welcome of the
Shining Ones.

The "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Holy War" are not as allegories
entirely perfect, but they probably gain in religious effect, as much
as they lose from a literary point of view, in those passages where the
allegorical disguise is not sustained. The simplicity and power of
their language are alone sufficient to give them an important place in
English literature. Throughout the "Pilgrim's Progress" are evidences
of a strong human sympathy, and a kindly indulgence on the part of the
author for the weak and erring among his fellow-men. Ignorance, to be
sure, is cast into the bottomless pit; but as the work taught a
spiritual perfection, it could not afford to encourage the willingly
ignorant by bestowing a pardon on their representative. Bunyan himself
was distinguished for a general sympathy with his fellow-men which the
narrowness of Puritanism had failed to impair. The sad words in which
he mourned, while in prison, his long separation from his wife and
children, show the natural tenderness of his disposition, as well as
the greatness of the sacrifice which he was making for his
religion:--"The parting with my wife and poor children hath often been
to me in this place as the pulling the flesh from my bones; and that
not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but
also because I often brought to mind the many hardships, miseries, and
wants that my poor family was like to meet with; especially my poor
blind child, who lay nearer to my heart than all I had beside."

With the allegories of Bunyan, we leave ideality behind us as a
characteristic feature of English fiction. The knights of the Round
Table, Robin Hood and his merry men, the princes and princesses of the
"Arcadia," the pilgrim Christian, were the ideal heroes of the
particular periods to which they belong. They were placed amid the
scenes which seemed most attractive, and were endowed with the
qualities which seemed most admirable to the men whose imaginations
created them. But, with the exception perhaps of Robin Hood, they were
purely ideal, without prototypes in nature. The writer of fiction had
not yet turned his attention to the delineation of character, to the
study of complex social questions, to the portrayal of actual life.
With the fall of Puritan power, begins a great intellectual change.
History shows, since the Restoration, a tendency which has continuously
grown stronger and wider, to subordinate