he note-books which even then he carried in his pocket were in
constant requisition.

The boy, from the very first, felt a strong leading to the profession of
letters, which he ultimately followed; and he describes himself as from
very early boyhood having been given to make notes for possible
romances, and to choose words of peculiar fitness for the purpose he had
in hand, as well as to weave tales of thrilling adventure.

Style was from the first a passion with him; and the lad had already
begun in these juvenile note-books that careful choice of words and
language which was at the very outset of his literary career to make so
competent a critic as Mr Hamerton call him one of the greatest living
masters of English prose. That he became something of a master in verse
also those few thin volumes of deep thoughts, in a setting of fitly
chosen words and rhymes, which he has published, amply prove.

To return, however, to the boy who went to the Academy, or rather who
did _not_ go to the Academy, for he had a faculty for playing truant
which must have been extraordinarily provoking to parents and masters.
No sooner was he out of the door in the morning than he could truly
say--

'I heard the winds, with unseen feet,
Pass up the long and weary street,

'They say "We come from hill and glen
To touch the brows of toiling men."

'That each may know and feel we bring
The faint first breathings of the spring.'

And the voice of the spring thus calling him as soon as it was heard,
was obeyed; and, careless of the frowns that were bound to greet his
return, he was off to wander on his beloved Braids and Pentlands, to lie
long days among the whin and the broom, or to slip away to watch the
busy shipping on the Forth, and to think deep thoughts beside the
wave-washed shore of that sea which ever drew him like the voice of a
familiar friend.

To that intense love of Nature, and of Nature's solitude, his readers
owe much, and we to-day may all say with the writer who gave such an
interesting description of Swanston in _Good Words_ in the spring of
1895, that those truant hours of his educated him for his future work
far better than a careful attendance at school and college could have
done. The same writer says that it was this open air life that he loved
so dearly which gave to Stevenson's books their large leisure, and to
his style its dignity. There is much truth in the remark; but as far