no reason to think that he was privy to the to "the horn," which, we understand, inconspiracy that proved fatal to Rizzio; but volved the pains and infamy of rebellion. it is probable that he had expressed his sat- And, in Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, we find isfaction at an event, which contributed to that during the succeeding months of April, the safety of religion, and of the common- May, June, and July, this indiscriminate wealth, if not also his approbation of the blistering of the lieges was kept up.-(Pitconduct of the conspirators." But in his cairn, vol. ii., p. 283, seq.) High and low, subsequent editions, observing that his lan- rich and poor, were denounced: cordiners guage did not convey his meaning, he al- and cutlers in the Canongate; residenters tered it to the effect that Knox expressed in Musselburgh and Dalkeith, were all in"his approbation of the object of the con- volved in the indiscriminate forfeitures. spiracy," that is to secure the reformed Suspicion in nearly all cases was the ground religion. Mr. Tytler, however, with un- of charge; and hence the simple, obvious, worthy disingenuity, quoted the passage in but important question, why was Knox not the first, instead of the fifth edition, as it denounced, seeing that "he took guilt to suited his argument better. We could cov- himself by flight?"-seeing that he was at er pages with farther evidence on this point; the moment suffering a punishment imposed but let the following reflection of Robert- upon him by the King, who, in disclosing son's, on the death of Beaton, suffice, as it the names of all the other conspirators, is the same idea which, in the person of would not surely overlook the man who had David Buchanan, has been so condemned: on other points displeased him? Was it not because no such interpretation was put upon his conduct by those who had every wish to put it, and because the breath of slander had not, in his own day, dimmed the lustre of his name?

"Thus," says Dr. Robertson, "did these men deliver their country, though by a most unjustifiable action, from an ambitious man, whose pride was as insupportable to the nobles, as his cruelty and cunning were the great checks to the Reformation."—(Vol. i., F. 96.)

The last argument we now approachand it fortunately is one which may be disposed of in a sentence. There was a reliKnox's opinions on the subject of tyran- gious fast held in Edinburgh, during the nicide, are are also brought in as an addi- week on which the murder was perpetrated, tional argument in favor of the theory of and which, Mr. Tytler tells us, the ministers probability. These were in some respects took advantage of, in order to preach fiery peculiar, but of the great leading principle, sermons suited to the times. It is clear Mr. Tytler will find that Paley's philosophy that their motive in this, was to prepare is only an expansion. Knox had other the public mind for the coming tragedy. speculative opinions, like all speculative Unfortunately for Mr. Tytler, however, it men, which he would hesitate to put in is upon record, that this fast was ordained practice. He maintained, for example, that to be celebrated by the General Assembly no woman could be a sovereign; but he of the Church, which had three months did not refuse to recognize Queen Mary previously closed its sittings; the subjects and Queen Elizabeth. We do not find, of exhortation were expressly stated; a though Mr. Tytler asserts it, that Knox re-regular treatise for the fast was prepared; garded "Senzcour Davy," in the light of a tyrant, to whom extreme measures should be applied; nor can we recognize in a speculative opinion of Knox, any more than of Paley, a proof of murder.

On the return of the Queen from Dunbar, the Privy Council was immediately convened, in order to bring down upon the murderers the punishment of the laws. Their directions on this head were of the most sweeping description;—" The Lords think expedient, that all that were of the device, council, or actually at the committing of the slaughter, shall be prosecuted by order of justice." (Keith, App. p. 131.) Accordingly, seventy-one persons were put

and with general directions to apply their sermons to sins of all times, they were specially to have in view, the calamitous position of the country at that period, by the banishment of the Protestant Lords, the open celebration of the mass, the danger that threatened the existence of the Church, and the insecurity in which the whole Protestant community was placed by the Queen's accession to the Bayonne League. These were the causes that induced the ministers so to preach. These are the reasons assigned by our historians, until we come down to Goodall, who first put upon it a sinister interpretation-(vol. i., p. 248), which "my grandfather" copied, and which

the grandson has again transcribed verbatim | Mary, is also mute; so is Spottiswoode, and et literatim. The famous scrap of paper so is Keith. is indeed the only part of his story, on which Mr. Tytler can claim the character of genius-thorough originality. On other points he serves up to us the old rinsings of forgotten virulence, distilled in the alembic of an affected impartiality, whose greatest virtue is to hate and despise with the dignity of moderation.

Thus, therefore, with all this body of overpowering and invincible negative evidence, we have four distinct lists of the murderers or their accessories, in none of which does the name of Knox appear,set in opposition to a miserable rag of paper, unsubscribed, unauthenticated, referred to in no letter, author unknown, date in nubibus, in short, without one single element of that evidence on which human opinion rests, and without one single recommendation to induce us to treat it with respect, or to give it credibility. If Mr. Tytler is not ashamed of his allies, we are. It is our respect for him that has made us march through Coventry with the "authentic list" and its subordinate arguments. "No eye hath seen such scarecrows; nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on. There's but a shirt and a half in all the company, and the half shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders, like a herald's coat without sleeves."

Finally, Mr. Tytler, according to his usual process of assumptive argument, having established that Knox was privy to the murder, slides into the astonishing assertion, that "the Reformed party in Scotland did not hesitate to adopt" the scheme "to break off the Parliament by the murder of Rizzio."-(Vol. vii., p. 21.) This is multiplication at a rapid rate. The "Protestant Barons" are first accused; in

All contemporary history-all the private correspondence of the age of Knox-is silent on the subject of his accession to the murder. We have examined every printed treatise on the subject, and many of the MSS. that still exist, and in not one of the labored journals, or didactic histories of either enemies or friends-in not one of the numerous letters written for private perusal, and uninfluenced hy any sinister purpose, have we been able to find one single inuendo or insinuation to corroborate the tale. The author of the "Diurnal of Occurrents," who is supposed to have been some person about the Court, and who terms the Queen "the anointed lieutenant of the Lord," while he mentions that Knox left Edinburgh "with ane greit murmyring of the godlie of religioun," (p. 94,) does not even hint that he was a conspirator. Melville, the Queen's friend, to whom Knox was sufficiently distasteful, is also silent. The historian of the doings of "James the Sext," who was a Papist, and discovers a partiality for Mary, is equally dumb. Blackwood, who invented as many falsehoods as Hector Boece himself, will not charge a few pages farther an addition is made in Knox, though a "heretic and necroman- the persons of "the chief ministers ;" and cer," with the guilt of Rizzio's death. Nor in ten lines afterwards, the change is made is there one remark to this effect, in the three collections of private correspondence from all quarters, and to many different persons, describing minutely the events of this period, published by Sir Henry Ellis, by Mr. Turner, and the Maitland Club, whose volume entitled, "Selections from unpublished MSS. in the College of Arms and British Museum," contains many letters which were before unknown. Crawford, the historio- We have now endeavored to discharge a grapher of Anne, who gives us the delecta- duty as disagreeable to us as it can be to ble piece of information, that Bothwell Mr. Tytler. We have endeavored to reswas unanimously acquitted, by a very cue from undeserved reproach, the memory honourable jury, of all suspicion as well as of a great man; and before quitting the action of murder (of Darnley); not so subject, we wish to have a few parting much as one probable circumstance being words with the historian. We believe that adduced against him," (p. 17,) will not add he is not ambitious of the wholesome discianother sin to his conscience by accusing pline of derision, or the severer trial of unKnox of murder. The author of the Me- ceremonious and indignant contradiction. moirs of Lord Herries, the defender of If we appreciate him correctly, we believe

into" the Reformed party," (vol. vii., p. 21.) We are obliged to appeal to Mr. Tytler's own sense of the ludicrous, in regard to the injustice of such reckless writing; and we call upon him to inform us by what privilege he thus considers himself entitled to deal about his violent charges against the illustrious ancestry who have ennobled his country by their virtues?

him conscious of the value of a strict adhe-countrymen, and will fail with the rest of rence to facts, and that he knows that the mankind as either argument or eloquence. restraints of the ninth commandment strike Mr. Tytler, in truth, could not appreciate against the historian of the past equally as the Reformer. The offspring of an obscure against the journalist of the present. He race, there was no prestige of noble blood will pardon, therefore, his reviewers, if, to redeem his errors; there was none of when they find no factitious recommenda- the famous chivalry of the military knighttion of philosophy or eloquence, or pecu-errants, to make his history romantic. He liar neatness of expression in his pages, had no titled name to give dignity to his they are apt to speak with more impatience, life; he lived not in a palace, and though and with less periphrasis of the prejudices a minister, he was not an archbishop or a of mediocrity. Great command of temper lord. There was not about him one single is necessary in dealing with a deliberate characteristic of those, which constitute twisting of authorities, a glozing over un- Mr. Tytler's heroes. He had not enough questioned facts, an omission of what was of genteel respectability; and when the necessary to the defence, while professing adventures of some titled oppressor are to to give it all; insinuation where assertion be had in heaps for the gathering, where is could not be hazarded, and the integrity of the use of dwelling on the moral preachings fair argument despised under the guise of and the school-erections of an uncivilized a reluctant accusation, and unbounded can- obscure? dor assumed, but never shown. The historian possesses, too, a large amount of obstinacy. He never drops a theory he has promulgated. His account of Wallace, and his speculations as to Richard the Second, have long been gathered to the granary of superficial nothings-and in spite of the ridicule of a hundred pens, they are printed in every edition as at first. In answer to Mr. M'Crie's letter in regard to Knox, Mr. Tytler states his dogged determination to persevere in the charge he has advanced; and we have therefore the less hesitation in dealing with an opponent so confident in his resources. He must, however, remember, that the fame of the Reformers is something that comes home to the bosom of Scottish affections. It is not a mere matter of metaphysical discussion, or of deep erudition; it is something more directly personal, and verging on the confines of national dishonor. Like the fabled garden of the Hesperides, the memory of the Reformers is to be kept sacred; and when a reckless hoof enters to Jay waste the borders and the bowers, it is a sacred duty to hunt the intruder into inca pacity for mischief. While Mr. Tytler insists in printing charges of murder, pa tiently refuted, he has no complaint to urge if his history be treated as the unwieldy pamphlet of a partisan; and while it ought to be only rational anticipation, it cannot form the subject of wailing or disappointment, when he finds that his oblations to his prejudices, though ushered in with a potent emphasis and voice of authority, have roused only the indignation of his

Yet, after all, we beg to ask, when a moment of philosophical impartiality will come, was there not something in the career of Knox, of the same grand originality by which humble birth has only been made a lever to its inheritor for a more exalted rise? We recognize in him the same force of character, the same inflexibility of will, the same patient perseverance, and profound knowledge of human nature, that characterized many of the successful leaders thrown up by the wild surges of revolutions. He knew well how to mould human passions to his will; to arouse the mob, or make them quiescent; to encourage the nobles, or to rebuke them when their courage or their virtue failed. No man can read his speeches, without seeing that each one of then was the skilful composition of a sagacious Antony, moving his hearers according to their dispositions, to revenge not a murdered Cæsar, but a rejected truth, on which their liberties and their religion hung. "His single voice," says Randolph, "could put more life into a host than six hundred blustering trumpets." Audacity in his circumstances was prudence; but he never, in the lowest extremity of his fortune, forgot the distinction between good and evilnever swerved from what was manly and honorable; and, if uncompromising in his hatreds, he never expressed them without a warrant, and never thrust himself between a good man's merit and his reward.

He was a man, too, of learning and liberal accomplishment. He exhausted the knowledge which his own country furnished, and travel in other lands completed an education, which embraced the whole

range of the learning of his age. His edu- to illustrate its worst or its weakest side. cated taste shines out in the vigorous Eng- Much has been said and written as to the lish of his works, hurried through in the unusual acerbity of his style. The refined distant intervals of a busy life, and flowing sentimentalists of modern days, in describwith a purity unequalled in the writing of ing it, have equalled the most violent of his any contemporary Scotchman, with the ex- declamatory passages All of them appear ception of Secretary Lethington. His fre- to be "absolute gentlemen, of very soft soquent references to all that was then known ciety, full of most excellent differences and of polite literature-brought in with the great shewing; indeed, to speak feelingly easy unpedantic grace of one who knew his of them, they are the card or calendar of subject-rebuke the unmannered slander- gentry." They appear to forget that the ers who can find for him no choicer epithet milky blandness of disposition they sketch than a "rustic apostle," incapable of any out, is naturally incompatible with that sympathy with the elegant refinements of energy of character ever found in the leadpolished life. Persons acquainted with his ers of revolutions. Luther illustrates the writings, must be surprised at the charge remark; and the generous German, when so frequently and so flippantly advanced, he was most scurrilous to Tetzel, had yet a that he was a gloomy and bigoted fanatic. kindly feeling to the party on the rack. Writers like Miss Strickland, who know Against him the same charge has been often absolutely nothing of the history of the man adduced, and certainly with more justice whom they malign-and historians like Mr. than against Knox. It may not be held a Tytler, who can see nothing but through complete justification of the latter, that for the medium of their prejudices-are only every harsh epithet he threw he received a working in their vocation when they uphold ruder in return; and his invectives for untheir caricature for truth. Had they as dili- doubted crimes, were met by accusations gently read, as they have diligently written, of crimes he never did. Archibald Hamabout the works of this austere and coarse ilton accuses him as guilty of adultery and enthusiast, they would have found his pages incest. Another writer mentions, that his filled with passages of the most racy hu- maid-servant fainted when, on looking mor, and genuine touches of the most af- through a hole in the door, "she saw his fecting pathos. After the porch is passed- master, Satan, in a black man's likeness, rendered somewhat forbidding by the quaint with him." James Laing also was ready style of the sixteenth century-we are ush-to establish, “quod patris sui uxorem vioered into a temple of manly thinking, sup-larat." This same writer also incontroported by the pillars of a correct morality, vertibly proves, that Luther was carnally and enriched with the decorations of a vigorous fancy and warmth of feeling. In telling us the eventful history of his times, he descends at once from the loftiest to the homeliest key; and while our feelings are hurried away by the touching narrative of Wishart's sufferings, we are obliged, in the midst of it, to laugh at the untimely humor of the historian. When he has raised our excitement by torturing sarcasm or fierce invective-with the thunders of the stern moralist, or the rebukes of the religious teacher-he can at once melt our hearts by a melancholy theme, or chase away our sorrows by a stream of contemptuous jocularity or unsparing ridicule.

and spiritually begotten of the devil; and Hamilton also mentions the price of tenpence, as that at which the heretics sold their souls to the enemy of mankind.

But the charge of using railing language, though the common blot of the controversial literature of his age, has been greatly exaggerated as regards Knox. "God is my witness," said he upon his death-bed,"God is my witness, whom I have served in the spirit in the Gospel of his Son, that I have taught nothing but the true and solid doctrine of the gospel of the Son of God, and have had it for my only object to instruct the ignorant, to confirm the faithful, to comfort the weak, the fearful, and the We would not defend any man from his distressed, by the promises of grace, and to cradle to his grave. The brightest sun fight against the proud and rebellious by that ever shone is marked with spots; and the divine threatenings. I know that many the career of the Scottish Reformer pre- have frequently complained, and do still sents, in many things, the taint of our fallible mortality. But in the most rigid of our speculations on the bankruptcy of human nature, we certainly cannot cite him

loudly complain, of my too great severity; but God knows that in my heart I never hated the persons of those against whom I thundered God's judgment." In no case

was he too severe with an individual; and Peace to his ashes!-Honor to hibe fact, the war that he made upon the persecuting ory! When we think of Scotland aterse hierarchy he overthrew, and the titled spo- birth, and as he left it, we are lost in wonliators who employed religion to cover their der at the change. The people he found rapacity, it was impossible could be too in the infancy of their civilization-rude, energetic or determined. In the whole of barbarous, and untutored-rotting under his writings may be perceived the philanthropist as well as the reformer, who is surrounded with ignorance, superstition, and crime, regretting the follics he seeks to check, and sarcastic only when he contrasts the degradation around him with the aspirations on which his mind loved to dwell. In Mary's days of comparative innocence, he might perhaps have made greater allowances for bad education, pernicious example, and for that vulgar weakness of the great which preferred French fiddlers and buffoons to the calls of an expansive philanthropy, or the interests of an empire. But if he erred on the side of principle, it was because on such matters there could be no question of compromise, of hesitation, or delay. His, in truth, was a severe masculine morality, grafted on a vigorous stock. It was not nourished or dandled in the school of expediency, nor did it veer round to the irregular impulses of personal feeling, or the varying gusts of popular applause. He stood against the people and the court, alike indifferent to the rude shock of democratic violence, or the fiercest outburst of royal indignation; and the same uncompromising patriot who could, at the foot of the throne, explain the doctrine of just resistance to oppression, could rebuke with equal energy the "rascal multitude" who pushed the principle to unbounded license.

the bad husbandry of misrule-gross and ferocious-often changing their masters, but never their condition-and, like the Romans in their last decline, as they had outlived the reverence for their religion, they freed themselves from professing any. The resources of the country were wasted in ruinous wars; religion was a plaything of fantastic show or public mummiery, enbodied in an institution having bulk without solidity-with gilded pinnacles at top, and foundations worn away. Its feverish animation when the struggle came, created awe, from the hereditary associations it possessed, and the prescriptive reverence it so. long enjoyed. But its last activity was only to render its fall the more decided; and it sunk without one among the people to sing its requiem. Neither its ministers, nor any of the population it kept in ignorance, knew anything of the learning which civilizes and refines the world-the arts that instruct, or the manufactures that enrich it. There was, in truth, no one single institution, principle, or system, that had any foundation in the affections of the people, or which, being in unison with their habits, might have been permitted through custom. Unity of feeling only existed in the people to find relief to misery by revenge; and Knox appeared upon the stage when the utter corruption of all morals, and the destruction of all social virtues threatening the total disThe claim of Knox to our gratitude, or solution of social life, announced the aphis title to infamy, must, however, be deter-proach of a time, in which a tottering socimined on far other grounds than the harsh-ety would right itself, by one of those conness or melody of his style. He was cer- vulsive changes in which history makes tainly one of the most conspicuous men of ridicule of fiction, by assorting new and the sixteenth century. Born at a period of strange destinies to mankind. wealth-and-rank idolatry, the son of parents In the quiet solitude of Geneva, Knox so obscure that industry cannot trace them, descried the coming change, and with his he raised himself by the native vigor of a usual decision he hurried to the scene. He determined will, to a position which ena- was just the man peculiarly suited to the bled him to influence the destinies of his times. His actions bore the stamp of a farcountry. Birth, station, profession, tem- reaching sagacity. A leader was necesper-all were against him; but in spite of sary to give coherence to popular feeling, every obstacle, he maintained to the last and to prevent it being frittered away in the nearly unbounded influence he had ac- painful, disjointed, and fruitless effort,-to quired, and was followed to the grave by inspire a young nation with courage, and mourning thousands, who saw in him the to mould them by fostering watchfulness rare picture of the whole masculine virtues into a reflecting people. Let us do justice of constancy, fidelity, fortitude, and mag--bare justice-to the men who effected nanimity. the Reformation. After that event, we