The Gay Gordon. By John Malcolm Bullock. (Chapman and Hall.
10s. 6d. net.)—Mr. Bullock does not pretend to tell the history of the Gordon clan. Nor is he relating the services of the Gordon Highlanders, for he explains that it is a mistake to identify this regiment, however gallant and gay, with this par- ticular sobriquet. He has been at the pains to find out that when the regiment was raised by the Duke of Gordon there were among seven hundred and seventy-two recruits only twenty who bore the name, that there were thirty-two Frasers, and a hundred and ninety-eight who were "Macs" of one clan or another. What he does is to tell a number of anecdotes illustrating the epithet which the popular voice has given to the name. He begins with the Catherine Gordon who married Perkin Warbeck, and introduces us to a number of Gordon men and women who more or less answer to the description. Sometimes, of course, it is very much less. Lord George, the hero of the riots, was scarcely gay ; a more gloomy fanatic never lived. Nor should we include among the worthy recipients the John. Gordon of Gight who had something to do with the death of Wallenstein. Henrietta Gordon, of the house of Aberdeen, who married Robert Gordon of Hallhead, and the Lord William who eloped with Lady Sarah Bunbury are more of the type. But we cannot follow the author in his somewhat inconsequent wanderings. We miry say, however, that he has written a pleasant book, now and then touching on great issues of history, and always abounding in interesting personal details. Is there a more curious chapter in the " Romance of the Peerage" than the life-story of George Hamilton Gordon, sixth Earl of Aberdeen, Viscount Gordon, in the Peerage of Great Britain, A.B.?
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