But of all the bards whose poems were appearing then, undoubtedly the most popular was Dugald Buchanan. No other book in Gaelic, if we except the Shorter Catechism and Psalter, has gone through so many editions as his Hymns. In the comparatively short period of 110 years from their first appearance they have been issued from the press forty times—so great has been the demand for these vivid and impressive products of Gaelic genius. Next in general vogue to Buchanan’s comes Peter Grant’s _Spiritual Hymns_, a book which has been printed at least nineteen times. These three instances alone—the Psalter, Dugald Buchanan’s and Peter Grant’s Hymns—would indicate that this is the type of literature that has gone highest with the Gael, even if we did not observe how frequently volumes of spiritual hymns occur in the list of printed books. By comparison such a classic as Alexander Macdonald’s _Gaelic Songs_ has only reached eight editions, Duncan Ban Macintyre’s ten, and Rob Donn’s three. And this bias, so unmistakably exhibited by the Gaelic printed literature, is not confined to poetry, but may be traced even in the few original prose works that the language possesses. Only ten such books appeared during the early decades of the nineteenth century, and they are all religious ones of quite indifferent merit. While of forty-five prose translations which were printed, either through the munificence of private individuals, or as booksellers’ ventures, forty-two were of a religious and three of a moral kind. There can be no doubt that this extraordinary preponderance of the religious over every other type of printed literature in the Gaelic list, has exercised its own baneful influence on the Highland character of last century, leaving it lop-sided in some obvious directions and rendering the Gael blind to the wider issues of life, and therefore more or less impervious to new ideas. We can well understand his limitations, if, ignorant of English or other modern languages, he were confined to the books of his native tongue, as many Highlanders of the past generations were. These books absolutely give him no knowledge of science, philosophy, art, or even of the great literatures of the world. And his own poets occupied, as we have seen, a somewhat subordinate place in his list. Taught to look through one particular medium, and deprived of most other means of vision, the unsuspecting Gael grew up almost entirely oblivious of the march of mind, and for the most part ignorant of the thoughts that shake mankind. It is through the introduction of English, therefore, that he has been getting emancipated of late years from the narrow outlook which his own ill-chosen and limited printed literature affords. And it is the sudden intrusion of this higher knowledge, rendering many of his theories obsolete, which has so painfully convulsed the older generation of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders in recent times, and left them so ill at ease.