parish of St. Cuthbert's which was his home from his release to his death
(unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of
his daily life. It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy,
with three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a
diminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof. Behind stood
an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse
of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary.
One Mr. Bagford, otherwise unknown to us, had once "walked into the
country" on purpose to see "the study of John Bunyan," and the student
who made it famous. On his arrival the interviewer--as we should now
call him--met with a civil and courteous reception from Bunyan; but he
found the contents of his study hardly larger than those of his prison
cell. They were limited to a Bible, and copies of "The Pilgrim's
Progress," and a few other books, chiefly his own works, "all lying on a
shelf or shelves." Slight as this sketch is, it puts us more in touch
with the immortal dreamer than many longer and more elaborate paragraphs.

Bunyan's celebrity as a preacher, great before he was shut up in gaol,
was naturally enhanced by the circumstance of his imprisonment. The barn
in Josias Roughead's orchard, where he was licensed as a preacher, was
"so thronged the first time he appeared there to edify, that many were
constrained to stay without; every one that was of his persuasion
striving to partake of his instructions." Wherever he ministered,
sometimes, when troublous days returned, in woods, and in dells, and
other hiding-places, the announcement that John Bunyan was to preach
gathered a large and attentive auditory, hanging on his lips and drinking
from them the word of life. His fame grew the more he was known and
reached its climax when his work was nearest its end. His biographer
Charles Doe tells us that just before his death, "when Mr. Bunyan
preached in London, if there were but one day's notice given, there would