it, we have to thank Knox, and such men as Knox, that
there is left 1o us no occasion of any other feeling. To
him, and to all honest and patriot hearts in Scotland in the
middle of the sixteenth century, the death of Cardinal
Beatoun, under whatever circumstances of atrocity, coukl_
not, unfortunately, be anything else but a circumstance of
gratulation. It is the divine doom of tyranny, in whatever
shape, that men should rejoice at its murder, even if that
murder be "foully done." The joy is not in fault, but the
cause of it. The former is a pure manifestation of human
feeling, the latter an eternal blasphemy and violation of
human right. Knox is gleeful, therefore, with a scornful
laughter, over the assassination of Beatoun, simply because
he realized all the meaning of the event for his country,
and could not see the downfall of a power so hateful with-
out a natural impulse of jubilee. As we look back into the
dim gray of that May morning, we only see the solitary
and helpless man raised from his bed and in the mnrderous
grip of his assassin. Knox remembered, as if it had hap-
pened yesterday, the proud and impious tyrant who re-
clined on velvet cushions at the castle window, to feast his
eyes on the torments of his martyred friend. A life of such
dazzling strength as Beatoun's terminating so swiftly in an
abject and miserable death, may well move us to pity — it
could only move Knox to irony ; and if the event be not
o»e for irony, we may say with Mr. Froude, " we do not
know what irony is for."

Nearly a year subsequent to the death of Beatoun (April
1547), Knox took refuge with his pupils in the castle of St.
