24 JUNE 1893, Page 42

Culture in Early Scotland. By James Mackinnon. '(Williams and Norgate.s—This

is a useful, informing, and interesting, rather than original, book,—based on careful reading, and free from viewiness. Mr. Mackinnon, like everybody else, has his own conception, and gives his own definition, of culture. He "uses the word in a wide sense to denote anything of interest in the social, religious, and intellectual condition of a people." Culture is to Mr. Mackinnon the equivalent of what some other writers term "civilisation," or, as he himself prefers to say, of the German "Cultur." Taking the idea of this book at its author's own esti- mate, it may fairly be described as the carefully presented results .of diligent and voluminous reading. The tone in which Mr. Mackinnon has done his work may be gathered from the sentence

ith which he closes one chapter :—" The devoted enthusiasm of