Unostentatious as were his innumerable charities, it is right that these things (which include his benefactions in South Wales alone) should be recorded. Bute's name was known in his lifetime, and has been handed down to posterity, as that of a munificent patron of scholarship and learning, of science and architecture and art. He richly deserves this tribute; but it is not to be forgotten that he was also a wise, discriminating,[3] and most generous benefactor of a score of institutions designed only for the relief of the distressed, the needy, and the suffering. Every one knew him to be a scholar, and a friend and patron of scholars, but it was only his innermost circle of friends, and the countless beneficiaries of his far-reaching generosity, who knew how truly, how continually, his heart was open to the calls of mercy and of charity. Bute never hesitated about expressing his opinion of men whom the world called famous, but whose claim to any such distinction he failed to recognise. Writing of Lord Randolph Churchill, whom he had met at luncheon in September, 1892, he says: He seemed to me ill-informed, ill-mannered, and stupid. I used to know him slightly at Oxford, and thought little of him there. I wonder whether his wife writes his speeches. {183} His notes on Royalties are, on occasion, quite as frank as on any one else. After attending the Lord Mayor's dinner in October, 1892, he wrote: The Maharajah of Baroda (it is a mere ignorant vulgarism to call him "the Gaikwar") spoke, I found, much better English than the Duke of ----. The latter went off home from the Lady Mayoress's boudoir, whither we men were taken to smoke, without returning to the drawing-room to wish her good-night. [Sidenote: 1892, Relations with Universities] The closing weeks of 1892 were marked by an event which brought Bute into intimate connection with the oldest of the four Scottish Universities, namely, his unanimous election as Lord Rector of St. Andrews. The honour was one which he very greatly appreciated, and the duties of the office would have been not only extremely interesting, but altogether congenial to him, had he not been involved by the peculiar circumstances of the time in a series of highly contentious questions, which, in his somewhat enfeebled state of health, caused him for a period of time extending over several years considerable trouble and anxiety.