his constant
determination to judge all questions by the simple touchstone of what he
believed to be right, irrespective of personal considerations. It was in
pursuance of these principles that, at the cost of great pain to himself
and some misrepresentation, he in 1878 sundered his long connection with
the Royal Geographical Society, by resigning his seat on their Council,
solely in consequence of their adoption of what he considered a wrong
policy. This severance occurred just when it was intended to propose him
as President. Some years later, at the personal request of the late Lord
Aberdare, a President in all respects worthy of the best traditions of
that great Society, Yule consented to rejoin the Council, which he
re-entered as a Vice-President.

In 1883, the University of Edinburgh celebrated its Tercentenary, when
Yule was selected as one of the recipients of the honorary degree of LL.D.
His letters from Edinburgh, on this occasion, give a very pleasant and
amusing account of the festivity and of the celebrities he met. Nor did he
omit to chronicle the envious glances cast, as he alleged, by some British
men of science on the splendours of foreign Academic attire, on the yellow
robes of the Sorbonne, and the Palms of the Institute of France! Pasteur
was, he wrote, the one most enthusiastically acclaimed of all who received
degrees.

I think it was about the same time that M. Renan was in England, and
called upon Sir Henry Maine, Yule, and others at the India Office. On
meeting just after, the colleagues compared notes as to their
distinguished but unwieldy visitor. "It seems that _le style n'est pas
l'homme meme_ in _this_ instance," quoth "Ancient Law" to "Marco Polo."
And here it may be remarked that Yule so completely identified himself
with his favourite traveller that he frequently signed contributions to
the public press as MARCUS PAULUS VENETUS or M.P.V. His more intimate
friends also gave him the same _sobriquet_, and once, when calling on his
old friend, Dr. John Brown (the beloved chronicler of _Rab and his
Friends_), he was introduced by Dr. John to some lion-hunting American
visitors as "our Marco Polo." The visitors evidently took the statement in
a literal sense, and scrutinised Yule closely.[70]

In 1886 Yule published his delightful _Anglo-Indian Glossary_, with the
whimsical but felicitous sub-title of _Hobson-Jobson_ (the name given by
the rank and file of the British Army in India to the r