red he the company of women_.'

These moralities, however merrily intended and at the time successful,
would have perhaps been more appropriate in the Forest of Arden or the
graveyard of Hamlet, than among the four Maries in Holyrood; and for
anything that is to be of autobiographical value we must go elsewhere
and go deeper. His wives contribute nothing; we may hope that they were
as happy as the countries which have no history. And if that is too much
to believe--or too little to hope--we shall find enough in the next few
pages to satisfy us that they had near them in all their trials a strong
and tender heart. But of their inward troubles, and of the sympathy
these may have drawn forth, Knox is not the historian--he refuses to be
the historian even of his own inner life. He unfolds himself in writing
only to the women who are in trouble, and at a distance. And the only
concession to domesticity is in the fact that his chief correspondent
is, if not a wife, a prospective mother-in-law.

The letters to her are the most important of all, and the following
extract is from one published among the letters of 1553 as 'The First to
Mrs Bowes.' It was by no means the first, even in that year; but it is
the one which Knox himself long afterwards selected as the first for
republication and as best illustrating the original relation between
himself and the lady recently deceased. In it he had said, writing from
London to Norham:--

'Since the first day that it pleased the providence of God to
bring you and me into familiarity, I have always delighted in
your company; and when labour would permit, you know that I have
not spared hours to talk and commune with you, the fruit whereof
I did not then fully understand nor perceive. But now absent,
and so absent that by corporal presence neither of us can
receive comfort of other, I call to mind how that ofttimes when,
with dolorous hearts, we have begun our talking, God hath sent
great comfort unto both, _which for my own part I commonly
want_. The exposition of your troubles, and acknowledging of
your infirmity, were first unto me a very mirror and glass
wherein I beheld myself so rightly painted forth, that nothing
could be more evident to my own eyes. And then the searching of
the Scriptures for God's sweet promises, and for his mercies
freely given unto miserable offenders--(for his nature
delighteth to shew mercy