66

Progress.' That work 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 turnstile, 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 chained lions crouching in the porch, 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 streets.
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 bones of those whom they had
slain.

Then the road passes straight on through a waste moor, till at length the towers of a distant city appear before the traveller; and soon he is in the midst of the innumerable multitudes of

0

Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and the apes, the shops and the puppet shows. There are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and Britain Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth.

Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver mine, and through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that pleasant river which is bordered on both sides by fruit-trees. On the left branches off the path leading to the horrible castle, the courtyard of which is paved with the skulls of pilgrims; and right onward are the sheepfolds and orchards of the Delectable Mountains.

From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through the fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here and there a bed of soft cushions spread under a green arbour. And beyond is the land of Beulah, where the flowers, the grapes, and the songs of birds never cease, and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl, on the other side of that black and cold river over which there is no bridge.

All the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims, giants and hobgoblins, ill-favoured ones and shining ones, the tall, comely, swarthy Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money, the black man in the bright vesture, Mr. Worldly Wiseman and my Lord Hategood, Mr. Talkative, and Mrs. Timorous, all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers through their allegorical progress with interest not inferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeannie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors men are mere personifications. We have not a jealous man, but jealousy; not a traitor, but perfidy; not a patriot, but patriotism. The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative that personifications, when he dealt with them, became men. A dialogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more dramatic effect than a dialogue between two human beings in most plays.

*

The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do

not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.

THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION.

THE great-grandsons of those who had fought under William and the great-grandsons of those who had fought under Harold began to draw near to each other in friendship; and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won by their united exertions, and framed for their common benefit.

Here commences the history of the English nation. The history of the preceding events is the history of wrongs inflicted and sustained by various tribes, which indeed all dwelt on English ground, but which regarded each other with aversion such as has scarcely ever existed between communities separated by physical barriers. For even the mutual animosity of countries at war with each other is languid when compared with the animosity of nations which, morally separated, are yet locally intermingled. In no country has the enmity of race been carried farther than in England. In no country has that enmity been more completely effaced. The stages of the process by which the hostile elements were melted down into one homogeneous mass are not accurately known to us. But it is certain that, when John became King, the distinction between Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the end of the reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In the time of Richard the First, the ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was, 'May I become an Englishman!'-his ordinary form of indignant denial was, 'Do you take me for an Englishman?' The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred years later was proud of the English

name.

The sources of the noblest rivers which spread fertility over continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought

in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps, and rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the history of our country during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that we must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the national character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has ever since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders,― islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics, their feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared with distinctness that constitution which has ever since, through all changes, preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other free constitutions in the world are copies, and which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which any great society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that the House of Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblies which now meet, either in the Old or in the New World, held its first sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity of a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival of the imperial jurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who manned the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges which still exist at both the great national seats of learning were founded. Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than the languages of the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece alone. Then too appeared the first faint dawn of that noble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many glories of England.

HALLAM: 1778-1859.

Domestic Comfort in the Fifteenth Century.

THE two most essential improvements in architecture during this period, one of which had been missed by the sagacity of Greece and Rome, were chimneys and glass windows. Nothing apparently can be more simple than the former; yet the wisdom

of ancient times had been content to let the smoke escape by an aperture in the centre of the roof; and a discovery of which Vitruvius had not a glimpse, was made perhaps, in this country by some forgotten semi-barbarian. About the middle of the fourteenth century the use of chimneys is distinctly mentioned in England and in Italy; but they are found in several of our castles which bear a much older date. This country

seems to have lost very early the art of making glass, which was preserved in France, whence artificers were brought into England to furnish the windows in some new churches in the seventh century. It is said that in the reign of Henry III. a few ecclesiastical buildings had glazed windows. Suger, however, a century before, had adorned his great work, the Abbey of St. Denis, with windows, not only glazed, but painted; and I presume that other churches of the same class, both in France and England, especially after the lancet-shaped window had yielded to one of ampler dimensions, were generally decorated in a similar manner.

Yet glass is said not to have been employed in the domestic architecture of France before the fourteenth century, and its introduction into England was probably by no means earlier. Nor indeed did it come into general use during the period of the Middle Ages. Glazed windows were considered as movable furniture, and probably bore a high price. When the earls of Northumberland, as late as the reign of Elizabeth, left Alnwick Castle, the windows were taken out of their frames, and carefully laid by.

But if the domestic buildings of the fifteenth century would not seem very spacious or convenient at present, far less would this luxurious generation be content with their internal accommodations. A gentleman's house containing three or four beds was extraordinarily well provided; few probably had more than two. The walls were commonly bare, without wainscot, or even plaster, except that some great houses were furnished with hangings, and that, perhaps, hardly so soon as the reign of Edward IV. It is unnecessary to add, that neither libraries of books nor pictures could have found a place among furniture. Silver plate was very rare, and hardly used for the table. A few inventories of furniture that still remain exhibit a miserable deficiency. And this was incomparably greater in private gentlemen's houses than among citizens, and especially foreign merchants.

We have an inventory of the goods belonging to Contarini, a rich Venetian trader, at his house in St. Botolph's Lane, A.D. 1481. There appear to have been no less than ten beds, and glass