CHAPTER VIII
LITERARY WORK (CONTINUED)
1886, 1887
"They will say that we are dull, of course," Bute wrote to his editor in 1887, discussing the contents of a forthcoming number of the Scottish Review. "But they say that anyhow, without reading us, whatever we put in or leave out." Bute did not always feel sure that his own contributions, written as they were with an immensity of care and painstaking, were not open to this charge. "I feel rather low about the 'Coronations,'"[[1]] he wrote a few weeks later. "It seems to me dull, very long, and intensely technical.... It is true that the Lord Lyon has returned my proof with a note calling the article 'most valuable,' and saying he could scarcely suggest any improvement. So far so good; but then he is a professional State Master of Ceremonies."
At other times Bute appeared rather to resent the charge of "heaviness" not infrequently applied to his Review. "They call us ponderous—it is their favourite adjective," he wrote in this mood a little later. "It is easy to bandy epithets, but I should say that we are positively light in comparison with some other quarterlies I could name. I was drowsing for two hours last night over one of them, which I can designate by no other word than stodgy." Nevertheless it must be frankly admitted that Bute did not possess the power of treating with any kind of light touch (or perhaps of inspiring others to do the same) the various interesting and important subjects which were the staple of the Review. The gift of humour he certainly possessed, and in a high degree: he could see as well as any man the incongruous and ridiculous side of the most serious subject: he liked a good story, and could tell one himself, with a sort of solemn jocosity which, combined with his singular felicity in the choice of language, added vastly to the effect of the anecdote. Moreover, he could write as well as talk wittily, as is evident from the caustic and sometimes mordant humour which characterises many of his letters. But this feature is almost or wholly absent from his published writings; and in these he seems to have adopted the principle which Dr. Johnson certainly practised as well as preached: "The dignity of literature is little enhanced by what passes for humour and wit; and the true man of letters will do well to reserve his jests for the ears of his private friends, and to treat serious subjects, on the printed page, in a serious manner."
Bute hardly seemed to realise that the following of the sage counsel just quoted could be any bar to the popularity of the Review with the general reader; and he was at times almost querulous with what he called the "unaccountable apathy" of the Scottish public in particular. "I think," he wrote to a literary friend, "you ought to pitch strongly into the Scottish people for their distaste for anything like serious reading. I am told that of the books borrowed from the Edinburgh Public Library for home perusal, more than 75 per cent. are works of fiction. One thing which I have particularly noticed about them is crass ignorance of their own history, to a point which is really quite astonishing."
In order to increase the circulation of the Review, and make it if possible self-supporting ("a state of things which, for the sake of the principle involved," wrote Bute, "I am extremely desirous to bring about,") the desperate expedient was proposed of transferring the Review to London, following the precedents of the Edinburgh and the North British. But this was too much for Bute's amor patriæ. He wrote to the Oxford friend from whom the suggestion had emanated:
October 1, 1887.
One might, of course, do better business by dropping it as a Scottish review, and starting another English magazine in London under the same name, and with a continuity of numeration. This, however, would be to destroy in its very essence the attempt to keep going a Scottish quarterly in Scotland. It must be owned that the apathy of the Scottish public is quite enough to drive any one to such a course, and it would be entirely their own fault if it were taken.
