Читать книгу Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Letters & Travel Sketches from Europe онлайн

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On this opposite eminence the statue of John Knox, grim and strong, stands with its arm uplifted, as if shaking his fist at the old cathedral which in life he vainly endeavored to battle down.

Knox was very different from Luther, in that he had no conservative element in him, but warred equally against accessories and essentials.

At the time when the churches of Scotland were being pulled down in a general iconoclastic crusade, the tradesmen of Glasgow stood for the defence of their cathedral, and forced the reformers to content themselves with having the idolatrous images of saints pulled down from their niches and thrown into the brook, while, as Andrew Fairservice hath it, "The auld kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the fleas are caimed aff her, and a' body was alike pleased."

We went all through the cathedral, which is fitted up as a Protestant place of worship, and has a simple and massive grandeur about it. In fact, to quote again from our friend Andrew, we could truly say, "Ah, it's a brave kirk, nane o' yere whig-malceries, and curliewurlies, and opensteek hems about it—a' solid, weel-jointed mason wark, that will stand as lang as the warld, keep hands and gun-powther aff it."