MONGST the sorry plights and predicaments into which John Bunyan leads his pilgrims, one of the sorriest of all is Vanity Fair. Now I have no intention to try to make Bunyan's description more clear, for nothing can be plainer or more intelligible than his style. If I were to begin systematically to comment upon what he has said about this fair, I should probably only obscure what the great dreamer has made plain to the dullest understanding. There are a great many people who can't let well alone; so as soon as a book becomes immortal through its genius and perspicacity, they set to work to try to immortalise themselves by basking in its reflected light, and write a lot of so-called "notes," by way of explanation of that which everyone understood before. There are numbers of satellites who have, in this fashion, revolved round the orb of Shakespeare's lustre, and like literary Charles Keans, have tried to dress him up in a mental millinery, and equip him with an adventitious upholstery, which rather disguises than sets off his symmetry, and cripples rather than assists his action. Commentators out of every college in the world, have buzzed about the Bible like blue bottles round a sugar basin, or wasps around a honey-jar, and have "explained, and illustrated, and enforced," its precious promises in so many different ways, that they have almost expressed all the sweetness out of them, without impressing

ay of the sweetness that is in them. Mrs. Stowe did not escape this toadying. Penny-a-liners and money-grubbers, skulked behind the skirts of the lady's garments, and edition after edition with notes by Tom Styles, and an appendix by Mumbo Jumbo, came pouring from the press; and not a week passed by without some hungry publisher putting a new bum-bailiff into "Uncle Tom's Cabin." And of all the books which have been cut, and carved, and commented upon, till the original tale is almost smothered in unintelligible explanations, the most prominent example of the butchery is the glorious allegory of the prisoner of Bedford jail. Whenever I see an edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress," with Scott's notes, and Cheever's notes, and George Offer's notes, and Mason's notes, and Ivimey's notes, and nobody knows whose else's notes, I am always reminded of the Great Eastern steam-ship, with about a hundred small craft plying round her, and taking off, to a great extent, the effect; and I wish she would whirl round her huge paddles, and trundle her screw until she swamped them all in the eddy. Or, I think of the St. George's Hall at Liverpool, with a lot of paltry outposts and pillars, and lions, put all round it far away from the structure itself, apparently for no other object than to mar the imposing appearance of the edin ice. Now, with respect to this Vanity Fair, as described by Bu nyan, Mr. Scott inflicts upon us the following sapient note: Our author evidently designed to exhibit in his allegory the grand outlines of the difficulties, temptations, and sufferings to which believers are exposed in this evil world; which, in a work of this nature, must be related as if they came upon them one after another in regular succession; though in actual experience se veral may meet together, many may nolest the same person again and again, and some harass him in every stage of his journey. We, should therefore, singly consider the instruction conveyed bv every allegorical incident, without measuring our experience or calculating our progress, by comparing them with circumstances which might be reversed or altered with almost endless variety. In general,

Vanity Fair represents the wretched state of things in these populous places, especially where true religion is neglected and persecuted, and, indeed, in "the whole world lying in wickedness," as distinguished from the church of redeemed 'sinners. Now, if all this mean anything, it means that a man can't say everything he wants to say all at once, so he must say first one thing and then another, although a person may feel more sensations or troubles than one at the same time. If every fool did not know that before Mr. Scott told him, I think it is a pity; and yet this is called an explanatory note to the following description drawn by Bunyan of Vanity Fair; this wretched rushlight, flickering with platitude, is held up to enable us to see the blazing lamp of the dreamer's vivid vision. After telling us that the fair is held all the year round, Bunyan goes on as follows:"This fair is no new-erected business, but a thing of ancient standing. I will show you the original of it. Almost five thousand years ago, there were pilgrims walking to the Celestial city, as these two honest persons are; and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their companions, perceiving by the path which the pilgrims made, that their way to the city lay through this town of Vanity, they contrived here to set up a fair; a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity, and that it should last all the year long; therefore, at this fair are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not. And, moreover, at this fair, there is at all times to be seen juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind. Here are to be seen too, and that for nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false-swearers, and that of a blood-red colour." Now there's something graphic here, and the man who can't understand that, can never understand the turgid, dreary notes which, in the edition before me, are appended from the pens of Messrs. Cheever, Mason, and Scott. There's

a story told of an old woman who borrowed the Pilgrim's Progress from a minister, and on his asking her if she had begun to read it yet, she said she had ; "And do you understand it?” "O yes, sir, I understand the book very well, and I hope by degrees to be able to understand the notes as well.”

Well, we need no learned commentary on Bunyan's Vanity Fair, we have it here amongst us in Manchester; it is kept all the year round; we are not summoned to it by the sound of fife or drum, but its shows, and booths, and dens, and resorts are built up round us; and smiles, and beckonings, and allurements bait every portal, and peep round every curtain to cajole the purblind pilgrim in, and lure him to his destruction.

Let us take our own city as the representative of Vanity Fair, and see if it does not come pretty near to Bunyan's own ideal. The dreamer certainly takes higher ground than we shall find quite practicable, and he sets down among his list of vanities many things which are good enough in themselves, and only become evils when suffered to engross more interest and attention than eternal things. When he says that "here are sold houses, lands, trades, places, preferments," &c., he does not mein to set these things down as worthless, but only to brand them with the name of vanity, when their importance is brought into contrast with that which is spiritual, and too often unfelt because unseen. There is ample necessity, indeed, here in Manchester to take similarly high ground, and denounce the overweening attachment to the world, and the exaggerated estimate of its concernments which some men form. There is crying need for some arresting voice to call after the busy builder whose entire soul is absorbed in the planning and direction of the superstructure of a worldly fame and fortune, to the total oblivion of all higher and more lasting accumulations. Strong reason is there for men to be reminded that here they have no continuing city, and that the deepest foundation they can lay for any earthly structure must be dug in sand, treacherous and yielding as a shifting shoal. And well would it be if some wise

We

monitor could become head clerk in many a counting-house in Manchester, and show the merchant who esteems himself most prosperous, that he is insolvent yet, and must be bankrupt at the final reckoning, unless he trades in a more remunerative merchandize, and lays up some more lasting treasure than silver and gold. But this is a task, perhaps, fitter for the high standard of the pulpit, than for the more social strain of the platform, more adapted to the exclusive spirituality of a sermon, than to the broader and more genial admonitions of a lecture. Moreover such a strain of remark should be more emphatically addressed to those who are high in life and worldly fortune, and cannot be supposed to apply so strongly to the humbler toilers for whom these lectures are for the most part intended. may, therefore, come down a little lower in John Bunyan's list, and look round Manchester, and see if we cannot find some of the yet grosser, more carnal, and essentially corrupt pursuits identified with this Vanity Fair. Run through the catalogue, and see if there is one of the abominations it enumerates which our city cannot shew. "Here are to be seen for nothing," says he, "thefts, murders, adulteries, and false-swearers." Here moreover may be found, "juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues." Yes, we have them all in Manchester. But there is one difference to be noticed between our Vanity Fair and Bunyan's Vanity Fair, and that is, that it is much more difficult for us to distinguish between the pilgrims who are passing through, and the "fools, apes, knaves, and rogues," who are resident and at home in the fair. Christian and Faithful were easily recognized by their homely garb, their abstracted mien, their steady earnestness in passing by each clap-trap show, their pilgrim's staves, and their travel-worn dress. But it is not so easy to mark pilgrim from resident now. Go to some of our churches and chapels, and you will find carriages at the gate, with footmen letting down the steps; you will find servile beadles at the door to amble down the aisle before you; you will see a forest of gorgeous bonnets droop down upon crimson cushions as