[[6]] See post, pp. [150], [151].
[[7]] "Isn't it perfectly monstrous," Bute is recorded to have once asked a lady in a London drawing-room, à propos of nothing in particular, "that St. Magnus hasn't got an octave?" What the lady said or thought is not recorded, but Bute had the satisfaction of knowing, before his death, that Pope Leo XIII. had at least authorised the keeping of St. Magnus's festival throughout Scotland; The Scots Benedictine Abbey of Fort Augustus is probably the only place in Christendom where the feast-day of the holy Earl (April 16) is annually celebrated by a solemn high Mass.
[[8]] The text of these two poems is given in [Appendices II]. and [III].
[[9]] Patroness of George Whitefield (the inventor of Calvinistic Methodism), and founder of numerous chapels up and down England, which were under her absolute control. The adherents of this sect (known as the "Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion") for the most part joined the Congregationalist body later.
[[10]] "Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised" (Prov. xxxi. 30).
[[11]] Mr. Boyle's grandson, who communicates this incident, adds: "My grandfather always told this story very solemnly, and with the fullest conviction of its truth, although he was not at all apt to believe in anything except the most positive and material facts."
Lady Margaret MacRae (Bute's only daughter) has assured the writer that on the eve of her father's death at Dumfries House (October 8, 1900), she was an ear-witness of a phenomenon precisely similar to that described in the text.