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.

An annual biographical dictionary, with which is incorporated "Men and women of the time."