There is no place in the neighbourhood of St. Andrew's where a leisure hour may be spent more agreeably than among the ruins of the Cathedral. I was not slow in discovering the eligibilities of the spot; and it soon became one of my favourite haunts. One evening, a few weeks after I had entered on my course at college, I had seated myself among the ruins in a little ivied nook fronting the setting sun, and was deeply engaged with the melancholy Jaques in the forest of Ardennes, when, on hearing a light footstep, I looked up, and saw the Edinburgh student whose appearance had so interested me, not four yards away. He was busied with his pencil and his tablets, and muttering, as he went, in a half audible voice, what, from the inflection of the tones, seemed to be verse. On seeing me, he started, and apologizing, in a few hurried but courteous words, for what he termed the involuntary intrusion, would have passed; but, on my rising and stepping up to him, he stood. "I am afraid, Mr. Ferguson," I said, "'tis I who owe _you_ an apology; the ruins have long been yours, and I am but an intruder. But you must pardon me; I have often heard of them in the west, where they are hallowed, even more than they are here, from their connection with the history of some of our noblest Reformers; and, besides, I see no place in the neighbourhood where Shakspeare can be read to more advantage." "Ah," said he, taking the volume out of my hand, "a reader of Shakspeare and an admirer of Knox. I question whether the heresiarch and the poet had much in common." "Nay, now, Mr. Ferguson," I replied, "you are too true a Scot to question that. They had much, very much in common. Knox was no rude Jack Cade, but a great and powerful-minded man; decidedly as much so as any of the nobler conceptions of the dramatist--his Cæsars, Brutuses, or Othellos. Buchanan could have told you that he had even much of the spirit of the poet in him, and wanted only the art; and just remember how Milton speaks of him in his "Areopagitica." Had the poet of "Paradise Lost" thought regarding him as it has become fashionable to think and speak now, he would hardly have apostrophized him as--_Knox, the reformer of a nation--a great man animated by the spirit of God_." "Pardon me," said the young man, "I am little acquainted with the prose writings of Milton; and have, indeed, picked up most of my opinions of Knox at second-hand. But I have read his _merry_ account of the murder of Beaton, and found nothing to alter my preconceived notions of him, from either the matter or manner of the narrative. Now that I think of it, however, my opinion of Bacon would be no very adequate one, were it formed solely from the extract of his history of Henry VII., given by Kaimes in his late publication.--Will you not extend your walk?"