MR. STEVENSON'S LAST ROMANCE.* FULL of genius and of the

glory of letters as is Mr. Stevenson's last romance, it confirms ns in the opinion which we ventured to express on his death,—the opinion that though his novels have so many high qualities, and attract,

• Weir of : an Unfinished Romance. By Robert Lode Stevenson. London: Chatto and Waidna. 1596. and delight from so many points of view, be was at his best as an essayist rather than as a writer of fiction. Weir of Hermiston contains three or four studies of character which

are in their way beyond praise. Our literature has few finer personal portraits than the picture of the hard, cruel, savage old lawyer who gives his name to the book, and who admittedly represents that most ruthless and violent of ledges, Lord Braxfield,—the great Scotch Judge who out- deffreyed Jeffreys in his manners on the Bench, but who was as brave, upright, and honest in intent as Jeffreys was

cowardly, dishonest, and corrupt. Hardly less striking is his weak, tearful wife, Mrs. Weir,—a gentle, ineffectual

creature whose " philosophy of life was summed in one expression, tenderness." "In her view of the universe, which was all lighted up with a glow out of the doors of hell, good people must walk there in a kind of ecstasy of tenderness." She heard, and in a sense admired, the strenuous Cal- vinist divinity of her Minister. My Lord sat under him with relish, "but Mrs. Weir beard him from afar off ; heard him (like the cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts; and

meanwhile within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden, which she watered with her tears." Contrasted with her is the elder Kirstie, the distant cousin, humble in rank though not in character, who fills the post of housekeeper to Mrs. Weir. "Kirstie was a woman in a thousand, clean,

capable, notable ; once a moorland Helen, and still comely as a blood-horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and colour, she ran the house with her whole in- temperate soul in a bustle, not without buffets." Again, there is her niece, the younger Kirstie, the heroine of the tale, not quite so memorable a person as the aunt, but yet, as heroines go, a wonderful piece of womanhood. Mr. Stevenson, at any rate, never came so near success with a young woman as he does in drawing this wayward. impulsive girl—in love with love, with herself, and with her lover. Even the hero, Lord

Hermiston's son, is attractive, though he has to play the difficult and ungrateful part of the high-minded young man. Many are the devices of authors to keep their heroes in virtue and good principle without degenerating into priggish- ness, and Mr. Stevenson has finely used the best of them. Other well-graced characters throng the book. The moor- land brothers of the younger Kirstie, one a yeoman, one a local Burns, and the other a Glasgow merchant, show once again how subtle and how keen was their creator's power to pierce, the secrets of human nature. But the moral situations of the book are not less good than the characters. Mr. Stevenson touches finely the old and never-ending conflict

between youth and age, between high and noble aspirations and hard, unimpassioned experience, between hot enthusiasm and cold worldly wisdom. We all know the tragedy of the son who thinks, with tears of shame and misery, that his father cares nothing for the only things that matter in the world, high principle and truth and justice, and the father who regards his son as a weak, hair-brained idiot. To each the attitude of the other is an insult, and each feels that the other has wantonly wounded him to the heart. But "to be wroth with one we love will work like madness in the brain," and hence these quarrels, whatever their merits or excuse, are among the most terrible that man's heart can endure. Mr. Stevenson

lays bare to us such a quarrel and moralises it for us as he goes. With a rare, and in this case helpful, art he gives us the

ease for the older man. He shows us how the son is at last con- vinced that, after all, the duty of not quarrelling with a father who confessedly is not a mean or corrupt man, is greater than the supposed sacred duty of violently championing certain of those great abstract principles of right and justice which

