Perhaps it is no achievement to write charmingly of the
Scotch Highlands : so many chords of association wait in all our memories eager to respond. But Mr. Barnett plays upon them skilfully in this well-illustrated volume ; and he has the best of gifts for such a book—a passion of delightthat becomes infectious. He can intoxicate himself with the mere chanting a litany of Gaelic names—all the more completely because he has the Gaelic, or some of it. Up and down the entangled history of clan and clan, Highland and Lowland, Gael and Saxon, he takes us and the way is lightened with modern instances of his own wanderings. There is a very good study, for example, of a "bad step" in the Orkneys—excellent narrative. But why does he imply that Columba and Adamnan were natives of Scotland ? They were so no more than St. Patrick was an Irishman.
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