1888, Bute's historical method
A typical example of Bute's method of treating subjects drawn from the byways of history may be seen in his studies on the trial and execution of Giordano Bruno,[[2]] whose memory a noisy party in Italy was at that time (1888) endeavouring to exalt as that of an innocent victim and martyr. The opinion of educated Catholics might have been thought pretty well made up as to the justice of the sentence on the notorious Neapolitan philosopher and ex-Dominican, of whom not a Roman Inquisitor, but a Protestant divine, had said that he was "a man of great capacity, with infinite knowledge, but not a particle of religion." Bute, however, approached the subject in his usual attitude of complete intellectual detachment, with no trace of parti pris. "There is much obscurity about the whole matter," he wrote from Sorrento on March 21, 1888, "but I flatter myself that my paper will at least be a triumph of impartiality, of absolutely colourless neutrality." It is sufficient to record here that his conclusion, after many months of patient sifting of evidence, much of it drawn from contemporary sources hitherto unexplored, was much the same as that of Bruno's accusers and judges in Venice and in Rome. He wrote as follows to Dr. Metcalfe, before his articles appeared in print:
What I fail to understand is why they executed him at all. If the Church Courts had kept him to themselves and imprisoned him for life, he could not have done any one any harm, and might with advancing age have repudiated and repented some of his blasphemous utterances (one being that Christ was not God, but only a magician of extraordinary cunning).[[3]] In the case of this obscure and repulsive vagabond, whose chief literary work could not be printed to-day without the author being prosecuted for obscenity, there was surely no need of a terrible public example, such as might have been (and was) urged in the case of the burning of Servetus.
1888, Garibaldi's Autobiography
Equally characteristic of his zeal for what he calls "colourless neutrality" in the presentment of historic facts are his observations on a proposed article for the Review on the autobiography of Garibaldi, then recently published. As to this he writes (February, 1888):
Perhaps the Contessa M—— C—— could do it; and if the book is on the Index (which is not unlikely),[[4]] she could easily get a dispensation by stating her object in wishing to read it. I suppose she is not a Garibaldian, by the way? that would never do. She should express as little opinion of any sort as possible—I don't mean, of course, that she should abstain from stating known facts—and should leave the man to speak for himself by an analysis and a string of quotations, which must be given from the Italian text, and severely literal.
The above example—many others could of course be cited—are sufficient to indicate the spirit of rigid impartiality in which Bute treated, and desired that others should treat, historical questions of every kind, and his almost passionate endeavours to follow in all such researches the old maxim, Audi alteram partem. It must be confessed, however—indeed he himself practically owned—that were his historiographical principles universally adopted, English literature, if not the cause of historic truth, would be the poorer. "Most history," he said in one of his addresses to a body of university students, "is not history at all, but romance, sometimes fascinating but seldom trustworthy, coloured, as it often is deeply, with the prejudices and prepossessions of its writers. Names—facts—dates—there is true history; but when a man gets beyond that, when he begins to dissect characters, to attribute motives, to analyse principles of action, then in nine cases out of ten he ceases to be a historian and becomes a romancer. Gibbon, with his enormous erudition, could have presented to us all the details of Rome's decline as they really were—-he has given us instead a travesty of them distorted by his own devilish hatred of Christianity. Macaulay, whose whiggery may have been all very well on the hustings, disgusts us by intruding it into every page of his so-called "History of England." Froude vaunts that his history of the English Reformation is entirely based on original documents; by which he really means that he has used all those which have helped him in his self-imposed task of whitewashing Henry VIII., and has suppressed all the rest.[[5]] I need not give other instances."
Bute might have pointed to his own laborious work on Scottish Chronology in illustration of his theory of how history should be written—the immense folio volumes, specially constructed for the purpose, in which day by day and year by year he inserted dates, with the barest and briefest statement of facts bearing on the history of Scotland and her early kings, as he encountered them in the course of his omnivorous reading. He could hardly have seriously maintained the paradox that history in this skeleton form was the only true history worthy of the name. But no historic student (and he disclaimed for himself any higher title) ever aimed more anxiously than he did, in every line that he wrote, to set forth the plain facts of history absolutely uncoloured by any views or prepossessions of his own. It was this marked characteristic, coupled (it is not necessary to say contrasted) with his complete and unquestioning loyalty to the teachings of his Church, which, especially to those who knew him, gave a unique interest to everything that came from his pen. Genuine erudition—a virile independence of thought and judgment—an engaging personal diffidence and a complete absence of anything like obtrusion of the writer's own opinions, combined with a gift of expression and a command of language which often soars to real, if sober, eloquence—these qualities may all be found in the essays which he wrote during the years which were the most intellectually productive of his life; and it is well that they have been rescued from the pozzo profondo of the pages of a provincial periodical of limited circulation, and are accessible, in two handsome volumes,[[6]] to all who care to read them.
