BUNYAN'S DEATH.
It was on the 31st of August, 1688, that John Bunyan left the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Doubting Castle, Vanity Fair, and all those other stages of the progress of a soul in its efforts to find rest and peace, to cross the dark river that, in his immortal dream, flowed under the walls of the Celestial City. This is how Mr. Froude describes the closing scene of his great life:—
"His end was characteristic. It was brought on by exposure when he was engaged in an act of charity. A quarrel had broken out in a family at Reading with which Bunyan had some acquaintance. A father had taken offence at his son, and threatened to disinherit him. Bunyan undertook a journey on horseback from Bedford to Reading, in the hope of reconciling them. He succeeded, but at the cost of his life. Returning by London, he was overtaken on the road by a storm of rain, and was wetted through before he could find shelter. The chill, falling on a constitution already weakened by illness, brought on fever. He was able to reach the house of Mr. Strudwick, one of his London friends, but he never left his bed afterwards. In ten days he was dead."
Mr. Froude thinks that the exact date is uncertain; but Southey and other biographers generally fix it upon the 31st of August. He was buried in a vault belonging to the Strudwick family, in the famous old Nonconformist burial ground of Bunhill Fields, where his monument—restored of late years by admiring and appreciative friends—may be seen any day by the passer-by, on which runs this inscription—"Mr. John Bunyan, Author of 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' ob. 31st August, 1688, æt. 60."
John Bunyan wrote sixty books, and lived sixty years. His chief work, "The Pilgrim's Progress," has been translated into seventy-two distinct languages and dialects, and thus has had a wider circulation and been more read than any book next to the Scriptures. More than fifty years ago Macaulay spoke of it as "the only book of its kind that possesses a strong human interest—that, while other allegories only amuse the fancy, this has been read by thousands with tears." What was true then is no less true now.