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Robert Louis Stevenson by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
page 29 of 39 (74%)
stranger's carriage, with the black pine tops standing above it
like plumes. And Will o' the Mill makes the acquaintance of his
physician and friend, and goes at last upon his travels. In the
other story, Markheim meets with his own double in the house of the
dealer in curiosities, whom he has murdered. It is not such a
double as Rossetti prayed for to the god of Sleep:


'Ah! might I, by thy good grace,
Groping in the windy stair
(Darkness and the breath of space
Like loud waters everywhere),
Meeting mine own image there
Face to face,
Send it from that place to her!'


but a clear-eyed critic of the murderer, not unfriendly, who lays
bare before him his motives and history. At the close of that
wonderful conversation, one of the most brilliant of its author's
achievements, Markheim gives himself into the hands of the police.
These two stories, when compared with the others, serve to show how
Stevenson's imagination quickened and strengthened when it played
full upon life. For his best romantic effects, like all great
romance, are illuminative of life, and no mere idle games.


III. MORALITY. - His genius, like the genius of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, was doubly rich in the spirit of romance and in a wise
and beautiful morality. But the irresponsible caprices of his
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