Leigh Hunt pleasantly says:—"I can no more pass through Westminster, without thinking of Milton; or the Borough, without thinking of Chaucer and Shakspeare; or Gray's Inn, without calling Bacon to mind; or Bloomsbury-square, without Steele and Akenside; than I can prefer brick and mortar to wit and poetry, or not see a beauty upon it beyond architecture in the splendour of the recollection. I once had duties to perform which kept me out late at night, and severely taxed my health and spirits. My path lay through a neighbourhood in which Dryden lived, and though nothing could be more common-place, and I used to be tired to the heart and soul of me, I never hesitated to go a little out of the way, purely that I might pass through Gerard-street, and so give myself the shadow of a pleasant thought."
CREED OF LORD BOLINGBROKE.
Lord Brougham says:—"The dreadful malady under which Bolingbroke long lingered, and at length sunk—a cancer in the face—he bore with exemplary fortitude, a fortitude drawn from the natural resources of his vigorous mind, and unhappily not aided by the consolations of any religion; for, having early cast off the belief in revelation, he had substituted in its stead a dark and gloomy naturalism, which even rejected those glimmerings of hope as to futurity not untasted by the wiser of the heathens."
Lord Chesterfield, in one of his letters, which has been published by Earl Stanhope, says that Bolingbroke only doubted, and by no means rejected, a future state.
BUNYAN'S PREACHING.
It is said that Owen, the divine, greatly admired Bunyan's preaching; and that, being asked by Charles II. "how a learned man such as he could sit and listen to an itinerant tinker?" he replied: "May it please your Majesty, could I possess that tinker's abilities for preaching, I would most gladly relinquish all my learning."