sixty-seven, he was placed on the retired list. The few years of life which remained to him he spent at Bansha Castle in Ireland, devoted chiefly to the cause of education. He was a frequent lecturer both in Dublin and the provinces on historical, social, and economic questions. Butler was known as a Home Ruler and an admirer of Charles Stewart Parnell. He was a member of the Senate of the National University of Ireland, and a commissioner of the Board of National Education. In June 1906, he was appointed Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and in 1909 he was made a member of the Irish Privy Council. He died at Bansha Castle and was buried at the cemetery of Killaldriffe, a few miles distant and not far from his ancestral home. He had long been known as a descriptive writer, since his publication of The Great Lone Land (1872), describing the Red River Expedition in suppression of the Red River Rebellion, and subsequent travel across Western Canada for the Government, to report on conditions there. Other works include biographies of Charles George Gordon (1889) and Sir George Colley (1899). In his biography of Gordon, he wrote the epigram "The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.":85 which has since frequently been misattributed to Thucydides. He had started work on his autobiography a few years before his death but died before it was completed. His youngest daughter, Eileen, Viscountess Gormanston, completed the work and had it published in 1911. Eileen found among his papers a poem he had written, which began: Give me but six-foot-three (one inch to spare) Of Irish earth, and dig it anywhere; And for my poor soul say an Irish prayer Above the spot. Notes Works References William Francis Butler (1872). The Great Lone Land; a Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America. London. William Francis Butler (1873). The Wild North Land: Being the Story of a Winter Journey, with Dogs, Across Northern North America. London. William Francis Butler (1882). Red Cloud, the Solitary Sioux: A Story of the Great Prairie. Roberts Brothers, Boston. Lieut.-General The Rt. Hon. Sir W. F. Butler G.C.B. (1911). Sir William Butler. An Autobiography Scribner's Sons,