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Altogether, if we have found in the neighbourhood of Bedford no Delectable Mountains, nor Valley of Humiliation, nor Land of Beulah, we have at least seen much pleasant English scenery, a fertile, well-cultivated country, and in the very absence of more outwardly exciting prospects, have had the more "leisure of thought" to dwell in the ideal world which Bunyan has made as familiar to us as our own home.
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From Bedford to Olney the distance by rail is between ten and eleven miles; by "the sinuous Ouse" probably between thirty and forty.
Few travellers, therefore, will care to ascend by the river banks, and the frequent shallows preclude the thought of a boating excursion, which otherwise would by its leisurely length be some preparation for our exchange of the associations of the seventeenth century for those of the eighteenth. One hundred and three years separated the birthday of Bunyan from that of Cowper.