1888, Tribute from Lord Rosebery
It may be well at this point, and in this connection, to cite an interesting tribute to Bute's literary abilities paid by one who had been among the earliest friends of his dawning manhood, and whose own distinction in the world of letters gives a particular value to his judgment. Lord Rosebery said of him as follows:—[[7]]
The late Lord Bute was a remarkable character to the world at large, whether they knew him well or did not. To some it may often have seemed that he was out of place in the nineteenth century. His mind, his thoughts, his studies were so entirely thrown back into a past more or less remote; and I think, had he had more incentive to make known the objects and subjects of his researches, he would have left no mean name in the republic of letters. And even as it is he has left behind him a rectorial address to the University of St. Andrews, which contains, I think, one of the strangest, most pathetic, most striking passages of eloquence with which I am acquainted in any modern deliverance.
This is high praise; but to those who are familiar with the passages to which Lord Rosebery refers, it will not seem exaggerated or misplaced. They form the peroration to Bute's inaugural address delivered at St. Andrews on the occasion of his election to the lord-rectorship of that University; and they run as follows:—
On the 5th of March, in this year, I took a walk with Professor Knight to Drumcarrow. It was a fine, sunny day. We stood among the remains of the prehistoric fort, and looked over the bright view, the glorious landscape enriched by so many memories, the city of St. Andrews enthroned upon her sea-girt promontory, the German Ocean stretching to the horizon, from where it chafes upon the cliffs which support her walls. And we remarked how God and man, how nature and history, had alike marked this place as an ideal home of learning and culture. And then the view and the name of the Apostle together carried my thoughts away to another land and a narrower and land-locked sea. I do not mean that where Patrai, the scene of Andrew's death, looks from the shores of Achaia towards the home of Ulysses over waters rendered for ever glorious by the victory of Lepanto. I do not mean the City of Constantine, where the first Christian Emperor enshrined his body, and where the union of ineffably debased luxury and ineffably debased misery, which drains into the Sea of Marmora, excites a disgust which almost chokes grief and humiliation. Neither do I mean those sun-baked precipices which, by the shores of the Gulf of Salerno, beetle over the grave where lies the body that was conformed in death to the likeness of the death of the Lord. I mean the land of Andrew's birth—the hot, brown hills, which, far below the general sea-level of the world, gird in the Lake of Gennesareth—that strange landscape which also is not unknown to me, the environing circle of arid steeps, at whose feet, nevertheless, the occasional brakes of oleander raise above the line of the waters their masses of pink blossom, and whence the eye can see the snows of Hermon glistering against the sky far away;—and I pray that some words which he heard uttered upon one of those hills may be realised here—that the physical situation of this place may be but a parable of its moral position—and that it may yet be said of the House of the Apostle that "the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock."[[8]]
In 1888 Mr. Gardner of Paisley, publisher of the Review, was honoured with the appointment of publisher to the Queen. Bute, who was interested in every detail concerning the periodical, wrote to the editor with one of his quaint comments:
September 30, 1888.
I think it would be just as well that Gardner should put his Royal title at the foot of the title-page, as in his other publications, and just in the same way. I suppose H.M. will not consider that she is thus made responsible for all the opinions to be found within. If she does, it will be time for her to say so when it strikes her.
I have just attacked a great frequenter and pillar of the Athenæum Club for not having us taken in there; and I hope he will succeed in wiping this reproach from the institution.
