Mr. Aeneas Mackay, of Stirling, publishes at 5s. for Mr.
Morris, the Town Clerk of that ancient and famous burgh. Robert Louis Stevenson and the Scottish Highlands. That is exactly as it should be, for Stirling is the key to the Highlands, and round the town still centre legends of Jacobitism and clanship, of blackmail and caterans, and of the king of them all—Rob Roy Macgregor or Campbell. Mr. Morris's book traces out the genesis, from material that writer had collected in the neighbourhood, of Stevenson's two romances of Kidnapped and Catriona, but it does more : it furnishes the admirable account of local Jacobitism with sidelights on Highland life and character generally, and takes a worthy place among other books oh the Gael, for which Mr. Mackay's publishing house is so well known. The Gael of the Hebrides (but the Gael tempered by a strong smack of Norwegian blood), his folk-lore and history, his surge-swept, rain-soaked coasts, his sweet manners and simple, kindly life, are depicted with sympathy and insight in Mr. Alasdair Alpin Macgregor's Summer Days Among the IVestern Isles (Jack, 7s. 6d.). An exquisite vein of poetry and glamour pervades this book. Very beautiful (to take but one small instance out of many) is the description of the smooring of the peat fire (which in some households never goes out) : how the goodwife of the house, " after the day's toiling is over and when the soft night closes in," will stretch out loving arms over the grey ash and intone to the Sacred Three the old rune, praying them-
" To save, to shield, to surround,
The hearth, the house, the household, This night, and every night, each single night. Amen."
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