ness of the artist. Each
pilgrim sings with a book in his grasp--a family Bible at the least for
bigness; tomes so recklessly enormous that our second impulse is to
laughter. And yet that is not the first thought, nor perhaps the last.
Something in the attitude of the manikins--faces they have none, they
are too small for that--something in the way they swing these monstrous
volumes to their singing, something perhaps borrowed from the text, some
subtle differentiation from the cut that went before and the cut that
follows after--something, at least, speaks clearly of a fearful joy, of
Heaven seen from the deathbed, of the horror of the last passage no less
than of the glorious coming home. There is that in the action of one of
them which always reminds me, with a difference, of that haunting last
glimpse of Thomas Idle, travelling to Tyburn in the cart. Next come the
Shining Ones, wooden and trivial enough; the pilgrims pass into the
river; the blot already mentioned settles over and obliterates
Christian. In two more cuts we behold them drawing nearer to the other
shore; and then, between two radiant angels, one of whom points upward,
we see them mounting in new weeds, their former lendings left behind
them on the inky river. More angels meet them; Heaven is displayed, and
if no better, certainly no worse, than it has been shown by others--a
place, at least, infinitely populous and glorious with light--a place
that haunts solemnly the hearts of children. And then this symbolic
draughtsman once more strikes into his proper vein. Three cuts conclude
the first part. In the first the gates close, black against the glory
struggling from within. The second shows us Ignorance--alas! poor
Arminian!--hailing, in a sad twilight, the ferryman Vain-Hope; and in
the third we behold him, bound hand and foot, and black already with the
hue of his eternal fate, carried high over the mountain-tops of the
world by two angels of the anger of the Lord. "Carried to Another
Place," the artist enigmatically names his plate--a terrible design.

Wherever he touches on the black side of the supernatural his pencil
grows more daring and incisive. He has many true inventions in the
perilous and diabolic; he has many startling nightmares realised. It is
not easy to select the best; some may like one and some another; the
nude, depilated devil bounding and casting darts against the Wicket
Gate; the scroll of flying horrors that hang over Christian