FREEDOM OF GLASGOW--BENEFACTIONS TO WALES--LORD RECTOR OF ST. ANDREWS
1891-1894
An incident which gave Bute sincere pleasure, during the year of his
mayoralty of Cardiff, was the presentation to him of the freedom of the
city of Glasgow, which took place on October 7, 1891. The honour was
conferred on him, according to the burgess-ticket which he received,
"in recognition of the distinguished services he has rendered to
Scotland, by erecting and gifting[1] to Glasgow the Bute Hall, by his
personal contributions to literature, and by the warm sympathy he has
ever shown in whatever is fitted to promote the interests of art and
science."
Bute replied to the presentation in a speech which he himself described
in anticipation as "maddeningly dull," but which was nevertheless very
well received; and on the same day he performed the opening ceremony of
the new Mitchell Library, delivering an address which he thought, in
contrast with the other, appeared "almost lively, with a tendency even
to flippancy." It was not his first public appearance in Glasgow; for
some time before this he had made an oration at the opening {180} of
the new Jesuit College of St. Aloysius, and had warmly congratulated
Scottish Catholics on taking another step in the resumption of a
tradition which identified higher culture with the Catholic Church.[2]
Cherishing as he did, to the end of his life, feelings of grateful
affection towards all those who had shown him kindness during his
somewhat solitary childhood, Bute was sincerely grieved to hear, in the
autumn of 1892, of the death of Lady Elizabeth Moore, one of his
earliest and most devoted friends. The temporary estrangement between
them caused by his change of religion had long passed away; and only
nine days before her death, on the occasion of her eighty-eighth
birthday, his daughter had written to her a letter of good wishes which
Lord and Lady Bute and all their children signed. He wrote thus
feelingly of this loss:
Of her affection for me, and mine for her, I cannot speak too strongly.
It is an event which finally cuts me off (till my own death) from the
generation to which my mother belonged, and in which I was born.... A
great friend of my mother's, and a second mother to me; and I am ever
grateful to her for her defence of me against General Stuart and others
in 1860.
By a strange coincidence, General Stuart himself died two days later.
The death of Colonel J. B. Crichton Stuart, Bute's former tutor-at-law,
had occurred in the previous year; and the Lord-Lieutenancy of
Buteshire, which he had held since 1859, {181} was in due course
offered to Bute and accepted by him. He performed all the duties
pertaining to the office with the scrupulous conscientiousness which
characterised him; and he told a friend, some time afterwards, that he
had been particularly gratified by the Lord Chancellor expressing his
approbation of the care which he (Bute) had exercised in the
recommendation of persons for the commission of peace in his titular
county.
[Sidenote: 1892, Benefactions to South Wales]
In September, 1892, Bute attended the meeting of the National
Eisteddfod, and delivered an address with which he was himself
extremely dissatisfied, though it is only fair to say that on such
occasions he was the severest critic of his own orations, with which
his audiences appeared well content. He had always been warmly
interested in the Eisteddfodan, had subscribed liberally to their
funds, and had presided and given an address at a previous meeting held
at Cardiff in 1882. He also gave generous assistance to the
Cymrodorion Society for its publication of Welsh Records, and enabled
the Cardiff Library, by his subscription of L1000, to acquire the
valuable MSS. which had belonged to Sir Thomas Phillips. Nor was it
only the cause of learning which he assisted by his judicious
benefactions. Every scheme set on foot for the benefit of the
districts with which he was connected found in him a generous
supporter. To King Edward VII.'s Hospital (then the Glamorgan and
Monmouthshire Infirmary) he gave a site for the new building worth some
L5000, having before this paid off the debt on the institution. For
many years he maintained entirely a cottage hospital at Aberdare; he
gave a large donation to the building fund of the Merthyr Hospital, and
a still larger one to the Seamen's {182} Hospital at Cardiff, and
contributed liberally both to the "Rest" at Porthcawl, and to the
Miners' Relief Fund for Monmouthshire and South Wales.
