I have just received the historic and venerable hood you are so very kind as to bestow on me. It has a very real value to me as coming from you, personally as well as from your sovereign position in the university to which I am proud to belong; and I beg to thank you for it as heartily and sincerely as it is possible to acknowledge an act of friendship.
If I was not one of your own recommendation,[[7]] I shall deem henceforward that you have adopted me, just as if you had named me for the distinguished honour I have received.
Believe me, most sincerely and gratefully yours,
ACTON.
Towards the close of his three years' Rectorship, Bute showed his interest in the city, as well as the university, of St. Andrews, by presenting to it a handsome chain of office for the use of the provosts. A member of the council, who had himself passed the civic chair, wrote thus to him in reference to this gift:
February 3, 1893.
I need not say what our appreciation is of your most handsome act. In an informal conversation held yesterday by the Provost, Dr. Anderson and myself, it was agreed that while it was in the power of any wealthy man to perform the mere act, yet there was only one nobleman in the three kingdoms who could perform it in the delicate and gracious way in which it will now come before the Town Council.
In the early autumn of 1895 Bute was able, in the course of a cruise in his yacht Christine, to revisit the Orkneys, and to set foot again in Kirkwall, Egilsay, and other spots sacred in his eyes to the memory of St. Magnus, as he had done when a youth of twenty, nearly thirty years previously. "These islands," he notes, "are far more picturesque than I remember them before, and I am much struck by the number, industry, and wealth of their inhabitants."
1895, Bute opposed by Lord Peel
A cause of special satisfaction to Bute, and that for more than one reason, was his re-election, at the end of November, 1895, to the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews University. Viscount Peel had been nominated for the office by the party opposed to Bute's policy, and the Master of Balliol had sent to the students a printed testimonial to Lord Peel's qualifications, and an urgent appeal to them to support his candidature. "This," wrote a member of the professorial staff to Bute, "is quite a new departure in Rectorial elections, and its legality is, I should say, as questionable as its taste." He adds in the same letter:
We had a very large and influential meeting [in London] last evening of the St. Andrews Graduates' Association. The President, Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, made a very strong speech in your favour. It was followed by what was virtually an ovation, so enthusiastic was the whole assemblage.