I expect to be here till the end of this month, and after that I have a few visits to pay; but I hope to be in Bute by November 1, and intend to stay there all the winter. The place is very charming, {94} and is my real home. I have not been there since I became Catholic, and the people are all, I fear, very strongly prejudiced; so I am afraid I shall have rather a rough time of it--at least at first. Will you not leave Rome and all its troubles, and pay a good long visit to Sneyd and me in a country where the Church is in a missionary character? If so, come and pass Christmas at least with me in Bute. We shall be delighted to see you, and you will be away from all sorts of disagreeable things, for a time at least. Always yours most sincerely, BUTE. Before leaving Cardiff for his home in Scotland, which he had not visited for two years, Bute attended the annual congress of the Iron and Steel Institute at Merthyr, was present at the banquet given to the congress by the South Wales ironmasters, and accompanied several of the excursions to the great works in the district in which he was interested. The letter which he wrote on the day of his arrival in Bute to his old friend at Oxford showed what his feeling was about the usurpation of the States of the Church by the Sardinian monarch. Mountstuart, Rothesay, _October_ 26, 1870. MY DEAR MISS SKENE, I ought to have written to you long ago, and really do not know what to say--except "mea culpa." There will be much to tell you when we next meet. I am quite firm, thank GOD, in the Church. I have outgrown any "convert enthusiasm" I may ever have possessed; but I have long ceased to think of anything else even as a possibility, or to {95} feel anything novel in Catholic practices. I am quite quiet, and I think, thank GOD, so far doing pretty well. You ask me about Rome. As to politics, my feeling in favour of the Temporal Power is very strong. Of course it had its faults, the extreme leniency of the criminal tribunals being probably the worst; but, putting the question of right aside, a Christian could institute no comparison between the Italian and the Pontifical Governments. Religiously, Rome is neither so good nor so bad as the extreme people would make it out. It was very edifying, and there was a great deal of piety--more conspicuous, perhaps, among the foreigners than the Romans, but of course that was to be expected, as the former came on purpose. The sanctuaries of Rome are very precious, especially the Holy Reliques and the graves of the Martyrs, and I love them very much. At the same time I think that this dreadful Revolution may be possibly a scourge in the hand of GOD to bring about His Will, though every Catholic must be appalled at the wickedness of the new Pontius Pilate and his accomplices. Perhaps the fiery trial may destroy some abuses, stop some things one does not like to see, and bring about others more profitable to Rome herself and to us.