Unostentatious as were his innumerable charities, it is right that
these things (which include his benefactions in South Wales alone)
should be recorded. Bute's name was known in his lifetime, and has
been handed down to posterity, as that of a munificent patron of
scholarship and learning, of science and architecture and art. He
richly deserves this tribute; but it is not to be forgotten that he was
also a wise, discriminating,[3] and most generous benefactor of a score
of institutions designed only for the relief of the distressed, the
needy, and the suffering. Every one knew him to be a scholar, and a
friend and patron of scholars, but it was only his innermost circle of
friends, and the countless beneficiaries of his far-reaching
generosity, who knew how truly, how continually, his heart was open to
the calls of mercy and of charity.
Bute never hesitated about expressing his opinion of men whom the world
called famous, but whose claim to any such distinction he failed to
recognise. Writing of Lord Randolph Churchill, whom he had met at
luncheon in September, 1892, he says:
He seemed to me ill-informed, ill-mannered, and stupid. I used to know
him slightly at Oxford, and thought little of him there. I wonder
whether his wife writes his speeches.
{183} His notes on Royalties are, on occasion, quite as frank as on any
one else. After attending the Lord Mayor's dinner in October, 1892, he
wrote:
The Maharajah of Baroda (it is a mere ignorant vulgarism to call him
"the Gaikwar") spoke, I found, much better English than the Duke of
----. The latter went off home from the Lady Mayoress's boudoir,
whither we men were taken to smoke, without returning to the
drawing-room to wish her good-night.
[Sidenote: 1892, Relations with Universities]
The closing weeks of 1892 were marked by an event which brought Bute
into intimate connection with the oldest of the four Scottish
Universities, namely, his unanimous election as Lord Rector of St.
Andrews. The honour was one which he very greatly appreciated, and the
duties of the office would have been not only extremely interesting,
but altogether congenial to him, had he not been involved by the
peculiar circumstances of the time in a series of highly contentious
questions, which, in his somewhat enfeebled state of health, caused him
for a period of time extending over several years considerable trouble
and anxiety.
Bute's keen and practical interest in educational matters, and
especially in the promotion of higher studies throughout the country,
had naturally brought him into relation, at different times of his
life, with several of the national universities. With Oxford, since
his student days there at the most memorable crisis in his life, he had
little subsequent connection. He refers occasionally in his letters to
the disadvantage which he had suffered from having been prevented by
circumstances from taking his degree; and Oxford never saw fit to
honour him, {184} or herself, by conferring on him an honorary degree
in recognition of his services to learning and scholarship. He never,
however, lost his interest in his original _Alma Mater_; and nothing
gave him greater pleasure, during the closing years of his life, than
the news of the removal of the restrictions which had hitherto
prevented Roman Catholic students from frequenting the universities of
Oxford and Cambridge. A friend, head of one of the Oxford Halls, was
visiting him in London some time subsequently, and informed him that
there were already, in consequence of this change of policy, more than
seventy Catholic undergraduates in residence at that university. Bute,
who was at that time quite an invalid, raised himself on his couch, and
said with the quiet emphasis with which he always spoke when strongly
moved: "I wish there were seven hundred." He only visited Oxford once
or twice after his marriage, but his continued affection for it was
evinced in many ways; and the Catholic church and mission there, as in
so many places, benefited by his munificence.[4]
The establishment of a University College at Cardiff was to Bute
naturally a matter of great interest, of which he gave many practical
proofs. He accepted the presidency of the institution in 1890, when he
contributed generously to the foundation of a chair of engineering; and
six years later he gave a special donation of L10,000 to the funds.
Besides his inaugural address, he gave another, in 1891, to the pupils
of the science and art schools. His many gifts to the college included
a complete {185} set of the valuable _Acta Sanctorum_ of the
Bollandists; and he was particularly gratified by the very appreciative
acknowledgment of this present which he received from the librarian.