Bute's control of the Scottish Review was maintained until the end of his life. The seventy-second and final number appeared in October, 1900, the month in which he died. Occasional entries in his diaries show that he had incurred very heavy expenses in connection with the Review—perhaps, from first to last, almost as heavy as those entailed on him by the establishment and support, twenty years before, of a Conservative daily newspaper in the heart of Liberal Wales. As he had not grudged that outlay in what he believed to be a good cause, so he did not consider the money expended on this literary enterprise to have been expended in vain. If the Scottish Review under his control had not proved precisely a commercial success—and perhaps he had never really expected that it would—its conduct and management had at least provided him with congenial work and occupation during a period extending over several years. It afforded him a convenient vehicle for the publication of his curious researches into some of the obscurer corners of ecclesiastical and general history: it brought him into contact, either personally or by correspondence, with many distinguished scholars and men of letters whom he might otherwise have had no opportunity of knowing: it led indirectly to the forming of at least one intimate friendship which was the source of pleasure and interest to him until the end of his life; and it brought him opportunities which he valued of playing the part of an unostentatious Mæcenas—in other words, of giving practical encouragement to literary beginners in whom he discerned actual ability or promise for the future, enabling them to make their first public appearance in a periodical of repute, and thus assisting them to mount at least the first slopes of the Parnassus to which they aspired.
1889, Death of Bishop Grant
Reserved, undemonstrative, and cold as Bute was often deemed, there is abundant evidence that his colleagues and collaborators on the Scottish Review appreciated highly the uniform courtesy, consideration, and kindness which they received at his hands. His real warmth of heart and loyal affection to his friends are well shown in the touching letter which he wrote on hearing of the death of his old and dear friend Bishop Colin Grant, who had not only contributed to the Review, but had given him, for many years past, constant and very highly valued assistance in his researches into the early history of Scotland.
September 28, 1889.
My own feelings are divided between grief for the loss of my old and esteemed personal friend, and a sense of desolation, almost amounting to despair, at the loss which Scottish historical science has sustained. There must be among his papers masses of notes which ought not to be lost to the world. I have written to his nephew to implore him not to let a single scrap of paper be destroyed. As for himself, if we can only put aside our grief at the loss to ourselves, and at the apparent loss to the Church upon earth, we can only feel a curious joy as we picture his admission, far beyond the sphere where time works, into the blessed company of the just made perfect (especially those of our own land, on whose earthly lives he loved so much to dwell[[9]]) and above all, into the very presence of their Divine Head, the great Shepherd of the sheep, Whom to please he so humbly and cheerfully devoted a lifetime in striving to serve His flock.
Scottish Home Rule
A short time before writing this tribute to his old friend and fellow-worker, Bute had attended a meeting held at Dundee to advocate the claims of Scotland to Home Rule—a claim which he regarded with a great deal of interest and not a little sympathy, as is evident from the article he wrote for the Scottish Review (October, 1889) on "Parliament in Scotland." He thus gives his impressions of the meeting:
The Home Rule meeting in Dundee seemed to me to be really a sort of battle between Dr. Clark and the Edinburgh Executive on the one hand, who gave me the impression of being well-informed, able, and educated people, either Tories or very moderate Liberals, with whom I get on perfectly; and on the other hand the great body of delegates, who seemed to me to be extreme Radicals unconscious of their own ignorance. Mrs. Maxwell Scott has read the proof of my forthcoming article, and is exceedingly pleased with it. The Home Rule people all wanted to know whether the Scottish Review could not be turned into their monthly organ! but I replied that such a change would be equivalent to annihilation of what the S.R. was designed to be, has always been, and is.
Bute had already accepted an engagement to preside this year (1889) at the St. Andrew's Day dinner of the Scottish Corporation in London, but was extremely dubious as to what kind of reception he would have from a company of whom many were doubtless quite out of sympathy with the views on Scottish Home Rule set forth in this article. His letter on this subject, expressing his obvious relief at the manner in which things had turned out, makes amusing reading:
Chiswick House,
December 1, 1889.