.seem worth the whole world to the fiery and feverish brain of youth. This episode is finely handled throughout. Lord Hermiston's son goes into Court and sees his father engaged in the, to him, most congenial task of " hunting gallowsward with jeers" a poor, mean-spirited, trembling, commonplace criminal. The description of the Judge, and indeed of the whole trial, could not be better. After describing "the panel"—i e., the prisoner—Mr. Stevenson continues :— " Over against him, my Lord Hermiston occupied the bench in the red robes of criminal jurisdiction, his face framed in the white wig. Honest all through, he did not affect the virtue of im- partiality ; this was no case for refinement ; there was a man to be banged, be would have said, and he was hanging him. Nor was it possible to see his lordship, and acquit him of gusto in the task. It was plain he gloried in the exercise of his trained faculties, in the clear sight which pierced at once into the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished gibes with which he demolished every figment of defence. He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn place with some of the freedom of the tavern ; and the rag of man with the flannel round his neck was hunted gallowsward with jeers The summing-up contained some jewels. These two peetiable creatures [the criminal and the woman who betrays him] seem to have made up thegither, it's not for us to explain why.'—' The panel, who (whatever else be may be) appears to be equally ill set-out in mind and boady.'—' Neither the panel nor yet the old wife appears to have had so much common sense as even to tell a lie when it was necessary.' And in the course of sentencing, my lord bad this elan. dictum : 'I have been the means, under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal as yourself.' The words were strong in themselves ; the light and heat and detonation of their delivery, and the savage pleasure of the speaker in his task, made them tingle in the ears."

This hideous scene makes a terrible impression upon the Judge's son, Archie Weir, and when the day of execution comes he gives vent to wild words, denouncing the execution as a " God-defying murder," and afterwards makes a scene in a college debating society in regard to capital punishment in general. Of course there is a scandal, and Lord Hermiston and his son have a deadly quarrel. In the course of the quarrel, however, Archie is made to see his fault by the kindly Lord Glenalmond,—one of Lord Hermiston's brother-Judges, who, though his sympathies are with Archie, has a deep respect for the upright but savage man of the world. The talk between the man and the boy is quite delightful could never deny,' he [Archie] began—'I mean I can conceive that some men would be better dead. But who are we to know all the springs of God's unfortunate creatures? Who are we to trust ourselves where it seems that God Himself must think twice before He treads, and to do it with delight? Yes, with delight Tigris ut aspera.'—' Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle,' said Glenalmond. And yet, do you know, I think somehow a great one.'—' I've had a long talk with him to night,' said Archie.—` I was supposing so,' said Glenalmond.= And he struck me —I can- not deny that be struck me as something very big,' pursued the son. ' Yes, he is big. He never spoke about himself; only about me. I suppose I admired him. The dreadful part—'—• Sup- pose we did not talk about that,' interrupted Glenalmond. • You know it very well, it cannot in any way help that you should brood upon it, and I sometimes wonder whether you and I—who are a pair of sentimentalists—are quite good judges of plain men.' —'How do you mean ? ' asked Archie.= Fair judges, I mean,' re- plied Glenalmond. Can we be just to them? Do we not ask too much ? There was a word of yours just now that impressed me a little when you asked me who we were to know all the springs of God's unfortunate creatures. You applied that, as I understood, to capital cases only. But does it—I ask myself —does it not apply all through ? Is it any less difficult to judge of a good man or of a half-good man, than of the worst criminal at the bar ? And may not each have relevant excuses?'—' Ah, but we do not talk of punishing the good,' cried Archie.—' No, we do not talk of it,' said Glenalmond. But I think we do it. Your father, for instance.'—' You think I have punished him ? ' cried Archie. Lord Glenalmond bowed his head. I think I have,' said Archie. 'And the worst is, I think he feels it ! How much, who can toll, with such a being? But I think he does.'—` And I am sure of it,' said Glenalmond.= Has he spoken to you, then ? ' cried Archie.= 0 no,' replied the judge.—' I tell you honestly,' said Archie, ' I want to make it up to him. I will go, I have already pledged myself to go to Hermiston. That was to him. And now I pledge myself to you, in the sight of God, that I will close my mouth on capital punishment and all other subjects where our views may clash, for—how long shall I say ? when 811%11 I have sense enough ?—ten years. Is that well ? It is well,' said my lord—' As far as it goes,' said Archie. 'It is enough as regards myself, it is to lay down enough of my conceit. But as regards him, whom I have publicly insulted ? What am I to do to him ? How do you pay attentions to a—an Alp like that ?'—' Only in one way,' replied Glenalmond. Only by obedience, punctual, prompt, and scrupulous.'—' And I promise that he shall have it, answered Archie. I offer you my hand in pledge of it.'

