manner, and gave the giant a wound in his arm;" while Spenser's hero, attacking the enemy

"With blade all burning bright

Smote off his arm ;"-Book I, Canto VIII, v. 10.

and the battle in each concludes with the slaying of the giant. "The women and children rejoiced, and Mr. Great Heart praised God for the deliverance he had wrought."

"Then 'gan triumphant trumpets sound on high,
That sent to heaven the echoed report

Of their new joy and happy victory."

Book I, Canto XII, v. 4.

They come to Doubting Castle, the grim old fortress in which Christian and Hopeful had been immured, and which Great Heart resolves to demolish. Prince Arthur has also a castle to storm, but he commences his attack in a different manner from Mr. Great Heart, and it is interesting to see how each writer preserves his identity in going over the same ground. The squire of Spenser's knight, finding "the castle gates fast shut," in accordance with the laws of chivalry, took

"The horn of bugle small,

Which hung adown his side in twisted gold,
And tassels gay,"-Book I, Canto VIII, v. 3.

and blew a piercing blast, which made the castle quake and opened the gate at once.

Spenser proceeds:

"The giant, self-dismayed with that sound,

In haste comes rushing from the inner bower
With staring countenance stern, as one astound,
And staggering steps;

And after him the proud Duessa came.”

"Therewith the giant buckled him to fight,
Inflamed with scornful wrath and high disdain,

And lifting up his dreadful club on high,

Him thought in first encounter to have slain."*

"Then when his dear Duessa heard and saw

The evil stownd [moment] that danger'd her estate,
Unto his aid she suddenly did draw."

Book I, Canto VIII, v. 5-8.

We have not interrupted the narration here to mark the correspondence between Spenser and Bunyan. It will be seen as we go

We have previously given this quotation where it applies quite as well as here.

on to describe Great Heart's attack. No squire, with horn of gold and baldrick gay, had he to announce his approach; no pricking coursers, nor "purple and violet plumes" were there. Great Heart's company was composed of only a few footsore, though faithful and honest-hearted pilgrims. "When Great Heart and his company came to the castle gate, they knocked for entrance with an unusual noise. With that the giant comes to the gate, and Diffidence, his wife," (like Duessa,) "follows."

"Now Giant Despair, because he was a giant, thought no one could overcome him. . . . So he harnessed himself and went out; . . . he came out in iron shoes, with a great club in his hand. . . . Then these six men went up to him to beset him, . . . and Diffidence, the giantess, came up to help him."

...

The Prince and Great Heart were both successful. Doubting Castle was destroyed, and two wretched prisoners released. "In it of pilgrims they found one Mr. Despondency, almost starved to death, and one Mrs. Much-Afraid, his daughter: these two they saved alive." Spenser, in correspondence with Bunyan, tells us of the search for captives, which resulted in finding the adventurous knight, with whom Spenser's story opens, immured in a horrible prison,

"A rueful spectacle of death and ghastly drere-
His bare, thin cheeks for want of better bits,
And empty sides deceivéd of their due,
Could make a stony heart his hap to rue."

And Spenser proceeds to relate how

Book I, Canto VIII, v. 41.

while Bunyan says, "It would have made you wonder to have seen the dead bodies that lay here and there in the castle yard, and how full of dead men's bones the dungeon was." No wonder that the pilgrims were jocund and merry, when such a tower of abomination was leveled.

"Now Christiana," continues the genial old dreamer, "could play upon the viol, and her daughter Mercy upon the lute; so, since they were so merry disposed, she played them a lesson, and Ready-to-Halt would dance. So he took Despondency's daughter, Much-Afraid, by the hand, and to dancing they went in the road. . . . He footed it well; also the girl was to be commended, for she answered the music handsomely." We presume that those of us who are most opposed

to dancing would hardly object to it under such circumstances, and with such a spirit. No ascetic was John Bunyan, with all his serious, earnest, intense views of eternity. His cheerful, loving nature is ever breaking forth in his narrative. We smile as often as we weep, at his artless naiveté and overflowing humor. He is an April day in which "gloom and glory meet together." Did the female sex ever have a nobler compliment given them than his? "I will say again, that when the Saviour was come women rejoiced in him, before either man or angel. I read not that ever man did give unto Christ so much as one groat; but the women followed him, and did minister unto him of their substance. It was a woman that washed his feet with tears, and a woman that anointed his body to the burial. They were women that wept when he was going to the cross, and women that followed him from the cross, and that sat by his sepulcher when he was buried. They were women that were first with him at the resurrection morn, and women that brought tidings first to his disciples that he was risen from the dead. Women, therefore, are highly favored, and show by these things that they are sharers with us in the grace of life." This lump of pure gold has been beaten very thin in some modern verses, without any credit being giving to the author of the sentiment.

