24 JULY 1886, Page 18

BOOKS.

KIDNAPPED.* WE question whether Mr. Stevenson will ever again come quite up to the freshness of Treasure Island, a book which may be said to have had more charm for boys than even Robinson Crusoe itself, though less for men. Indeed, we should be dis- posed to regard the boys of England who lived before Robinson Clime was written, as boys without a literature, and the boys who lived between Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island, as boys who had only a foretaste of what was in preparation for them ; while boys who have lived since Treasure Island was published, are boys who have a right to look back on all previous boyhoods with compassion, as boyhoods sunk in comparative darkness, or touched only with the streaks of dawn. Kidnapped is not so ideal a story of external adventure as Treasure Island. On the other hand, it has more of human interest in it for those who have passed the age of boyhood. It touches the history of Scotland with a vigorous hand. It gives a picture of Highland character worthy of Sir Walter Scott himself. Its description of the scenery of the Highlands in the old, wild times, is as charming as a vivid imagination could make it; and the description of the cowardly old miser who plotted his nephew's death rather than

• Kidnapped: being Menwirs of the Adventures rf David Baymr in the Year 1751; how he was Kidnapped and Cast away ; his Sufferings in a D. sort Isle ; his Journey in the Wild Highlands; his Acquaintance with Alan Bee .k Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites ; with all that he Wired at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Slms. falsely en called; Written by Kim ef, and now set forth. By Robert Louis Stevenson. London : Cassell and Company, Limited. give him up his inheritance, is as vivid as anything which Mr. Stevenson's singular genies has yet invented for us. Nor is there in this delightful tale the least trace of that evil odour which makes The Strange Story of Dr. Jekyll and .Mr. Hyde so unpleasant a reminiscence, in spite of the originality and eeri- ness of the inconceivable and illogical marvel on which it is based.

The power of Kidnapped consists chiefly in the great vivacity with which the portrait of the Highland chieftain is drawn, and with which the contrast is brought out between the frank vanity of the Highland character and the rooted self•sufficiency of the Lowland character in the relations between the Stewart of Appin and the Lowland hero of the adventures. So far as the mere story goes, though there is plenty of adventure, there is not that rush of danger and enterprise which transfigured Treasure Island. The story depends far more for its interest on the realities of history and character than that of the earlier tale. The first striking effect in the book is the description of the hatred in which the uncle of the hero is held by the country-folk in the neighbour- hood of his house, the desolation of the old miser's abode, and the struggle in his mind between his horror of his nephew, who may depriie him of his property,. and his wish to keep him till some plan of finally ridding himself of the lad occurs. The description of his attempt to bring him to his death by sending him on a dark night up an unfinished staircase is very powerful:—

"The tower, I should have said, was square; and in every corner the step was made of a great stone of a different shape, to join the flights. Well, I had come close to one of these turns, when, feeling forward as usual, my hand slipped upon an edge and found nothing but emptiness beyond it. The.stair had been carried no higher : to set a stranger mounting it in the darkness was to send him straight to his death ; and (although, thanks to the lightning and my own precautions, I was safe enough) the mere thought of the peril in which I might have stood, and the dreadful height I might have fallen from, brought out the sweat upon my body and relaxed my joints. But I knew what I wanted now, and turned and groped my way down again, with a wonderful anger in my heart. About half-way down, the wind sprang up in a clap and shook the tower, and died again ; the rain followed ; and before I had reached the ground level it fell in buckets. I put out my head into the storm, and looked along towards the kitchen. The door, which I had shut behind me when I left, now stood open, and shed a little glimmer of light ; and I thought I could see a figure standing in the rain, quite still, like a man hearkening. And then there cams a blinding flash, which showed me my uncle plainly, just where I had fancied him to stand ; and hard upon the heels of it, a groat tovi-row of thunder. Now, whether my uncle thought the crash to be the sound of my fall, or whether he heard in it God's voice denouncing murder, I will leave you to guess. Certain it is, at least, that he was seized on by a kind of panic fear, and that he ran into the house and left the door open behind him. I followed as softly as I could, and, coming unheard into the kitchen, stool and watched him. He had found time to open the corner cupboard and bring out a great case-bottle of aqua vireo, and now sat with his back towards me as the table. Ever and again he would be seized with a fit of deadly-shuddering and groan aloud, and carrying the bottle to his lips, drink down the raw spirits by the mouthful. I stepped for- ward, came close behind him where he sat, and suddenly clapping my two hands down upon his shoulders—' Ah !' cried I. My uncle gave a kind of broken cry like a sheep's bleat, Rang up his arms, and tumbled to the thor like a dead man."

