[Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson]@TWC D-Link book
Lay Morals

CHAPTER III--BAGSTER'S 'PILGRIM'S PROGRESS'
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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 by the Mouth of Hell; the horned shade that comes behind him whispering blasphemies; the daylight breaking through that rent cave-mouth of the mountains and falling chill adown the haunted tunnel; Christian's further progress along the causeway, between the two black pools, where, at every yard or two, a gin, a pitfall, or a snare awaits the passer-by--loathsome white devilkins harbouring close under the bank to work the springes, Christian himself pausing and pricking with his sword's point at the nearest noose, and pale discomfortable mountains rising on the farther side; or yet again, the two ill-favoured ones that beset the first of Christian's journey, with the frog-like structure of the skull, the frog-like limberness of limbs--crafty, slippery, lustful-looking devils, drawn always in outline as though possessed of a dim, infernal luminosity.
Horrid fellows are they, one and all; horrid fellows and horrific scenes.
In another spirit that Good-Conscience 'to whom Mr.Honest had spoken in his lifetime,' a cowled, grey, awful figure, one hand pointing to the heavenly shore, realises, I will not say all, but some at least of the strange impressiveness of Bunyan's words.

It is no easy nor pleasant thing to speak in one's lifetime with Good-Conscience; he is an austere, unearthly friend, whom maybe Torquemada knew; and the folds of his raiment are not merely claustral, but have something of the horror of the pall.


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