be-times! Poor John Knox! thou must fall down and worship "a painted bredd" after all. A beautiful queen must be spared, if Scotland should perish. But looking at the matter from the free atmosphere of New England, we maintain that John Knox was of higher rank than Mary Queen of Scots. He was more true, more heroic, more kingly, than all the race of the Stuarts. He had a right, in God's name, to speak the truth, "to reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all long-suffering." Hence, though his words were stern and appalling, they were uttered with a kind and generous intention. "Madame," said Knox, when he saw Mary burst into tears from vexation and grief, "in God's presence I speak; I never delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures, yea, _I can scarcely well abide the tears of mine own boys_, when mine own hands correct them, much less can I rejoice in your Majesty's weeping; but seeing I have offered unto you no just occasion to be offended, I must sustain your Majesty's tears, rather than I dare hurt my conscience, or betray the commonwealth by silence." Yes, he was a stern old puritan, a lion of a man, who made terrible havoc among the "painted bredds" of Popery, and turned back the fury of wild barons and persecuting priests. "His single voice," says Randolph, "could put more life into a host than six hundred blustering trumpets." Single handed, he met the rage of a disappointed government and an infuriated priesthood, and conquered by the silent might of his magnanimous audacity. In the wildest whirl of contending emotion, he never lost sight of the great end of his being, as a servant of God, nor swerved a hair's breadth from truth and right. Yet this stern old Covenanter was not without a touch of gentleness and even of hilarity. He loved his home, his children, and his friends. An honest, quiet laugh often mantled his pale earnest visage. "They go far wrong," says Carlyle, whose thorough appreciation of such men as Luther, Cromwell, and Knox, is truly refreshing amid the vapid inanities or coarse prejudices of ordinary historians, "who think that Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all. He is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious, hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present: a certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. * * An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both." Knox, doubtless, had his faults; and what of that? He made some mistakes! and what, too, of that? Was he not a true man, and a true minister of God's Word? Did he not accomplish a great and beneficial work of Reform; and, having done this, did he not die a sweet and triumphant death? God has set his seal upon him, and upon his work; and that is enough for us.