This is but an instance of many similar misconceptions with which the colour of the picture is heightened. An impassioned spectator looking on with a foregone conclusion in his mind, never apparently able to convince himself that vice does not always wear her trappings, but is probably much more dangerous when she observes the ordinary modesties of outward life, is always apt to be misled in this way. The state of affairs in which a great body of public men, not only ministers, but noble men and worthy persons of every degree, could personally address the Queen, and that almost in the form of an accusation couched in the most vehement terms, because of a libertine raid made by a few young gallants in the night, on a house supposed to be inhabited by a woman of damaged character, is inconceivable to us--a certain parochial character, a pettiness as of a village, thus comes into the great national struggle. The Queen's uncle, who had accompanied her to Scotland, was one of the young men concerned, along with Earl Bothwell and another. "The horror of this fact and the raretie of it commoved all godlie hearts," said Knox--and yet there was no lack of scandals in that age notwithstanding the zeal of purification. When the courtiers, alarmed by this commination (in which every kind of spiritual vengeance upon the realm and its rulers was denounced), asked, "Who durst avow it?" the grim Lindsay replied, "A thousand gentlemen within Edinburgh." Yet if Edinburgh was free from disorders of this kind, it was certainly far from free of other contentions. The proclamations from the Cross during Mary's brief reign give us the impression of being almost ceaseless. The Queen's Majestie proclaimed by the heralds now one decree, now another, with a crowd hastily forming to every blast of the trumpet: and the little procession in their tabards, carrying a moving patch of bright colour and shining ornament up all the long picturesque line of street, both without and within the city gates, was of almost daily occurrence. It was some compensation at least for the evils of an uncertain rule to have that delightful pageant going on for ever. Sometimes there would arise a protest, and one of the lords, all splendid in his jewelled bonnet, would step forward to the Lord Lyon and "take instruments and crave extracts," according to the time-honoured jargon of law; while from his corner window perhaps John Knox looked out, his eager pen already drawn to answer, the tumultuous impassioned sentences rushing to his lips.