[9] The Court of Session refused to grant the "reduction" of the union; and the House of Lords, after some further litigation, finally decided, on July 27, 1896, that Dundee College was not merely affiliated to, but actually incorporated in, the University of St. Andrews, and that the union between them was valid, permanent, and irreversible. In November, 1900, a month after Bute's death, the same tribunal dismissed an action raised by certain members of St. Andrews University, craving the reduction of all the documents constituting the Union. Since the last-named date the union has remained as constituted in 1890, except that University College, Dundee, is no longer represented by two members in the University Court. [10] In the same letter Bute expresses his willingness to give a site for the new synagogue to be erected at Cardiff. He did, as a matter of fact, a little later grant a ninety-nine years' lease, on very favourable terms, of an excellent site for the Jewish place of worship. {198} CHAPTER XI NOTES AND ANECDOTES--SECOND RECTORSHIP OF ST. ANDREWS--PROVOST OF ROTHESAY 1894-1897 Although Bute (who was not given to exaggeration) found occasion to write at the end of 1894, in his usual brief summary of the events of the past twelve-month, "The whole year has been spent in the struggle for the University of St. Andrews," he nevertheless found time, with the ordered industry which was one of his marked characteristics, not only for the numerous other duties incumbent on him, but also for the social amenities which the _début_ of his only daughter had brought into his retired life. His note on the Caledonian ball in London, which he attended this year, is amusing, if not altogether appreciative: The ball was doubtless a great success as regarded the charity which benefited by it; but it was mismanaged, crowded, and hot beyond expression, and the dancing was a mere rough-and-tumble (as seems to be the way now), with neither science, grace, nor even an elementary idea of time. The poetry of motion seems to be asleep. A dinner given to Lord Rosebery[1] by his old {199} contemporaries at Christ Church, which Bute attended, must have evoked curious memories of long-past days. R's cynical witticisms (when the doors were shut) on the state of politics were quite startling: we were all his political opponents except one. The well-remembered names and changed faces were rather pathetic. Bute has a note on the famous Ardlamont murder trial, which was arousing general interest in the early days of 1894: Lord Kingsburgh said that ten of the jury were determined to hang Monson, and _he_ was determined they should not, as he did not consider the evidence legally conclusive. Nobody doubts M.'s guilt morally.[2] [Sidenote: 1894, Maiden speech in Parliament]