I am sensible of the kindness of your offer, but I know my own limitations. About prehistoric antiquities I can write nothing, for I know nothing; and of the Scots Men-at-Arms I know if possible even less. For the latter subject I could no doubt "mug up," as Arthur Pendennis did for his articles in the _Pall Mall Gazette_; but _cui bono_? As for early Scottish Christianity, the subject is too vast: you might almost as well ask me for an article on the history of the human race. It must be done in _fragments_. I think I might try my hand on some scrap, say the ancient Celtic Hymns, in Latin; and I am now taking steps to ascertain if there are known to be any more of such compositions than I already possess--also to get a legible transcript of one of mine, a (to me) illegible lithographic facsimile of an ancient Codex.... As to the Men-at-Arms, I am of opinion that Mrs. Maxwell Scott of Abbotsford would do this well. She is somewhat of an invalid, and spends much time in study, in which she has the advantage both of great natural ability and of her illustrious great-grandfather's admirable library. She is (unreasonably) diffident; but were the article once written, I feel sure you would not find yourself in search of any excuse not to print it. [Sidenote: 1883, Contributions to the _Scottish Review_] Bute's own paper on "Ancient Celtic Latin Hymns" appeared in February, 1883, and was the first of over twenty articles contributed by him to the _Scottish Review_.[8] Other articles followed, dealing respectively with St. Patrick, the Scottish Peerage, and the Bayreuth Festival, which he attended for the first time in 1886, the same year in which he acquired {131} control of the _Review_. The last-named article has a particular interest of its own, as having been written by a man quite devoid (as he himself frankly acknowledged)[9] of any æsthetic appreciation of music, but who was yet moved and impressed to an extraordinary degree by the Wagnerian cycle as presented at Bayreuth. "Had you not better," he writes to the editor in sending the Bayreuth article, "submit my _Festival_ to some expert musician of Wagnerian mind, that he may add a few technicalities at appropriate places? (I have indicated in pencil where I think this may fitly be done.)" The article on St. Patrick aroused some interest, especially in the perennial question of the Saint's birthplace--a subject to which Bute makes whimsical reference in a letter relating to hoped-for contributions from the Rev. Colin Grant,[10] the learned priest of Eskadale.