was created for man, as the Scriptures assure us, the impression
that she makes on him should not count for as much as the
impression she makes on some other woman, is a question that cries
for solution. Perhaps the answer is that disinterested curiosity,
which is one means of approach to the knowledge of character,
although only one, is a rare attitude for man to assume towards the
other sex. Stevenson's curiosity was late in awaking; the heroine
of THE BLACK ARROW is dressed in boy's clothes throughout the
course of the story, and the novelist thus saved the trouble of
describing the demeanour of a girl. Mrs. Henry, in THE MASTER OF
BALLANTRAE, is a charming veiled figure, drawn in the shadow; Miss
Barbara Grant and Catriona in the continuation of KIDNAPPED are
real enough to have made many suitors for their respective hands
among male readers of the book; - but that is nothing, reply the
critics of the other party: a walking doll will find suitors. The
question must stand over until some definite principles of
criticism have been discovered to guide us among these perilous
passes.

One character must never be passed over in an estimate of
Stevenson's work. The hero of his longest work is not David
Balfour, in whom the pawky Lowland lad, proud and precise, but 'a
very pretty gentleman,' is transfigured at times by traits that he
catches, as narrator of the story, from its author himself. But
Alan Breek Stewart is a greater creation, and a fine instance of
that wider morality that can seize by sympathy the soul of a wild
Highland clansman. 'Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable,' a condoner
of murder (for 'them that havenae dipped their hands in any little
difficulty should be very mindful of the case of them that have'),
a confirmed gambler, as quarrel-some as a turkey-cock, and as vain