Fancy leaving this place [Mountstuart] at its very best, in order to be jammed in a stuffy back garden in London, in a hollow surrounded by houses, for hours on a midsummer's afternoon.
THE GREAT HALL, MOUNTSTUART
I see astrologically that Mars has a good deal to say with regard to the *******;[[14]] it may possibly mean sunstroke or apoplexy as well as dynamite. Really one would think they ought to provide not only an ambulance tent and nurses, but also a dead-house and a competent staff of undertakers.[[15]]
William Skene, the eminent Celtic scholar and historiographer-royal for Scotland, had proposed writing an article for the Review on the question of reunion between the Episcopalian and Presbyterian Churches; and this gave Bute an opportunity of ventilating his deep-seated animosity against what he considered the hopelessly Erastian element inherent in, and (as he believed) essential to, Anglicanism. He wrote from Raby Castle on October 11, 1887:
If Dr. Skene advocates Bishop Wordsworth's views, he is likely to find himself strongly controverted in the next number. What the Bishop means by reunion is the unconditional surrender of the Scottish nation to a foreign body, whose marriages form 2 per cent. of those celebrated in Scotland. This seems to me simply insane impertinence. A reunion between Presbyterians and Catholics looks to me far less unlikely; for the very essence of the Presbyterian position—that the sacramental character of Order belongs only to the presbyterate, the episcopate being merely its full exercise—is at least a discutable[[16]] question with us, and we are already agreed on Christ's Divine Headship "on earth as it is in heaven": whereas the Anglicans have nailed their colours to the mast on the first point, and have abandoned every shred of Catholic principle on the second. Their doing this last is indeed the sole reason why they exist at all, either in England or in Scotland.
The withers of the historiographer-royal were probably quite unwrung by this rather polemical outburst, the fact being that Dr. Skene had (as he himself mildly explained) no sympathy at all with Bishop Wordsworth's views on reunion, which his article was designed not to support but to confute.[[17]]
[[1]] The vintage of 1885 was also a very good one. "The Mayor of Cardiff," Bute noted in his diary in July, 1892, "has bought three dozen of my 1885 wine—like, but in his opinion better (and I really think it is) than, my Falernian here."
[[2]] It may be worth while to point out that the suggested Welsh name for the wine is based on a mistaken etymology. The word "Swanbridge" has nothing to do with swans, but is from the Norse or Danish proper name Sweyn (Swegen, Swain or Svend). The narrow neck of land connecting the place, at low tide, with the island of Sully is the "bridge" or "brigg" forming the second half of the word. Norse names are common all along the south coast of Glamorgan.