Bute is in admirable dispositions, and during the month of May has been leading the life of a true Christian. The long delay has tried him much: yet his spiritual progress since last summer has been extraordinary. I am simply amazed at some of the things he has told me. May our dear Lord be eternally blessed for all He has done, and is doing, for this soul so dear to Him. [Sidenote: 1868, Religious studies] The long vacation of 1868 was, as has been seen, chiefly devoted to a yachting tour in the North Sea, and a visit to Russia, undertaken by Bute in the companionship of Lord Rosebery. The autumn months after the celebration of his majority were {69} spent quietly at Cardiff and in Scotland, as much time as he could spare being given to a course of reading recommended to him by Mr. Capel, partly by way of preparation for his reception into the Church of his choice. He refers to this in an interesting letter to his attached friend at Oxford, written soon after his coming of age. _October_ 5, 1868. You may imagine how busy I have been and am since my birthday. Still I find time every day for some serious reading, as to which I have had competent advice. I am going through some of the writings of S. Cyprian, S. Ambrose, and S. Gregory, and doing a little liturgical study. Then there are the 12th cent. lives of Ninian and Kentigern, and Adamnan's Columba, all of great interest to me; and I have sent for Boethius's lives of the Bishops of Aberdeen. Theiner's great work, not long ago published in Rome,[8] I find most valuable, and throwing a flood of light on the mediæval relations between Scotland and the Holy See. For devotion I have St. Bernard (his Letters): a very simple prayer-book, such as children use; and the Latin Psalter. I wish you were able to use this;[9] there is a beauty and fulness of meaning in the Latin version which I think no modern language can give--except, you will say (and as to that you have a right to speak)[10] possibly Greek. I sometimes dream of trying my hand at a new English version of the Psalms; but that is part of {70} a larger scheme which it is perhaps presumptuous of me even to think of.[11] It was natural that when the long-anticipated time at length came for actually taking the step prepared for with such anxious deliberation, Bute should turn to the only Catholic priest with whom he was in any degree intimate. More than thirty years later Monsignor Capel, who had then been for some time resident in California, wrote in a San Francisco newspaper a short account of Bute's conversion, the steps that led up to it, and his own part in receiving him into the Church.