The first two years of Bute's connection with the _Scottish Review_ were perhaps among the busiest of his life, not only because of the assiduous care which, as we have seen, he devoted to the conduct and control of that journal, but also by reason of the increasing duties which devolved on him in connection with his extensive estates. To the latter he made very considerable additions at this period, increasing his Buteshire property in 1886 by the acquisition of the island of Cumbrae from the trustees of the sixth Earl of Glasgow, and also purchasing in the following year the important estate of Falkland in Fife, to which was annexed an office of the greatest interest to him, the hereditary keepership of the ancient palace of Falkland. In Cardiff, also, there was a great increase of business connected with the reorganisation of the vast docks. The new Roath Dock was opened in 1887 by his six-year-old heir, Lord Dumfries (his first appearance in public), and on the same day his youthful daughter cut the first sod of Roath Park, for which he had made a free gift of land valued at £50,000. His generosity was further shown after the disastrous failure of the Cardiff Savings Bank, when it was sought to make him liable as honorary president of the institution. As soon as it was judicially decided that there was no claim whatever against him, he voluntarily contributed £3,000 towards making up the deficiency. In the previous year he had manifested his liberality towards his Scottish tenants by obtaining (in view {153} of the prevalent agricultural depression) an independent valuation of his farms in Bute, and reducing the rents by a third. It was not without reason that the local Liberal newspaper, in many respects even vehemently hostile to him, described him as "a just and generous landowner"; whilst in Cardiff this handsome tribute was paid to him by one extremely well qualified to pronounce an opinion: "As regarded his estates, he was, of course, a most excellent and liberal landlord, as all who had the privilege of being his tenants would certainly admit." [Illustration: FALKLAND PALACE.] [Sidenote: 1889, A cathedral foundation]