For all I know, they may serve to complete the impression in the mind of the reader, as they were certainly a part of it for me.

And this happened to me in the place of all others where I liked least to stay. When I think of it I grow ashamed of my own ingratitude. 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness.' There, in the bleak and gusty North, I received, perhaps, my strongest impression of peace. I saw the sea to be great and calm; and the earth, in that little corner, was all alive and friendly to me. So, wherever a man is, he will find something to please and pacify him: in the town he will meet pleasant faces of men and women, and see beautiful flowers at a window, or hear a cage-bird singing at the corner of the gloomiest street; and for the country, there is no country without some amenity--let him only look for it in the right spirit, and he will surely find.

Footnotes:

{1} The Second Part here referred to is entitled 'ACROSS THE PLAINS,' and is printed in the volume so entitled, together with other Memories and Essays.

{2} I had nearly finished the transcription of the following pages when I saw on a friend's table the number containing the piece from which this sentence is extracted, and, struck with a similarity of title, took it home with me and read it with indescribable satisfaction. I do not know whether I more envy M. Theuriet the pleasure of having written this delightful article, or the reader the pleasure, which I hope he has still before him, of reading it once and again, and lingering over the passages that please him most.

{3} William Abercrombie. See Fasti Ecclesia Scoticanae, under 'Maybole' (Part iii.).

{4} 'Duex poures varlez qui n'ont nulz gages et qui gissoient la nuit avec les chiens.' See Champollion--Figeac's Louis et Charles d'Orleans, i. 63, and for my lord's English horn, ibid. 96.

{5} Reprinted by permission of John Lane.

{6} 'Jehovah Tsidkenu,' translated in the Authorised Version as 'The Lord our Righteousness' (Jeremiah xxiii. 6 and xxxiii. 16).

{7} Compare Blake, in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell: 'Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads, without improvement, are roads of Genius.'

Robert Louis Stevenson
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