human enterprise, industry, or pleasure. And to me it will be a deadly disappointment if I cannot roll this stone away! One generation further might be nothing, but it is my present object of desire, and we are so near it! There is a man in the same parish called Constantine; if I could only trace to him, I could take you far afield by that one talisman of the strange Christian name of Constantine. But no such luck! And I kind of fear we shall stick at James. So much, though all inchoate, I trouble you with, knowing that you, at least, must take an interest in it. So much is certain of that strange Celtic descent, that the past has an interest for it apparently gratuitous, but fiercely strong. I wish to trace my ancestors a thousand years, if I trace them by gallowses. It is not love, not pride, not admiration; it is an expansion of the identity, intimately pleasing, and wholly uncritical; I can expend myself in the person of an inglorious ancestor with perfect comfort; or a disgraced, if I could find one. I suppose, perhaps, it is more to me who am childless, and refrain with a certain shock from looking forwards. But, I am sure, in the solid grounds of race, that you have it also in some degree. {332} I. JAMES, a tenant of the Muirs, in Nether-Carsewell, Neilston, married (1665?) Jean Keir. II. ROBERT (Maltman in Glasgow), died 1733, married 1st; married second, Elizabeth Cumming. [Of ROBERT and 1st marriage: William (Maltman in Glasgow), of him: ROBERT, MARION and ELIZABETH] III. ROBERT [of Robert and Elizabeth Cumming] (Maltman in Glasgow), married Margaret Fulton (had a large family). IV. ALAN, West India merchant, married Jean Lillie. V. ROBERT, married Jean Smith. VI. ALAN.—Margaret Jones. VII. R. A. M. S. NOTE.—Between 1730–1766 flourished in Glasgow Alan the Coppersmith, who acts as a kind of a pin to the whole Stevenson system there. He was caution to Robert the Second’s will, and to William’s will, and to the will of a John, another maltman.