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 THE PORTRAITS OF JOHN KNOX. 281 elements of the phenomenon, and done a right por- trait of it ; a man with an actually seeing eye. The battle of Pinkie, for instance, nowhere do you gain, in few words or in many, a clearer view of it : the battle of Carberry Hill, not properly a fight, but a whole day's waiting under mutual menace to fight, which winds up the controversy of poor Mary with her Scot- tish subjects, and cuts off her ruffian monster of a Bothwell, and all the monstrosities cleaving to him, forever from her eyes, is given with a like impressive perspicuity. The affair of Cupar Muir, which also is not a battle, but a more or less unexpected meeting on the ground for mortal duel, — especially unexpected on the Queen Regent and her Frenchmen's part, — re- mains memorable, as a thing one had seen, to every reader of Knox. Not itself a fight, but the prologue or foreshadow of all the fighting that followed. The Queen Eegent and her Frenchmen had marched in triumphant humour out of Falkland, with their artillery ahead, soon after midnight, trusting to find at St. Andrews the two chief Lords of the Con- gregation, the Earl of Argyle and Lord James (after-