Antony, "has been sworn to not in the Greyfriars' Church alone; but by crowds, signed with their blood on parchment spread on the stones of the churchyards in Edinburgh and Glasgow; yea, in church after church, in city, village, and on hill-side, from John o'Groats' House to the Borders, from Mull to Fife, with tears, and shouts, and fervent prayers." "And this means?" said my Father. "It means that the Scottish nation will rather die than submit to Archbishop Laud's ceremonies and canons; but that they mean neither to die nor to submit; that every covenanted congregation will be a recruiting ground, if necessary, fora covenanted army; that the oath sworn in the Kirk they are prepared to fulfil on the battle-field." "And a goodly army they might soon discipline," said my Father, "with the military officers they have trained under the great Gustavus." "It means," added Dr. Antony, lowering his voice, "that they are ready to kindle a fire for religion and liberty in Scotland which will not stop at the Borders, and will find fuel enough in every county in England." "The Court had better, for its own peace, have heeded Jenny Geddes' folding-stool," said my Father. "For his own peace," rejoined Aunt Dorothy, "but scarcely for ours." From that time (1638), through more than a quarter of a century, public and private life were so intertwined that no faithful history can divide them. In quieter times, while the great historical paintings are being wrought in parliament-houses and palaces, countless small family-pictures are being woven entirely independent of these in countless homes. But in times of revolution, national history and private story are interwoven into one great tapestry, from which the humblest figure cannot be detached without unravelling the whole web. Such times are hard, but they are ennobling. Or at least they are enlarging. Faults, and ordinary virtues become crimes, or heroical virtues, by mere force of temperature and space. Principles are tested; pretences are dissolved by the fact of being pretences. Such times are ennobling, but they are also necessarily tragical. All noble lives--all lives worth living--are expanded from the small circles of everyday domestic circumstances into portions of the grand orbits of the worlds. Yet, doubtless, thereby in themselves such lives must often become fragments instead of wholes, must seem in themselves unfinished, must be in themselves inexplicable.