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.