Surely a subtler, and yet more helpful, homily on the com- mand "Judge not" was never written. One could not do better than set a young man or woman bent on fighting a commonplace or a harsh parent to study that dialogue.

We cannot here follow the rest of the story or tell how the elder Kirstie half breaks her stormy heart over Archie, of how he and the younger Kirstie fall in love at first sight, or of how the villain of the piece comes on the stage. Nor, again, can we attempt to describe where the story leaves off or to discuss what was the ending intended for the tale. Our readers will find that out for themselves while enjoying a noble fragment of true literature. But though, as we have shown, there is so much good drawing of character and so many artful and stimulating situations in the book, the story is somehow or other not the success it ought to be. It is like those pictures in which the drawing, the colour, and the intention are alike excellent, and yet the work as a whole is disappointing Whether, if Mr. Stevenson had lived, he would for the first time in his career have conquered this difficulty of composition, and have at last brought a story to perfection, it is of course impossible to say. It is conceivable that he might have done so. If he had, he would have produced a novel as great as anything in Scott, for of the staff of which great novels are made, here is enough and to spare. The parts of the tale are as near perfection as may be. We fear, however, that he would have failed in this drawing together of the material, this co-relating of the parts to the whole, this interfusion Of a general harmony. It is, indeed, this quality of harmonious- ness which is lacking in The Master of Ballantrx, in Catriona, and in all Mr. Stevenson's other novels. That it is also lacking in Weir of Hermiston is, we suspect, an essential, not an accidental, defect. But to say that this last work of a man of rare genius is not perfect is not to condemn it. It is full of a thousand things that stir the fancy and spur the imagination. The words, as in every great work of literature, are brimming over with meaning, and hurry us along in a torrent of eager and excited interest. One more quotation we will give to exhibit this swift attraction of Mr. Stevenson's manner, here at its best. The last chapter describes a misunderstanding between Archie and his love. He has to tell her that they must not see each other so often because people are beginning to talk. Of course he does it very badly, and of course she resents his words as an insult :— " The schoolmaster that there is in all men, to the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely in possession of Archie. He had passed a night of sermons, a day of reflection ; he had come wound up to do his duty; and the set mouth, which in him only betrayed the effort of his will, to her seemed the ex- pression of an averted heart. It was the same with his constrained voice and embarrassed utterance ; and if so—if it was all over— the pang of the thought took away from her the power of thinking. He stood before her some way off. • Kirstie, there's been too much of this. We've seen too much of each other.' She looked up quickly and her eyes contracted. ' There's no good ever comes of these secret meetings. They're not frank, not honest truly, and I ought to have seen it. People have begun to talk ; and its not right of me. Do you see ? '—' I see somebody will have been talking to ye,' she said sullenly.= They have, more than one of of them,' replied Archie.—' And whae were they ? ' she cried. And what kind o' love do ye ca' that, that's ready to gang round like a whirligig at folk talking ? Do you think they haven& talked

to me ? Have they indeed ?' said Archie, with a quick breath. ' That is what I feared. Who are they ? Who has dared— ?' Archie was on the point of losing his temper. As a matter of fact, not any one had talked to Christina on the matter ; and she strenuously repeated her own first question in a panic of self- defence. Ah, well ! what does it matter ? ' he said. ' They were good folk that wished well to us, and the great affair is that there are people talking. My dear girl, we have to be wise. We must not wreck our lives at the outset. They may be long and happy yet, and we must see to it, Kirstie, like God's rational creatures and not like fool children. There is one thing we must see to before all. You're worth waiting for, Kirstie ! worth waiting for a generation ; it would be enough reward.' And here he remembered the schoolmaster again, and very unwisely took to following wisdom. The first thing that we must see to, is that there shall be no scandal about for my father's sake. That would ruin all; do ye no see that?' Kirstie was a little pleased, there had been some show of warmth of sentiment in what Archie had said last. But the dull irritation still persisted in her bosom; with the aboriginal instinct, having suffered herself, she wished to make Archie suffer."

How difficult to bring out the inner meaning of such a situation, and to give their true value to the moral forces of the scene. Yet how perfectly the work has been accom- plished. Assuredly the man who wrote this, even if he was not a great novelist, was among the greatest of writers.