must be a preliminary to every good speech. He then
carefully constructed a skeleton of his arguments, and
impressed this firmly on his memory, after which he went
to his study and wrote down as fast as he could lay pen to
paper his whole speech from the beginning to the end ; but
the moment he had completed his task and here is the
peculiarity of his method he gathered all the sheets
together and put them in the fire without looking at them.
He then sat down and repeated the process, and this not
once or twice, but three, four, five, or six times. In this
way he not only got clearly into his head the articulated
structure of his speech, but having clothed the same ideas
over and over again with different forms of expression,
when he went down to deliver himself in the House of
356 RECTORIAL ADDRESSES
Commons he had such a wealth of language at his disposal,
such a variety in his vocabulary, that he never had to
hesitate for the words or to stutter or stumble over a
single sentence. But it is needless to observe that this
process, though very effectual for the purpose aimed at,
would only be possible to a person who addressed his
audience at rare intervals, and had ample time at his
disposal for the excessively laborious process I have de-
scribed. Still it appears to me a mode of procedure which
is not unworthy of a beginner's attention, as it would at
once give him confidence, fluency, and a clear perception of
the line of country he had to traverse ; and this in itself is
a great advantage, for very often when a man gives utterance
on his legs to a succession of inane or meaningless phrases,
it is because for the moment his brain has not supplied
him with the necessary material for the proper continuation
of his discourse, and his tongue is performing one office
while his mind and his memory are endeavouring to fulfil
another. Nor must you suppose that even the most
practised of our public men are free from those lapses and
infirmities which naturally fill our own minds with terror
at the thought of speaking in public. I have seen the
late Lord Derby, one of the most eloquent, courageous, and
successful speakers that ever charmed the two Houses of
Parliament, tremble throughout his frame at the commence-
ment of one of his great speeches. I have seen a Lord
Chancellor of England completely lose the thread of his
discourse, and, sitting down, confess that he had done so ;
and I have heard another very famous orator rolling forth
platitude after platitude in the most helpless manner, simply
because he could not, for the life of him, hit off a satis-
factory peroration.
Another practice which I have also found useful, has
been to dictate a speech over to a shorthand writer immed-
iately before delivering it. When I was in Canada, particu-
larly in remote districts, it frequently happened that the
newspaper reporters were not masters of shorthand, or
perhaps there was only one shorthand writer amongst them.
MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA 357
As a consequence, they sometimes asked me to say over my
speech beforehand to their representative, and I was quite
surprised to find how a compliance with their request
enabled me to clarify and condense what I intended to
say when an hour later I addressed my audience.
There is another subject in connection with public
speaking upon which one or two observations may be
opportune, and that is gesture. There is no doubt that a
graceful, commanding, and dignified attitude in the orator
greatly enhances the effect of fervid eloquence, and in this
respect I am afraid it is rather on the Continent than in the
House of Commons that your best models will be found.
According to our ideas, foreigners gesticulate a great deal too
much ; but I have been much struck, when attending the
debates in the Italian Parliament, by the unstudied and
easy manner in which its members enforce their meaning
by graceful and spontaneous gestures. They neither put
their hands beneath their coat-tails, nor do they scratch the
tops of their heads, nor do they toss about their pocket-
handkerchiefs, or wave one arm up and down like a pump-
handle, nor bend their bodies in two at every word. So far
from this being the case, it is quite a pleasure to watch
them, even when you are not able either to hear or perhaps
to comprehend what they are saying ; and, consequently, you
must not be surprised if I am disposed to insist on the
advisability of paying some attention to the movements of
your hands and body when you speak. What may be the
best method to follow is another question. I remember
getting a very useful hint from Wigan, the actor, when we
were both attending a charity dinner in the City. He had
observed that when making my speech I had kept turning
my palms to the audience, as is a very common habit with
many people, and he told me that on the stage they were
specially warned against this practice, as it conveyed the
notion of weakness ; whereas, if the back of the hand were
displayed, the very opposite effect would be produced.
