STEVENSON. 566 STEVENSON. Virginia University in 1869 and in 1871 was appointed professor of geology in New York University. He served as geologist on the United States Geological Survey west of the 100th meridian in 1873-74 and 1878-80. He was also on the Pennsylvania Geological Survey in 1875- 78 and in 1881-82. In this work he made out the classification of the upper coal measures of Ohio and Pennsylvania^ and also described the coal area of New Mexico and southeastern Colo- rado. He became corresponding member of the more important seientifie societies and academies of foreign countries. He Avas president of the New York Academy of Sciences from 1896 to 1898, and president of the Geological Society of America in 1898. His publications include: The Geology of a Portimi of Colorado Explored and Surveyed in 1S73 (1875) ; Report of Prog- ress in the Greene and Washington District of the Bituminoits Coal Fields of Western Pennsyl- vania (1876) ; Report upon Geological Examina- tions in Southern Colorado and 'Northern New Mexico During 1S7S and 1S79 (1881); Origin of the Pennsylvania Anthracite (1893); Lower Carboniferous of the Appalachian Basin (1903) ; and more than a hundred other memoirs, many of the greatest importance, on geological topics. STEVENSON, Joseph (1800-95). A Scottish antiquary, born at Berwick-upon-Tweed. In 1831 he was appointed to a post in the manu- script department of the British Museum, and in 1834 became a sub-commissioner of the pub- lic records. He was ordained a priest in the Church of England (1839), but his studies in the Keformation period of English history led him to the Roman Catholic Church (1863). In 1877 he entered the Society of Jesus. For his ser- vices he was granted a Government pension, and was hono'ed by Saint Andrews with the degree of LL.D. At the suggestion of Stevenson, the Eng- lish Government began in 1857 the valuable Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland, otherwise known as the Rolls Series. The Government also sent him to Rome to make an exhaustive examination of the Vatican archives.- The thirteen volumes of his manu- script were deposited in the Public Record Office, but were not publislied. Stevenson edited nearly fifty works for the leading learned societies. STEVENSON, Robert (1772-1850). A Scotch engineer, born at Glasgow. His progress in the study of engineering was so rapid that in 1791 he was entrusted with the erection of a lighthouse on Little Cumbrae. During forty- seven years' service as engineer and inspector of lighthouses, he planned and constructed twenty- tliree lighthouses round the Scottish coasts, em- ploying the catoptric system of illumination, and his valuable invention of intermittent and flashing lights. The most remarkable of these structures was that on the Bell Rock (q.v. ) . The enterprise was unprecedented in lighthouse en- gineering, for the Bell Rock was never uncov- ered except at the lowest ebb tides. Stevenson was the author of four volumes of professional printed reports, a large work on The Bell Rock Lighthouse (Edinburgh, 1824), and articles in the Encyclopwdia Britannica and in the Edin- burgh Encyclopcedia. — His son Alan (1807-65) was also an engineer of prominence, and was the author of a Treatise on Lighthouse Illumi- nation. See Lighthouse. Consult Stevenson,. Life of Robert Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1878). STEVENSON, Robert Alan Mowbray ( 1847- 1900). An English art critic, a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson. He was born in Edinburgh, was educated at Sussex College, Cambridge, and studied art in the Edinburgh School of Art. and in Paris and Antwerp, but never attained much success as a painter. In 1882 he began to teach art at Cambridge and in 1889 became professor of fine arts at University College, Liverpool. He was one of the most gifted and just of Eng- lish critics. His sympathies were with the im- pressionist school, but his judgment was im- partial, and he possessed a keen analytical mind and an eft'ective style. His works include: Enqraving (1886), from the French of Dela- borde; Peter Paul Rubens (1898); The Art of Tclazquez ( 1895 ; revised ed. in Williamson's series of Great Masters, 1899) ; and an Essay on Rueburn (1900). STEVENSON, Robert Louis (properly Rob- ert Lewis Balfour) (1850-94). A Scottish romancer, essayist, and poet, born in Edinburgh, November 13, 1850, the only son of Thomas Stevenson, a distinguished lighthouse engineer. After beginning his education at various schools and imder private tutors, he entered Edinburgh University in 1867, with the intention of be- coming an engineer. On this profession he turned his back in 1871, and prepared for the bar, to which he was called in 1875. He had already written several essays and tales and some verse, but chiefly with a view of, in his own forcible phrase, "playing the sedulous ape" to the great masters. His strong bent to a lit- erary career was now encouraged by the friend- ship of such men as Edmund Gosse, Andrew Lang, and Sidney Colvin, whom he met in Lon- don. A canoeing trip in Belgium and France and a walking tour in the Cfivennes furnished material for An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey (1879), sketches in which he gave full proof of his exquisite literary art. Without attracting much attention, he was con- tributing to the Cornhill Magazine and Temple Bar sliort stories, and some of his best essays, those which were afterwards collected under the titles of Yirginibus Puerisque (1881) and Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882). To this period also belong the fascinating, fan- tastic New Arabian Nights (1882), first pub- lished between 1876 and 1878. In 1876 he had met, in an artistic colony near Paris, Mrs. Osbourne, an American lad}', Avho was after- wards to be his wife. In 1879, hearing from California that she was seriously ill, he made up his mind to go there. His resources were so limited that he made the long journey in an emigrant ship and train, noting his curious ex- periences and publishing them afterwards in The Amateur Emigrant (1894) and Across the Plains (1892). He spent two years in Cali- fornia, often in very delicate health, and in 1880 married Mrs. Osbourne. The next few years were spent in various health resorts — Davos, the Riviera, Bournemouth, and the Adl- rondacks. Often under the most discouraging conditions, but with that brave cheerfulness which was the distinguishing note of his char- acter, he worked incessantly. Success first came to him with the publication in 1883 of Treasure
