A sea uncharted, on a lampless isle,
Environs and confines their wandering child
In vain. The voice of generations dead
Summons me, sitting distant, to arise,
My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace,
And all mutation over, stretch me down
In that denoted city of the dead."



CHAPTER IV - HEREDITY ILLUSTRATED



AT first sight it would seem hard to trace any illustration of the
doctrine of heredity in the case of this master of romance. George
Eliot's dictum that we are, each one of us, but an omnibus carrying
down the traits of our ancestors, does not appear at all to hold
here. This fanciful realist, this naive-wistful humorist, this
dreamy mystical casuist, crossed by the innocent bohemian, this
serious and genial essayist, in whom the deep thought was hidden by
the gracious play of wit and phantasy, came, on the father's side,
of a stock of what the world regarded as a quiet, ingenious,
demure, practical, home-keeping people. In his rich colour,
originality, and graceful air, it is almost as though the bloom of
japonica came on a rich old orchard apple-tree, all out of season
too. Those who go hard on heredity would say, perhaps, that he was
the result of some strange back-stroke. But, on closer
examination, we need not go so far. His grandfather, Robert
Stevenson, the great lighthouse-builder, the man who reared the