Bute proposed Mr. Gladstone as the first Chancellor of the University
of Wales. Although profoundly opposed to some of the political views
of that statesman, he had an admiration for his character and
attainments; and he looked on it as a special honour, some years later,
to receive the Honorary Doctorate of St. Andrews on the same occasion
as the veteran Liberal leader.
[Sidenote: 1892, Honorary Doctorates]
The first of the Scottish universities with which Bute found himself
practically connected was that of Glasgow, to which he presented in
1877 the noble hall, for graduation and other ceremonies, since known
as the Bute Hall. Two years later, in recognition of this splendid
gift, which is said to have cost him nearly L50,000, the Honorary
Doctorate of Laws was bestowed on him by the university. He received
the same honour from Edinburgh in 1882, and from St. Andrews in 1893,
the first year of his rectorship. In 1883 he was invited to stand for
the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University, being nominated in the
Conservative interest against Mr. Fawcett as the Liberal candidate.
John Ruskin was also nominated. A regrettable element of religious
animus was introduced into the contest, but the leading Glasgow journal
warmly supported Bute. Mr. Fawcett was elected, the figures
being--Fawcett 796, Bute 690, Ruskin 329.
By his appointment in 1889 as a member of the Scottish Universities
Commission, Bute came, of course, into intimate relation with the
affairs of all the four universities. He was an active member of the
Commission, attending its meetings regularly, {186} and giving much
time and attention to the important questions which came up for
discussion and solution. But as a member of a mixed body of this kind,
of which some--and these not the least distinguished--were sure to
hold, and to express, views sharply conflicting with his own, Bute was
not, it must be frankly said, at his best or happiest. The candid
biographer must admit that, with all his admirable qualities, he was
not of a temperament that could easily or patiently brook opposition to
his matured views. The absolute impartiality and freedom from
prejudice with which, as we have seen, he approached the consideration
of any subject, literary or other, on which he had to form an opinion,
made him, perhaps not unnaturally, all the more tenacious of that
opinion when once formed. "I know no one," remarked one of his friends
and admirers, "to whom the description of Horace, _Justum et tenacem
propositi virum_, could be applied with greater truth"; and the tribute
was a deserved one. But he did not always find it easy to realise that
the views of those opposed to him might be as considered and as
conscientious as his own; and he was, perhaps, too apt to regard their
opposition in the light of personal hostility to himself. "It might, I
think, have been observed," he wisely says in one of his university
addresses, with reference to Peter de Luna's disputed claim to the
Papacy, "that where so many learned and able persons were divided in
opinion, a difference of judgment from one side or the other did not
necessarily imply moral obliquity." It is not suggested that Bute
imputed "moral obliquity" to those who differed from him either on the
Universities Commission, or afterwards in the vexed questions which he
had to encounter at St. Andrews. But {187} that he resented their
action, and in some cases even with a certain bitterness, is clear from
many passages of his correspondence; and this feeling was in one
instance sufficiently acute to interrupt and suspend a friendship which
had lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, though it is pleasant to
add that the breach was entirely healed, and cordial relations resumed,
long before his death.
