How many years, I wonder, was it before I learned to dislike Thackeray and Tennyson as cordially as I now do? For how many years did I not almost worship them? Bunyan and Others I have been reading _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ again—the third part and all—and wish that some one would tell one what to think about it. The English is racy, vigorous and often very beautiful; but the language of any book is nothing except in so far as it reveals the writer. The words in which a man clothes his thoughts are like all other clothes—the cut raises presumptions about his thoughts, and these generally turn out to be just, but the words are no more the thoughts than a man’s coat is himself. I am not sure, however, that in Bunyan’s case the dress in which he has clothed his ideas does not reveal him more justly than the ideas do. _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ consists mainly of a series of infamous libels upon life and things; it is a blasphemy against certain fundamental ideas of right and wrong which our consciences most instinctively approve; its notion of heaven is hardly higher than a transformation scene at Drury Lane; it is essentially infidel. “Hold out to me the chance of a golden crown and harp with freedom from all further worries, give me angels to flatter me and fetch and carry for me, and I shall think the game worth playing, notwithstanding the great and horrible risk of failure; but no crown, no cross for me. Pay me well and I will wait for payment, but if I have to give credit I shall expect to be paid better in the end.” There is no conception of the faith that a man should do his duty cheerfully with all his might though, as far as he can see, he will never be paid directly or indirectly either here or hereafter. Still less is there any conception that unless a man has this faith he is not worth thinking about. There is no sense that as we have received freely so we should give freely and be only too thankful that we have anything to give at all. Furthermore there does not appear to be even the remotest conception that this honourable, comfortable and sustaining faith is, like all other high faiths, to be brushed aside very peremptorily at the bidding of common-sense.