l cry throughout the wilderness.

Now I saw in my vision, that there were some others who were busy in
strewing the most gaudy flowers over the numerous bogs, precipices,
and pitfalls, with which the wilderness abounded; and thus making
danger and death look so gay, that the poor thoughtless creatures
seemed to delight in their own destruction. Those pitfalls did not
appear deep or dangerous to the eye, because over them were raised gay
edifices with alluring names. These were filled with singing men and
singing women, and with dancing, and feasting, and gaming, and
drinking, and jollity, and madness. But though the scenery was gay,
the footing was unsound. The floors were full of holes, through which
the unthinking merrymakers were continually sinking. Some tumbled
through in the middle of a song, many at the end of a feast; and
though there was many a cup of intoxication wreathed with flowers,
yet there was always poison at the bottom.

But what most surprised me was, that though no day passed over their
heads in which some of these merry-makers did not drop through, yet
their loss made little impression on those who were left. Nay, instead
of being awakened to more circumspection and self-denial by the
continual dropping off of those about them, several of them seemed to
borrow from thence an argument of a directly contrary tendency, and
the very shortness of the time was only urged as a reason to use it
more sedulously for the indulgence of sensual delights. "Let us eat
and drink; for to-morrow we die." "Let us crown ourselves with
rose-buds before they are withered." With these, and a thousand other
such little mottoes, the gay garlands of the wilderness were
decorated.

Some admired poets were set to work to set the most corrupt sentiments
to the most harmonious tunes: these were sung without scruple,
chiefly, indeed, by the looser sons of riot, but not seldom also by
the more orderly daughters of sobriety, who were not ashamed to sing,
to the sound of instruments, sentiments so corrupt and immoral, that
they would have blushed to speak or read them; but the music seemed to
sanctify the corruption, especially such as was connected with love or
drinking.

Now I observed, that all the travellers who had so much as a spark of
life left, seemed every now and then, as they moved onwards, to cast
an eye, though with very different degrees of attention, towards the
Happy land, which they were told lay at the end of