The kind abbot of S. Paulo had come to England in order to escort to Brazil a little community of nuns for his newly-founded Benedictine convent; and I had promised to attend their _dispedida_ at Southampton at the end of September. I found myself at Inverness among the gay crowds attending the Northern Meeting, of which the special feature this year was a great rally of boy-scouts from all the northern counties, in honour of their popular Chief, Sir Robert Baden-Powell. Seven hundred mustered, at least half of them kilted--a very pretty sight; and "B. P." made them a stirring speech, with an interesting account of the spread of the movement ("Escotismo," they called it in Brazil, where it was very popular), in different parts of the world. I travelled from Edinburgh to London with the Archbishop of York, who had been officiating at the wedding of an Ayrshire Houldsworth. We had last met at Dunskey, my old home in Galloway, when he was, I think, vicar of Portsea. I journeyed straight to Southampton, where good Abbade Miguel, an English Benedictine (Dom Sibley) who was accompanying him to Brazil, and the seven nuns,[6] were all ready for their long voyage. I saw them on board the good old _Aragon_ (which looked very spick-and-span), "waved my hands (like Nancy Lee) upon the quay," and rather wished that I was one of the party! Meanwhile I had to get back to London, to help to marry (on a murky Saturday afternoon) my Irish Guards friend Tom {217} Vesey[7] to Lady Cicely Browne. A "mixed marriage," as it is called, is always a short affair, with no vocal music, and of course no nuptial mass; but this was the briefest I ever remember, the whole ceremony, including a five minutes' sermon from Father Maturin, taking exactly a quarter of an hour! There was the usual tiresome crowd afterwards at Lord Revelstoke's house in Carlton House Terrace; but I was glad to see some old friends, and to have a pleasant chat with Lady Bigge,[8] who, by the way, had just become Lady Stamfordham. If there was no music at the Chelsea church, I came in for more than I bargained for next day (Sunday), namely a performance by a famous London choir of Beethoven's Grand Mass, a composition which I would fain hear anywhere rather than in church. It was, of course, excellently rendered; but as I listened to the crashing chords, I could not help recalling the appreciation of an eminently-qualified critic, treating of this musical masterpiece:-- "The Christian sentiment has completely left him in the _Gloria_, where there bursts forth, not the pure and heavenly melody of a hymn of praise and peace, but the shout of victory raised by human passions triumphing over a conquered enemy."