"For herein lies the glory of the Scot, To fill the woods with clamour of the chase; To swim the stream, and cold and heat defy, And hunger and fatigue. To guard their land Not with deep trench or wall, but with the force Of arms, contemning life for honour's sake; To keep their troth, to reverence the bonds Of friendship, to love virtue and not gifts. Such acts as these secured throughout the land Freedom and peace, when war raged o'er the world, And every other nation was constrained To change its native laws for foreign yoke, The fury of the Goth stopped here; the onslaught fierce Of the strong Saxon, and the tribes more strong, The Dane and Norman, who had conquered him, Nay, in our ancient annals live the tales Of Roman victory stayed--the Latin tide Which neither south wind checked, nor Parthia bleak, Nor waves of Meroi, nor the rushing Rhine, Was here arrested by this only race Before whose face the Roman paused and held The frontier of his empire, not by lines Of hill and river, but by walls and towns, By Caledonian axes oft assailed, Laying all hope of further gain aside." In the meantime, while these poetical performances went on, and the scholar occupied his leisure in preparing for publication his scattered works--an occupation which of itself proved the quiet and good hope in which he was living--more serious labours also occupied his mind. Notwithstanding his tutorship at Court, Buchanan took advantage of the moment to declare himself an adherent of the newly formed and very belligerent Church, now settled and accepted on the basis of the Reformation, but with little favour at Court as has been seen. He not only put himself and his erudition at once on that side in the most open and public way, but sat in the General Assembly, or at least in one of the Assemblies which preceded the formal creation of that great ecclesiastical parliament, in 1563, less than two years after his arrival in Scotland. Nor was his position that of a simple member taking part in the debates; he seems to have sat upon various special committees, and to have been entrusted, along with several others, to revise the Book of Discipline, the standard of order and governance: and this while he was still a courtier, Mary's tutor and gossip, holding his place in her presence, and celebrating the events of the time in courtly and scholarly verse--a curious instance of toleration in a time which scarcely knew its name.