However, I am inclined to refer you on this delicate subject
to your womenkind. It is wonderful what an eye one's
358 RECTORIAL ADDRESSES
sisters and cousins have for any awkwardness of manner or
ungainly tricks and contortions ; nor probably will you find
them behindhand, especially your daughters, when you have
them, in proffering their criticisms on the subject. As
supplementary to these impartial and frank instructors, 1
would recommend you to well, if I were not speaking to a
Scotch audience, I would say to go through a course of
dancing lessons ; but to you, being what you are, and in the
city of John Knox, I will refrain from so frivolous a sugges-
tion, and propose to you to go to the fencing-master instead ;
for not only will you derive from the practice of fencing
that indescribable lightness and freedom in your joints
which is the very essence of grace, but you will find that in
the fencing-room there is such an atmosphere of traditional
courtesy, that it will give you in general society that easi-
ness, aplomb, and self-confidence which is the foundation of
good manners and gentleman-like bearing.
There is one further general suggestion, in addition to
the few practical hints I have given you, which perhaps you
may find useful, and it is that, apart from and in addition
to whatever may be the professional and obligatory occupa-
tions of your lives, you should invent for yourself an interest
or employment as distinct as possible from your usual
avocations. A parergon of this kind will always provide
you with a delightful rest or change, whether it be an art
such as music or painting, the exercise of an experimental
science such as chemistry which I believe engrosses Lord
Salisbury's leisure moments or a species of sport like book-
collecting, or the acquisition of some abstruse tongue like
hieroglyphics or Arabic, or something of the sort, which shall
stimulate your imagination and lift you out of the ruts along
which the routine of your ordinary lives forces you to travel.
But, gentlemen, I am transgressing my own recommend-
ation that all speeches should be as short as -possible : and
after all I am afraid that I have only treated you to a very
gossiping, commonplace allocution to nothing, in short,
that may not have occurred to your own minds. My object
has been not to be brilliant myself, but useful to you. All
MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND A VA 359
the loftier themes upon which young men are generally
addressed on these occasions I have purposely pretermitted ;
nor have I ventured, for obvious reasons, to indulge in any
recommendations in regard to the higher, more abstruse, and
scientific departments of your university studies, for upon
none of them would I be entitled to speak with the slightest
authority. And yet, before concluding, I would like, as
your Lord Eector, to risk a few parting words in reference
to one or two of what I will call the lesser moralities ; for
education does not simply consist in the acquisition of
knowledge or even the training of our mental faculties : it
also includes the disciplining of our consciences and the right
ruling of our conduct; for what is the use of putting arms
into a man's hands if it is only to turn them against himself
or his friends ? which is what happens to us if we employ
our faculties otherwise than in accordance with God's will.
Now the essence of conduct is a right judgment in all things.
But good judgment, like everything else, is a gift from
heaven which some have and some have not. There is,
however, one practical rule in regard to the formation of our
judgments upon which I am disposed to insist, and that is,
that you should never arrive at any decision nor enter upon
the execution of any act, without setting yourselves deliber-
ately and of set purpose to consider it in all its bearings.
This seems a very commonplace recommendation*; but 1
firmly believe that half the mistakes that are made in life
arise from people merely revolving things in their minds in
a casual, half-hearted kind of manner, and allowing an
impression in regard to them to form itself insensibly and
automatically as a kind of growth, and the result of an
imperceptible process, Now, in the course of a somewhat
varied public career, I have had to arrive at decisions upon
many momentous subjects, involving not merely my own
interests or the interests of persons connected with me, but
the welfare and happiness of thousands and thousands, I
may say millions, of my fellow-creatures. Well, my practice
has always been, and I heartily recommend it to my young
hearers, no matter how long or how carefully I may have
360 RECTORIAL ADDRESSES
been chewing the cud of reflection, never to adopt a final
determination without shutting myself up in a room for an
hour or a couple of hours, as the case may be, and then,
with all the might and intellectual force which I was cap-
able of exerting, digging down into the very depths and
remotest crannies of the problem, until the process had
evolved clear and distinct in my mind's eye a conclusion as
sharp and cleanly cut as the facets of a diamond : nor, when
once this conclusion was arrived at, have I ever allowed
myself to reconsider the matter, unless some new element
affecting the question, hitherto unnoticed or unknown, should
be disclosed ; for if one is weak enough to get into the
habit of going back upon one's decision, the chances are that
your faculties, being no longer so alert as when you origin-
ally took the matter into consideration, some one factor in
the case acquires, according to the transitory mood or temper
of your mind at that particular moment, a predominance
and an importance which does not belong to it, and in this
way you are led into a change of opinion which in all
probability turns out to be a wrong one. To the foregoing
advice I have to add a corollary. Never send off a letter,
and especially if it is likely to involve you in an angry
discussion with another person, by the evening's post.
