if it might be, some of the pilgrims there to take up their rest when weary.  This, you must think, all things considered, was tempting.  I saw in my dream also that they went on in this their solitary way till they came to a place at which a man is very apt to lose his way.  Now, though when it was light, their guide could well enough tell how to miss those ways that led wrong, yet in the dark he was put to a stand.  But he had in his pocket a map of all ways leading to or from the Celestial City, wherefore he struck a light (for he never goes also without his tinder-box), and takes a view of his book or map, which bids him be careful in that place to turn to the right-hand way.  Then I thought with myself, who that goeth on pilgrimage but would have one of those maps about him, that he may look when he is at a stand, which is the way to take?”

1.  “But what is the meaning of all this?” asked Christiana of the guide.  “This Enchanted Ground,”—­her able and experienced friend answered her, “this is one of the last refuges that the enemy to pilgrims has; wherefore it is, as you see, placed almost at the end of the way, and so it standeth against us with the more advantage.  For when, thinks the enemy, will these fools be so desirous to sit down as when they are weary, and when so like to be weary as when almost at their journey’s end?  Therefore it is, I say, that the Enchanted Ground is placed so nigh to the land Beulah and so near the end of their race; wherefore let pilgrims look to themselves lest they fall asleep till none can waken them.”  “That masterpiece of Bunyan’s insight into life, the Enchanted Ground,” says Mr. Louis Stevenson, “where his allegory cuts so deep to people looking seriously on life.”  Yes, indeed, Bunyan’s insight into life!  And his allegory that cuts so deep!  For a neophyte, and one with little insight into life, or into himself, would go to look for this land of darkness and thorns and pitfalls, alternated with arbours and settles and soft couches—­one new to life and to himself, I say, would naturally expect to see all that confined to the region between the City of Destruction and the Slough of Despond; or, at the worst, long before, and never after, the House Beautiful.  But Bunyan looked too straight at life and too unflinchingly into his own heart to lay down his sub-Celestial lands in that way; and when we begin to look with a like seriousness on the religious life, and especially when we begin to look bold enough and deep enough into our own heart, then we too shall freely acknowledge the splendid master-stroke of Bunyan in the Enchanted Ground.  That this so terrible experience is laid down almost at the end of the Celestial way—­the blaze of light that pours upon our heads fairly startles us, while at the same time it comforts us and assures us.  That this Enchanted Ground, which has proved so fatal to so many false pilgrims, and so all but fatal to so many true pilgrims, should lie around the very