iv, p. 418,) says, "The earliest American edition we have seen is the sixteenth, and is now nearly a century old. It was 'Printed by JOHN DRAPER for CHARLES HARRISON over against the Brazen Head in Cornhil BOSTON N. E. M,DCCXLIV. It is adorned with wood-cuts, which, though rude, are expressive." A writer in the Boston Weekly Magazine says he has examined the seventeenth edition, printed and published in the same year, and by the same persons. He has also seen a copy of the fiftyseventh edition, dated only about twenty or twenty-five years later than the above, and some time before the revolution.

Perhaps no other uninspired book has been so universally popular as the Pilgrim's Progress. The rich vein of native good sense and sober pleasantry that runs through it, recommends it to all orders of readers, and it is read by almost everybody who reads anything. "It commands the admiration of the most fastidious critic, though he may have no sympathy with either its design or spirit; and it is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. It is equally a favourite with young and old: children peruse it with wonder and delight; and their interest in its pages only increases with advancing years." "The very things which are 'milk for

babes,' are actually 'strong meat' to the same persons when they become men. What is admired as history in childhood, is admired as mystery in youth: what is admired as ingenuity in manhood, is loved as experience in old age. ... In childhood we sit, as it were, on Christian's knee, listening to the tale of his

Hair-breadth escapes

By flood and field.'

In youth we join him upon his perilous journey, to obtain directions for our own intended pilgrimage in the narrow way. Before manhood is matured, we know experimentally that the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle are no fictions. And even in old age, Christians are more than ever convinced of the heights, and depths, and breadths, and lengths of Bunyan's spiritual wisdom. The faltering tongue of decrepitude utters, as sage maxims, the very things it had lisped as amusing narrative; and we gravely utter, as counsel to the young, what we prattled, as curious, to our parents."-Philip.

Nor is it possible to conceive a time when it shall cease to be popular. "Amidst all changes of time, and style, and modes of thinking, it has maintained its place in the popular literature of every succeeding age, and it stands among

the perished and perishing intellectual labours of man, in generations past, as one of the few that may now be pronounced imperishable." Yes, "that wonderful vision which Bunyan saw-brighter than any other but that seen by him of Patmos-shall be the wonder and delight of lisping infancy, and the joy of hoary age, till the pilgrims all reach the celestial city."†

It has been so much the fashion for witlings to decry Bunyan's style as coarse and vulgar, that we cannot refrain from giving, in addition to what has already been said on that subject, the following remarks from an article in the "Edinburgh Review," written by T. B. Macauley, Esq." 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 vehe

* Montgomery's Essay.

† Rev. Dr. Bacon.

ment 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 same writer observes,-" Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. ... We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of these minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim's Progress."

CHAPTER XVI.

CALUMNIOUS REPORT: PUBLICATION OF THE HOLY WAR, life of badMAN, ETC.

A DESIRE not to interrupt the account of the Pilgrim's Progress has occasioned a departure from the strict chronological order of our narrative; we must now therefore go back a little to the circumstances that intervened between the publication of the First and Second Parts of that work. During that period (about 1678) an attempt was made to implicate Bunyan in a charge of seduction and murder. A full account of the affair was written by the person chiefly interested, Agnes Beaumont, the daughter of a farmer, near Bedford, who was bitterly prejudiced against Bunyan. The facts of the case are briefly these. This young woman, who was a member of Bunyan's church, had, on a certain occasion, a great desire to attend a church meeting at a place called Gamlingay. "About a week before it," she says, "I was much in prayer, especially for two things: the one, that the Lord would incline the heart of my father to let me go, which he sometimes refused; ... the other, that the Lord would