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, 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 a 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.
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