The next great success in the book introduces us to the High- lander, the Stewart chief of Appin, whose character is so skil- fully drawn that Scott himself would, we think, have been glad to own the picture. The hero, David Balfour, has helped him in his fight against the crew of the Covenant,' in which David Balfour had been kidnapped. The Highlander is as grateful as he is vain ; but then, he is also as vain as he is grateful, and David Balfour, who is full of the self-sufficiency of the Lowlands, is not a little mortified at finding how little of the credit of the victory is set down to himself :—

" The round-house was like a shambles; three were dead inside, another lay in his death agony across the threshold ; and there were Alan and I victorious and unhurt. He came up to me with open arms. 'Come to my arms !' he cried, and embraced and kissed me hard upon both cheeks. 'David,' said he, 'I bye you like a brother. And oh, man,' he cried in a kind of ecstasy, Am I no a bonny fighter ?' Therenpon he turned to the four enemies, passed his sword clean through each of them, and tumbled them out of doors one after the other. As he did so, be kept humming and singing and whistling to himself, like a man trying to recall an air ; only what he was try- ing, was to make one. All the while, the flush was in his face, and his eyes were as bright as a five-year-old child's with a new toy. And presently ho sat down upon the table, sword in hand ; the air that he was making all the time began to ran a little clearer, and then clearer still; and then out he burst with a great voice into a Gaelic song. I have translated it here, not in verso (of which I have no skill) but at least in the King's English. He sang it often afterwards, and the thing became popular ; so that I have heard it, and had it explained to me, many's the time :—

' this is the song of the sword of Alan The smith made it, The fire sat it ; Now it shines in the baud of Alan Brock..

Their eyes were many and br:ght, Swift wore they to behold. Many the hands they guided The sword was alone.

The dun deer troop over the hill, They are many, the hill is ins ; The dun deer vanish,

The hill remains.

Como to me from the hills of heather, Come from the isles of the sea.

0 far-beholding eagles, Here is your meat.'

Now this song which be made (both words and music) in the hour of our victory, is something less than just to me, who stood beside him in the tussle. Mr. Simian and five more were either killed outright or thoroughly disabled ; but of these, two fell by my hand, the two that came by the skylight. Four more were hurt, and of that number, one (and ho not the least important) got his hurt from me. So that, altogether, I did my fair share both of the killing and the wounding, and might have claimed a place in Alan's verses. But poets (as a very wise man once told me) have to think upon their rhymes ; and in good prose talk, Alan always did me more than justice."

In the relations between these two, the chief intellectual in- terest of the story consists. These relations are very powerfully drawn, and perhaps nothing is better told than the great quarrel which results from Alan's borrowing David's money to gamble with and lose, and the sulky bitterness with which David Balfour resents the wrong. The account of the long days of estrangement, during which the two flee together through the highlands, the one sullenly nursing his wrath, and perhaps partly on that account sickening for a long illness, while the other, after a generous effort to clear away the cause of quarrel by a candid acknowledgment of his fault, accepts the feud with a malignant joy, is admirably effective, as also is the close of the feud, when David breaks down altogether, and Alan all but carries him to the house of one of the Maclarens in the Braes of Balquidder. Perhaps, too, there is nothing much better in the book than the account of the contest between Alan Stewart and the Macgregor for victory as rivals on the bagpipes. Nothing could have brought out the petty vanity and the deep generosity of the Highland character better than this spirited contest.

On the whole, while this book is not quite so unique as Treasure Island, it has perhaps even more of the qualities proper to all true literature, and for the lovers of Scotch scenery and Scotch character it is altogether delightful. Mr. Stevenson has, so far as we know, written nothing which is more likely to live, and to be a favourite with readers of all sorts and classes.