Then, as if her difficulties were not sufficiently perplexing without foreign interference, her relatives, the Guises, lost no opportunity of reminding her that they looked to her alone for the restoration of the Religion in Scotland, and eventually over the whole of Britain; whilst a strong party in Spain furnishing her, for aid, with nothing but unasked advice, actually reproached her for lukewarmness in the cause to which she was sacrificing day by day her authority, her comfort, her very safety, and to which she was so sincerely attached, that, rather than resign it, she would have lost, as she afterwards did lose, her crown, ay, and the head that it encircled. The insults levelled at her person, through her belief, constantly goaded her to anger, which prudential considerations urged her to suppress; and when pictures were paraded before her in the streets, ridiculing all that she held most sacred, and priests maltreated in her own chapel for the performance of their ritual and hers, it is painful to imagine the feelings of a sensitive woman and a Queen compelled to forego her revenge, and even to court the favour of those undutiful subjects who had originated such overt and outrageous scandal. No wonder she galloped on with burning cheeks and swelling heart, reflecting only on the failure of her benevolent scheme so thwarted by the obstinate integrity of Knox, and insensible as the very horse that carried her to the beautiful scene opened out at her very feet. Before her lay the noble sweep of St Andrew’s Bay, framed, as it were, in its golden sands, that stretched far to the north along the coast of Forfarshire, till their tawny line was lost in the distant ocean at the jutting promontory of the Red-head. Clear against the blue expanse, clotted here and there with a white sail, rose the delicate pinnacles of the cathedral, supported on the right by the bluff square tower of St Regulus, firm and massive like some bold champion, proud yet careful of his charge. On the left, far out into the water, stood the sea-girt defences of the castle, while between these prominent objects many a graceful arch and pointed spire denoted the churches and colleges adorning that stronghold of learning and piety, refining the taste with their exalted beauty, whilst they carried the eye upwards towards heaven. Below these, the smiling town, with its white houses and gardens scattered more and more as they neared the water, straggled downwards to the beach; and, beyond all, the broad sea lay, calm and mighty in the serenity of its majestic repose.