political and literary communion have justified and confirmed, on
the part of his friend and associate,
THE AUTHOR.

JOHN BUNYAN.

"Wouldst see
A man I' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?"

Who has not read Pilgrim's Progress? Who has not, in childhood,
followed the wandering Christian on his way to the Celestial City? Who
has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the
walls of darkness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill
of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and Vanity Fair,
the sunny Delectable Mountains and the Shepherds, the Black River and
the wonderful glory beyond it; and at last fallen asleep, to dream over
the strange story, to hear the sweet welcomings of the sisters at the
House Beautiful, and the song of birds from the window of that "upper
chamber which opened towards the sunrising?" And who, looking back to
the green spots in his childish experiences, does not bless the good
Tinker of Elstow?

And who, that has reperused the story of the Pilgrim at a maturer age,
and felt the plummet of its truth sounding in the deep places of the
soul, has not reason to bless the author for some timely warning or
grateful encouragement? Where is the scholar, the poet, the man of taste
and feeling, who does not, with Cowper,

"Even in transitory life's late day,
Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road,
And guides the Progress of the soul to God!"

We have just been reading, with no slight degree of interest, that simple
but wonderful piece of autobiography, entitled Grace abounding to the
Chief of Sinners, from the pen of the author of Pilgrim's Progress. It
is the record of a journey more terrible than that of the ideal Pilgrim;
"truth stranger than fiction;" the painful upward struggling of a spirit
from the blackness of despair and blasphemy, into the high, pure air of
Hope and Faith. More earnest words were never written. It is the entire
unveiling of a human heart; the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of
its sin. The voice which speaks to us from these old pages seems not so
much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the
last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as
the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the
Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the