"It touched and interested me extremely," Bute said many years later, "to find myself described in this document as 'devotus Peregrinus,' and this for more than one reason. The phrase, in the first place, seemed to link me, a mere schoolboy, with the myriads of devout and holy men, saints and warriors, who had made the pilgrimage before me. 'Illuc enim ascenderunt tribus, tribus Domini.' And then I remembered that I descended lineally through my mother's family, the Hastings', from a very famous pilgrim, the 'Pilgrim of Treves,' the Hebrew who went to Rome during the great Papal Schism, sat himself down on one of the Seven Hills, and dubbed himself Pope. When Martin V. (Colonna) was recognised as lawful Pope, {28} my ancestor returned to Rome and, I believe, reverted to the Judaism from which he had temporarily lapsed. But this celebrated journey earned him the title, _par excellence_, of the Pilgrim of Treves; and the name of Peregrine has been borne since, all through the centuries, by many of his descendants, of whom I am one." All this is so curiously characteristic of Lord Bute's half serious, half whimsical (and always original) manner of regarding out-of-the-way corners of history and genealogy, that it seems worth reproducing in this place. [Illustration: THE MARQUESS OF BUTE, ÆT. 17.] [Sidenote: 1866, Steeplechasing at Oxford] Soon after his return from his Palestine journey, Bute was duly matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, and he went into residence in the October term. He was one of the last batch of peers who entered the university on the technical footing of "noblemen," with the privilege of wearing a distinctive dress, sitting at a special table in hall, and paying double for everything. Among his contemporaries at the House were the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Rosebery, the seventh Duke of Northumberland, and Lords Cawdor, Doune, and Willoughby de Broke. His cousin, the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings, who was five years his senior, had not long before gone down from the university, had been married for a year, and was at the height of the meteoric career which came to a premature and inglorious end just when Bute attained his majority. The latter had that strong sense of family attachment which is so marked a characteristic of Scotsmen; and _noblesse oblige_ was a maxim which for him had a very real and serious meaning. It is certain that the contemplation of his cousin's wasted life not only distressed him deeply, but tended to confirm in him an almost exaggerated {29} antipathy to the extravagant craze for racing, gambling and betting, which was the form of "sport" most prevalent among the young men of family and fashion who were his contemporaries at Oxford. Bute's entire want of sympathy with such pursuits and such ideals thus inevitably cut him off from anything like intimate intercourse with the predominant members of the undergraduate society of his college. He