Weir of Hermiston
An Unfinished Romance
With the words last printed "a wilful convulsion of brute nature," the romance of Weir of Hermiston breaks off. They were dictated, I believe, on the very morning of the writer's sudden seizure and death. Weir of Hermiston thus remains in the work of Stevenson what Edwin Drood is in the work of Dickens, or Denis Duval in that of Thackeray, or rather it remains relatively more--for if each of those fragments holds an honourable place among its author's writings, among Stevenson's the fragment of Weir holds certainly the highest.
was a true enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her - her colour raised, her hands clasped or quivering - glow with gentle ardour. There is a corner of the policy of Hermiston, where you come suddenly in view of the summit of Black Fell, sometimes like the mere grass top of a hill, sometimes (and this is her own expression) like a precious jewel in the heavens. On such days, upon the sudden view of it, her hand would tighten on the child's fingers, her voice rise like a song. "I TO THE HILLS!" she would repeat. "And O, Erchie, are nae these like the hills of Naphtali?" and her tears would flow.
Upon an impressionable child the effect of this continual and pretty accompaniment to life was deep. The woman's quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child's pugnacit
