Vanity Fair is one of John Bunyan’s universally-admitted masterpieces.  The very name of the fair is one of his happiest strokes.  Thackeray’s famous book owes half its popularity to the happy name he borrowed from John Bunyan.  Thackeray’s author’s heart must have leaped in his bosom when Vanity Fair struck him as a title for his great satire.  ’Then I saw in my dream that when they were got out of the wilderness they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity, and at that town there is a fair kept called Vanity Fair.  The fair is kept all the year long, and it beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where it is kept is lighter than Vanity.  And, also, because all that is sold there is vanity.  As is the saying of the wise, All that cometh is vanity.  The fair is no new erected business, but a thing of ancient standing:  I will show you the original of it.  About five thousand years ago there were pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these two honest persons now are, and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their companions, perceiving that by the path that the pilgrims made, that their way to the city lay through this town of Vanity, they contrived there to set up a fair:  a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity, and that it should last all the year long.  Therefore at this fair are all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, as wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, precious stones, and what not.  And, moreover, at this fair at all times there is to be seen juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind.’  And then our author goes on to tell us the names of the various streets and rows where such and such wares are vended.  And from that again he goes on to tell how the Prince of princes Himself went at one time through this same fair, and that upon a fair day too, and how the lord of the fair himself came and took Him from street to street to try to get Him induced to cheapen and buy some of the vain merchandise.  But as it turned out He had no mind to the merchandise in question, and He therefore passed through the town without laying out so much as one farthing upon its vanities.  The fair, therefore, you will see, is of long standing and a very great fair.  Now, our two pilgrims had heard of all that, they remembered also what Evangelist had told them about the fair, and so they buttoned up their pockets and pushed through the booths in the hope of getting out at the upper gate before any one had time to speak to them.  But that was not possible, for they were soon set upon by the men of the fair, who cried after them:  ’Hail, strangers, look here, what will you buy?’ ‘We buy the truth only,’ said Faithful, ’and we do not see any of that article of merchandise set out on any of your stalls.’  And from