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Bonnie Scotland
Painted by Sutton Palmer, Described by A R Hope Moncrieff (1904)


The author does not attempt elaborate word-pictures, that would seem pale beside the artist's colouring. His design has been, as accompaniment to these beautiful landscapes, an outline of Scotland's salient features, with glimpses at its history, national character, and customs, and at the literature that illustrates this country for the English-speaking world. While taking the reader on a fireside tour through the varying "airts" of his native land, he has tried to show how its life, silken or homespun, is a tartan of more intricate pattern than appears in certain crude impressions struck off by strangers. And into his own web have been woven reminiscences, anecdotes, and borrowed brocade such as may make entertaining stripes and checks upon a groundwork of information. The mainland only is dealt with in this volume, which it is intended to follow up with another on the Highlands and Islands.

Chapters

Robert Hope Moncrieff

 


 


The Highlands and Islands of Scotland
Painted by W Smith Junior, Described by A R Hope Moncrieff

Inverness

Preface

IN Bonnie Scotland was promised a further volume that should be devoted to the sterner and wilder aspects of Caledonia. That book dealt with the main body of Highlands and Lowlands, more familiar to the gentle tourist for whose patronage it was a candidate. This one, whose title might have been qualified as West Highlands, deals with the less visited side that is still Highland indeed, both in ruder natural features and in a life holding out longer against the trimming and taming of Sassenach intromissions. The author, as before, has tried to weave a pattern of entertaining stripes and checks upon a groundwork of information. all making a darker-hued tartan than is worn in the centre of Bonnie Scotland. Another metaphor would put it that he has prepared a brisk, perhaps frothy, but, it is hoped, not unpalatable, brew of "heather-ale," which contains in solution more solid ingredients than may be manifest to every reader.

Contents

The Heart of Scotland
Painted by Sutton Palmer, Described by A. R> Hope Moncrieff

Preface

"Bonnie Scotland" pleased so many readers that it came to be supplemented by another volume dwelling mainly on the western "Highlands and Islands," which was illustrated in a different style to match their wilder and mistier features. Such an addition gave the author's likeness of Scotland a somewhat lop-sided effect; and to balance this list he has prepared a third volume dealing with the trimmer and richer, yet not less picturesque region oftenest visited by strangers—that is, Perthshire and its borders. This is shown to be the Heart of Scotland, not only as containing its most famous scenery, but as best blending Highland and Lowland charms, and as having made a focus of the national life and history. Pict and Scot, Celt and Sassenach, king and vassal, mailed baron and plaided chief, cateran and farmer, Jacobite and Hanoverian, gauger and smuggler, Kirk and Secession, here in turn carried on a series of struggles whose incidents should be well known through the Waverley Novels. But these famous romances seem too little known to hasty readers of to-day; and some glimpses of Perthshire's past life may not prove over familiar at least to strangers in a county where the author is at home.

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