cave at the valley’s mouth, in which, Giant Pagan having been dead this many a day, his brother, Giant Pope, now sits alone, grinning at pilgrims as they pass by, and biting his nails because he cannot get at them; Vanity Fair, the picture of the world, as St. John describes it, hating the light that puts to shame its own self-chosen darkness, and putting it out if it can, where the Pilgrim’s fellow, Faithful, seals his testimony with his death, and the Pilgrim himself barely escapes; the “delicate plain” called Ease, and the little hill, Lucre, where Demas stood “gentlemanlike,” to invite the passersby to come and dig in his silver mine; Byepath Meadow, into which the Pilgrim and his newly-found companion stray, and are made prisoners by Giant Despair and shut up in the dungeons of Doubting Castle, and break out of prison by the help of the Key of Promise; the Delectable Mountains in Immanuel’s Land, with their friendly shepherds and the cheering prospect of the far-off heavenly city; the Enchanted Land, with its temptations to spiritual drowsiness at the very end of the journey; the Land of Beulah, the ante-chamber of the city to which they were bound; and, last stage of all, the deep dark river, without a bridge, which had to be crossed before the city was entered; the entrance into its heavenly gates, the pilgrim’s joyous reception with all the bells in the city ringing again for joy; the Dreamer’s glimpse of its glories through the opened portals—­is not every stage of the journey, every scene of the pilgrimage, indelibly printed on our memories, for our warning, our instruction, our encouragement in the race we, as much as they, have each one to run?  Have we not all, again and again, shared the Dreamer’s feelings—­“After that they shut up the Gates; which, when I had seen, I wished myself among them,” and prayed, God helping us, that our “dangerous journey”—­ever the most dangerous when we see its dangers the least—­might end in our “safe arrival at the desired country”?

“The Pilgrim’s Progress” exhibits Bunyan in the character by which he would have most desired to be remembered, as one of the most influential of Christian preachers.  Hallam, however, claims for him another distinction which would have greatly startled and probably shocked him, as the father of our English novelists.  As an allegorist Bunyan had many predecessors, not a few of whom, dating from early times, had taken the natural allegory of the pilgrimage of human life as the basis of their works.  But as a novelist he had no one to show him the way.  Bunyan was the first to break ground in a field which has since then been so overabundantly worked that the soil has almost lost its productiveness; while few novels written purely with the object of entertainment have ever proved so universally entertaining.  Intensely religious as it is in purpose, “The Pilgrim’s Progress” may be safely styled the first English novel.  “The claim to be the father of English romance,” writes Dr.