them all.  “The young woman whose name was Dull” taxes our patience every day.  Where is the town which does not contain Mrs. Timorous and her coterie of gossips, Mrs. Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Lightmind, and Mrs. Knownothing, “all as merry as the maids,” with that pretty fellow Mr. Lechery at the house of Madam Wanton, that “admirably well-bred gentlewoman”?  Where shall we find more lifelike portraits than those of Madam Bubble, a “tall, comely dame, somewhat of a swarthy complexion, speaking very smoothly with a smile at the end of each sentence, wearing a great purse by her side, with her hand often in it, fingering her money as if that was her chief delight;” of poor Feeblemind of the town of Uncertain, with his “whitely look, the cast in his eye, and his trembling speech;” of Littlefaith, as “white as a clout,” neither able to fight nor fly when the thieves from Dead Man’s Lane were on him; of Ready-to-halt, at first coming along on his crutches, and then when Giant Despair had been slain and Doubting Castle demolished, taking Despondency’s daughter Much-afraid by the hand and dancing with her in the road?  “True, he could not dance without one crutch in his hand, but I promise you he footed it well.  Also the girl was to be commanded, for she answered the musick handsomely.”  In Bunyan’s pictures there is never a superfluous detail.  Every stroke tells, and helps to the completeness of the portraiture.

The same reality characterizes the descriptive part of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”  As his characters are such as he must meet with every day in his native town, so also the scenery and surroundings of his allegory are part of his own everyday life, and reproduce what he had been brought up amidst in his native county, or had noticed in his tinker’s wanderings.  “Born and bred,” writes Kingsley, “in the monotonous Midland, he had no natural images beyond the pastures and brooks, the town and country houses, he saw about him.”  The Slough of Despond, with its treacherous quagmire in the midst of the plain, into which a wayfarer might heedlessly fall, with its stepping-stones half drowned in mire; Byepathmeadow, promising so fair, with its stile and footpath on the other side of the fence; the pleasant river fringed with meadows, green all the year long and overshadowed with trees; the thicket all overgrown with briars and thorns, where one tumbled over a bush, another stuck fast in the dirt, some lost their shoes in the mire, and others were fastened from behind with the brambles; the high wall by the roadside over which the fruit trees shot their boughs and tempted the boys with their unripe plums; the arbour with its settle tempting the footsore traveller to drowsiness; the refreshing spring at the bottom of Hill Difficulty; all are evidently drawn from his own experience.  Bunyan, in his long tramps, had seen them all.  He had known what it was to be in danger of falling into a pit and being dashed to pieces with Vain Confidence, of being drowned in