Hard by the house of kings, repose the dead,

My dead, the ready and the strong of word.
Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive;

The sea bombards their founded towers; the night
Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers,

One after one, here in this grated cell,
Where the rain erases and the rust consumes,

Fell upon lasting silence. Continents
And continental oceans intervene;

A sea uncharted, on a lampless isle,
Environs and confines their wandering child

In vain. The voice of generations dead
Summons me, sitting distant, to arise,

My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace,
And all mutation over, stretch me down

In that denoted city of the dead."
CHAPTER IV - HEREDITY ILLUSTRATED

AT first sight it would seem hard to trace any illustration of the
doctrine of heredity in the case of this master of romance. George

Eliot's dictum that we are, each one of us, but an omnibus carrying
down the traits of our ancestors, does not appear at all to hold

here. This fanciful realist, this naive-wistful humorist, this
dreamy mystical casuist, crossed by the innocent bohemian, this

serious and genial essayist, in whom the deep thought was hidden by
the gracious play of wit and phantasy, came, on the father's side,

of a stock of what the world regarded as a quiet, ingenious,
demure, practical, home-keeping people. In his rich colour,

originality, and graceful air, it is almost as though the bloom of
japonica came on a rich old orchard apple-tree, all out of season

too. Those who go hard on heredity would say, perhaps, that he was
the result of some strange back-stroke. But, on closer

examination, we need not go so far. His grandfather, Robert
Stevenson, the great lighthouse-builder, the man who reared the

iron-bound pillar on the destructive Bell Rock, and set life-saving
lights there, was very intent on his professional" target="_blank" title="a.职业的 n.自由职业">professional work, yet he had

his ideal, and romantic, 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 annualvoyage 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 Calvinist in daily action - from him, no
doubt, our subject drew much of his interest in certain directions

- John Knox, Scottish history, the '15 and the '45, and no doubt
much that justifies the line "something of shorter-catechist," as

applied by Henley to Stevenson among very contrasted traits indeed.
But strange truly are the interblendings of race, and the way in

which traits of ancestors reappear, modifying and transforming each
other. The gardener knows what can be done by grafts and buddings;

but more wonderful far than anything there, are the mysterious
blendings and outbursts of what is old and forgotten, along with

what is wholly new and strange, and all going to produce often what
we call sometimes eccentricity, and sometimes originality and

genius.
Mr J. F. George, in SCOTTISH NOTES AND QUERIES, wrote as follows on

Stevenson's inheritances and indebtedness to certain of his
ancestors:

"About 1650, James Balfour, one of the Principal Clerks of the
Court of Session, married Bridget, daughter of Chalmers of

Balbaithan, Keithhall, and that estate was for some time in the
name of Balfour. His son, James Balfour of Balbaithan, Merchant

and Magistrate of Edinburgh, paid poll-tax in 1696, but by 1699 the
land had been sold. This was probably due to the fact that Balfour

was one of the Governors of the Darien Company. His grandson,
James Balfour of Pilrig (1705 - 1795), sometime Professor of Moral

Philosophy in Edinburgh University, whose portrait is sketched in
CATRIONA, also made a Garioch [Aberdeenshire district] marriage,

his wife being Cecilia, fifth daughter of Sir John Elphinstone,
second baronet of Logie (Elphinstone) and Sheriff of Aberdeen, by

Mary, daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot, first baronet of Minto.
"Referring to the Minto descent, Stevenson claims to have 'shaken a

spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots.'
He evidently knew little or nothing of his relations on the

Elphinstone side. The Logie Elphinstones were a cadet branch of
Glack, an estate acquired by Nicholas Elphinstone in 1499. William

Elphinstone, a younger son of James of Glack, and Elizabeth Wood of
Bonnyton, married Margaret Forbes, and was father of Sir James

Elphinstone, Bart., of Logie, so created in 1701. . . .
"Stevenson would have been delighted to acknowledge his

relationship, remote though it was, to 'the Wolf of Badenoch,' who
burned Elgin Cathedral without the Earl of Kildare's excuse that he

thought the Bishop was in it; and to the Wolf's son, the Victor of
Harlaw [and] to his nephew 'John O'Coull,' Constable of France. . .

. Also among Tusitala's kin may be noted, in addition to the later
Gordons of Gight, the Tiger Earl of Crawford, familiarly known as

'Earl Beardie,' the 'Wicked Master' of the same line, who was
fatally stabbed by a Dundee cobbler 'for taking a stoup of drink

from him'; Lady Jean Lindsay, who ran away with 'a common jockey
with the horn,' and latterly became a beggar; David Lindsay, the

last Laird of Edzell [a lichtsome Lindsay fallen on evil days], who
ended his days as hostler at a Kirkwall inn, and 'Mussel Mou'ed

Charlie,' the Jacobite ballad-singer.
"Stevenson always believed that he had a strong spiritualaffinity

to Robert Fergusson. It is more than probable that there was a
distant maternalaffinity as well. Margaret Forbes, the mother of

Sir James Elphinstone, the purchaser of Logie, has not been
identified, but it is probable she was of the branch of the

Tolquhon Forbeses who previously owned Logie. Fergusson's mother,
Elizabeth Forbes, was the daughter of a Kildrummy tacksman, who by

constant tradition is stated to have been of the house of Tolquhon.
It would certainly be interesting if this suggested connection

could be proved." (5)
"From his Highland ancestors," says the QUARTERLY REVIEW, "Louis