ally
call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but it
was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On
the whole, cheap at any price!--as life is. The people began to _live_:
they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever.
Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume,
Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in
the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find
that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what of
Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of
New England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a
universal battle and struggle over all these realms;--there came
out, after fifty years' struggling, what we all call the "_Glorious_
Revolution" a _Habeas Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments, and much
else!--Alas, is it not too true what we said, That many men in the van
do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz,
and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them
dry-shod, and gain the honor? How many earnest rugged Cromwells, Knoxes,
poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough
miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured,
_bemired_,--before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step
over them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal
three-times-three!

It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three
hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world;
intrinsically for having been, in such way as it was then possible to
be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he
could have crouched into the corner, like so many others; Scotland
had not been delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one
Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt.
He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to
it any million "unblamable" Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared
his breast to the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn
in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his
windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his place of
recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologize for
Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two hundred and fifty years
or