have laboured to shew that there was little in the lad which any
would censure, save the righteous overmuch. The truth is, that
considering his rank of life, his conduct was not flagitious; for he
never was a drunkard, a libertine, or a lover of sanguinary sports:
and the profanity and sabbath-breaking and heart-atheism which
afterwards preyed on his awakened conscience, are unhappily too
frequent to make their perpetrator conspicuous. The thing which gave
Bunyan any notoriety in the days of his ungodliness, and which made
him afterwards appear to himself such a monster of iniquity, was the
energy which he put into all his doings. He had a zeal for idle
play, and an enthusiasm in mischief, which were the perverse
manifestations of a forceful character, and which may have well
entitled him to Southey's epithet--"a blackguard." The reader need
not go far to see young Bunyan. Perhaps there is near your dwelling
an Elstow--a quiet hamlet of some fifty houses sprinkled about in the
picturesque confusion, and with the easy amplitude of space, which
gives an old English village its look of leisure and longevity. And
it is now verging to the close of the summer's day. The daws are
taking short excursions from the steeple, and tamer fowls have gone
home from the darkening and dewy green. But old Bunyan's donkey is
still browzing there, and yonder is old Bunyan's self--the brawny
tramper dispread on the settle, retailing to the more clownish
residents tap-room wit and roadside news. However, it is young
Bunyan you wish to see. Yonder he is, the noisiest of the party,
playing pitch-and-toss--that one with the shaggy eyebrows, whose
entire soul is ascending in the twirling penny--grim enough to be the
blacksmith's apprentice, but his singed garments hanging round him
with a lank and idle freedom which scorns indentures; his energetic
movements and authoritative vociferations at once bespeaking the
ragamuffin ringleader. The penny has come down with the wrong side