t' was blown out of season." And this it was that he began to
perceive after the accession of Elizabeth: not that he had been wrong,
and that female rule was a good thing, for he had said from the first
that "the felicity of some women in their empires" could not change the
law of God and the nature of created things; not this, but that the
regiment of women was one of those imperfections of society which must
be borne with because yet they cannot be remedied. The thing had seemed
so obvious to him, in his sense of unspeakable masculine superiority,
and in his fine contempt for what is only sanctioned by antiquity and
common consent, he had imagined that, at the first hint, men would arise
and shake off the debasing tyranny. He found himself wrong, and he
showed that he could be moderate in his own fashion, and understood the
spirit of true compromise. He came round to Calvin's position, in fact,
but by a different way. And it derogates nothing from the merit of this
wise attitude that it was the consequence of a change of interest. We
are all taught by interest; and if the interest be not merely selfish,
there is no wiser preceptor under heaven, and perhaps no sterner.

Such is the history of John Knox's connection with the controversy about
female rule. In itself, this is obviously an incomplete study; not fully
to be understood, without a knowledge of his private relations with the
other sex, and what he thought of their position in domestic life. This
shall be dealt with in another paper.

PRIVATE LIFE

To those who know Knox by hearsay only, I believe the matter of this
paper will be somewhat astonishing. For the hard energy of the man in
all public matters has possessed the imagination of the world; he
remains for posterity in certain traditional phrases, browbeating Queen
Mary, or breaking beautiful carved work in abbeys and cathedrals, that
had long smoked themselves out and were no more than sorry ruins, while
he was still quietly teaching children in a country gentleman's family.
It does not consist with the common acceptation of his character to
fancy him much moved, except with anger. And yet the language of passion
came to his pen as readily, whether it was a passion of denunciation
against some of the abuses that vexed his righteous spirit, or of
yearning for the society of an absent friend. He was vehement in
affection, as in doctrine. I will not deny that there may have been,
along with his vehemen