[Sidenote: 1892, Rectorial address]
Bute's election to the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews took place on
November 24, 1892. "I had great difficulty in accepting," he wrote to
his friend Dr. Metcalfe, "because I had already declined Glasgow[5] on
the grounds of want of unanimity and probable inability to fulfil the
duties, and only accepted St. Andrews on an assurance of unanimity, and
that the duties are almost nominal." The latter hope was disproved by
the event; but whether light or heavy, Bute entered on the duties of
his office with his usual conscientious resolve to fulfil them all to
the utmost of his ability,[6] and for the benefit of the ancient seat
of Scottish learning which he had loved and venerated from his earliest
years. He alluded in his inaugural address, with charming simplicity,
to these childish memories, "associated with that of the only parent
whom I ever knew, and with those of friends of hers, nearly all of whom
are now passed away":
I dimly recall the old garden of St. Leonard's and a variety of
mechanical toys working by wind and water, with which Sir Hugh Playfair
had adorned it. I remember gazing from St. Andrews at the {188} great
comet which there was about the time of the Indian Mutiny; and when we
were living in the Principal of St. Mary's House, my kinsman, Charles
MacLean,[7] came home wounded from India and stayed with us, and with
his maimed hand gave me some elementary lessons in fortification, with
wet sand in a box. I find in my diary, under date of July 20, 1889:
"To St. Andrews ... saw the last of the old garden of St. Mary's
College, where I used to play (and eat unripe pears) as a child: they
are going to build the library extension over it." Well, I can only
hope that the fruits of the tree of knowledge, to the cultivation of
which that spot is now dedicated, may prove less crude and more
wholesome than the grosser dainties, to the attractions of which I
there formerly yielded.
It was an undoubted satisfaction to the new Lord Rector to be able to
nominate, as he did in the month following his own election, to the
office of his assessor his old friend and fellow-worker on the
_Scottish Review_. He gives his reasons, with his usual clearness, in
a letter addressed to Dr. Metcalfe himself:
I have come to the conclusion to nominate you, because you are a man of
public position versed in these matters--you are (if you will allow me
to say so) on most friendly and even intimate terms with me for years
past--we are, I believe, after many conversations with you, quite at
one upon University questions--and you are almost bound to be _persona
grata_, having quite recently received the Honorary Doctorate of the
University. Besides which, I think that an outside expert is better
adapted to see questions fairly than somebody who is necessarily inside
some local groove.
{189}
[Sidenote: 1892, St. Andrews and Dundee]
Dr. Metcalfe was duly appointed to the assessorship; and with one at
his side in whose sound judgment as well as his personal attachment to
himself he had the fullest confidence, Bute was greatly encouraged in
the assumption of his important duties with regard to the university,
in which he had already shown his practical interest by giving it, at a
time of some financial distress, very timely and welcome help. This
help had been all the more welcome in view of the unsympathetic
attitude of successive Governments towards St. Andrews. Mr. Arthur
Balfour had indeed during his Rectorship (1886-1889) persuaded the
administration of which he was a member to build the addition to the
library to which Bute refers in the extract from his diary quoted
above. But, generally speaking, Tories and Liberals alike had shown
towards the premier university of Scotland the minimum of interest and
generosity. This was the more remarkable, inasmuch as the patronage of
the principalships of the United College as well as of St. Mary's, and
also of the chairs of Church History, Biblical Criticism, and Hebrew
and Oriental Languages, was vested in the Crown. In 1889 Parliament
had actually entrusted to the newly appointed Universities Commission
powers to abolish St. Andrews University altogether--a proposal which
found a certain measure of support in Dundee, where University College
had been founded in the same year. The relations of this new college
to the ancient university were still indeterminate when Bute took
office in 1892; but its medical possibilities, situated as it was in
the heart of a populous and growing city, had of course become quickly
apparent to its managers.
It must be borne in mind that medical degrees had all along been
granted by St. Andrews itself after due {190} examination by the
professors of the university, who were assisted by external examiners
of high distinction. The number of such degrees, originally unlimited,
had been afterwards reduced to ten. At the time of Bute's coming into
office there were two main contentions as to medical teaching at St.
Andrews. The first was that provision should be made for one _annus
medicus_ only, so that practically the whole weight of medical teaching
should be thrown on Dundee. The second was that there should be two
complete _anni medici_ in St. Andrews; but this was at the time
impracticable, owing to the insufficiency of adequate medical teaching.
Bute saw clearly that if, as was his great desire, the science of
medicine should be worthily represented in the university, proper
provision for the teaching of that science must be made in St. Andrews
itself, and students of medicine must be encouraged to come to St.
