"the
Congregation departed forth of Edinburgh to Linlithgow and left their
artillerie void upon the causeway lying, and the town desolate." It was
November, and the darkness of the night could not have been more dark
than the prospects and thoughts of that dejected band, a little while
before so triumphant. As the tramp of the half-seen procession went
heavily down the tortuous streets at the back of the castle, probably by
the West Bow and West Port, diving down into the darkness under that
black shadow where the garrison sat grimly impartial taking no part, the
populace, perhaps frightened by the too great success of their own
fickle and cruel desertion of the cause, and hoping little from the
return of the priests, would seem to have beheld with silent dismay the
departure of the Congregation. The guns which had done them so little
service which they left on the road, as the preachers would have had
them leave all the devices and aid of men, were gathered in by the
soldiers from the castle with little demonstration, and the town was
left desolate. The anonymous writer of the _Diurnal of Occurrents_ is
curiously impartial and puts down his brief records without any
expression of feeling: but a certain thrill is in these words as of
something too impressive and significant to be passed by.

It is at this miserable moment that John Knox shows himself at his best.
Hitherto his vehemence, his fierce oratory, his interminable letters and
addresses, though instinct with all the reality of a most vigorous, even
restless nature, represent to us rather a man who would if he could have
done everything,--the fighting and the protocolling as well as the
preaching, a man to whom repose was impossible, ever ready to draw forth
his pen, to mount his pulpit, to add his eager word to every
consultation, and enjoying nothing so much as to press the most
unpleasant truths upon his correspondents and hearers,--than one of
sustaining power and wisdom. The uncompromising fidelity with which he
pointed out the shortcomings of those about him, and the terrible
penalties laid up for them; and the stern denunciations in his letters,
even those which he intended to be conciliatory, make his appearance in
general more alarming than reassuring. An instance which almost tempts a
smile, grave as are all the circumstances and surroundings, is his
letter (written some time before the point at which we have now arrived)
to Cecil whom he had known in E