d in volume form in an
edition limited to 250 copies, in 1896. _Beau Austin_ was acted in 1890
at The Haymarket, and quite recently _Admiral Guinea_ has been played
with Mr Sydney Valentine in the part of David Pew, but in spite of the
literary distinction of the collaborators the plays have not been a
great success on the stage.

In the later papers, 'A Christmas Sermon,' 'A Letter to a Young
Gentleman,' and 'Pulvis et Umbra,' in the volume of collected essays
called _Across the Plains_, the note of pathos which appears now and
then in _Virginibus Puerisque_ is even more forcibly struck. The writer
is older, he has known more of life and of suffering, he has more than
once looked death closely in the face, and, though his splendid courage
is there all the time, the sadness of humanity is more apparent than in
most of his work. The other essays in this volume are very pleasant
reading, and _Across the Plains_ and _The Old and New Pacific Capitals_
give most graphic descriptions of the life and scenery on the shore of
the Pacific, and of the journey to get there.

In 'Random Memories' in the same volume, he goes back to his boyhood,
and we meet him at home beside the 'Scottish Sea,' under grey Edinburgh
skies, larking with his fellow-boys in their autumn holidays, touring
with his father in _The Pharos_ round the coast of Fife, and later
inspecting harbours at Anstruther, and on the bleak shores of Caithness,
an apprentice engineer, for whom, apart from the open air and the
romance of a harbour or a light tower, his profession had no charms.

Not the least pleasant of his volumes of _Essays_ is that called
_Memories and Portraits_, published by Messrs Chatto & Windus in 1887,
and dedicated to his mother, whom his father's death in the May of that
year had so recently made a widow. In it there is a most interesting
paper entitled 'Thomas Stevenson,' in which he writes very
appreciatively of that father who was so great a man in the profession
which the son admired although he could not follow it. Here, too, are
papers on 'The Manse,' that old home of his grandfather at Colinton
which he when a child loved so well; on the old gardener at Swanston,
who so lovingly tended the vegetables of which he remarked to his
mistress, when told to send in something choice for the pot, that 'it
was mair blessed to give than to receive,' but gave her of his best all
the same, and who loved the old-fashioned flowers, and gave a place to