The Fitzwilliam Museum is the most handsome modern building in Cambridge, if not in Great Britain. It looks as if it should be placed in a glass case and kept for the angels to inhabit.
In Trinity College Library, I saw the original manuscript of Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” the manuscript of Lord Macaulay’s “History of England,” also the first letter that Lord Byron ever penned; he wrote, in his mother’s name, thanking a neighbor lady for some potatoes which she had been kind enough to send Lady Byron. I saw the telescope used by Newton in studying the heavenly bodies, and by the assistance of which he discovered new planets.
I was much interested in going through the University printing establishment, and in seeing the Cambridge Bibles manufactured. When I got back to Nottingham, I felt that I could truly say: “I have been through Cambridge University, and still I may write, ‘Plus ultra’—there is more beyond, more to learn.”
I bade adieu to my Nottingham friends this morning while the dewdrops and the rays of the sun were yet playing hide-and-seek and seek-and-hide. Two hours later found me in Bedford. I go at once to the church where John Bunyan was pastor two hundred years ago. The church I find surrounded by a huge iron fence. After hunting for half an hour, I succeed in finding the sexton who kindly shows me through. The front door of the church cost six thousand dollars. It is molded of heavy bronze. The door is divided into twelve large panels, each panel representing a scene taken from Pilgrim’s Progress. The first panel on the bottom of the lefthand side represents Christian with the burden of sin on his back, parting with his wife and children, leaving the city of Destruction and starting out for that city whose builder and maker is God. In the other panels we see Christian as he passes through the wicket gate; as he approaches the cross and loses his burden; as he falls into the hands of Giant Despair and is thrust into Doubting Castle; as he passes the lions in his way; as he sleeps and loses his scroll; as he enters Vanity Fair; as he stands on the Delectable Mountains from which he views the city of the blessed and hears the music of the redeemed; and finally we see him as he crosses the River of Death, and is welcomed by the angels as he reaches the golden shore.
In the back end of the church, is a small room containing some relics of Bunyan. Among other things, is the chair which Bunyan occupied while in Bedford jail, and in which he sat while writing Pilgrim’s Progress. The iron-barred door of this little room is the same door that locked Bunyan in his prison cell. My blood runs cold in my veins as I look upon the iron bolts and bars behind which Bunyan stood and preached the gospel to the listening multitudes as they gathered around the jail.
Near by the church is the place where the old prison stood. The prison was torn down in 1801, the old site now being used as a market-place during the week, and as a place for street-preaching on Sunday.
At the head of High Street, near where the old jail stood, there is a splendid bronze statue of the immortal dreamer. The statue is more than life size. It stands upon a tall granite pedestal, on which is the following inscription;
“He had his eyes lifted to heaven;
The best of books in his hand,
The law of truth was written upon his lips;
He stood as if he pleaded with men.”