whole family, and only particularly to Thomas Stevenson from the
great number and importance of his inventions: holding as the
Stevensons did a Government appointment they regarded their
original work as something due already to the nation, and none of
them has ever taken out a patent. It is another cause of the
comparative obscurity of the name: for a patent not only brings in
money, it infallibly spreads reputation; and my father's
instruments enter anonymously into a hundred light-rooms, and are
passed anonymously over in a hundred reports, where the least
considerable patent would stand out and tell its author's story.

But the life-work of Thomas Stevenson remains; what we have lost,
what we now rather try to recall, is the friend and companion. He
was a man of a somewhat antique strain: with a blended sternness
and softness that was wholly Scottish and at first somewhat
bewildering; with a profound essential melancholy of disposition
and (what often accompanies it) the most humorous geniality in
company; shrewd and childish; passionately attached, passionately
prejudiced; a man of many extremes, many faults of temper, and no
very stable foothold for himself among life's troubles. Yet he was
a wise adviser; many men, and these not inconsiderable, took
counsel with him habitually. "I sat at his feet," writes one of
these, "when I asked his advice, and when the broad brow was set in
thought and the firm mouth said his say, I always knew that no man
could add to the worth of the conclusion." He had excellent taste,
though whimsical and partial; collected old furniture and delighted
specially in sunflowers long before the days of Mr. Wilde; took a
lasting pleasure in prints and pictures; was a devout admirer of
Thomson of Duddingston at a time when few shared the taste; and
though he read little, was constant to his favourite books. He had