Beyond Northampton, a memory of Ben Franklin brings us to Ecton, apparently the sleepiest of Midland villages. We follow the straggling line of thatched cottages to the church, where gray stones with almost illegible inscriptions mark the graves of Eleanor and Thomas Franklin, uncle and aunt of one who, in some respects, was our greatest American. The Franklin manor house is gone and Benjamin himself had little to do with Ecton save as a visitor to his ancestral home. He relates that in searching the parish records he learned that he was the youngest son of the youngest son for no less than five generations--verily, genius has little respect for the law of primo-geniture so sacred in England. His grandfather, also a Benjamin, left Ecton for London, where he engaged in the dyer's trade and varied the drudgery of his calling by writing much poetry of doubtful merit. His youngest son, Josias, emigrated to America in 1682, and the rest is American history, too well known to need recording here. Ecton, somnolent and remote, seems little conscious today of the achievements of the mighty son of her Franklin squires of a few centuries ago. At Bedford, the brightest and most progressive-looking of English towns, we enter the old home of Howard, who civilized the prisons of the world and whose memory is kept green by the excellent work of the Howard societies of our own and other countries. Near at hand is the Bunyan memorial chapel, with many relics of the author of "Pilgrim's Progress." And one is mildly astonished to see the collection of the works of this famous preacher and to note how "Pilgrim's Progress" outshone and survived a flood of mediocre, if not stupid, theological writings which he poured forth. We hasten onward through Cambridge, and night finds us at the Angel in Bury St. Edmunds. Of our last day's wanderings I have already told in my chapter on East Anglia. Travel-stained but unwearied, the tried and trusty companion of our pilgrimage stands before our London hotel. It is hard to think of her--is the pronoun right?--as a thing of iron and steel; she has won a personality to us; but, metaphor aside, what a splendid means to a splendid end the motor has become! In two summers we have seen more of Britain than one might find it practicable to see in years under old conditions, and we have seen the most delightful, though unfamiliar, side. I trust that some small measure of our appreciation has been reflected in these pages, though I well recognize that neither the words nor the power to use them are mine by which there might be conveyed a truly adequate idea of such a pilgrimage. XXI LUDLOW TOWN