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paid her a visit. The name of the old meeting'was an Open sesame,' and she pointed to the portrait of her ancestor with evident pride. It is not an original,' she said; but was copied from an original that was painted on glass; adding so they said when I was a girl many years ago, for in six months I shall be eighty-eight years old.' Despite her years, there is fire in her dark deep eyes, and an expression of both humour and severity in her mouth. We observed how very like she was to the portrait; she admitted that every one said the same, they all said she was like to it: she might have been once, but not now, for he died young, only sixty, quite young, but she was nearly ninety, only wanted two years and six months to be ninety all out. She was his great, great, grand-daughter, and we understood her to say, she had a nephew who bore the name of Bunyan; we felt inclined to question as to which of the nonconformist's children she was descended from, but she did not like being questioned, at least she did not like the trouble of reply; she spoke of the old meeting' with animation, and looking at the picture repeated more than once, 'He was a great pilgrim a faithful pilgrim!' She told us she had left THE PICTURE to the old meeting,' but added that no one from the town of Bedford had ever called upon her, until Mr. Jukes had done so. She was kind and even cordial, but there was a natural severity in her tone and manner which savoured of the puritans of old times. She would not permit the little maid who showed us up, to attend us down stairs, but did so herself, standing at the open door after an assurance of how glad she would be to see us again.

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She is not easily forgotten; her formal dress, close cap, and snowy neckerchief-pinned down as you see in portraits of some sixty or seventy years ago and above all, the earnest steadfast expression of her face, telling of firmness of the most immovable kind, softened by a world of affection in her deep brown eyes. She was a singular link between the present and the past; and we make no doubt, would at this moment be willing to suffer imprisonment or death for the sake, not only of her general faith, but for any one point thereof. We ought to have inquired of her about the tomb; but have a great unwillingness to press questions on old age, and every one who passes Bunhill Fields burying-ground, whatever doubts may arise as to this spot or that, may safely say—

There lies JOHN BUNYAN.

THE BURIAL PLACE OF JOHN HAMPDEN.

UST at the close of the summer of 1848, it was our privilege to sojourn at a hospitable old English house in Hertfordshire; a stately mansion with abundant space, and yet, withal, so comfortable, and suggestive! every nook fitted with old story-telling cabinets, or great high book-cases, crammed with rare books, books that conjure up

old memories, talk in quaint language, and have a

dark-determined-knowledge-look. The walls, too, were impressive teachers, hung with fine portraits-Vandyke, Lely, and Sir Joshua, speaking from the canvas. And when our eyes were uplifted from the page, it was so delightful to us, city dwellers, to gaze out of the large windows into the green park, diving through dark recesses and deep hollows-beneath huge 'Patrician trees.' So still, so solitary, was the dwelling, that, but for the hallowing view of the Church tower, and the smoke from the adjacent village of Aldbury, we might have believed ourselves detenus in the happy valley.' It was so delicious to watch the clouds gathering over Moneybury Hill to canter through the never-ending green drives of Ashridge-to wonder at the tameness of the forest deer-to speculate on the geological formation of Incombe-hole, where giants might play at bowls-to creep among the venerable box-hedges, and appreciate the taste of the old monks of Aylesbury, who here established a Health-house for such of the brethren

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as were 'sick in the flesh '-to pause still longer on the Beacon Hill' that rises boldly and verdantly above the village of Ivinghoe, and recall much that we have read, or tradition tells us, of the times of England's bitter struggle between Despotism and Liberty,-when upon that very hill was kindled the beacon-fire, which told to Harrow the issue of the fight at Edge-hill, that Harrow might tell it to eager and anxious London! What fearful times-fearful to read of even now-most fearful to those who knew that the freedom of future England was in their keeping; when one of the hard Iron men, in whose high bravery and truth of purpose our utilitarian age finds it no easy matter to have faith, exclaimed, in the Commons House of Parliament, We must fight as in a cock-pit—we are surrounded by the sea-we have no stronger holds than our own skulls and our own ribs, to keep out our enemies!'

Pacing further back, we recalled the old rhyme—

'Tring, Wing, and Ivinghoe

From the HAMPDENS did goe

For striking the Black Prince a blowe.'

