Of her affection for me, and mine for her, I cannot speak too strongly. It is an event which finally cuts me off (till my own death) from the generation to which my mother belonged, and in which I was born.... A great friend of my mother's, and a second mother to me; and I am ever grateful to her for her defence of me against General Stuart and others in 1860. By a strange coincidence, General Stuart himself died two days later. The death of Colonel J. B. Crichton Stuart, Bute's former tutor-at-law, had occurred in the previous year; and the Lord-Lieutenancy of Buteshire, which he had held since 1859, {181} was in due course offered to Bute and accepted by him. He performed all the duties pertaining to the office with the scrupulous conscientiousness which characterised him; and he told a friend, some time afterwards, that he had been particularly gratified by the Lord Chancellor expressing his approbation of the care which he (Bute) had exercised in the recommendation of persons for the commission of peace in his titular county. [Sidenote: 1892, Benefactions to South Wales] In September, 1892, Bute attended the meeting of the National Eisteddfod, and delivered an address with which he was himself extremely dissatisfied, though it is only fair to say that on such occasions he was the severest critic of his own orations, with which his audiences appeared well content. He had always been warmly interested in the Eisteddfodan, had subscribed liberally to their funds, and had presided and given an address at a previous meeting held at Cardiff in 1882. He also gave generous assistance to the Cymrodorion Society for its publication of Welsh Records, and enabled the Cardiff Library, by his subscription of £1000, to acquire the valuable MSS. which had belonged to Sir Thomas Phillips. Nor was it only the cause of learning which he assisted by his judicious benefactions. Every scheme set on foot for the benefit of the districts with which he was connected found in him a generous supporter. To King Edward VII.'s Hospital (then the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire Infirmary) he gave a site for the new building worth some £5000, having before this paid off the debt on the institution. For many years he maintained entirely a cottage hospital at Aberdare; he gave a large donation to the building fund of the Merthyr Hospital, and a still larger one to the Seamen's {182} Hospital at Cardiff, and contributed liberally both to the "Rest" at Porthcawl, and to the Miners' Relief Fund for Monmouthshire and South Wales.