dam Wanton's house, Mr. Lightmind
and Mr. Love-the-flesh, with Mr. Lechery and Mrs. Filth, and passed the
afternoon with music and dancing, were troubled by no divine misgivings.

Then, too, the Lord of the way found no difficulty in easing the path
of the gentler sort of pilgrims. He kept the Valley of the Shadow
comparatively quiet for Christiana and her tender band. The ugly thing
that came to meet them, and the Lion that padded after them, were not
suffered to draw near. The hobgoblins were stayed from howling. It
never seemed to have occurred to Bunyan to question why the Lord of the
way had ever allowed this unhallowed crew to gather in the valley at
all. If he could restrain them, and if Mr. Greatheart could hew the
giants in pieces, why could not the whole nest of hornets have been
smoked out once and for all? Even the Slough of Despond could not be
mended with all the cartloads of promises and texts that were shot
there. And yet for all that, when one came to reflect upon it, this
Calvinistic scheme of election and reprobation did seem to correspond
in a terrible manner with the phenomena of the world. One saw people
around one, some of whom seemed to start with an instinct for all that
was pure and noble, and again others seemed to begin with no preference
for virtue at all, but to be dogged with inherited corruption from the
outset. The mistake which moralists made was to treat all alike, as if
all men had the moral instinct equally developed; and yet Hugh had met
not a few men who were restrained by absolutely no scruples, except
prudential ones, and the dread of incurring conventional penalties,
from yielding to every bodily impulse. If truth and purity and
unselfishness were the divine things, if happiness lay there, why were
there such multitudes of people created who had no implanted desire to
attain to these virtues?

It was in the grip of such thoughts that Hugh left the house and walked
alone through the streets of the town, as Christian might have walked
in the City of Destruction. What was one to fly from? and whither was
the pilgrimage to tend? The streets were full of busy comfortable
people, some, like Mr. Brisk, men of considerable breeding, some again,
like the two ill-favoured ones, marked for doom; here and there was a
young woman whose name might have been Dull. What was one's duty in
the matter? Was one indeed to repent, with groans and cries, for a
corruption of heart that h