ncongruous combinations I spoke of; and forthwith I
passed into the Co-operative Hall, resolving to defer my visit to the
phrenologist. There are some facts of which it is better to remain
contentedly ignorant; and I have no doubt my own mental condition
belongs to that category.

I found the Co-operative Hall a handsome and commodious building; and a
very fair audience had gathered to listen to Mr. Holyoake, who is an
elderly thin-voiced man, and his delivery was much impeded on the
occasion in question by the circumstance of his having a bad cold and
cough. After a brief extempore allusion to the fact of the Duke of
Bedford having erected a statue to Bunyan, which he regarded as a sort
of compensation for his Grace ceasing to subscribe to the races, Mr.
Holyoake proceeded to read his treatise, which he had written on several
slips of paper--apparently backs of circulars--and laid one by one on a
chair as he finished them.

The world, he said, is a big place; but people are always forgetting
what a variety of humanity it contains. Two hundred years ago, the
authorities of Bedford made it very unpleasant for one John Bunyan,
because they thought they knew everything, and could not imagine that a
common street workman might know more. The trade of a tinker seems an
unpromising preparation for a literary career. A tinker in Bedford
to-day would not find himself much flattered by the attentions paid him,
especially if he happened to be an old gaol-bird as well. So much the
more creditable to Bunyan the ascendancy he gained. If he mended pots as
well as he made sentences he was the best tinker that ever travelled.

Bunyan had no worldly notions. His doctrine was that men were not saved
by any good they might do--a doctrine that would ruin the morals of any
commercial establishment in a month! He declared himself the "chief of
sinners;" but judged by his townsmen he was a stout-hearted,
stout-minded, scrupulous man.

He was not a pleasant man to know. He had an unrelenting sincerity which
often turned into severity. Yet he had much tenderness. He had a soul
like a Red Indian's--all tomahawk and truth, until the literary passion
came and added humour to it. He demands in his vigorous doggerel:--

May I not write in such a style as this,
In such a method, too, and yet not miss
My end, thy good? Why may it not be done?
Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none.

Like all men of original genius,