straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every touch. I could not tell how to speak my words for fear I should misplace them." A man so sensitive to supernatural impressions could realize them as completely as the actual experiences of his daily life. Such, in fact, they were. With a conscience so tender, and a longing so intense for what he considered a condition of grace, Bunyan described the journey of Christian with the minuteness and fidelity of one who had trod the same path. The sketch of the pilgrim, which opens the work, stamps Christian at once an individual. As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the Book, and read therein; and, as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying "what shall I do?" The same impression of reality pervades the whole work. Christian's sins take an actual form in the burden on his back. Every personage whom he meets on his journey, and every place through which he passes appears to the mind of the reader with the vividness of actual experience. The child or the laborer reads the "Pilgrim's Progress" as a record of adventures undergone by a living man; the scholar forgets the art which has raised the picture before his mind, in a sense of contact with the subject portrayed. This is the triumph of a great genius, and it is a triumph to which no other writer has attained to the same degree. Other allegorists have pleased the fancy or gratified the understanding, but Bunyan occupies at once the imagination, the reason and the heart of his reader. Defoe's power of giving life to fictitious scenes and personages has not been surpassed by that of any other novelist. But Defoe's scenes and characters were of a nature familiar to his readers, and therefore easily realized. In the "Pilgrim's Progress," strange and unreal regions become well-known places, and moral qualities distinct human beings. Evangelist, who puts Christian on the way to the Wicked Gate; Pliable, who deserts him at the first difficulty; Help, who pulls him out of the Slough of Despond; Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who shows him an easy way to be rid of his burden, are all life-like individuals. Timorous, Talkative, Vain Confidence, Giant Despair, are not mere personifications, but distinct human beings with whom every reader of the "Pilgrim's Progress" feels an intimate acquaintance. Not less real is the impression produced by the various scenes through which the journey of Christian conducts him. The Slough of Despond, the Wicket Gate, the House of the Interpreter, the Hill