ention shines no more; the voice is hushed of a
creative mind, expressing its fine imagining in this, our peerless
English tongue. His expression was so original and fresh from
Nature's treasure-house, so prodigal and various, its too brief flow
so consummate through an inborn gift made perfect by unsparing toil,
that mastery of the art by which Robert Louis Stevenson conveyed those
imaginings to us so picturesque, yet wisely ordered, his own romantic
life--and now, at last, so pathetic a loss which renews

"'The Virgilian cry,
The sense of tears in mortal things,'

that this assemblage has gathered at the first summons, in tribute to
a beautiful genius, and to avow that with the putting out of that
bright intelligence the reading world experiences a more than wonted
grief.

"Judged by the sum of his interrupted work, Stevenson had his
limitations. But the work was adjusted to the scale of a possibly
long career. As it was, the good fairies brought all gifts, save that
of health, to his cradle, and the gift-spoiler wrapped them in a
shroud. Thinking of what his art seemed leading to--for things that
would be the crowning efforts of other men seemed prentice-work in his
case--it was not safe to bound his limitations. And now it is as if
Sir Walter, for example, had died at forty-four, with the _Waverley
Novels_ just begun! In originality, in the conception of action and
situation, which, however phantastic, are seemingly within reason,
once we breathe the air of his Fancyland; in the union of bracing and
heroic character and adventure; in all that belongs to tale-writing
pure and simple, his gift was exhaustless. No other such charmer, in
this wise, has appeared in his generation. We thought the stories,
the fairy tales, had all been told, but 'Once upon a time' meant for
him our own time, and the grave and gay magic of Prince Florizel in
dingy London or sunny France. All this is but one of his provinces,
however distinctive. Besides, how he buttressed his romance with
apparent truth! Since Defoe, none had a better right to say: 'There
was one thing I determined to do when I began this long story, and
that was to tell out everything as it befell.'

"I remember delighting in two fascinating stories of Paris in the time
of Francois Villon, anonymously reprinted by a New York paper from a
London maga