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exception in favour of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work, he said, was one
of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common
merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most
pedantic of critics, and the most bigoted of tories. In the wildest parts
of Scotland the Pilgrim's Progress is the delight of the peasantry. In
every nursery the Pilgrim's Progress is a greater favourite than Jack the
Giant-Killer. Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as
he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times.
This is the highest miracle of genius,--that things which are not should
be as though they were,--that the imaginations of one mind should become
the personal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker has
wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turn-stile,
with which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket gate, and the
desolate swamp which separates it from the City of Destruction,--the long
line of road, as straight as a rule can make it,--the Interpreter's house,
and all its fair shows,--the prisoner in the iron cage,--the palace, at
the doors of which armed men kept guard, and on the battlements of which
walked persons clothed all in gold,--the cross and the sepulchre,--the
steep hill and the pleasant arbour,--the stately front of the House
Beautiful by the wayside,--the low green valley of Humiliation, rich with
grass and covered with flocks,--all are as well known to us as the sights
of our own street. Then we come to the narrow place where Apollyon strode
right across the whole breadth of the way, to stop the journey of
Christian, and where afterwards the pillar was set up to testify how
bravely the pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we advance, the valley
becomes deeper and deeper. The shade of the precipices on both sides falls
blacker and blacker. The clouds gather overhead. Doleful voices, the
clanking of chains, and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are heard
through the darkness. The way, hardly discernible in gloom, runs close by
the mouth of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, its noisome
smoke, and its hideous shapes, to terrify the adventurer. Thence he goes
on, amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled bodies of those who
have perished lying in the ditch by his side. At the end of the long dark
valley, he passes the dens in which the old giants dwelt, amidst the bo