A very indulgent but a very interesting account of the bishop's
political career will be found in Lord Mahon's valuable History
of England.

...


JOHN BUNYAN.

(May 1854.)


John Bunyan, the most popular religious writer in the English
language, was born at Elstow, about a mile from Bedford, in the
year 1628. He may be said to have been born a tinker. The
tinkers then formed an hereditary caste, which was held in no
high estimation. They were generally vagrants and pilferers, and
were often confounded with the gipsies, whom in truth they nearly
resembled. Bunyan's father was more respectable than most of the
tribe. He had a fixed residence, and was able to send his son to
a village school where reading and writing were taught.

The years of John's boyhood were those during which the puritan
spirit was in the highest vigour all over England; and nowhere
had that spirit more influence than in Bedfordshire. It is not
wonderful, therefore, that a lad to whom nature had given a
powerful imagination, and sensibility which amounted to a
disease, should have been early haunted by religious terrors.
Before he was ten, his sports were interrupted by fits of remorse
and despair; and his sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends