put in because a
heroine is necessary--the more's the pity evidently from the author's
point of view!--and drawn somewhat perfunctorily by their creator, with
but a limited knowledge of the virtues, the faults, the failings, and,
above all, the 'little ways,' which go to make up the ordinary woman.

The women are undoubtedly a weakness in the author's work. It looks as
if he had known intimately only exceptional women,--who, possibly, had
left behind them, before he knew them well, most of a young girl's
faults and follies, and some of her attractions also,--and had never
found other women worth studying deeply, so that the girls in his books
do not read _real_ enough to interest one greatly, and it is almost a
relief to take up _Treasure Island_, _The Wrecker_, or _The Ebb Tide_,
in which there is very little about them. Lady Violet Greville, in a
recent article, expresses much the same opinion. She says, 'The late
Robert Louis Stevenson had no opinion of women writers, he said they
were incapable of grasping the essential facts of life. He was a great
master of style, but I doubt if he had much knowledge of feminine
character'--a dictum in which many women will agree with her. She goes
on to say that there is some truth in what he says of women writers,
because women and men regard as essential quite different facts in life;
and she explains it by saying that it is the difference of personality
and of point of view. Certainly Mr Stevenson's point of view in regard
to his heroines is not a satisfying one to most women.

Many men have drawn excellent female characters, just as a few women
have given us life-like heroes. These exceptions, one imagines, must
have been to some extent better able to appreciate the other sex
thoroughly than most writers; but it strikes one as odd that Mr
Stevenson, who had in himself so much of gentleness and of the
essentially feminine, should have so continually failed to give a living
interest to his heroines. Possibly had he lived longer, and had the
maturing of his powers, so evident in _Weir of Hermiston_, been
accompanied by a measure of improved health, the women of his later
books might all have been as powerful creations as the two Kirsties
promised to be.

His heroes are all that heart can desire, manly, brave, and natural; his
villains make villainy interesting; so it may be forgiven him that
scarcely one of his feminine characters lives in the reader's memory.

One of the m