The St. Andrew's Day dinner came off last night. I had been extremely nervous about it, so that I could really take up nothing else until it was over. This was folly, and really almost sinful folly, because the desire to be liked is only vanity at bottom, and vanity is a bastard cousin to pride. But I knew also (and there I was on fair enough ground) that, although politics were not to be mentioned, the thing was in fact to be a political demonstration, and that it was not yours truly, John M. of B., who was to be placed in the chair, but the author of "Parliament in Scotland"; and the question was, how the Scottish commercial colony in London would receive him. It had even been publicly suggested in print that the charity should be boycotted because I had been asked to take the chair, "although, no doubt," (the writer charitably added,) "that must have been done before the article appeared." Well, the festival duly came off, and I think I was never more cheered in my life. They cheered for quite long periods every time I had to come forward, from the time I entered the drawing-room before the dinner. And I will not quote the language which was used to me about the speech which I made.
The interest which Bute had always felt in St. Magnus of Orkney since his visit, or pilgrimage, to the scene of the saint's martyrdom in his under-graduate days,[[10]] was evinced by the new and careful investigations which he undertook in 1886, in view of an article on the subject in his Review. His cautious, yet reverent, attitude towards the supernatural is well shown in a passage of a letter to his publisher, relating to the local tradition about a perennially green spot of ground said to mark the site of Magnus's death in the isle of Egilsay:
I own that, with such information as I have ever had, together with my own recollections of the place, I am inclined to think that the phenomenon is, if not strictly miraculous, in the strongest sense of the word, a special intervention of Divine Providence, which may be called a preternatural testimony of God's favour towards His martyred servant.
Bute later entered into negotiations for the purchase of the site above referred to, with a view to its preservation; but this was not carried out. He also wrote at considerable length to his correspondents in Orkney, throwing great doubts (as he had done nineteen years previously) on the supposed bones (or "reliques," as he calls them) of St. Magnus preserved at Kirkwall—chiefly on account of the degenerate type of the skull. "It may be," he characteristically says, "that this only indicates a triumph of grace over nature. But it seems to me to be incompatible, I will not say with holiness, but with the intellectual, high-minded, and beautiful character and tastes of the Martyr." On these and other grounds he urges that the local photographer of the skull must be strictly enjoined not to circulate the photograph under false pretences.
Relics of St. Magnus
A letter which Bute addressed (in Latin) to the Cardinal Archbishop of Prague as to reputed "reliques" of St. Magnus preserved in the cathedral there elicited no response. "The reliques of St. Magnus themselves," Bute wrote in some displeasure, "could not be more voiceless than the Cardinal of Prague in regard to my (I hope) courteously-worded request." Through Cardinal Manning, however, information finally reached him that the relics at Prague (venerated there for several centuries) included a shoulder-blade. This was missing from the bones in Kirkwall Cathedral—so far satisfactory; but they also included a shin-bone (crus), whereas the shin-bones (crura) at Kirkwall were complete and intact.[[11]] Bute's final conclusion (and the incident is recorded as showing the curious interest with which he pursued such minute investigations) was that the bones at Kirkwall were not St. Magnus's at all, but probably those of Earl St. Rognwald, nephew to St. Magnus, another Norse saint and hero venerated in the same locality. He thought it worth while to insert in the Review a letter from Orkney informing him that there was a tradition in Egilsay that one would always find an open flower on the site of the martyrdom, and that the writer had found there on December 10, after heavy snow and gales, several daisies in full bloom.[[12]]
