The Cairngorm Mountains. By John Hill Burton. (W. Blackwood and
Sons.) —Mr. Burton has here given a curious discursive account of his favourite district for a ramble. His moral, though how ho gets it out of his narrative is not very easy to say, is that a guide is a tyrant, and that many people make their guide-book a tyrant. This is true, but not new. It is all very well to recommend people to leave the beaten track, but this implies that you are accustomed to cut out voluntary occupation for yourself and do not care for comfort,—in other words, that you are not an Englishman of the middle class. That persevering tourist has no idea of anything but a change of work, and his guide-book sets him to work. It tells him what he must see and where he can get good dinners. His slavery is grateful to him. If people are to be tempted to become explorers of the Cairngorm Mountains by Mr. Barton's account of them we do not think he will have much success. His whimsical description is best in those parts in which it does not describe, and though amusing enough is rather slight as material for a book. It would have made a better magazine article. A pretty woodcut of Loch Avon is prefixed to the volume.
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