With the hope that I have written nothing that can be considered in any way personally offensive, I remain, etc. II. In regard to what might be called the “nationality” of John Bunyan I said, in my letter of the 5th May, that “the question at issue is really not one of evidence, but of an unfortunate feeling of caste that bars the way against all investigation and proof.” I do not know what the congregation of Bunyan’s Church at Bedford consists of, but I presume it is composed of humble people, engaged in making a living and bringing up their children becomingly, and indulging in the simple conventionalities suitable to their positions in life. To ask them even to entertain the question whether the great dreamer was of the Gipsy race would apparently horrify them in their simplicity; and it might be useless to attempt to explain matters so as to “convert” them to a belief in it. Proof is perhaps not what such people want, nor would they all be likely to be able to say what it should consist of, or to appreciate it if it was laid before them. It is from no lack of charity or politeness on my part that I say this, and that I would attach little weight to what they might say were they to assert that it is only proof they require to satisfy them that John Bunyan was of the Gipsy race; or that the fact of it has not been proved. He was either of the Gipsy race, of mixed blood, or of the ordinary English one. What proof is there that he was of the latter one? If there is no proof of his having been of the ordinary English race, why assert it, and deny that he was of the Gipsy one, and refuse to investigate the meaning of what he said himself and people were and were not, which, if language has any meaning, clearly showed that he was of the Gipsy race? Why assume, without investigation, that he was not that, but of the ordinary English race, even in the face of his calling having been that of a tinker? If the congregation of Bunyan’s chinch and the people living in the neighbourhood of it have a difficulty in judging of evidence in a matter like this, they can have none in explaining, in a general or more or less crude way at least, their feelings of antipathy to the idea of the illustrious pilgrim having been of the Gipsy race; and drawing the logical conclusion that he was not likely to have said plainly that he was one of it, in the face of the storm of indignation that seems to be entertained to-day; an indignation which is so great that it has not yet found expression.