exact, it is yet sure
enough that near by, within reach of the doors of his ancient church,
beneath the pavement trodden by so many feet, his remains repose in the
centre of the life of the Scottish capital, a position more appropriate
than any other that could be imagined. Thus by life and by death this
singular and most evident and unmistakable man, still alive in every
lineament, is connected with the city in which his life was passed, and
in the history of which he can never be forgotten. There may be doubts
about other localities, and it may be difficult to identify the houses
which have been inhabited and the floors that have been trod by other
distinguished personages. Crowding footsteps of the poor have
obliterated the record in many a noble house abandoned by history; even
the fated steps of the Queen save in one bloodstained closet have left
but little authentic trace. But Knox is still present with all the force
of an indestructible individuality--in the existing life of the country
which took so strong an impression from him, and in the absolutely
personal facts of the church in which he preached, the house in which he
lived, the stone under which he lies.

To estimate the share he had in the foundations of that modern Scotland
which has so increased and thriven since his day, is perhaps more hard
now than it was even eighty years ago, when his biography was written by
Dr. M'Crie to the great interest and enthusiasm of the country. The laws
of historical judgment are subject to perpetual change, and the general
estimate of the great personages of the past has undergone various
modifications since that time. Perhaps even the Church is less sure of
her share in the record, less certain of the doom once so unhesitatingly
denounced against "the Paip that Pagan fu' of pride"; less confident of
her own superiority to all other developments of Christianity. The least
enlightened are no longer able to feel with a good conscience, as our
best instructed fathers did, that an important part of religious liberty
was freedom to curse and pull down every tenet other than their own. No
belief has been more obstinate or is more time-honoured: but in theory
at least it has been much subdued in recent times, so that few of us are
able to hold by our own side with the perfect confidence which once we
felt. And in these changing views, and in the impulse towards a greater
catholicity of feeling which has sprung up in Scotland, t