's life it seems to me inadequate. Small is the word; it is a small
age, and I am of it. I could have wished to be otherwise busy in this
world. I ought to have been able to build lighthouses and write _David
Balfours_ too. _Hinc illae lacrymae._ I take my own case as most handy,
but it is as illustrative of my quarrel with the age. We take all these
pains, and we don't do as well as Michael Angelo or Leonardo, or even
Fielding, who was an active magistrate, or Richardson, who was a busy
bookseller. _J'ai honte pour nous_; my ears burn.

I am amazed at the effect which this Chicago exhibition has produced
upon you and others. It set Mrs. Fairchild literally mad--to judge by
her letters. And I wish I had seen anything so influential. I suppose
there was an aura, a halo, some sort of effulgency about the place; for
here I find you louder than the rest. Well, it may be there is a time
coming; and I wonder, when it comes, whether it will be a time of
little, exclusive, one-eyed rascals like you and me, or parties of the
old stamp who can paint and fight, and write and keep books of double
entry, and sculp, and scalp. It might be. You have a lot of stuff in the
kettle, and a great deal of it Celtic. I have changed my mind
progressively about England: practically the whole of Scotland is
Celtic, and the western half of England, and all Ireland, and the Celtic
blood makes a rare blend for art. If it is stiffened up with Latin
blood, you get the French. We were less lucky: we had only
Scandinavians, themselves decidedly artistic, and the Low-German lot.
However, that is a good starting-point, and with all the other elements
in your crucible, it may come to something great very easily. I wish you
would hurry up and let me see it. Here is a long while I have been
waiting for something _good_ in art; and what have I seen? Zola's
_Debacle_ and a few of Kipling's tales. Are you a reader of Barbey
d'Aurevilly? He is a never-failing source of pleasure to me, for my
sins, I suppose. What a work is the _Rideau Cramoisi!_ and
_L'Ensorcelee!_ and _Le Chevalier Des Touches!_

This is degenerating into mere twaddle. So please remember us all most
kindly to Mrs. Low, and believe me ever yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_P.S._--Were all your privateers voiceless in the war of 1812? Did _no
one_ of them write memoirs? I shall have to do my privateer from chic,
if you can't help me.[74] My application to Scribner has been quite in
va