There was one interesting piece of work outside the normal duties of my office in which I was concerned. It was a graceful idea of Mr. Gladstone’s to commemorate his victory in the famous Midlothian Campaign of 1880 by some sort of monument in Edinburgh. It occurred to him that it would be an appropriate gift if he were to reproduce the old City Cross, the “Mercat” Cross as it was called, which used to stand in the High Street and from which the Royal proclamations used to be heralded. It was from that Cross that Prince Charles Edward, the young Pretender, was proclaimed King of England and Scotland in 1745. It was swept away in 1756 as an obstruction, an act of vandalism which Sir Walter Scott scourged in “Marmion.” It had been an octagonal tower surmounted by a shaft carrying a unicorn which had been destroyed by Cromwell. The shaft had been removed to Drum, near Dalkeith. Mr. Gladstone was very keen upon rebuilding the little tower outside St. Giles’s Cathedral, and replacing the shaft, which was to be brought back from Drum. He asked me to help him in the business part of his undertaking, which I was only too glad to do. On the recommendation of Lord Rosebery, Mr. Sydney Mitchell, a Scot, was chosen to be the architect. I had a good deal of correspondence with Mr. Gladstone upon the subject, for he was a sedulous letter-writer. People at that time had not yet fallen into the lazy habit of using typewriters; all his letters were holograph in his own hand, and some of them very long. The modern fashion would have been quite out of tune with his exquisite old world courtesy. The late Lord Bath, who, though a Tory, was one of his great admirers, said to me once that Mr. Gladstone’s punctilious politeness always made him feel shy. “He will take off his hat!” How he found time for writing is a mystery. Upon one detail he was much exercised. He had discovered, how I know not, that Sir Walter Scott had managed to obtain some of the stones of the old Mercat Cross, and used them in building the walls at Abbotsford. He was very keen to gain possession of these and to incorporate them in the new Cross. To his great disappointment Sir Walter’s successor refused his request. He wrote to me at great length and almost indignantly upon the subject, but I felt bound to say that I thought that it was intelligible that the present possessors should decline to tamper with Sir Walter’s building, indeed, that they might almost consider that it would be an act of impiety to do so. However, in the end the finished work gave Mr. Gladstone as great pleasure as it did to the citizens of Edinburgh. The Latin inscription was composed by Mr. Gladstone, rather against his will, in deference to a general wish that there should be an inscription of some sort. He wrote and consulted me upon the subject. With Dr. Johnson’s views in my head, I suggested that it should be in Latin. Mr. Gladstone wrote back: