While fulfilling his municipal duties at Rothesay to the satisfaction of every one concerned, Bute had continued, to the best of his ability, and with undiminished interest, to discharge his functions as Lord Rector of St. Andrews. He was still able to carry out, though not without fatigue and strain, what he called the "routine work" of his office; but he was no longer physically able to take the strenuous part he had formerly done in the government of the university, and the defence of her interests at the University Court and elsewhere. Early in 1897 he had heard with some dismay of the urgent desire of the students (who were doubtless very imperfectly acquainted with the condition of his health) that he should deliver a second Rectorial address, on the occasion of his re-election. To this effort he felt absolutely unequal, and he wrote as follows to his assessor:
Jan. 19, 1897.
You must do what you can to prevent the students insisting on another address. They cannot know what they are asking. I can get through my ordinary business, but cannot attempt the impossible, such as a Rectorial address. If I did, my failure would be as annoying to them as it would be painful to myself. Please try to make them understand this.
I do not complain. "The night cometh when no man can work," sooner or later. It has come to me through overwork and anxiety as Rector, and it is perhaps better that way than many others. But I am sure that those on whose behalf I have incurred it would not try to goad me into a fiasco which could only be distressing to all concerned.
Bute probably knew well that this pathetic appeal to the good sense and good feeling of the St. Andrews students would not be made in vain. Between them and himself the feeling had never been otherwise than kindly and cordial, with no trace of the misunderstandings or bitterness which had sometimes clouded his relations with other sections of the university. They respected him as a great Scottish noble: they admired his zeal for, and jealousy of, the honour and reputation of their Alma Mater: they were proud of his position in the world of letters, of his deserved distinction as a munificent and discriminating patron of learning, science, and art. Most of all, they were grateful to him for his continual and unfailing kindness towards themselves—kindness which he had proved not only by the generosity of his public gifts, but by acts of private beneficence of which the outside world knew nothing, and which he himself would have been the last to wish made public.
[[1]] Lord Rosebery's brief tenure of the Premiership (1894-95) had just commenced at the date of this entertainment. He had been Foreign Secretary during the two previous years.
[[2]] The verdict was the unsatisfactory one of "Not Proven"—unsatisfactory, that is, to the public, although doubtless preferable from the prisoner's point of view to one of "Guilty." The present writer, who chanced to hear the concluding part of the case, well remembers the surprise caused, both within and without the court, by the judge's strong summing up in the prisoner's favour. A legal kinsman of the writer told him subsequently what he had never before heard—that a Scottish judge, unlike an English one, considered it his duty not merely to sum up the evidence impartially, but also to direct the jury how to regard it from the point of view of a trained mind.
[[3]] Bute felicitously applies to St. Andrews, seat of the first-called ([Greek: prôtóklêtos]) of the Apostles, the word [Greek: témenos]—land "cut off" and assigned or dedicated to divine or sacred purposes. Syracuse was of old the [Greek: témenos] of Ares (Mars), as the Acropolis at Athens was that of Pallas Athene.
[[4]] Bute himself was a keen curler, thoroughly enjoying a spell at the "roaring game" with his country neighbours. A family tradition records how, night falling before the end of a hotly-contested march on The Moss, above Mountstuart, Bute sent for footmen to bear lighted candles round the rink, so that the game might be concluded that evening.
[[5]] See ante, p. [96]. The popular appreciation of such kindly intercourse could hardly be shown more neatly, and at the same time more humorously, than it was on the occasion of a garden party given at Mountstuart, some years later, in celebration of the majority of Bute's eldest son and successor. Sir Charles Dalrymple, who was present, remarked on the success of the fête to one of the guests, a Buteshire farmer. "Ou ay," was the reply, "it was just grand a'thegither; and the young Mairquis—did ye obsairve, Sir Charles?—he was mixing fine."