Andrews for the completion of their medical course. At no stage of the
long controversy between St. Andrews and Dundee did he ever seek or
propose to establish a complete medical school at St. Andrews; and he
would have been the first, with his robust common sense, to see the
absurdity of such a proposal as regarded the university city, where
there was not even a hospital, and therefore no opportunity for the
necessary clinical instruction. Unguarded language on this subject may
have been employed by some of his supporters, but never by himself. He
aimed only at what was practicable and desirable, and this he made it
possible to attain by instituting a lectureship (now the Bute
professorial chair) of Anatomy, by promoting the refoundation of the
Chair of Physiology,[8] and by {191} building at his own cost the new
medical school, the completion of which, though he did not live to see
it, was a source of satisfaction to him only a few weeks before his
death. It would have been not less gratifying to him to foresee, had
that been possible, the natural result and development of his
enlightened munificence, as shown in the following figures. The number
of students of anatomy in the Bute Medical School was, in 1914,
eighteen; in 1915-16 thirty; in 1916-17 thirty-seven; in 1917-18
fifty-four; and in 1919-20 ninety.
It would be doing Bute a great injustice to suppose that in his
attitude towards Dundee he was actuated by any feeling of hostility
towards the newly-founded college. The very contrary was indeed the
case. Keenly interested as he was in the higher education of the
people, especially in large centres of population, he was naturally as
favourably disposed towards University College, Dundee, as he had shown
himself to be towards University College, Cardiff. But he could not
view with equanimity the prospect which was, as he well knew, hopefully
contemplated by some of the supporters of the new college, namely, that
of its ultimately not only absorbing the ancient university to which it
had been united within the last three years, but even possibly of
crushing it out of existence altogether. Of this prospect he wrote on
March 12, 1893:
The object of the Dundee people is evidently to obtain entire command
of the university, which they {192} will employ by secularising St.
Mary's and translating all the Science subjects to Dundee, as well as
starting, I take it, a complete Arts curriculum there, possibly
allowing the United College to exist as a kind of outhouse.
"It has been said, and said publicly, by one of that party," he wrote
on another occasion, "'Give us two years more of the union, and we will
drag St. Andrews at our chariot wheels.'" To Bute, with his almost
passionate veneration for the ancient university, which for centuries
had been the chief home of religion and learning in Scotland, it was
intolerable to think of St. Andrews being deposed from its pride of
place and sinking into a decaying village, a mere resort of sea-bathers
and golfers. From this fate he was resolute, if possible, to save the
"House of the Apostle" (as he loved to call it), at whatever cost to
himself. "For months past," he wrote a little later, "I have been
slaving for St. Andrews. The people--or some of them--may not be worth
saving, but the place surely is. My vital force is, it is plain to
myself, much diminished by all this anxiety and strain; but I shall
work on as long as I have strength to do so."
In the long and elaborate memorandum which he drew up in the second
year of his Rectorship, on the four possible relations in which the
University of St. Andrews and the college at Dundee might conceivably
stand to one another, Bute gives clear evidence of his genuine desire
that the cause of education and learning should flourish equally in
both institutions. But both he and those who thought and acted with
him were perfectly convinced that this would never be so long as Dundee
continued its intrigues to become the predominant partner in {193} what
he calls the "ill-assorted union" between them; and he was equally
convinced that an absolutely essential preliminary step in this
direction was the dissolution of the Order of the University Commission
of March 21, 1890 (_dies nefastus_, as Bute calls it in one of his
notes), by which the existing union between St. Andrews and Dundee had
been brought about. It was with this object that an action was brought
in the Court of Session in July, 1894, for the "reduction" of the union
in question, and also that a bill was introduced into the House of
Lords by the Chancellor of the university, the Duke of Argyll, whose
sympathies were entirely with Bute in the question at issue.[9]
[Sidenote: 1893, St. Andrews and Oxford]
"I have sometimes dreamt," wrote Bute in one of the most picturesque
passages of his Rectorial Address, "of the primeval headland, still
lifting skyward its crown of ancient towers, but with that crown
encircled by an aureola of affiliated colleges--a commonwealth of seats
of learning, an Oxford of the North." It may have been with some such
vision as this before him that Bute had suggested to his assessor, some
time before drawing up the memorandum above referred to, another
solution of the difficulty:
{194}
_March_ 28, 1893.