The three sisters were within our ken, while we stood on the Beacon Hill, and, without pausing to consider whether History confirms or contradicts the legend, THE NAME, thus suggested, reminded us that the home, and the grave, of the truest-the purest-the best-of England's Patriots, was nigh at hand, among the far-famed Hills of the Chiltern Hundreds.* A morning drive would take us there, through the quaint villages and green lanes of Buckinghamshire—all tranquil and grateful for the abundant

* From these Chiltern Hills is derived the celebrity of three of the hundreds of Buckinghamshire, viz., Stoke, Desborough, and Bonenham, which constitute a district very frequently referred to in the proceedings of Parliament, by means of the well-known phrase, 'taking the Chiltern Hundreds.' It is a mere ceremony, a legal fiction, expressed by the words accepting the situation of steward or bailiff of Her Majesty's Chiltern Hundreds-an office purely nominal; for though, perhaps, the claim to some fees might be enforced, if duties were performed, yet as no functions are ever discharged, so no rewards are acquired by the holder; it is therefore only in the eye of the law' that it is an office of emolument.' No such office can be conferred by the Crown on a member of the House of Commons without his thereby vacating his seat; and it is only by obtaining office that any person qualified to sit in Parliament can rid himself of the duties which any body of constituents may impose, even without his consent.

realities of a full-lapped autumn; and then we might have some hours to ramble amid scenes the great and high-hearted Patriot loved so well; thus commencing our purposed PILGRIMAGES by a visit to one of the most interesting of England's many hallowed SHRINES.

We passed that evening with Lord Nugent's interesting history of the Patriot, to whose dwelling we had vowed a pilgrimage, calling in, occasionally, to council, one of the Old Chronicles, or consulting a volume of grave Parliamentary Reports-resolved to strengthen and refresh our memory, before presuming to look upon the honoured urn that contains the ashes of John Hampden.

We learned that he was born in the year 1594; that the city of London was his birth-place, and that he manifested an early love of letters, overcome only by those stern duties of the times to which taste and pleasure must unmurmuring yield. His reputation for scholarly attainments must have been considerable, for he was chosen to write the Oxford gratulations on the union of the Elector Palatine with the Princess Elizabeth. Strange destiny, that Prince Rupert, the issue of that marriage, should have led the troops at Chalgrove by whom John Hampden was slain! We found him, in 1613, studying the law in the Inner Temple; there acquiring the knowledge to which he afterwards gave practice, to the salvation of that law. Yet this study in no degree hardened his nature; nor did it ever become stern under Puritan ascendancy: he loved worthily, and at twentyfive years old-in 1619-married whom he loved-Elizabeth, the daughter of Edmund Symeon, Lord of the Manor of Pyrton, in Oxfordshire. His lineage was old and honourable, his fortune more than ample, his love successful, his mind nurtured to perfectness by severe and thoughtful studies, and enriched and adorned by the higher delights of poetry; while his healthful frame enabled him to enjoy all country sports amid the delicious scenery he loved-as fathers love their children-where he cherished, as twin-born, the home affections and the Liberty that glorifies the name of ENGLAND. How clearly we felt, while tracing out the vast possessions that made him, perhaps, the richest Commoner in the kingdom, and revelling over the little of either conversations or correspondence that remains to those who would have sate at his feet for instruction-how clearly we felt that he was forced by troublous times from the privacy he loved; appearing

suddenly, as Sir Philip Warwicke says, 'with all great qualities ripened about him, of which he had never given a crude or ostentatious promise.' He was, indeed, compelled to raise the standard by what, among many high and noble qualities, was the highest and noblest quality of his nature -a deep, stern, true, unquailing love of Justice! Although in Parliament during a portion of the reign of the first James, his fame, filling all England, is based upon the occurrences of the last few years of his great life; like his cousin Cromwell, he entered the arena when the blaze of youth had sunk into the deep burning fire of middle age; he had numbered forty years before he was recognised as 'the Patriot Hampden.' There is no record of his having bowed in the ante-room of the coarse and faithless James, for the title his mother coveted for her son; he had nobler aspirations-nobler company, than that which waited there; the Chronicles are radiant with the glorious names of those who constituted with him the great movement—the Parliamentary party. How they echo through the vaults of history! Wentworth, and Pym, and Eliot, and Selden! But we write not a Chronicle-though tempted to dwell upon strange records of strange times-often with natural indignation, when we read how James, scrambling through his dignity more like an idiot-baby than an anointed king, could offer insults to men like these!

We glanced rapidly over the early reign of his successor, the first Charles; dignified by some high virtues; disfigured by lack of forethought and want of truth; born out of season; belonging to the past, unwilling to advance, if not incapable of moving, with the times that rose and swelled about him! Then the gathering of Parliaments-dark clouds heralding a tempest-now dispersing-now collecting-outraged in their dearest rights and privileges-struggling for their constituents, as men struggle for life, against 'imposts' and 'levies,' and the worse mockery of 'loans,' which no man was free to refuse; Hampden with his friends— labouring with them to the death, yet seeking no self-glory. As the horizon darkens, as the storm gathers, so does this great spirit come brightly forward-suffering imprisonments even in the GATE-HOUSE; * but

* Hampden was confined in the Gate-House for his opposition to the forced loans endeavoured to be imposed on the country in 1625. This prison, which obtained much celebrity during the civil wars on account of the incarceration of so many eminent men within its walls,