keenness of vision, be wanting in those qualities of animation and force which he who is confident of having every good influence on his side, and nothing but the powers of evil against him, is likely to possess. Major indeed was a historian, but he did not meddle with the history of his own time; and Buchanan, while separated from the reader by the bonds and cerements of his Latin, and therefore shut out from a popular audience, is as great a partisan as Knox. The little garrison of St. Andrews was taken, as everybody knows, by the French, and carried away to prison and the galleys; but no blood was shed to avenge the blood of Beatoun, a point which ought to be put to their credit. John Knox suffered all these misfortunes with a steadfast soul, still declaring to all who surrounded him, in the extremity of suffering, hardship, and sickness, that he should again preach in that Church of St. Andrews from which he had been taken. This is the first of the many prophecies completely verified afterwards with which he is credited. He escaped after about three years of captivity and misery in France, during which he would seem to have been actually employed in the galleys, and came to England, where it is to be supposed the story of his influence and power with the Scotch Reformers had preceded him, otherwise the advancement to which he reached, and which might have been greater but for his dissatisfaction with the imperfectly Reformed Church there, and the bondage of ceremonials and traditions still left in it, would have been still more extraordinary. He was one of the chaplains to the boy-king Edward, for whom he had the amiable prejudice common to those who secure the favour of very young princes, expecting from him everything that was great and good. At the death of the young King, however, Knox removed hurriedly to the Continent with many others, knowing that under the reign of Mary there would be little acceptance for men of his views. During his stay in England he had met with a pair of ladies who were henceforward to be very closely connected with his life--Marjory Bowes, his future wife, and to all appearance still more important her mother, Mrs. Bowes, to whom, contrary to the ordinary idea of that relationship, he seems to have given much regard and affection, notwithstanding that she was a melancholy woman, depressed and despondent, sometimes overwhelmed with religious terrors, and requiring continued support and encouragement in the faith. One cannot help feeling a sort of compassion for the silent Marjory, of whom nothing is ever heard, between her solemn lover of fifty and her sad mother. But she is voiceless, and though there are letters of religious counsel addressed to her under the title of "weill belovit sister," there is not among them all, so strange is the abstract effect of religious exhortation thus applied, one gleam of anything like individual character, or which can throw any light upon what she was; which,