He hears the angelic songs of the City beyond the river; he hears
them, but repeat them to us he cannot, "for I'm no poet," as he says
himself. He beheld the country of Beulah, and the Delectable
Mountains, that earthly Paradise of nature where we might be happy
yet, and wander no farther, if the world would let us--fair
mountains in whose streams Izaak Walton was then even casting angle.

It is pleasant to fancy how Walton and Bunyan might have met and
talked, under a plane tree by the Ouse, while the May showers were
falling. Surely Bunyan would not have likened the good old man to
Formalist; and certainly Walton would have enjoyed travelling with
Christian, though the book was by none of his dear bishops, but by a
Non-conformist. They were made to like but not to convert each
other; in matters ecclesiastical they saw the opposite sides of the
shield. Each wrote a masterpiece. It is too late to praise "The
Complete Angler" or the "Pilgrim's Progress." You may put ingenuity
on the rack, but she can say nothing new that is true about the best
romance that ever was wedded to allegory, nor about the best idyl of
old English life.

The people are living now--all the people: the noisy bullying
judges, as of the French Revolutionary Courts, or the Hanging Courts
after Monmouth's war; the demure, grave Puritan girls; and Matthew,
who had the gripes; and lazy, feckless Ignorance, who came to so ill
an end, poor fellow; and sturdy Old Honest, and timid Mr. Fearing;
not single persons, but dozens, arise on the memory.

They come, as fresh, as vivid, as if they were out of Scott or
Moliere; the Tinker is as great a master of character and fiction as