Reserve it, if possible, till the next morning, and you will
find after you have read it again that in some cases you
will not send it at all, or, if it has to go, that it will be in
a different form from that in which it was originally written.
Then, again, I would advise you not to stimulate over
much the critical faculty of course I am not using the
term in its literary sense. On the contrary, you will find
life much pleasanter if you habituate yourselves to seek out
and to see the good rather than the evil in all things. Nor
need you be the least afraid that such an attitude will in
any degree blunt your preceptions or generate a tendency to
silly and indiscriminating admiration. So far from this
being the case, it is in those whose natural impulse it is to
recognise merit, whether in persons or in things, that the
faculty of true criticism is most vigilant ; but, like a faithful
MARQUESS OF DUFF ERIN AND A VA 361
watch -dog, it lies apparently dormant until the real
aggressor approaches, instead of annoying the world in
general by perpetually snarling at the heels of every innocent
passer-by. The very reverse, however, is the case as regards
the spirit of the detractor and habitual fault-finder. By dint
of perpetually fixing his gaze upon the weaknesses and the
defects of his fellow-creatures, or upon what is less beautiful
and lovely in the world he becomes, as it were, colour-blind,
and, to his own great loss and misery, degenerates into a
narrow-minded cynic. In illustration of my meaning I
subjoin this rather pretty oriental apologue :
A dead wolf lay beside the road which led from
Jerusalem to Jericho. First came a Pharisee, who
exclaimed, " How the brute stinks ! " then came a Sadducee,
who cried, " How horridly its coat stares ! " then followed
a publican, who remarked on the hideous look in its glazed
and sunken eyes. Lastly came our Saviour, who exclaimed,
" What beautiful teeth the creature has ! "
And now I will conclude by mentioning two further
rules of conduct which I would urge you to consider one
to be observed in the interests of your fellow-creatures, and
the other in view of your own happiness namely, the
cultivation, first, of the spirit of Justice, and secondly, of the
sentiment of Chivalry. I am disposed to lay especial, stress
on each of these points, because it seems to me that modern
society runs the risk of losing its hold upon both of them.
A wave of hysterical sentimentality appears in some
quarters to be threatening the first principles of Justice,
and other influences which it would be difficult to define or
analyse are drying up the fountains of Chivalry. There
is no doubt that the weak point in all democratic societies
is to be found within the domain of Justice. And by
Justice I do not mean the justice administered in our courts
of law, but Justice as it is understood and interpreted by
public opinion, by our newspapers nay, even by our
Parliaments. The misapprehension of the exigencies and
requirements of Justice is the product of by no means
unamiable qualities in our human nature. It is the
362 RECTORIAL ADDRESSES
triumph of the heart over the head, of our feeling over our
reason, and it is further stimulated by that tendency to
" compassion " which has of late become so signally
developed amongst masses of men in most civilised nations ;
for we must remember that amongst the bulk of mankind
the emotions, the affections, the passions incident to human
nature, are being daily and hourly stimulated through the
friction of their social and domestic relations, whereas their
logical faculties are much more rarely brought into play,
and when this is the case, sentiment is sure to overpower
reason. Some of the most cruel episodes in the French
Revolution had their origin in -this perversion of a not
unrighteous instinct. We see the same tendency in
American lynchings and in the scandalous scenes at French
murder trials or, to cite a ridiculous instance, when the
good actor who has sustained the villain's part in some
thrilling drama is unmercifully hissed by the excited pit
and gallery on his reappearance after the fall of the curtain.