Dancing and music in like manner celebrated the victory of Sir Guyon, another of Spenser's many knights-errant :

"All dancing in a row

The comely virgins came, with garlands dight, [dressed,]
As fresh as flowers in meadow green doth grow
When morning dew upon their leaves doth light,
And in their hands sweet timbrels all upheld on hight.

"And them, before the fry of children young,
Their wanton sports, and childish mirth did play,
And to the maidens' sounding timbrels sung,
In well attuned notes, a joyous lay,

And made delightful music all the way."

Book I, Canto XII, v. 7.

We had begun this article before we saw Mr. Macaulay's very positive assertion that John Bunyan had never read The Faerie Queen, and that "a detailed examination" would convince any one of the fact. A detailed examination has confirmed our opinion to the contrary, but we leave it to others to decide whether the Dreamer had ever read the verses of the Poet.

ART. IV. THE MORAL VALUE OF A MATERIAL WORLD.

MAN is a spirit linked to a clod. His soul is like angels, like God himself, without weight or magnitude. In this part of his nature all his real power resides. Here lies the ability to perceive, remember, and reason, to will and to do, to enjoy happiness or suffer pain. Here holiness dwells, or sin reigns. The soul is the man. Of itself the body is a mass of inert, passive matter, deriving importance only from its connection with the unseen spirit. It has long been the fashion to speak of the body with contempt, and to bewail the degradation of the spirit in being compelled to drag this earthly clog after it in all its motions. The philosophers of one school declared matter essentially bad, unmanageable even by the power of God, an eternal obstacle in the path of Divine goodness, and the source of all evil. Even divines spoke of the body as the enemy of the soul, blinding its eyes, weighing upon its wings, and dragging it down from its heavenward flight. Hence arose the hermit seclusions of one set of dreamers, and the multiplied fasts and flagellations of others. It was deemed a virtue to lash and starve the body, and he was considered the nearest heaven, whose bones bore the least of earth.

But is this a correct view of the case? Is the union of the soul with matter an unmixed evil? Is the body a mere board tied before the eyes, or a weight bound to the neck of an unruly beast? Has this strange marriage of the material and the immaterial no beauty, no philosophy? Is it the creation of the Divine will, but not the Divine wisdom? What bearing has it upon human life and probation? It pleased God, ages, it may be, before the creation of man, to call into existence cherubim and seraphim, and "an innumer able company of angels." These, so far as the record informs us, were created spirits, untrammeled with material bodies. They nevertheless had a law and a probation suited to their nature, and some of them "kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation," and are now "reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day." Others have kept their first estate, and now form the angelic "host of God." They are the thousand thousands" that minister unto the Ancient of days, the "ten thousand times ten thousand" that stand before the throne of flame. But if a spirit can live, move, and have its being, be holy or unholy, undergo a probation and receive its reward, without a material body, or a material world, why has our Creator, in forming

man, departed from former modes? It is often said that God's works are varied and multiform; but does variation ever occur without reason? We would not take the ground, that our Creator has made us of spirit and matter both, because other modes of creation have proved of doubtful wisdom, or have been attended with unforeseen disasters. It is safe, however, for us to believe that, whatever means God may have employed to secure equivalent results in other cases, the union of the spiritual and the material in the formation of man, is a wise, benevolent, and beautiful element of his probationary life; and that, instead of bewailing our degradation, in being made dwellers upon the earth, we should rejoice, saying with the Psalmist," O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches."

But what are the peculiarities incident to life and probation in a material world, as distinguished from the probationary existence of spirits, unconnected with matter? It is evident that to attempt to investigate these things is to deal with shadows more than with substance, and to indulge in conjecture, rather than arrive at demonstration. Still, conjecture is sometimes allowable, even in Divine things; and if, in the present case, we attribute considerable importance to material things, it will be kept in mind that we value them only because God sees fit by their means to effect results which, it may be, Infinite Wisdom could have reached in a thousand other ways. God has adopted this mode, and though there may be many others, the wisdom and the beauty of this are none the less admirable. The question before us is, How is the probationary life of a human spirit affected by its being clothed in a material body, and placed in a material world?

1. The result which first strikes the mind is location, or confinement to a place. We learn from Revelation that spirits possess the power of motion. Of angels it is said that they are "all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation." Angels hastened Lot from the doomed city in which he dwelt, delivered Elisha from his enemies, and bore Lazarus to Abraham's bosom. At the day of judgment angels shall be sent forth to "gather together the elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." Devils, too, can go from place to place. In the book of Job, Satan is addressed thus: "Whence comest thou?" He replies: "From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." And at the end of the colloquy, "Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord." Angels and devils, then, not only appear and disappear, but come and go. They traverse space, but how, we know not; none of the laws pertaining to the motions