Why should it not be suggested to Dundee, that instead of a division of
forces, difference of place, etc., etc., they should build a college
for themselves at St. Andrews, just as we hope Blairs will do, confined
to Dundee people? I think that would meet the foundress's intention,
and it might be called Dundee College. This would be transferring her
benefaction to St. Andrews, instead of St. Andrews being bled into such
veins as Dundee possesses.
I do not see why St. Andrews, holding a unique position, geographically
and otherwise, should not also hold a unique position in being
constituted, as Oxford and Cambridge are, of a congeries of free and
affiliated colleges.
The above mention of "Blairs" has reference to another scheme which
Bute hoped might, if carried out, fulfil the two-fold object of
strengthening the position of St. Andrews, and of raising the
educational standard--an object he had much at heart--of his
co-religionists in Scotland. With this view he had proposed the
transference to St. Andrews, and the affiliation to the university, of
the College of Blairs, near Aberdeen, the training-school of the Scots
Catholic clergy; and had promised substantial help both towards the
acquirement of a site, and in the endowment of the new seminary. The
success of such a scheme obviously depended to great extent, if not
entirely, on the concurrence of the ecclesiastical authorities. They
were divided on the matter, among those opposed to the plan being the
then Metropolitan of Scotland, as well as the rector of the college;
and finally the Holy See, much to Bute's disappointment, decided
against the project. An alternative scheme, providing for the
establishment in {195} the university city of a house of studies in
connection with the abbey of Fort Augustus, also proved impracticable.
The Benedictines were only invited to make the foundation on the
understanding that, and as long as, Bute's offer was not taken
advantage of by the secular clergy, and they did not see their way to
accept it under those conditions.
[Sidenote: 1894, Interest in the Jews]
Simultaneously with the plan just referred to, Bute likewise cherished
the hope of attracting to the university members of the Jewish body, in
which he had always been warmly interested. He wrote as to this on
June 8, 1894:
Mr. Mocatta has given me a tract, and talked to me at length of the
religious desolation of the young Jews who are sent to Christian
schools and colleges without any provision for their own religious
instruction and practices. I am trying to persuade him and others that
all they seek to gain would be gained, and all they deplore avoided, by
starting a Jewish college at St. Andrews. I think the idea is dawning
on them.
Three months later he wrote to the Chief Rabbi that he was much
gratified at the prospect of young Hebrews matriculating at St.
Andrews. "I do not pretend," he added, "to have any other motive in
the matter than zeal for the good of the university; but I sincerely
think that the benefits would be reciprocal."[10] Bute was not a
little incensed at this time by what he called a "most unseemly" letter
written to the newspapers by one of the professors, who said that he
would much prefer that a group of Jewish students should have "a
comfortable {196} berth in Abraham's bosom" than that they should come
to St. Andrews. A question subsequently arose as to the unsuitability
of a certain Saturday--which was not only, of course, the Hebrew
Sabbath, but chanced to be also their solemn Day of Atonement--for the
entrance examination of Jewish candidates. The Principal suggested, as
an alternative, holding an examination on the following Sunday--a
proposal that drew from Bute a characteristic protest, in which he
gives interesting proof of his sympathy with Hebrew religious ideals:
The Day of Atonement is, as the Chief Rabbi feelingly wrote me, the
most solemn day in all their year.... Anything more defiantly
contemptuous of their race and religion than the original selection of
that particular day for the examination can hardly be conceived, nor
any device better calculated to raise contempt for St. Andrews in the
whole Jewish world. I fear it can hardly have been inadvertent....
