Whereat the said John, abashed, burst forth in most
abundant tears and withdrew himself to his chamber."

It would be difficult to find a more striking scene. Any sudden incident
of an individual character thus occurring in a public assembly calls
forth a thrill of interest, and gives at once to the most disconnected
crowd a pictorial unity. The interest and excitement in those roused and
eager eyes, the crowd all turned towards the astonished subject of this
appeal, the soft young faces making a little circle round him, half
terrified, half flattered by the sudden consciousness that all eyes were
turned towards them, would make a fine theme for a historical painter.
And "the said John, abashed," finding no refuge in the great excitement
and surprise of the moment, he so stern and so strong, but in tears! It
was thus that the ministry of the great Reformer began.

It is unnecessary to follow in detail a career so well known. Every
particular of it, and even the sermons with all their heads, may be
found in the _Historie of the Reformation in Scotland_, which yields in
interest, in picturesqueness and the most living and graphic power of
narrative, to none of the primitive chronicles. No professional
word-painter has ever put a dramatic scene, a contention, a battle, such
as those which were everyday occurrences in Scotland at that time, upon
paper with more pictorial force, or with half the fervour of life and
reality. The writer goes through all the gamut of popular passion. He
exults sometimes fiercely, laughs sometimes coarsely, throws in "a merry
jest," which is often grim with savage humour; but throughout all is
always real, always genuine, writing not impartially, but with the
strong conviction and sentiment of a man elucidating matters in which he
has been himself a prominent actor. The arguments of his adversaries
when he enters upon a public controversy are unaccountably feeble, which
perhaps may be explained by the fact that the friars were not much
accustomed to controversy, perhaps by the natural bias of a
controversialist to lessen the force of his antagonists' arguments; and
he does not pretend to contemplate his adversaries, either spiritual or
political, with any tolerance, or permit any possibility that they too
might perhaps mean well and have a righteous intention, even though it
was entirely opposed to that of John Knox: such ideas had no currency in
his day. That Mary of Guise might really mean and