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Mr Stevenson's broad shoulders, his massive head, his powerful face, reminded one of that enduring grey Scotch stone from which he and his ancestors raised round all our coasts, their lighthouses and harbours.

Strong, grey, silent, these solid blocks resist winds and waves, and so one felt would that powerful reticent nature stand steadfast in life's battle, a tower of strength to those who trusted him. Like his own 'Beacon Lights,' on cliff and headland brilliant gleams of humour bright gems of genius flashed out now and then from the silence. One felt too that safe as the ships in his splendid harbours, would rest family and friends in the strong yet loving heart that could hold secure all that it valued through the tests and changes of time and the conflicts of varying thoughts and opposing opinions. A man of strong prejudices, a man too of varying moods, Mr Stevenson knew what it was at times to endure hours of depression, to suffer from an almost morbidly religious conscience, but he always kept a courageous hold on life and found the best cure for a shadowed soul lay in constant and varied work.

The charming dedication of Familiar Studies of Men and Books is a delightful tribute from the gifted son to the strength and nobility of his father's character.

Highly favoured in his paternal heredity Mr R. L. Stevenson was no less fortunate in his mother and his mother's family.

If strength and force of intellect characterised Mr Thomas Stevenson, his wife, Margaret Balfour, had no less powerful an individuality; in beauty of person, in grace of manner, in the brilliance of a quick and flashing feminine intelligence—that was deep as well as bright—she was a fitting helpmate for her husband, and the very mother to sympathise with and encourage a son whose genius showed itself in quaint sayings, in dainty ways, and in chivalrous thoughts almost from his infancy.

Mrs Stevenson was the youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr Lewis Balfour, from 1823 to 1860 minister of Colinton, and of Henrietta Scott Smith, daughter of the minister of Galston. There had been thirteen children in the manse of Colinton, and father and mother had made of the picturesque old house a home in truth as well as in name. Many of these children survived long enough, two of them indeed are still living, to carry the sacred traditions of that happy home out into a world where they made honourable positions for themselves.

After the death of the mother her place was taken by her daughter Jane, that aunt of whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote so sweetly in his Child's Garden of Verses—

To other 'motherless bairns,' as well as to her own brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, that most motherly heart and gentle and beautiful soul has been a comfort and a refuge on the thorny highway of life, and many whose love she has earned by the tenderness of her sympathy still call Miss Balfour blessed.

She was a true helper to her father in the motherless home and in his parish work, and in spite of much bad health filled the mother's place in the house and won for herself the undying affection and regard not only of her own family but of her father's parishioners and friends.

A testimony to the high esteem in which her father's memory and hers, and indeed that of all the Balfour family, is still held in Colinton, was given to me a few years ago by the old beadle there. Fond as he was of Dr Lockhart, to speak to him of the Balfours, whom he remembered in his younger days, at once won his attention and regard. On my saying to him it was for their sakes I wished to see the inside of the church he queried with a brightening face:

'Ye'll no be ane o' them, will ye?'

'No' was the reply, 'but they have been so long known and loved they seem like my "ain folk" to me.'

'Aweel come awa' an' see the kirk. Will ye mind o' him?'

Alas! no; for the minister of Colinton had died seven years before my friendship with the Balfours began.

'Eh!' was all the old man said, but that and the shake of his head eloquently expressed what a loss that was for me!

'But ye'll ken her?' meaning Miss Balfour, he queried again, and as I said I did and well, the face brightened with a great brightness.

So, having found a friend in common, together we went over the church and the manse grounds, but, as Dr Lockhart was away from home, I resisted his persuasion to ask leave to go through the house and contented myself with a pleasant talk with him of Dr John Balfour, who had fought the mutineers in India and the cholera at Davidson's Mains, Slateford, and Leven; of Dr George, who is still fighting the ills that flesh is heir to, in Edinburgh; of the sons and daughters of the manse who had gone to their rest; of Mrs Stevenson, then in Samoa with her son, and whose charm of personality made her dear to the old man, and lastly of 'the clivir lad,' her son, who had spent such happy days in the old manse garden.

Of all the children in that large family Maggie, the youngest, was perhaps especially her sister's charge; and one knows, from that elder sister's description, how sweet, and good, and bright the little girl was, and how charming was the face, and how loving the heart of the mother of Robert Louis Stevenson when she too was a child at play in the manse garden. The mother's beauty and that dainty refinement of face and voice which she bequeathed to her son came to her in a long and honourable descent from a family that had for many centuries been noted for the beauty and the sincere goodness of its women, for the godliness and the manliness of its men.

The Rev. Dr Lewis Balfour of Colinton was the third son of Mr Balfour, the Laird of Pilrig. The quaint old house of Pilrig stands a little back from Leith Walk, the date on it is 1638; and the text inscribed on its door-stone, 'For we know, that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God, an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens,' is a fitting motto for a race whose first prominent ancestor was that James Balfour of Reformation times, who not only was a cousin of Melville the Reformer, but who married one of the Melville family. This double tie to those so entwined with the very life of that great period in Scotland's history brought Mr James Balfour into very close communion with such men as Erskine of Dun, the Rev. John Durie, and many others of the Reforming ministers and gentlemen, with whom a member of the Pilrig family, the late James Balfour-Melville, Esq., W.S., in his interesting pamphlet dealing with his family says, that his ancestor had much godly conversation and communing.

The early promise of the race was not belied in its later descendants, and the Balfours were noted for their zeal in religion, and in their country's affairs, as well as for an honourable and prudent application to the business of life on their own account. Andrew Balfour, the minister of Kirknewton, signed the protestation for the Kirk in 1617, and was imprisoned for it. His son James was called to the Scotch Bar, and was a Clerk of Session in Cromwell's time. A son of his was a Governor of the Darien Company, and his son, in turn, purchased the estate of Pilrig where his descendants kept up the godly and honourable traditions of the house, and dispensed a pleasant and a kindly hospitality to their friends in Edinburgh, from whom, at that time, their pretty