That the story of the throwing out of the pillars, like the tale of the three hundred and sixty Celtic Crosses in Iona, which were said to have been thrown into the sea, is apocryphal, I gravely suspect. The thing which it professes to relate never occurred in connection with any work in which I was concerned, and I think I would have heard of it had it happened in any of Lord Bute's other undertakings, at least in Scotland. The unlikely part of the story is that he had allowed himself to be landed with a vast quantity of the wrong stuff for such an important purpose. The rest of it, his fabled measures for getting himself out of the difficulty, is quite true to his character. I, at least, never knew him to be diverted from his intention on the score of delay or cost. I remember a case which is somewhat in point, his choice of the railings for the gallery of the great hall of his house, or, rather, palace of Mountstuart, although the case is more interesting as an illustration of his mind in a more important aspect. I had proposed, in accordance with my duty, a design strictly in keeping with the mediæval character of the building. Lord Bute, however, had seen and {243} remembered the ancient and curious bronze railings which stand round the tomb of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, and he determined to take, what was to him the opportunity of erecting a facsimile of them in Scotland. I went, therefore, to Aix and made measured drawings of them on the spot. By his directions I had the copies cast in Edinburgh, and they stand now in their place in Mountstuart in all the variety and yet unity of their originals. They are not Florentine, but if you ask me what should have prevented a Florentine nobleman from erecting them in his palace in Florence, I could not tell you. Sentimentally, at any rate, they would have been appropriate. I refer, of course, to the historical fact, of which I am sure the Marquis was aware, that it was no other than Charlemagne who relieved the Florentines from the tyranny of the Longobards, and conferred upon them the freedom of a municipal government.