I see too amongst those great, dim figures, that speak in Scriptural tones, the form of Hugh Latimer, as he stands to-day on the Memorial Cross in Oxford. I think of him too--in humbler dress than that which the sculptor has put on him--even the yeoman’s clothes, which he wore upon his father’s farm, in the Valley of the Soar, when he wrought there in the meadows, and drank in humility of thought, and manly independence under the skies of Leicestershire[76]--where (as he says), “My father had walk for an hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine.” He kept his head upon his shoulders through Henry’s time--his amazing wit and humor helping him to security;--was in fair favor with Edward; but under Mary, walked coolly with Ridley to the stake, where the fires were set, to burn them both in Oxford. Foxe[77] too is to be remembered for his Stories of the Martyrs of these, and other times, which have formed the nightmare reading for so many school-boys. I see, too, another figure that will not down in this coterie of Reformers, and that makes itself heard from beyond the Tweed. This is John Knox,[78] a near contemporary though something younger than most I have named, and not ripening to his greatest power till Henry VIII. had gone. Born of humble parentage in Scotland in the early quarter of the century, he was a rigid Papist in his young days, but a more rigid Reformer afterward; much time a prisoner; passing years at Geneva; not altogether a “gloomy, shrinking, fanatic,” but keeping, says Carlyle, “a pipe of Bordeaux in that old Edinboro house of his;” getting to know Cranmer, and the rest in England; discussing with these, changes of Church Service; counselling austerities, where Cranmer admitted laxities; afraid of no man, neither woman;--publishing in exile in Mary’s day--_The first Blaste of the Trumpet against the monstrous Regiment of Women_, and repenting this--quietly no doubt--when Elizabeth came to power. A thin, frail man; strong no ways, but in courage, and in brain; with broad brows--black cap--locks floating gray from under it, in careless whirls that shook as he talked; an eye like a falcon’s that flashed the light of twenty years, when sixty were on his shoulders; in after years, writhing with rheumatic pains--crawling upon his stick and a servant’s arm into his Church of St. Andrews; lifted into his pulpit by the clerk and his attendant--leaning there on the desk, a wilted heap of humanity--panting, shaking, quivering--till his breath came, and the psalm and the lifted prayer gave courage; then--fierce torrents of speech (and a pounding of the pulpit till it seemed that it would fly in shivers), with a sharp, swift, piercing utterance that pricked ears as it pricked consciences, and made the roof-timbers clang with echoes.