That Bute did know "a lot about most things" was undoubtedly true; and what used often to strike those who were intimate with him was the singular _orderliness_ of his knowledge. "His memory was prodigious," writes one who often consulted him on points of history, "and he seemed to me to keep everything which he had ever learned or read stored away, so to speak, in watertight compartments of his brain, ready for instant use when called for." But he never paraded his knowledge of history or anything else, and one of his most engaging characteristics was the extreme respect and, indeed, deference which he paid to acknowledged masters of any branch of learning or science. He welcomed the opportunity which his occasional periods of residence in London afforded him of offering hospitality to such. "My experience of men of intellectual eminence," he once said, "has been that they are not only interesting, {171} but as a rule extremely agreeable." Among those who from time to time were his guests at St. John's Lodge were men of such varied distinction as Lord Halsbury, Lord Rosebery, Mr. W. H. Mallock, Sir Ernest A. W. Budge, F.S.A., Cardinal Vaughan, Sir William Huggins, Mr. Walter Birch, Mr. Westlake, Sir William Crookes, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, etc. Later on, after the presentation of his only daughter, his charming house in Regent's Park (which, as well as its spacious gardens, he did much to improve and adorn) became the centre of much agreeable hospitality of a more general kind. Bute himself was pleased to think that the entertainments given there in the beautiful ball-room--lit from garlands of Venetian glass, and opening on to the illuminated grounds--were popular and appreciated by society. "I really think," he wrote, "that people enjoy making up parties to come to us on these occasions. Regent's Park is a _terra incognita_ to a great many Londoners; and there is perhaps a certain piquancy about a place which almost simulates to be a country house and is yet only a shilling cab-fare from Piccadilly Circus." In 1888, the same year in which he acquired his London residence, Bute paid his first visit to Falkland, his new possession in Fife--his first, that is, as owner of the estate and keeper of the ancient palace; for (as he notes in his diary) he had visited it as a boy of thirteen, nearly thirty years previously, in the company of Lady Elizabeth Moore, and had been there before more than once with his mother. The firstfruits of his new connection with the place was a carefully-written paper on "David Duke of Rothesay," the hapless heir of Robert III., said to have been starved to death in Falkland Palace in March, {172} 1402.[9] Of this article the friendly critic already quoted[10] appreciatively writes: