glow of the lanterns, these vain imaginations lost their
vividness, and finally vanished from the first ray of sunshine
that greeted our escape from the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Ere we had gone a mile beyond it I could well-nigh have taken my
oath that this whole gloomy passage was a dream.

At the end of the valley, as John Bunyan mentions, is a cavern,
where, in his days, dwelt two cruel giants, Pope and Pagan, who
had strown the ground about their residence with the bones of
slaughtered pilgrims. These vile old troglodytes are no longer
there; but into their deserted cave another terrible giant has
thrust himself, and makes it his business to seize upon honest
travellers and fatten them for his table with plentiful meals of
smoke, mist, moonshine, raw potatoes, and sawdust. He is a German
by birth, and is called Giant Transcendentalist; but as to his
form, his features, his substance, and his nature generally, it
is the chief peculiarity of this huge miscreant that neither he
for himself, nor anybody for him, has ever been able to describe
them. As we rushed by the cavern's mouth we caught a hasty
glimpse of him, looking somewhat like an ill-proportioned figure,
but considerably more like a heap of fog and duskiness. He
shouted after us, but in so strange a phraseology that we knew
not what he meant, nor whether to be encouraged or affrighted.

It was late in the day when the train thundered into the ancient
city of Vanity, where Vanity Fair is still at the height of
prosperity, and exhibits an epitome of whatever is brilliant,
gay, and fascinating beneath the sun. As I purposed to make a
considerable stay here, it gratified me to learn that there is no
longer the want of harmony between the town's-people and