ings, habits, and thoughts that are the web of society. For the appreciation of morality in this wider sense high gifts of imagination are necessary. Shakespeare could never have drawn Macbeth, and thereby made apparent the awfulness of murder, without some sympathy for the murderer-the sympathy of intelligence. These gifts of imagination and sympathy belong to Stevenson in a very high degree; in all his romances there are gleams from time to time of wise and subtle reflection upon life, from the eternal side of things, which shine the more luminously that they spring from the events and situations with no suspicion of homily. In The Black Arrow, Dick Shelton begs from the Duke of Gloucester the life of the old shipmaster Arblaster, whose ship he had taken and accidentally wrecked earlier in

the story. The Duke of Gloucester, who, in his own words, 'loves not mercy nor mercy-mongers,' yields the favour reluctantly. Then Dick turns to Arblaster.

"Come," said Dick, "a life is a life, old shrew, and it is more than ships or liquor. Say you forgive me, for if your life is worth nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my fortune. Come, I have paid for it dearly; be not so churlish."

"An I had my ship," said Arblaster, “I would 'a' been forth and safe on the high seasI and my man Tom. But ye took my ship, gossip, and I'm a beggar; and for my man Tom, a knave fellow in russet shot him down. Murrain,' quoth he, and spake never again. 'Murrain' was the last of his words, and the poor spirit of him passed. 'A will never sail no more, will my Tom."

'Dick was seized with unavailing penitence and pity; he sought to take the skipper's hand, but Arblaster avoided his touch.

"Nay," said he, "let be. Y' have played the devil with me, and let that content you."

saw, through tears, the poor old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, go shambling away, with bowed head, across the snow, and the unnoticed dog whimpering at his heels; and for the first time began to understand the desperate game that we play in life, and how a thing once done is not to be changed or remedied by any penitence.'

A similar wisdom that goes to the heart of things is found on the lips of the spiritual visitant in Markheim.

Murder is to me no special category,"

replied the other.

"All sins are murder, even

as all life is war. starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine, and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my eyes the pretty maid, who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself."

I behold your race, like

The wide outlook on humanity that

expresses itself in passages like these is combined in Stevenson with a vivid interest in, and quick appreciation of, character. The variety of the characters that he has essayed to draw is enormous, and his successes, for the purposes of his stories, are many. Yet with all this, the number of lifelike portraits, true to a hair, that are to be found in his works

is very small indeed. In the golden glow of romance, character is always subject to be idealised; it is the effect of character seen at particular angles and in special lights, natural or artificial, that Stevenson paints; he does not attempt to analyse the complexity of its elements, but boldly projects into it certain principles, and works from those. It has often been said of Scott that he could not draw a lady who was young and beautiful; the glamour

of chivalry blinded him, he lowered his eyes and described his emotions and aspirations. Something of the same disability afflicted Stevenson in the presence of a ruffian. He loved heroic vice only less than he loved heroic virtue, and was always ready to idealise his villains, to make of them men who, like the Master of Ballantrae, 'lived for an idea.' Even the low and lesser villainy of Israel Hands, in the great scene where he climbs the mast to murder the hero of Treasure Island, breathes out its soul in a creed:

"For thirty years," he said, "I've sailed the seas, and seen good and bad, better and worse, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o' goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't bite; them's my views-Amen, so be it."'

John Silver, that memorable pirate,