ON one of the hottest of our summer days I chanced to fall into conversation with an elderly decayed tradesman, living in a house erected for such as he. “Are you comfortable?” I said. “Well,” was the reply, “we do our best to make ourselves as comfortable as we can.” I was struck with the good sense of his answer. Ah, thought I, as we parted, how much happier we would all be if we did as the decayed tradesman did. The conversation took place opposite the grand Abbey-gate of the ancient town of Bury St. Edmunds. No Englishman should wander off to the Continent until he has first visited Bury St. Edmunds, a town full of busy life, peopled with more than 16,000 inhabitants, which rejoices in a rich historic past, and which, especially if you are there on a market-day, strikes the stranger as a place of immense activity and bustle. It is eighty-three miles from Liverpool-street, and you can see all its lions—and they are very numerous—in a day. On the eastern ridge of it—as Carlyle wrote in _Past and Present_—still runs, long, black, and massive, a range of monastic ruins. Its chief claim to fame is that it was the burial place of the young Saxon king known as Edmund, who, in 870, was cruelly murdered by the Danes at Hoxne, not far off. After the lapse of many years, the body was brought to Bury, where it was placed in the renowned Abbey, which owes much of its greatness to Edward the Confessor, and which for more than six hundred years remained one of the chief ecclesiastical centres of mediæval England. Piety, wealth, and superstition did much for the place. Its churchyard is one of the most picturesque in all the land. Its churches are marvels of beauty, and one of them contains the tomb of Mary Tudor, Queen of France, and third daughter of Henry VII. of England. Bury is famous as being the spot where the Barons met before enforcing the signature of Magna Charta by King John, who, on his return from France in 1214, met the nobles at Bury, and confirmed on oath a charter restoring the laws enacted by Edward the Confessor, and abolishing the arbitrary Norman code. You have to pay sixpence to visit the Abbey grounds, which are left in good order, and which ought to be thrown open to the public; but many people will not grudge the money when they come to the spot where is an inscription denoting that Cardinal Langton and the Barons swore at the altar that they would obtain from King John the satisfaction of Magna Charta, and another, close by, giving the names and titles of the twenty-five Barons who thus met. A few yards off are the ruins of the refectory where was held the Parliament which decided on the impeachment of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Many Parliaments were held at Bury; many kings and queens and mighty personages came there. It had its martyrs—like Coping, who was hanged for not believing the Prayer-book, and Lawes, an innocent clergyman, who, with forty others, was condemned and executed for witchcraft.