friends of
one who cared nothing for the company of such men as my class-fellow,
and who, though acquainted with the literature of England and Rome,
could dwell with interest on the simple poetry of his native country.

There is no place in the neighbourhood of St. Andrew's where a leisure
hour may be spent more agreeably than among the ruins of the Cathedral.
I was not slow in discovering the eligibilities of the spot; and it soon
became one of my favourite haunts. One evening, a few weeks after I had
entered on my course at college, I had seated myself among the ruins in
a little ivied nook fronting the setting sun, and was deeply engaged
with the melancholy Jaques in the forest of Ardennes, when, on hearing a
light footstep, I looked up, and saw the Edinburgh student whose
appearance had so interested me, not four yards away. He was busied with
his pencil and his tablets, and muttering, as he went, in a half audible
voice, what, from the inflection of the tones, seemed to be verse. On
seeing me, he started, and apologizing, in a few hurried but courteous
words, for what he termed the involuntary intrusion, would have passed;
but, on my rising and stepping up to him, he stood.

"I am afraid, Mr. Ferguson," I said, "'tis I who owe _you_ an apology;
the ruins have long been yours, and I am but an intruder. But you must
pardon me; I have often heard of them in the west, where they are
hallowed, even more than they are here, from their connection with the
history of some of our noblest Reformers; and, besides, I see no place
in the neighbourhood where Shakspeare can be read to more advantage."

"Ah," said he, taking the volume out of my hand, "a reader of Shakspeare
and an admirer of Knox. I question whether the heresiarch and the poet
had much in common."

"Nay, now, Mr. Ferguson," I replied, "you are too true a Scot to
question that. They had much, very much in common. Knox was no rude
Jack Cade, but a great and powerful-minded man; decidedly as much so as
any of the nobler conceptions of the dramatist--his Caesars, Brutuses, or
Othellos. Buchanan could have told you that he had even much of the
spirit of the poet in him, and wanted only the art; and just remember
how Milton speaks of him in his "Areopagitica." Had the poet of
"Paradise Lost" thought regarding him as it has become fashionable to
think and speak now, he would hardly have apostrophized him as--_Knox,
the reformer of a nation--a great man animated by t