The debate was long and minute, and Knox was no more shaken from his determination that the mass was idolatry and that every idolater should die the death, than from his conviction that he did his utmost for the Queen in praying that God might convert her, if it were possible. The argument as to resisting princes is still longer and more elaborate, but as it involves only large and general questions is argued out with much more justice and perception. It was one of the subjects most continually under discussion among all who held the Reformed faith, and Lethington himself and all his audience had both in profession and practice held the popular view in the time of Mary of Guise. It is like enough, indeed, that somewhere among the crowd of faces turned towards the disputants there was that long head and saturnine countenance, still one of the best-known effigies of his time, of the scholar who was at that period proud to be Queen Mary's tutor, reading Livy with her in the afternoons, and who upon this question had views as clear as a crystal, waiting for the moment when they could be set forth. But George Buchanan, though he held office in the Assembly, had no warrant to claim a hearing between such men as the learned and lively Lord Secretary and the great prophet and preacher John Knox. The discussion ended in nothing, as may be supposed, except a deepened offence on the part of the Court with the impracticable Reformer, and an additional bitterness of criticism on the part of the Congregation touching all that went on at the abbey--the gaieties, and the beautiful dresses, as well as the mass, and now and then a whisper of scandal, unproved but taken for granted with that miserable eagerness which such opposition brings. Edinburgh, between these two conflicting powers, was no doubt able, with the wonderful impartiality of common life, to carry on its usual existence much less affected than we could imagine possible by any of the disorders, which almost reached the height of civil war when Murray and the other lords were banished, and the tide of Mary's fate began to rise darkly between the unhappy fool she had chosen for her husband, and all the wild conflicting elements which had been enough to tax her strength without that aggravation. Even Knox acknowledges that "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," though he himself had been the first to warn the people of national judgments to be looked for because of the offences in costume and other matters of their Queen. We lose, however, here the picturesque and dramatic scenes which added so much interest to the history during the brief period when she and he were friends. The debate with Lethington, indeed, is the conclusion of the brilliant and vivid piece of history in which we have been made to see all that was going on in the centre of Scottish life--the continual tumults, the great gatherings in the Church, the sermons, daily orations