logical to do it? while on the other side there was not much in point of natural justice to be said against Norman Leslie and his men who slew the Cardinal. Such spectators there must have been in no small number, affording a curious rim and edge of observers to all that the more active and violent might do or say. But these lookers-on have said nothing on the subject, or their mild voices have been lost in the clangour of actors vehement and earnest. It has been reserved for our age to bring these dispassionate or, as we are apt to think, cynical observers into the front rank. The first scene in which John Knox comes prominently into sight of the world occurs in the midst of that small but urgent and much-agitated society on the fierce little headland by the sea, in the great and noble cathedral which for most of the intervening time has been nothing but ruins. We must in imagination rebuild these lofty walls, throw up again the noble piers and clustered pillars, and see the townsfolk streaming in--a crowd more picturesque in garb than any Scots assembly nowadays, with its provost and councillors in their municipal finery: and the grave representatives of the colleges filing in to their stalls--very grave now, we may well believe, with many a look at the group of gentry, among whom were half a dozen men whose hands were stained with the blood of the Cardinal. No doubt to these spectators, beyond even the great volume of sound which pealed upward from that vast company, in some popular hymn or ancient war-cry of a psalm, the stir of the languid besieging army outside, and the guns of the French Fleet, already on its way to avenge Beatoun and crush this nest of heretics out, sounded ominous in the background. Among the congregation was a dark, vehement man, full of repressed fervour and energy, with two or three lads by his side, of whom he had charge--strange tutor! flames of zeal and earnestness burning in his deep-set eyes; the mark of the tonsure (if it was ever there, which is a doubtful question) obliterated by long disuse; a man known by the congregation as a zealous instructor of youth, catechising his boys publicly of afternoons in the cathedral, vacant then of the many services, the vespers and benedictions, of the superseded faith.