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 forms of Murray, Morton, and Argyll, but also, in the stalls above them, the archbishops of St. Andrew's and Glasgow, with Abbot Kennedy, the foremost champions of Rome, so soon to be overtaken by the rising tide of Protestantism. The preacher, terrible in his unrestrained zeal and fervour, bends low down over his pulpit, as though his eager soul and winged words would drag the body after them. A jackman in attendance on the archbishops, standing with his arquebus in his hand, glares fiercely at the bold iconoclast, as though he were on the point of avenging the insult to his master; whilst a young member of the university, standing near the pulpit, is on the alert to defend the preacher in case of need. It could not have been the Admirable Crichton, as Wilkie meant it to be, for James Crichton was not born until the following year; but we may take the figure as representing the liberal movement in the premier university of Scotland at one of its most brilliant epochs.

The whole scene is full of life and motion. The artist has made his picture speak, and we are reminded, as we look at it, of all the long struggle for religious reform in Scotland, which was now on the eve of completion. Not many days after the preaching of that sermon the old order of things was overthrown, the monasteries were dissolved, pictures and images were turned out of the churches, and the revolution to which Knox had devoted himself was accomplished. It would be strange if from such a scene and from such a character the mind did not revert to the events and the men of two hundred