Now Justice, and Justice alone, is the very basis and
foundation of civilisation, as well as of all private and
public happiness, and if we destroy its legitimate supremacy,
the most frightful evils will be sure to overtake the human
race.
Since in a State fond men are tempted still
To evil, for a guard against worst ill,
And what in quality and act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
Then labour good on good to fix, that so
Justice may triumph over every foe.
With regard to the spirit of Chivalry which I have
recommended you to cultivate, a very few words will suffice.
Remember that the very essence of that spirit is the empire
of pure and generous thoughts in a virile and robust body,
and if you wish to have this spirit exemplified in its noblest
form, I refer you to those immortal works in which it is
embalmed for the happiness and instruction of all time
the poems and romances of Walter Scott. Compare the
magical creations evolved from that powerful brain and
MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND A VA 363
noble heart with certain novels of modern times, and you
will be able at once to appreciate the difference between
the two worlds which either have created. While the one
compels us to wander through the polluted atmosphere of
what are falsely called the realities of life, the other leads
our souls through a region where manly virtue, heroic
courage, self-respect, and, above all, a tender and loving
reverence for women, which is the keystone of all goodness,
are the characteristics that illuminate and glorify its
surroundings. Believe me, the only true reality is the
ideal, and what is commonly referred to as the realistic
truth is a degraded and apocryphal eidolon. The secret of
lifelong happiness is not, as is generally said, to keep one's
illusions as long as possible, but to preserve the conviction
that one's " illusions " are the only realities, and that their
destruction is tantamount to our becoming the victims of a
vain and empty dream. But with knightly Purity and
white-robed Justice for your companions on either hand,
the magic light of which Wordsworth speaks in his glorious
" Ode on Immortality " will neither waver nor fade from
your path, but will invest all your surroundings, your inner
thoughts, and the outward sights of earth and heaven with a
magical glory and a divine iridescence, showering sunshine
and gladness over your most commonplace employments,
and illuminating your declining years with unspeakable
content.
MARQUESS OF BUTE
Rector from 1892 to 1895
Address delivered on November 20, 1893
MARQUESS OF BUTE
The position to which I have had the honour of being
elected has surrounded me with a good many elements of
the new or of the unexpected. My installation indeed is
but a few moments old, but those who know anything of
the circumstances of my election know that that election
was in no way anticipated by me. My adventures since
have not been of a character which I foresaw. Nor can I
even exclude from the category of the unforeseen much kind-
ness with which I have been treated, for it has been greater
than any for which I was entitled to look. But there is
one feature about my office in which there is for me nothing-
new. That feature is St. Andrews itself. I may indeed
claim that my affection for this place has hitherto been life-
long. My mother, like so many others, sometimes .came
here about August and September how often, I do not
remember, for these sojourns enter dimly into the region of
some of the very earliest recollections which I have, and
these memories, associated with that of the only parent whom
I ever knew, and with those of friends of hers, nearly all of
whom are now passed away, form elements in that mental
store which is now become sacred for me without becoming
sorrowful. I dimly recall the old garden of St. Leonard's
and a variety of mechanical toys working by wind and water
with which Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair had adorned it. The
art of taking photographs was then new, and he was rather an
enthusiastic amateur, in it, and fond of getting my mother and
her friends to sit for him. I think I have some of the results
now. There was Sir David Brewster, who gave me a kaleido-
368 RECTORIAL ADDRESSES
scope, an instrument which was, I believe, of his inventing, and
was then still regarded by his contemporaries as somewhat a
new thing ; and I have a faint remembrance of some other
optical machine of his, I think of a rotatory character. I
remember gazing from St. Andrews at the great comet which
there was about the time of the Indian Mutiny, and when
we were living in the Principal of St. Mary's house, my
kinsman, Charles MacLean, came home wounded from India
and stayed with us, and with his maimed hand gave me
some elementary lessons in fortification, with wet sand in a
box. I think St. Mary's must have been the last house in
St. Andrews where we stayed. I am one of those persons,
of perhaps disputable prudence, who keep a Diary, and I
find under date of July 20, 1889 "to St. Andrews . . .
