Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him, which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His history, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the two prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence, march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another’s rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him every way. Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone, though there is enough of that too; but a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say a laugh in the _eyes_ most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. He had his pipe of Bordeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his--a cheery, social man, with faces that loved him. They go far wrong who think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all; he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious, hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present. A certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough, and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern him--“They, what are they?” But the thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of, and in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear, all the more emphatic for his long silence. This prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man. He had a sore fight of an existence; wrestling with popes and principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. A sore fight; but he won it. “Have you hope?” they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, “pointed upward with his finger,” and so died. Honor to him. His works have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men’s, but the spirit of it never. DUKE OF ALVA. BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. [Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, a Spanish statesman and general, born 1508, died 1582. From his earliest years a soldier, the dominating passion of his soul was hatred of heretics and infidels. He bore a distinguished part in the wars and negotiations of Charles V’s splendid reign, and on the accession of Philip II was equally honored by that monarch. On the outbreak of the rebellion in the Netherlands, Alva was sent thither with an army, as viceroy. His six years of rule was one of the most bloody and atrocious episodes in modern history. His great opponent was the Prince of Orange. Utterly failing in stamping out the rebellion, he was recalled by his master in 1573.]