"LOTHAIR," (MARQUIS OF BUTE.)
Nearly every young lady of wealth and rank in England set her cap for the young Marquis when he attained his majority; but this nobleman is very unlike the Marquis of Waterford or the Duke of Hamilton, who by the way are distant relatives of his. He is not fond of dissipation, and since his boyish days he has been of a reflective turn of mind, with deep religious yearnings—yet withal he is not guilty of cant, and does not bore one with his religious views. He is good looking, but is not showy in his dress, and just now he is the lion of fashionable Europe from the fame which attends him everywhere as the hero of Disraeli's novel. The Marquis was reared a Presbyterian with decided Church of England leanings, and was converted one year ago, to the Roman Catholic faith through the efforts of Monsigneur Capel, who has also a niche in "Lothair," under the title of Monsigneur Catesby. He is a most accomplished ecclesiastic, who unites with a fascinating exterior the greatest ability and perseverance.
BUTE, MANNING, AND NEWMAN.
The income of the Marquis is about £380,000 annually, and he has decided to give one year's income, which is nearly two millions of dollars, toward the construction of a Catholic Cathedral at Oxford, in which all the glories of the Medieval Gothic shall be renewed. The roll of this young nobleman's titles is enough to startle an American. They are as follows: John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, Marquis of Bute, Earl of Windsor, Viscount Mountjoy in the Isle of Wight, Baron Mount-Stuart of Wortley and Baron of Cardiff Castle, Wales, in the Peerage of Great Britain. He is also Earl of Dumfries and Bute, Viscount of Ayr and Kingarth, Baron Crichton, Lord Crichton of Sanquhar, Lord Mount-Stuart of Cumbrae and Inchmarnock, and Hereditary Keeper of Rothesay Castle (formerly a Royal residence). Besides, he is a Baronet of Nova Scotia among the Blue-Noses.
Through his mother he is a Crichton, which is a royal House, and by his father he comes of the equally royal House of Stuart, and he holds the title of "Lord of the Isles." The motto of his family is "Avito viret honore." (He flourishes in an honorable ancestry.) The motto of the Hastings family, with which Lord Bute is connected, is "Trust warrants troth."
The most beautiful woman of the English nobility is Lady Victoria-Maria Louisa Hastings, who is now in her thirty-third year. This lady was a great pet of Queen Victoria, and when a child Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Kent, the mother of the Queen, held the pretty baby in her arms as sponsor at the baptismal font, for the sake of a dear friend, Lady Victoria's mother, who was Stephanie, Duchess of Baden, and a relation of the Emperor Napoleon. The young girl grew up, and is now the wife of John Forbes-Stratford Kirwan, Esq., of Moyne, County Galway, Ireland.
The Marquis of Bute is a relation of the late Baron Stuart de Rothesay, for many years English Ambassador at Paris.
It has been variously hinted and rumored that the Marquis of Bute was at one time engaged to the Lady Albertina Hamilton, a daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, and also to a young lady of the Sutherland-Leveson-Gower family, which has for its head the Duke of Sutherland. It is said that the "Lady Corisande" of "Lothair," is none other than a daughter of the Duchess of Sutherland, the former firm friend of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe.