stopped, to paint pictures or draw portraits, and there are few
writers from whom it is more difficult to make typical or
characteristic extracts. Yet, as I have already quoted from his
account of Cranmer's execution, it may not be inappropriate that I
should cite some of the thoughts suggested to him by the death of
Knox. Morton's epitaph is well known.

"There lies one," said the Earl over the coffin, "who never feared
the face of mortal man." "Morton," says Froude, "spoke only of what
he knew; the full measure of Knox's greatness neither he nor any man
could then estimate. It is as we look back over that stormy time,
and weigh the actors in it one against the other, that he stands out
in his full proportions. No grander figure can be found, in the
entire history of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox.
Cromwell and Burghley rank beside him for the work which they
effected, but, as politicians and statesmen, they had to labour with
instruments which soiled their hands in touching them. In purity, in
uprightness, in courage, truth and stainless honour, the Regent and
Latimer were perhaps his equals; but Murray was intellectually far
below him and the sphere of Latimer's influence was on a smaller
scale. The time has come when English history may do justice to one
but for whom the Reformation would have been overthrown among
ourselves; for the spirit which Knox created saved Scotland; and if
Scotland had been Catholic again, neither the wisdom of Elizabeth's
Ministers, nor the teaching of her Bishops, nor her own chicaneries,
would have preserved England from revolution. His was the voice that
taught the peasant of the Lothians that he was a free man, the equal
in the sight of God with the proudest peer or prelate that had
trampled on his forefathers. He was the one antagonist whom Mary
Stuart could not soften nor Maitland deceive. He it was who had