A man sent to row in the French galleys, and such like, for teaching the truth in his own land, can not always be in the mildest humor. I am not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper, nor do I know that he had what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind, honest affections dwell in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling man. That he _could_ rebuke queens, and had such weight among those proud, turbulent nobles--proud enough, whatever else they were--and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual presidency and sovereignty over that wild realm, he who was only “a subject born within the same”; this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean, acrid man, but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious, rioting demagogue; precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine. Knox wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element. It was the tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the born enemy of disorder--hates to be in it; but what then? Smooth falsehood is not order. It is the general sum-total of _dis_order. Order is _truth_--each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it. Order and falsehood can not subsist together.