THE FAITHFUL HELPMATE. brutality. But John Bunyanwas peculiarly fortunate in exemption from these severe measures. At length, after a confinement of seven years, the stringent measures were relaxed, and he enjoyed considerable immunity, attending the Baptist meetings, and being a good deal at home,-be- coming almost nominally a prisoner. While in prison, Bunyan's mind and pen had not been idle. With little to divert his thoughts be- yond what he could see upon the road or the river, through his grated window, -" a leaping fish or a skimming swallow both an event and a sermon to him, " - he began to sketch forth one of the grandest allegories the world has ever seen-" The Pilgrim's Progress." The history of the book, as Lord Macaulay observes, is remarkable. " The author was, as he tells us, writing a treatise, in which he had occasion to speak of the stages of Christian progress. He compared that progress, as many others had compared it, to a pilgrimage. Soon his quick wit discovered innumerable points of similitude which had escaped his predecessors. Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words ; quagmires and pits, steep hills, dark and horrible glens, soft vales, sunny pastures, a gloomy castle of which the court yard was strewn with the skulls and bones of murdered prisoners, a town all bustle and splendour, like London on the Lord Mayor's Day, and the narrow path, straight as a rule could make it, running on up hill and down hill, through city and through 33
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