Page:Pilgrims Progress-1896.djvu/13

Rh ugly morass into which they had stumbled, hurrying across the low fields at nightfall. The House of the Interpreter was precisely the mansion of some learned recluse, at the gables and towers of which they had cast superstitious glances from the highway. The House Beautiful, with its lion-guarded lodge, was the seat of their local lord. The Valley of the Shadow of Death, the Valley of Humiliation, and the Enchanted Ground — what were they but the vales and thickets in which Bedfordshire shepherds lost their way in the black fogs of autumn ? What was Vanity Fair but the market town at festival time ? What was the River of Life, with its shady path and lily-sprinkled mead- ows, but the little stream where the laborers stopped to rest after their morning in the fields ? Except for the added feature of mountains, which Bunyan had never actually seen and which he portrays vaguely and conventionally, the landscape of this surprising new book was the common English landscape, with its endeared accessories. Not only so, but the wayfarers with whom Christian meets were such as one might see any day along an English market road. Mr. Worldly Wiseman, portly, well-to-do, full of prudential maxims ; young Ignorance, going his way with blundering boyish self-confidence ; Demas, " standing gentleman-like " at the side of the road ; sweet Piety, with her pretty cate- chising talk at the House Beautiful, — all these were liv- ing figures, having about them the good tang of every-day realism. The Pilgrim's Progress was in a deep sense the first English novel. It sprang racy of the soil ; it had its root in daily fact, and drew its sap from the immediately human.

But this was not all. It added to the charm of realism the charm of romance. This road which Christian treads is beset with supernatural dangers. Demons lurk in the dark waste valleys. Giant Despair dwells in a grim castle near the highway, and piles his courtyard with the bones of slaughtered pilgrims. The mouth of Hell belches forth