And this is true even of the greatest English and Scottish works of genius. You will not find Chaucer, or Shakespeare, or Bacon, or Gibbon, Scott or Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, or Tennyson here. Two poems alone of Burns are translated, “Tam o’ Shanter” and “Auld Langsyne,” but the great masters are to Gaelic print as if they had never existed. Science is unknown, and art and philosophy; history, too, we may say, and the drama. Whole departments of human thought remain practically unrepresented, as if they were alien to the Gaelic mind. On the other hand, works of religion, pious devotion, theology, and ecclesiastical polemics abound, showing the peculiar cast of the modern Celtic temperament. And of all the books, that which has been most in demand, if we may judge by the extraordinary frequency with which it has been printed, has been the Shorter Catechism. We are confronted with the curious fact that between the year 1651 and the Disruption in 1843 no less than seventy editions or reprints of this document were issued, and this notwithstanding the circumstance that it was also usually published with the oft-printed Psalter. The version far and away the most in evidence seems to have been the Synod of Argyll’s, though other versions, such as Dr. Ross’s, Dr. Macdonald’s, Dr. Smith’s, and Morrison’s were in circulation, besides various other Catechisms, of which Willison’s and Watt’s were prominent examples. The Gael seems to have had a perfect mania for Catechisms. And next to these in his estimation comes the Psalter, with nearly eighty editions or reprints between the year 1659 and the Disruption. These editions represent six important versions, without taking into account other four unauthorised ones. The select six may be given in chronological order, as follows:— 1. The Synod of Argyll’s translation of the first fifty Psalms, entitled, “An Ceud Chaogad do Shalmaibh,” 1659; and the whole, 1694. 2. Kirke’s Psalter—a translation by the Rev. Robert Kirke, Balquidder, 1684. This was the first complete version issued, ante-dating the former when finished by ten years. 3. Macfarlane’s translation, which is just the Synod of Argyll’s amended and altered by the Rev. Alex. Macfarlane, M.A., of Kilninver and Kilmelford, who excluded many of the Irishisms and added forty-five of the paraphrases, 1753. 4. Smith’s revised version, including all the Paraphrases, by the Rev. Dr. Smith, Campbeltown, 1787. 5. Ross’s Psalter, also an amendment, by the Rev. Thomas Ross, LL.D., Lochbroom, 1807. 6. The General Assembly’s authorised translation, 1826.