Mr. Worldly-Wiseman has a long history behind him on which we cannot now enter at any length.  As a child, the little worldling, it was observed, took much after his secular father, but much more after his scheming mother.  He was already a self-seeking, self-satisfied youth; and when he became a man and began business for himself, no man’s business flourished like his.  ‘Nothing of news,’ says his biographer in another place, ’nothing of doctrine, nothing of alteration or talk of alteration could at any time be set on foot in the town but be sure Mr. Worldly-Wiseman would be at the head or tail of it.  But, to be sure, he would always decline those he deemed to be the weakest, and stood always with those, in his way of thinking, that he supposed were the strongest side.’  He was a man, it was often remarked, of but one book also.  Sunday and Saturday he was to be found deep in The Architect of Fortune; or, Advancement in Life, a book written by its author so as to ’come home to all men’s business and bosoms.’  He drove over scrupulously once a Sunday to the State church, of which he was one of the most determined pillars.  He had set his mind on being Lord Mayor of the town before long, and he was determined that his eldest son should be called Sir Worldly-Wiseman after him, and he chose his church accordingly.  Another of his biographers in this connection wrote of him thus:  ’Our Lord Mayor parted his religion betwixt his conscience and his purse, and he went to church not to serve God, but to please the king.  The face of the law made him wear the mask of the Gospel, which he used not as a means to save his soul, but his charges.’  Such, in a short word, was this ‘sottish man’ who crossed over the field to meet with our pilgrim when he was walking solitary by himself after his escape from the slough.

‘How now, good fellow?  Whither away after this burdened manner?’ What a contrast those two men were to one another in the midst of that plain that day!  Our pilgrim was full of the most laborious going; sighs and groans rose out of his heart at every step; and then his burden on his back, and his filthy, slimy rags all made him a picture such that it was to any man’s credit and praise that he should stop to speak to him.  And then, when our pilgrim looked up, he saw a gentleman standing beside him to whom he was ashamed to speak.  For the gentleman had no burden on his back, and he did not go over the plain laboriously.  There was not a spot or a speck, a rent or a wrinkle on all his fine raiment.  He could not have been better appointed if he had just stepped out of the gate at the head of the way; they can wear no cleaner garments than his in the Celestial City itself.  ’How now, good fellow?  Whither away after this burdened manner?’ ’A burdened manner, indeed, as ever I think poor creature had.  And whereas you ask me whither away, I tell you, sir, I am going to yonder wicket gate before me; for there, as I am informed, I shall