Yorkshire and Lancashire are the great centres for this class of names on English soil. _Squire_ is found on every page of the West Riding Directory, such entries as Squire Jagger, Squire Whitley, Squire Hind, Squire Hardy, or Squire Chapman being of the commonest occurrence. _Duke_ is also a favourite, Duke Redmayne and Duke Oldroyd meeting my eye after turning but half a dozen pages. But the great rival of _Squire_ is _Major_. There is a kind of martial, if not braggadocio, air about the very sound, which has taken the ear of the Yorkshire folk. Close together I light upon Major Pullen, farmer; Major Wold, farmer; Major Smith, sexton; Major Marshall, ironmonger. Other illustrations are _Prince_ Jewitt, _Earl_ Moore, _Marshall_ Stewart, and _Admiral_ Fletcher. This custom has led to awkwardnesses. There was living at Burley, near Leeds, a short time ago, a "_Sir Robert_ Peel." In the same way "Earl Grey" is found. Sir Isaac Newton was living not long ago in the parish of Soho, London. Robinson Cruso still survives, hale and hearty, at King's Lynn, and Dean Swift is far from dead, as the West Riding Directory proves. It was an odd idea that suggested "Shorter." I have five instances of it, two from the Westminster Abbey registers: "1689, March 3. Buried Shorter Norris." "1690, July 9. Baptized Shorter, son of Robert and Ann Tanner." _Junior_ is found so early as 1657: "1657, ----. Christened Junior, sonne of Robert Naze."--Cant. Cath. Little is similarly used. Little Midgley in the West Riding Directory is scarcely a happy conjunction. In the same town are to be seen John Berry, side by side with "Young John Berry," and Allen Mawson, with Young Allen Mawson. VI. BUNYAN'S DEBT TO THE PURITANS. But if the Sussex jury was not visionary, except for the panel, neither was that at Mansoul! What a text is this for the next biographer of Bunyan, if he have the courage to enter upon it! To suggest that the great dreamer was not a reprobate in his youth, and thus spoil the contrast between his converted and unconverted life, was a perilous act on Lord Macaulay's part. To insinuate that he had a not altogether unpleasant time of it in the Bedford gaol, that he could have his friends to visit him, and, on the face of it, ink, paper, and quills to set down his meditations, even this is enough to set a section of political and religious society about our ears. But to hint that his character names were not wholly the offspring of his imagination, not thought out in the isolation of his dreary captivity, and not pictured in his brain, while his brain-pan was lying upon a hard and comfortless pallet--this, I know, not very long ago would have brought a mob about me! In the present day, I shall only be smiled upon with contempt, and condemned to a righteous ignominy by the superior judgment of the worshippers of John Bunyan!