318 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
plan, but we are indebted to him for some interesting information 
regarding the group of saints more immediately connected with 
the Lothians and Fife, viz., St Kentigern, and his mother St 
Thenew (daughter of Loth, King of the Lothians), St Servanus or 
St Serf, St Columba, St Asaph, St Baldred of the Bass, St Con- 
wall, and St Palladius. 
From his family connection with Clackmannanshire he was 
much attached to that district, and for several summers he occupied 
a villa in the neighbourhood of Muckart. In this retirement he 
was always happy, surrounded by his family, and supplied with the 
newest literature. One season was distinguished by some rural 
festivities, which he commemorated in verse in a tiny volume 
printed in 1872 (“ The Yetts o’ Muckart; or the Famous Pic-nic 
and the brilliant Barn-Ball. In hairst auchteen bunder an’ 
seventy -one.”) 
Finding his health failing, Dr Stevenson, with much reluctance, 
resigned his Chair in November 1872. 
This step was much regretted by his colleagues, and his retire- 
ment was gracefully referred to by Principal Sir Alexander G-rant, 
in his opening address of the College, session 1872-73, and in the 
introductory lectures of his colleagues in the Faculty of Theology, 
who all expressed the hope that he would enjoy the rest to which 
he was so well entitled.* 
The good wishes of the learned Principal and the Professors 
were not realised, and the last year of Dr Stevenson’s life was 
spent in much annoyance from the effects of an accident he had 
* The allusion by Sir Alexander Grant to Dr Stevenson was in the follow- 
ing terms : — “ I regret now to have to announce the retirement, owing to 
impaired health, of Dr Stevenson, who for eleven years has occupied the im- 
portant Chair of Divinity and Ecclesiastical History. During that time 
Professor Stevenson has shown himself to be a man of real learning; he has 
exhibited that quality which the philosopher Coleridge used to value highly, 
and which he called ‘ book-mindedness.’ In an age distracted by a number 
of ephemeral interests, and, at the same time vaunting itself on a Baconian 
adhesion to things rather than to words, this quality of * book-mindedness,’ 
the characteristic of the scholar of the olden times, has a tendency to become 
rare. But, for the interests of humanity, it is necessary that there should be 
not only men who study nature, but also men whose life is spent in books — 
whose minds are more taken up with the past than the present ; to whom 
everything suggests an association with some great writer, and who thus 
