his. There are some women who like to see men crying; and here
was this great-voiced, bearded man of God, who might be seen beating the
solid pulpit every Sunday, and casting abroad his clamorous
denunciations to the terror of all, and who on the Monday would sit in
their parlours by the hour, and weep with them over their manifold
trials and temptations. Nowadays, he would have to drink a dish of tea
with all these penitents.... It sounds a little vulgar, as the past will
do, if we look into it too closely. We could not let these great folk of
old into our drawing-rooms. Queen Elizabeth would positively not be
eligible for a housemaid. The old manners and the old customs go sinking
from grade to grade, until, if some mighty emperor revisited the
glimpses of the moon, he would not find any one of his way of thinking,
any one he could strike hands with and talk to freely and without
offence, save perhaps the porter at the end of the street, or the
fellow with his elbows out who loafs all day before the public-house. So
that this little note of vulgarity is not a thing to be dwelt upon; it
is to be put away from us, as we recall the fashion of these old
intimacies; so that we may only remember Knox as one who was very
long-suffering with women, kind to them in his own way, loving them in
his own way--and that not the worst way, if it was not the best--and
once at least, if not twice, moved to his heart of hearts by a woman,
and giving expression to the yearning he had for her society in words
that none of us need be ashamed to borrow.

And let us bear in mind always that the period I have gone over in this
essay begins when the Reformer was already beyond the middle age, and
already broken in bodily health: it has been the story of an old man's
friendships. This it is that makes Knox enviable. Unknown until past
forty, he had then before him five-and-twenty years of splendid and
influential life, passed through uncommon hardships to an uncommon
degree of power, lived in his own country as a sort of king, and did
what he would with the sound of his voice out of the pulpit. And besides
all this, such a following of faithful women! One would take the first
forty-two years gladly, if one could be sure of the last twenty-five.
Most of us, even if, by reason of great strength and the dignity of grey
hairs, we retain some degree of public respect in the latter days of our
existence, will find a falling away of friends, and a soli