rom
shadowy abstractions into living men and women. But with all its
excellencies, and they are many, the general inferiority of the history
of Christiana and her children's pilgrimage to that of her husband's must
be acknowledged. The story is less skilfully constructed; the interest
is sometimes allowed to flag; the dialogues that interrupt the narrative
are in places dry and wearisome--too much of sermons in disguise. There
is also a want of keeping between the two parts of the allegory. The
Wicket Gate of the First Part has become a considerable building with a
summer parlour in the Second; the shepherds' tents on the Delectable
Mountains have risen into a palace, with a dining-room, and a looking-
glass, and a store of jewels; while Vanity Fair has lost its former bad
character, and has become a respectable country town, where Christiana
and her family, seeming altogether to forget their pilgrimage, settled
down comfortably, enjoy the society of the good people of the place, and
the sons marry and have children. These same children also cause the
reader no little perplexity, when he finds them in the course of the
supposed journey transformed from sweet babes who are terrified with the
Mastiffs barking at the Wicket Gate, who catch at the boughs for the
unripe plums and cry at having to climb the hill; whose faces are stroked
by the Interpreter; who are catechised and called "good boys" by
Prudence; who sup on bread crumbled into basins of milk, and are put to
bed by Mercy--into strong young men, able to go out and fight with a
giant, and lend a hand to the pulling down of Doubting Castle, and
becoming husbands and fathers. We cannot but feel the want of
_vraisemblance_ which brings the whole company of pilgrims to the banks
of the dark river at one time, and sends them over in succession,
following one another rapidly through the Golden Gate of the City. The
four boys with their wives and children, it is true, stay behind awhile,
but there is an evident incongruity in their doing so when the allegory
has brought them all to what stands for the close of their earthly
pilgrimage. Bunyan's mistake was in gratifying his inventive genius and
making his band of pilgrims so large. He could get them together and
make them travel in company without any sacrifice of dramatic truth,
which, however, he was forced to disregard when the time came for their
dismissal. The exquisite pathos of the description of the passag