A History of Moray and Nairn. By Charles Rampini, LL.D.
(William Blackwood and Sons.)—This addition to Blackwood's series—which promises to be an excellent and useful one—of Scottish county histories deals with one of the most " salubrious" and historically interesting districts of Scotland. The sheltered little seaport town of Nairn, which boasts of an exceptionally low rainfall, has become a fashionable resort not only of Scotsmen but of Englishmen, and the visitor to Forres, which is within an easy distance of Shakespeare's "blasted heath," cannot fail to observe in it all the possibilities of a northern Bournemouth. But the region in which these towns hold positions of importance played an important part in early Scotch history, and particularly during the struggles between the Scandinavian invaders and the Celts, or Scoto-Celts, whom they found in possession. It sub- sequently figured in the War of Independence, in the equally important conflict between Saxons and Highlanders — the battle of Harlem, fought in the beginning of the fifteenth century had as much influence on the future of modern Scotland as the battle of Bannockburn, fought in the beginning of the fourteenth—and in the Wars of Reforma- tion and Covenant. Sheriff Rampini tells these old stories over again very completely and very graphically. In his pages the Bishop-defying Wolf of Badenoch, the troublesome if not traitorous Earl of Mindy, Montrose, and Cumberland live again. His account of the rise and fall of various local families, such as the Duffs, is very full; there is, indeed, a suspicion of padding in the chapter which treats of "The Distinguished Men of Moray and Nairn." There is nothing of the nature of redun- dance, however, in the chapter upon "The Land and the People ;" it is quite a treasury of anecdotes, proverbs, and such sensational incidents in local history as the Moray Floods of 1829. Mr. Rampini's volume is, in point of manner and matter alike, quite the equal of its two predecessors in the same series.
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