forced by all the party of the Hamiltons, and the city lay, overawed
and helpless, at the mercy of the fortress, the life of the Edinburgh
citizens underwent an extraordinary change. The churches were closed,
and all the pious habits of the time suspended: "neither was there any
sound of bell heard in the town, except the ringing of the cannon." How
strange this was among a population which had crowded daily to the
sermon and found the chief excitement of its life in the orations of the
preacher, it is scarcely necessary to point out.

The picture of Knox in St. Andrews, where he went in May 1571, after all
these agitations, is wonderfully soothing and subdued. He was far from
being without agitation even there. The new institution of "Tulchan"
bishops--called so by the popular wit, men who bore the title alone of
their supposed bishopric, transferring the revenue to the lay patron,
and who officiated, it would appear, much as pleased them, according to
the old rule, or to the form of the Reformed service--had just been
invented; and Knox was called upon to instal the nominal bishop of St.
Andrews, a thing which he refused to do. He was in consequence accused
by some foolish person of himself desiring to have the bishopric (such
as it was), an accusation of which it is extraordinary that he
condescended to take any notice. But apart from these rags and remnants
of familiar conflict, his life in the little city by the sea has a
pleasant repose and calm. "He ever spoke but sparingly against the mock
bishop, because he loved the man." This softer note is carried out in
the two glimpses of him which appear to us chiefly through the
recollections of the gentle James Melville, then a youth studying at St.
Andrews. The old man seems to have taken pleasure in the sight of the
boys about, who were carrying on their education in the place where he
himself had taught those "bairns," whom Wishart had sent him back to in
his fervid manhood. "He would sometimes come in and repose him in our
college yard, and call us scholars to him, and bless us and exhort us to
know God and His work in our country, and stand by the good cause--to
use our time well and learn the guid instructions and follow the guid
examples of our maisters. Our haill college (St. Leonard's) maister and
scholars were sound and zealous for the good cause, the other two
colleges not so." Nor did he disdain the amusements of the young men,
for when one of the professors