action, and in some cases even with a certain bitterness, is clear from many passages of his correspondence; and this feeling was in one instance sufficiently acute to interrupt and suspend a friendship which had lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, though it is pleasant to add that the breach was entirely healed, and cordial relations resumed, long before his death. [Sidenote: 1892, Rectorial address] Bute's election to the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews took place on November 24, 1892. "I had great difficulty in accepting," he wrote to his friend Dr. Metcalfe, "because I had already declined Glasgow[5] on the grounds of want of unanimity and probable inability to fulfil the duties, and only accepted St. Andrews on an assurance of unanimity, and that the duties are almost nominal." The latter hope was disproved by the event; but whether light or heavy, Bute entered on the duties of his office with his usual conscientious resolve to fulfil them all to the utmost of his ability,[6] and for the benefit of the ancient seat of Scottish learning which he had loved and venerated from his earliest years. He alluded in his inaugural address, with charming simplicity, to these childish memories, "associated with that of the only parent whom I ever knew, and with those of friends of hers, nearly all of whom are now passed away": I dimly recall the old garden of St. Leonard's and a variety of mechanical toys working by wind and water, with which Sir Hugh Playfair had adorned it. I remember gazing from St. Andrews at the {188} great comet which there was about the time of the Indian Mutiny; and when we were living in the Principal of St. Mary's House, my kinsman, Charles MacLean,[7] came home wounded from India and stayed with us, and with his maimed hand gave me some elementary lessons in fortification, with wet sand in a box. I find in my diary, under date of July 20, 1889: "To St. Andrews ... saw the last of the old garden of St. Mary's College, where I used to play (and eat unripe pears) as a child: they are going to build the library extension over it." Well, I can only hope that the fruits of the tree of knowledge, to the cultivation of which that spot is now dedicated, may prove less crude and more wholesome than the grosser dainties, to the attractions of which I there formerly yielded. It was an undoubted satisfaction to the new Lord Rector to be able to nominate, as he did in the month following his own election, to the office of his assessor his old friend and fellow-worker on the _Scottish Review_. He gives his reasons, with his usual clearness, in a letter addressed to Dr. Metcalfe himself: