esque and dramatic elements gone. Romance died out along
with the actual or possible tragedies of public life, and Humour came
in, in the development most opposed to romance, a humour full of mockery
and jest, less tender than keen-sighted, picking out every false
pretence with a sharp gibe and roar of laughter often rude enough, not
much considerate of other people's feelings. Perhaps there was something
in the sudden cessation of the tragic character which had always
hitherto distinguished her history, which produced in Scotland this
reign of rough wit and somewhat cynical, satirical, audacious mirth, and
which in its turn helped the iconoclasts of the previous age, and
originated that curious hatred of show, ceremony, and demonstration,
which has become part of the Scottish character. The scathing
sarcasm--unanswerable, yet false as well as true--which scorned the
"little Saint Geilie," the sacred image, as a mere "painted bradd," came
down to every detail of life; the rough jokes of the Parliament House at
every trope as well as at every pretence of superior virtue; the grim
disdain of the burgher for every rite; the rude criticism of the fields,
which checked even family tendernesses and caresses as shows and
pretences of a feeling which ought to be beyond the need of
demonstration, were all connected one with another. Nowhere has love
been more strong or devotion more absolute; but nowhere else, perhaps,
has sentiment been so restrained, or the keen gleam of a neighbour's eye
seeing through the possible too-much, held so strictly in check all
exhibitions of feeling. Jeanie Deans, that impersonation of national
character, would no more have greeted her delivered sister with a
transport of kisses and rapture than she would have borne false
testimony to save her. There is no evidence that this extreme
self-restraint existed from the beginning of the national history, but
rather everything to show that to pageants and fine sights, to dress and
decoration, the Scots were as much addicted as their neighbours. But the
natural pleasure in all such exhibitions would seem to have received a
shock, with which the swift and summary overthrow of Mary's empire of
beauty and gaiety, like the moral of a fable, had as much to do as the
scornful destruction of religious image and altar. The succeeding
generations indemnified themselves with a laugh and a gibe for the loss
of that fair surface both of Church and Court: and the nation