It was but the pathetic inconsistency of human nature that in the lands of perpetual sunshine made him think no stars were so splendid as the Edinburgh street lamps, and so the whole romance of his life was bound up with “the huddle of cold grey hills from which we came,” and most of all with that city of the hills, and the winds and the tempest where he had his origin. He was called to the Scots bar; his family were powerful in Edinburgh and so he got a little work—four briefs in all we are told. Even when he was far distant the brass plate on the door of 17 Heriot Row bore the legend “Mr. R. L. Stevenson, Advocate” for many a long day. Probably the time of the practical joker is passed in Edinburgh, or an agent might have been tempted to shove some papers in at the letter-box; but what about the cheque with which it used to be, and still is in theory at any rate, the laudable habit in the north of enclosing as companion to all such documents? Ah! that would indeed have been carrying the joke to an unreasonable length. I will not tell here of the memorable occasion when plain Leslie Stephen, as he then was, took him to the old Infirmary to introduce him to W. E. Henley, then a patient within those grimy walls. It was the beginning of a long story of literary and personal friendship, with strange ups and downs. Writing about Edinburgh as I do, I would fain brighten my page and conclude my chapter with one of his most striking notes on his birthplace. “I was born likewise within the bounds of an earthly city illustrious for her beauty, her tragic and picturesque associations, and for the credit of some of her brave sons. Writing as I do in a strange quarter of the world, and a late day of my age, I can still behold the profile of her towers and chimneys, and the long trail of her smoke against the sunset; I can still hear those strains of martial music that she goes to bed with, ending each day like an act of an opera to the notes of bugles; still recall with a grateful effort of memory, any one of a thousand beautiful and spacious circumstances that pleased me and that must have pleased any one in my half-remembered past. It is the beautiful that I thus actively recall, the august airs of the castle on its rock, nocturnal passages of lights and trees, the sudden song of the blackbird in a suburban lane, rosy and dusky winter sunsets, the uninhabited splendours of the early dawn, the building up of the city on a misty day, house above house, spire above spire, until it was received into a sky of softly glowing clouds, and seemed to pass on and upwards by fresh grades and rises, city beyond city, a New Jerusalem bodily scaling heaven.” CHAPTER EIGHT THE ARTISTS