twenty
thousand men. As a safer course for the immediate future, Mary chose the
advice proffered to her by the party for the present in the ascendant.
Through the lord James Stewart as their deputy, the Protestant leaders
urged upon her the necessity of leaving religion as she would find it,
and of adopting as her advisers the persons now at the head of affairs.
When at length, on August 19, 1561, Mary landed at Leith, it appeared
that at least for the time she was content to take things as she found
them. That she would accept them as definitive, no one, and least of all
John Knox, could so far delude himself as to believe.

THOMAS CARLYLE

In the history of Scotland I can find properly but one epoch: we may
say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation
by Knox. A poor, barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions,
massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution,
little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce barons,
not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other _how to
divide_ what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the
Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a
revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old
ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very
singular significance! "Bravery" enough, I doubt not; fierce fighting
in abundance, but not braver or fiercer than that of their old
Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors, whose exploits we have not found worth
dwelling on! It is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed
in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And now, at the
Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs
of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes, kindles
itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from
Earth, whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member
of Christ's visible Church; a veritable hero, if he prove a true man!

But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really
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 Indust