their line, nursed another light and tended it. Their lamps still
shine upon the Bell Rock and the Skerryvore; and--though in alien
seas, upon a rock of exile--this other light shall continue,
unquenchable by age, beneficent, serene.

* * * * *

Nov. 2, 1895. The "Vailima Letters."

Eagerly as we awaited this volume, it has proved a gift exceeding all
our hopes--a gift, I think, almost priceless. It unites in the rarest
manner the value of a familiar correspondence with the value of an
intimate journal: for these Samoan letters to his friend Mr. Sidney
Colvin form a record, scarcely interrupted, of Stevenson's thinkings
and doings from month to month, and often from day to day, during the
last four romantic years of his life. The first is dated November 2nd,
1890, when he and his household were clearing the ground for their
home on the mountain-side of Vaea: the last, October 6th, 1894, just
two months before his grave was dug on Vaea top. During his Odyssey in
the South Seas (from August, 1888, to the spring of 1890) his letters,
to Mr. Colvin at any rate, were infrequent and tantalizingly vague;
but soon after settling on his estate in Samoa, "he for the first
time, to my infinite gratification, took to writing me long and
regular monthly budgets as full and particular as heart could wish;
and this practice he maintained until within a few weeks of his
death." These letters, occupying a place quite apart in Stevenson's
correspondence, Mr. Colvin has now edited with pious care and given to
the public.

But the great, the happy surprise of the _Vailima Letters_ is neither