saw the last of the old garden of St. Mary's College, where
I used to play (and eat unripe pears) as a child : they are
going to build the library extension over it." Well, I can
only hope that the fruits of the tree of knowledge, to the
cultivation of which that spot is now dedicated, may
prove less crude and more wholesome than the grosser
dainties, to the attractions of which I there formerly
yielded.
As I grew towards manhood, I did not put away childish
things in the sense of losing my feelings towards this place.
And I remember when I was at Oxford and was going one
Long Vacation to Iceland in company with an English
friend (now the secretary of one of Her Majesty's present
ministers), I stopped the yacht here in order to show him
with pride the only place in Scotland, as far as I know,
whose appearance can boast any kinship with that of
Oxford. And, indeed, if the buildings here be comparatively
few, they would be proud enough at Oxford of the tower
and chapel of St. Salvator ; they never had any building
such as is the Cathedral, even in its ruins; they have
nothing to compare to the tower of St. Eegulus, and no
walls like those of Prior Hepburn. And the glorious
surroundings of nature here rise above any comparison with
the site of Oxford amid flat meadows surrounded by tame
MARQUESS OF BUTE 369
hills, upon the banks of a small sluggish river, and annually
insulated for a longer or shorter period by floods.
I was going to have added that St. Andrews had also
the advantage over Oxford of emerging into the light of
history from the glittering haze of the heroic myth, instead
of from the dark fogs of uncertainty, occasionally illuminated
by the fitful will-o'-the wisp of doubtful conjecture. But I
am not fond of the heroic myth when I can get facts, and
even fair suppositions drawn from facts. And St. Andrews
needs not the heroic myth in order to clothe its birth or its
history with lustre. Its real history is noble. And as
time advances, and the romance of youth becomes ever more
and more distant, and the sober desire for historic and
scientific truth waxes stronger, it seems to me all the more
precious for being a real history which is recoverable from
documents, and of which what must still be the subject of con-
jecture, is at least conjecture based upon good circumstantial
evidence. How much has been done for that history by the
late William Skene it would be unseemly here not to
acknowledge, and the field which his learning covered was
so vast that it is no disparagement to him to say that he
lias left in it much which has yet to be gleaned, or that a
consultation of the authorities may sometimes lead to the
respectful formation upon particular points of conclusions
other than his.
I look upon the history of St. Andrews as especially
precious here as a continual expression of and witness to the
spirit of the Scottish nationality in the higher spheres of
thought and activity. There is, of course, a true and a false
nationalism. It seems to me to be a false nationalism when,
as I think is done by Erastianism, it is attempted to render
amenable to political and even artificial distinctions things
which are by their very nature either true or false, not only
in every part of this planet, not only in this system, but
universally. It is a true nationalism which recognises and
acts upon those racial instincts and characteristics which are
eradicable only with the races themselves. The develop-
ments of these instincts and characteristics may be modified,
24
370 RECTORIAL ADDRESSES
but to ignore their existence and endeavour to thwart their
manifestation is merely a useless and harmful fighting
against nature. This extends into the modes of religious
thought and practice as well as to other things. It would
be no doubt an exaggeration to say that the conversion of
an Aryan country to Christianity is no more than the
infusion of Shemitism into its religion ; but I have seen a
certain amount of people of different races and of different
religions, and the result of my observation is that those who
are of the same race, and of different religions, resemble one
another more even in their religious practices than do those
who are of the same religion but of different races. I might
take divers examples, which I abstain from citing for fear of