The amended proposal, of holding the examination on the Sunday, seems
to me hardly less objectionable. I had suggested Thursday, in order
that the young men's minds might be as free as possible on their
solemnity. On the Principal's plan, they would have to reach St.
Andrews--a place utterly strange to them--on Friday evening and there
pass the Day of Atonement alone, presumably in an inn. When night set
in on Saturday, they would have been 26 hours without so much as a
crumb or a drop of water--unwashed, barefooted, and probably dressed in
grave-clothes--their minds having been fixed as far as possible on Sin,
Death, and Eternity--and worn out by hours of recitation of Hebrew
prayers. Would they be likely in this state to do themselves justice
in an examination held a few hours later?
{197}
[Sidenote: 1893, Bute's disinterestedness]
It seems unnecessary, after a lapse of a quarter of a century, to enter
into further details of the regrettable controversy between St. Andrews
and Dundee, which persisted throughout Bute's term of office in the
university, but of which all, or nearly all, the protagonists have now
passed over
"To where, beyond these voices, there is peace."
There is no doubt but that the part taken by Bute in the affair was
much misinterpreted in many quarters; and he in turn may have to some
extent misunderstood, and unconsciously misjudged, the actions and
motives of his opponents. Enough, however, has perhaps been said to
show, what no impartial person can question, that he was throughout
animated by a single-hearted desire to act for the best, and to promote
by every means in his power the highest interest of the university
which he loved so well. That this was the view of those whose
suffrages had placed him in office, and with whom he had never ceased
to maintain the most cordial relations, namely, the students of the
university, was shown by the substantial majority by which, as will be
seen, they voted for his re-election to the Rectorship.
[1] It is to be feared, from their use of this particularly
objectionable word, that the then Glasgow Corporation did not combine a
literary sense with their other (doubtless) admirable qualities.
[2] Bute's speech on this occasion, delivered in reply to two addresses
presented to him, was in Latin. Some of those present were rather
disconcerted by this classical outburst, for which they were not in the
least prepared.
[3] Bute's far-reaching charities were regulated, like everything else
in his busy life, by strictly business-like methods. Every appeal for
help which reached him was carefully sifted and inquired into through
the almoner to whom, from the time of his coming of age, he entrusted
the investigation of all such cases before dealing with them himself.
[4] The marble altar in the church was given by him. An inscription on
it, inconspicuous yet visible to every priest who celebrates there,
asks for prayers for Bute himself and for his wife.
[5] This was on a subsequent occasion to the election of 1883, referred
to on a previous page.
[6] "I pray God bless my Rectorship of St. Andrews," he wrote in his
diary on the last day of this year.
[7] It was to this same kinsman that Bute, then in his thirteenth year,
had addressed the remarkable letter quoted on p. 6.
[8] A condition attached by Bute to his foundation of the Chair of
Anatomy was that a new Chair of Physiology should be constituted from
the former Chair of Medicine, which a majority of the University
Commissioners had wished to transfer to History.
[9] The Court of Session refused to grant the "reduction" of the union;
and the House of Lords, after some further litigation, finally decided,
on July 27, 1896, that Dundee College was not merely affiliated to, but
actually incorporated in, the University of St. Andrews, and that the
union between them was valid, permanent, and irreversible. In
November, 1900, a month after Bute's death, the same tribunal dismissed
an action raised by certain members of St. Andrews University, craving
the reduction of all the documents constituting the Union. Since the
last-named date the union has remained as constituted in 1890, except
that University College, Dundee, is no longer represented by two
members in the University Court.
[10] In the same letter Bute expresses his willingness to give a site
for the new synagogue to be erected at Cardiff. He did, as a matter of
fact, a little later grant a ninety-nine years' lease, on very
favourable terms, of an excellent site for the Jewish place of worship.
{198}