the jail where Bunyan was imprisoned.[7] This jail was the first to excite the interest and compassion of Howard. Near Bedford is the picturesque village of Elstow, where Bunyan was born; the house is pointed out, though it has been refronted. Bunyan took the side of Cromwell in the civil wars, and his escape from death at the siege of Leicester is well known; we are indebted to his incarceration for what Macaulay declares to be incomparably the finest allegory in our language. There are several drawings of the jail preserved, and nothing could be more picturesque: there are projecting roofs and overhanging storeys, and apparently a quaintly-tiled roof of different levels. A flat archway spanned the bridge, and there was a sundial over it. Such gatehouses were not at all uncommon, and they were often used afterwards for prisons. The bridge over the Dee, leading from the Wrexham road to Chester at Handbridge, had two similar gatehouses, but, from drawings that have been preserved of them, they must have been immeasurably more picturesque: one of them was gabled, and covered with tiles similar to those that are common in Holland, and the other had a portcullis and bastions, and a fine tower four storeys high, in which was a large clock. Unfortunately, these were all demolished in 1782, and a new gate called Bridgegate, a rather unsightly structure, given to us instead. In a drawing by Randal Holme, made about the middle of the seventeenth century, in which these gates are shown, are some curious water-mills. It is difficult to form any very definite idea of the way in which they are worked, or what their general appearance may have been, but the wheels seem to have stood out from the sides not dissimilarly to the paddles of a steamer, and probably could be lowered or heightened according to the level of the water.