aps the only book about which, after the
lapse of a hundred years, the educated minority has come over to the
opinion of the common people.

The attempts which have been made to improve and to imitate this book
are not to be numbered. It has been done into verse: it has been
done into modern English. "The Pilgrimage of Tender Conscience,"
"The Pilgrimage of Good Intent," "The Pilgrimage of Seek Truth," "The
Pilgrimage of Theophilus," "The Infant Pilgrim," "The Hindoo Pilgrim,"
are among the many feeble copies of the great original. But the peculiar
glory of Bunyan is that those who most hated his doctrines have tried to
borrow the help of his genius. A Catholic version of his parable may be
seen with the head of the Virgin in the title-page. On the other hand,
those Antinomians for whom his Calvinism is not strong enough may study
the pilgrimage of Hephzibah, in which nothing will be found which can be
construed into an admission of free agency and universal redemption. But
the most extraordinary of all the acts of Vandalism by which a fine work
of art was ever defaced was committed so late as the year 1853. It was
determined to transform the "Pilgrim's Progress" into a Tractarian book.
The task was not easy: for it was necessary to make the two sacraments
the most prominent objects in the allegory; and of all Christian
theologians, avowed Quakers excepted, Bunyan was the one in whose system
the sacraments held the least prominent place. However, the Wicket Gate
became a type of Baptism, and the House Beautiful of the Eucharist. The
effect of this change is such as assuredly the ingenious person who made
it never contemplated. For, as not a single pilgrim passes through the
Wicket Gate in infancy, and as Faithful hurries past the House Beautiful
without stopping, the lesson which the fable in its altered shape
teaches, is that none but adults ought to be baptised, and that the
Eucharist may safely be neglected. Nobody would have discovered from the
original "Pilgrim's Progress" that the author was not a Paedobaptist.
To turn his book into a book against Paedobaptism was an achievement
reserved for an Anglo-Catholic divine. Such blunders must necessarily
be committed by every man who mutilates parts of a great work, without
taking a comprehensive view of the whole.

*****

OLIVER GOLDSMITH. (February 1856.)

Oliver Goldsmith, one of the most pleasing English writers of the
eighteenth century. He was of a Protes