None of these thoughts came into the minds of the two travellers⟨.⟩ They did not see this dreadful dungeon, for it was hidden beneath the rubbish of the ruined walls. The sight of it would, I hope, have moved Johnson to write otherwise than he did. Had he looked down into its gloomy depths, he would scarcely have said that "Cardinal Beaton was murdered by the ruffians of reformation." Never surely was a more righteous sentence executed than that whereby this murderer of George Wishart, in the very room where, lolling on his velvet cushion, he had looked forth on the martyr's sufferings, was himself put to death.
With far different feelings are we animated as we look at "the poor remains of the stately Cathedral." If we do not grieve for the rooks, nevertheless we mourn over the wild folly which struck down so glorious a rookery. Would that that fair sight still caught the sailor's eye which met John Knox's gaze when, "hanging tired over his oar in the French galley, he saw the white steeples of St. Andrews rising out of the sea in the mist of the summer morning!"[1] Desolate as is the scene of ruin now, it was far more desolate when Johnson saw it. The ground lay deep in rubbish. The few broken pillars which were left standing were almost hidden in the ruins heaped up around them. The Cathedral until very lately had been made a common quarry, "and every man had carried away the stones who fancied that he wanted them." Now all is trim. The levelled ground, the smooth lawn, the gravelled paths, the gently sloping banks, the trees and the shrubs, all bear witness to man's care for the venerable past, and to his reverence for the dead who still find their last resting-place by the side of their forefathers. The wantonness of the destruction, however, mocks at repair. The work was too thoroughly done by those fierce reformers, and by the quiet quarrymen of after ages. In all the cities of Scotland there were craftsmen, but it was in Glasgow alone that they rose to save their beloved Cathedral. Yet everywhere the people should have felt—to use Johnson's homely words—as, "wrapt up in contemplation," he surveyed these scenes—that "differing from a man in doctrine is no reason why you should pull his house about his ears." We may exclaim, as Wesley exclaimed at Aberbrothick, when he was told that the zealous reformers burnt the Abbey down, "God deliver us from reforming mobs!"[2]
In the ruined cloisters as our travellers paced up and down,