The first two years of Bute's connection with the Scottish Review were perhaps among the busiest of his life, not only because of the assiduous care which, as we have seen, he devoted to the conduct and control of that journal, but also by reason of the increasing duties which devolved on him in connection with his extensive estates. To the latter he made very considerable additions at this period, increasing his Buteshire property in 1886 by the acquisition of the island of Cumbrae from the trustees of the sixth Earl of Glasgow, and also purchasing in the following year the important estate of Falkland in Fife, to which was annexed an office of the greatest interest to him, the hereditary keepership of the ancient palace of Falkland. In Cardiff, also, there was a great increase of business connected with the reorganisation of the vast docks. The new Roath Dock was opened in 1887 by his six-year-old heir, Lord Dumfries (his first appearance in public), and on the same day his youthful daughter cut the first sod of Roath Park, for which he had made a free gift of land valued at £50,000. His generosity was further shown after the disastrous failure of the Cardiff Savings Bank, when it was sought to make him liable as honorary president of the institution. As soon as it was judicially decided that there was no claim whatever against him, he voluntarily contributed £3,000 towards making up the deficiency. In the previous year he had manifested his liberality towards his Scottish tenants by obtaining (in view of the prevalent agricultural depression) an independent valuation of his farms in Bute, and reducing the rents by a third. It was not without reason that the local Liberal newspaper, in many respects even vehemently hostile to him, described him as "a just and generous landowner"; whilst in Cardiff this handsome tribute was paid to him by one extremely well qualified to pronounce an opinion: "As regarded his estates, he was, of course, a most excellent and liberal landlord, as all who had the privilege of being his tenants would certainly admit."
FALKLAND PALACE.
1889, A cathedral foundation
Much of Bute's correspondence at this period is taken up with a scheme which he had greatly at heart, namely, the establishment of the full liturgical service of the Church at Oban, where his diocesan (the Bishop of Argyll and the Isles) had his see, and where he himself had built a handsome church. He was concerned that the canonical office of the Roman Breviary, for which he had so high a veneration, should not be recited daily in a single cathedral church throughout Britain;[[13]] and he incurred a great deal of trouble and expense in his efforts that this reproach should be wiped out at least in one church in Scotland. He defrayed the whole cost of organ and organist, choirmen and chorister-boys, instituted and supported a convent-school for the education of the last-named, and paid a chaplain for the exclusive work of presiding in choir and singing the daily Mass. The question of providing a chaplain exercised him much, and he wrote to a friend in Italy on this point:
May 8, 1886.
I imagined that, the duties being light and the remuneration (I venture to think) adequate, a chaplain could easily be found; but the difficulties seem endless. Whether the cause be chronic ill-health, constitutional indolence, or an entire want of interest in the Liturgy, I know not; but so far no priest has been found in England or Scotland able or willing to celebrate the daily sung Mass. Kindly set on foot inquiries among the unattached clergy of Rome, popularly known as preti di piazza—many of them, I believe, estimable priests, unoccupied through no fault of their own—and see if one can be found to supply our needs. Unexceptionable references would be, of course, required.
This and other difficulties were in time overcome, and the daily choral office was duly carried out for a period extending over several years, and was much appreciated by the numerous Catholic visitors who frequented Oban during the summer and autumn. Unfortunately it was not found possible to continue the daily services for any long time after the death of the founder.
Bute expressed, with his usual frankness, his sentiments on the subject of the rather nondescript festivals commonly known as "church openings":
Chiswick House,
April 17, 1886.
I am suffering much at present from the persistent wish of my Lord of Argyll to have what he calls an "opening" of the tin temple[[14]] in August—i.e. during the tourist and shooting season. This anomalous celebration is not designed in honour of the inauguration for public worship, which was last Sunday; nor its ecclesiastical blessing, which is arranged for an earlier date, nor the inception of the Divine office—but something in the nature of the "opening" of the Westminster Aquarium, a new Dissenting Chapel, municipal washhouses, or a fancy fair, with (I presume) tickets, placards, and posters, and probably excursion-trains. The bishop seems moved by a conviction that the local Protestants are anticipating a junketing of this kind with even more eagerness than the Catholics. But he is a gentleman; and I am sure when he knows how I hate the whole thing he will give it up.
