d," was
the prayer Knox made over her grave.

And yet, so far as can be judged, Mary of Guise was no persecutor and no
tyrant. To all appearance she had honestly intended to keep peace in the
kingdom, to permit as much as she could without committing herself to
views which she did not share. And nothing could be more touching than
such an end to a life never too brilliant or happy. She had gone through
many alternations of gladness and of despair, had stood bravely by her
sensitive husband when the infant sons who were his hope had been taken
one after another, had discharged, as faithfully as circumstances and
the accidents of a tremendous crisis would let her, her duties as
Regent. Her death, lonely, desolate, and defeated, with no one near whom
she loved, to smooth her passage to the grave, might have gained her a
more gentle word of dismissal.

Within little more than a month after her death peace was signed; the
French forces departed, and the English army, not much more loved in its
help than the others in their hostility, was escorted back to the Border
and safely got rid of. On the 19th of July, all being thus happily
settled, St. Giles's was once more filled with a crowd of eager
worshippers, "the haill nobilitie and the greatest part of the
Congregation,"--a number which must have tried the capacity of the great
church, large as it is. Knox does not give his sermon on the occasion,
but we have a very noble and devout prayer, or rather thanksgiving,
which was used at this service, and in which, though there is one
reference to "proud tyrants overthrown," the spirit of devout
thankfulness is predominant. He tells us, however, that the subject of
his discourses, delivered daily, were the prophecies of Haggai, which he
found to be "proper for the time." Some of his hearers, he informs us,
spoke jestingly of having now to "bear the barrow to build the house of
God." "God be merciful to the speaker," cries the stern prophet, "for we
fear he shall have experience that the building of his ain house, the
house of God being despised, shall not be so prosperous or of such
firmity as we desire it were"--so dangerous was it to jest in the
presence of one so tremendously in earnest. The speaker referred to, of
this, as of most of the other caustic sayings of the time, is said to
have been Lethington.

The first thing done by the Parliament was the distribution of the
handful of ministers then existing among the districts