to the first, it is a work of striking individuality and graphic power,
such as Bunyan alone could have written. Everywhere we find strokes of
his peculiar genius, and though in a smaller measure than the first, it
has added not a few portraits to Bunyan's spiritual picture gallery we
should be sorry to miss, and supplied us with racy sayings which stick to
the memory. The sweet maid Mercy affords a lovely picture of gentle
feminine piety, well contrasted with the more vigorous but still
thoroughly womanly character of Christiana. Great-Heart is too much of
an abstraction: a preacher in the uncongenial disguise of a knightly
champion of distressed females and the slayer of giants. But the other
new characters have generally a vivid personality. Who can forget Old
Honesty, the dull good man with no mental gifts but of dogged sincerity,
who though coming from the Town of Stupidity, four degrees beyond the
City of Destruction, was "known for a cock of the right kind," because he
said the truth and stuck to it; or his companion, Mr. Fearing, that most
troublesome of pilgrims, stumbling at every straw, lying roaring at the
Slough of Despond above a month together, standing shaking and shrinking
at the Wicket Gate, but making no stick at the Lions, and at last getting
over the river not much above wetshod; or Mr. Valiant for Truth, the
native of Darkland, standing with his sword drawn and his face all bloody
from his three hours' fight with Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatick;
Mr. Standfast, blushing to be found on his knees in the Enchanted Ground,
one who loved to hear his Lord spoken of, and coveted to set his foot
wherever he saw the print of his shoe; Mr. Feeblemind, the sickly,
melancholy pilgrim, at whose door death did usually knock once a day,
betaking himself to a pilgrim's life because he was never well at home,
resolved to run when he could, and go when he could not run, and creep
when he could not go, an enemy to laughter and to gay attire, bringing up
the rear of the company with Mr. Readytohalt hobbling along on his
crutches; Giant Despair's prisoners, Mr. Despondency, whom he had all but