1886, Church building in Scotland
Besides the pro-cathedral at Oban, Bute was interesting himself this year (1886) in building a church at a mining town in Ayrshire, near Loudoun Castle, the ancestral home of his mother's family. Discarding, as usual, conventional ideas, he chose for his model the great church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, of which the church at Galston was a carefully-executed miniature copy. One of the first solemn services held in it was a Requiem Mass celebrated for Lord Loudoun's sister, Flora Duchess of Norfolk, who died on April 11, 1887. Lord and Lady Bute attended her funeral at Arundel, and also that of Clara Lady Howard of Glossop, Lady Bute's sister-in-law, whose death occurred a few days later.
[[1]] "The Earliest Scottish Coronations": "The Coronation of Charles I. at Holyrood"; "The Coronation of Charles II. at Scone." These appeared in the Review, 1887-1888, and were reprinted, with an additional article and an Appendix, in 1902, after Bute's death.
[[2]] "Giordano Bruno before the Venetian Inquisition" (July, 1888): "The Ultimate Fate of Giordano Bruno" (October, 1888).
[[3]] In his first trial (at Venice) Bruno tried to defend himself on the principle of "two-fold truth," maintaining that he had held and taught the errors imputed to him "as a philosopher, and not as an honest Christian."
[[4]] It does not appear on the official Index Librorum Prohibitorum published at the Vatican Press.
[[5]] This may seem a severe judgment; but some contemporary French critics of Mr. Froude had much harder things to say about his literary honesty. "L'historien d' Henry VIII. et d'Élizabeth," wrote M. de Wyzewa, "était victime de ce q'un critique a appelé 'la folie d'inexactitude.' Il ne pouvait pas copier un document sans y introduire des variantes qui souvent en altéraient le sens."—"Rév. des Deux Mondes," tom. xv. (1903), p. 937.
[[6]] "Essays on Foreign Subjects" (1901), and "Essays on Home Subjects" (1904).
[[7]] The occasion of this striking utterance was an annual meeting of the Scottish History Society, held subsequent to Bute's death.
[[8]] Reprinted in "Essays on Home Subjects" (1904), pp. 263, 264.
[[9]] Bishop Grant was, among other things, a noted hagiographer, having made profound studies of the lives and acts of the early Celtic saints of Scotland.
[[10]] See ante, p. [50]. The writing of the article on St. Magnus was entrusted to Mrs. Maxwell Scott of Abbotsford, but illness prevented her from completing it, and Bute himself, as he says, "saw it through." It was published in January, 1887.
[[11]] Although the high authority of the Bollandists (Acta Sanctorum, April, tom. II. p. 435) is on the side of the relics at Prague being actually those of St. Magnus of Orkney, King and Martyr, it is impossible not to remember that there was another St. Magnus (popularly known as St. Mang), monk of St. Gall and Apostle of the Algau, who was greatly venerated in Germany, and whose cultus would seem more antecedently probable at Prague than that of the holy Norse Earl.
[[12]] In March, 1919, thirty-three years after Bute's second investigation of the supposed relics of St. Magnus, a discovery was made fully justifying his grave doubts as to the identity of the bones interred in the north pillar of the choir of Kirkwall Cathedral. A casket was found in one of the southern pillars of the choir, containing remains (including a skull with a clean cut in the parietal bone and a sword-cut through the jaw,) which there seems reason to believe may be the actual relics of St. Magnus.
[[13]] At Belmont Abbey, until recently cathedral of the diocese of Newport (in which Cardiff lay), the daily Divine office has been chanted by monks without intermission for more than sixty years; but their office is of course the Benedictine, not the Roman. The latter has been recited daily, and continuously, in Westminster Cathedral since its opening in 1902.
[[14]] The Oban pro-cathedral was a provisional structure of iron, but its interior was handsomely and even richly fitted up at Bute's expense. He usually gave the name of "tin temples" to the iron chapels which he set up in various parts of the country.