omantic, and
adventurous side. In the delightful sketch which his famous grandson
gave of him, does he not tell of the joy Robert Stevenson had on the
annual voyage in the _Lighthouse Yacht_--how it was looked forward to,
yearned for, and how, when he had Walter Scott on board, his fund of
story and reminiscence all through the tour never failed--how Scott drew
upon it in _The Pirate_ and the notes to _The Pirate_, and with what
pride Robert Stevenson preserved the lines Scott wrote in the lighthouse
album at the Bell Rock on that occasion:

"PHAROS LOQUITUR

"Far in the bosom of the deep
O'er these wild shelves my watch I keep,
A ruddy gem of changeful light
Bound on the dusky brow of night.
The seaman bids my lustre hail,
And scorns to strike his timorous sail."

And how in 1850 the old man, drawing nigh unto death, was with the utmost
difficulty dissuaded from going the voyage once more, and was found
furtively in his room packing his portmanteau in spite of the protests of
all his family, and would have gone but for the utter weakness of death.

His father was also a splendid engineer; was full of invention and
devoted to his profession, but he, too, was not without his romances, and
even vagaries. He loved a story, was a fine teller of stories, used to
sit at night and spin the most wondrous yarns, a man of much reserve, yet
also of much power in discourse, with an aptness and felicity in the use
of phrases--so much so, as his son tells, that on his deathbed, when his
power of speech was passing from him, and he couldn't articulate the
right word, he was silent rather than use the wrong one. I shall never
forget how in these early morning walks at Braemar, finding me
sympathetic, he unbent with the air of a man who had unexpectedly found
something he had sought, and was fairly confidential.

On the mother's side our author came of ministers. His maternal
grandfather, the Rev. Dr Balfour of Colinton, was a man of handsome
presence, tall, venerable-looking, and not without a mingled authority
and humour of his own--no very great preacher, I have heard, but would
sometimes bring a smile to the faces of his hearers by very naive and
original ways of putting things. R. L. Stevenson quaintly tells a story
of how his grandfather when he had physic to take, and was indulged in a
sweet afterwards, yet would not allow the child to have a sweet because
he had not had the physic. A veritable C