The first of the Scottish universities with which Bute found himself practically connected was that of Glasgow, to which he presented in 1877 the noble hall, for graduation and other ceremonies, since known as the Bute Hall. Two years later, in recognition of this splendid gift, which is said to have cost him nearly £50,000, the Honorary Doctorate of Laws was bestowed on him by the university. He received the same honour from Edinburgh in 1882, and from St. Andrews in 1893, the first year of his rectorship. In 1883 he was invited to stand for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University, being nominated in the Conservative interest against Mr. Fawcett as the Liberal candidate. John Ruskin was also nominated. A regrettable element of religious animus was introduced into the contest, but the leading Glasgow journal warmly supported Bute. Mr. Fawcett was elected, the figures being--Fawcett 796, Bute 690, Ruskin 329. By his appointment in 1889 as a member of the Scottish Universities Commission, Bute came, of course, into intimate relation with the affairs of all the four universities. He was an active member of the Commission, attending its meetings regularly, {186} and giving much time and attention to the important questions which came up for discussion and solution. But as a member of a mixed body of this kind, of which some--and these not the least distinguished--were sure to hold, and to express, views sharply conflicting with his own, Bute was not, it must be frankly said, at his best or happiest. The candid biographer must admit that, with all his admirable qualities, he was not of a temperament that could easily or patiently brook opposition to his matured views. The absolute impartiality and freedom from prejudice with which, as we have seen, he approached the consideration of any subject, literary or other, on which he had to form an opinion, made him, perhaps not unnaturally, all the more tenacious of that opinion when once formed. "I know no one," remarked one of his friends and admirers, "to whom the description of Horace, _Justum et tenacem propositi virum_, could be applied with greater truth"; and the tribute was a deserved one. But he did not always find it easy to realise that the views of those opposed to him might be as considered and as conscientious as his own; and he was, perhaps, too apt to regard their opposition in the light of personal hostility to himself. "It might, I think, have been observed," he wisely says in one of his university addresses, with reference to Peter de Luna's disputed claim to the Papacy, "that where so many learned and able persons were divided in opinion, a difference of judgment from one side or the other did not necessarily imply moral obliquity." It is not suggested that Bute imputed "moral obliquity" to those who differed from him either on the Universities Commission, or afterwards in the vexed questions which he had to encounter at St. Andrews. But {187} that he resented their