, in grace of manner, in the brilliance of a quick and
flashing feminine intelligence--that was deep as well as bright--she was
a fitting helpmate for her husband, and the very mother to sympathise
with and encourage a son whose genius showed itself in quaint sayings,
in dainty ways, and in chivalrous thoughts almost from his infancy.

Mrs Stevenson was the youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr Lewis Balfour,
from 1823 to 1860 minister of Colinton, and of Henrietta Scott Smith,
daughter of the minister of Galston. There had been thirteen children in
the manse of Colinton, and father and mother had made of the picturesque
old house a home in truth as well as in name. Many of these children
survived long enough, two of them indeed are still living, to carry the
sacred traditions of that happy home out into a world where they made
honourable positions for themselves.

After the death of the mother her place was tak