The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-14 00:00:00

CASSELL'S ILLUSTRATED BUNYAN.

Me Pilgrims Progress. Illustrated by H. C.
Selous and M. P. Privlo. No. 1. Cassell, Petter,
and Glslpin.

Another monument to the fame of John Bunyan,
the Tinker, is here begun to be set up. It gives pro-
mise of becoming perhaps the noblest yet raised in
his honour. IC is nothing less than the issue, in
penny weekly numbers, of a wonderful illustrated
edition of his masterpiece. A w.inderful illustrated
edition, we repeat, deliberately end advisedly. For
the embellishments comprised in each penny num.
ber are drawn and engraved with a grace
and a delicacy that really demand the appli.
cation to the serial (ot which they are
but the accessories) of that otherwise extravagant
adjective. Speaking of the le.terPrees, Lord
Macaulay has said, in one of his most celebrated
cr.ticisms, "This is the highest miracle of genius,
that the imaginations of one mind should become

the personal recollections of another; and this
miracle the Tinker has wrought. There Is no
place, no turnstile,
acquainted." Are
not these high words of praiee
awsictehn
wt ,
hni oc
hd ewcel i va irteyn,
onto
preersfteientgi y
--words pronounced
jbuys t
it
flh
eed of modern times—
iiite7rary critic
E tell one can answer, from
his own personal remembrance. And here, in
this penny initial number of the new
popular edition :of the most famous prose
gtoretahteestful
allegory in our language (as Spencer's 41 Fairy
Queen" is the most renowned in our poetic
literature) here, once more we begin with Christian,
pack on back and staff in hand, the immemorial
Pilgrimage. Above the initial letter, on page one,
over against Chepter the First " The Den and the
Dreamer"—lies half recumbent—his wallet slung
by his side, his elbow a resting on the book—The
Book—his bands clasp ,ed—his eyes looking up to the
starry crown of glory promised to him in the skies
—the Pilgrim, Christian ! A little further on

"Evangelist Direct/ 3 Christian to the Wicket
Gdte"—that being ti ne subject of the first half page
illustration. The first full-page engraving is
exactly
or
fepDrrs oo"etrnotointig._
" Christian setting
o
running ! away
from taunts and j eers! away from entreaties and
supplications ! It we could but obliterate here and
u out from otphpeos Cityit e .
there from the wondrous allegory a word or
two of fiercest bi gotry and most narrow-minded
intolerance, word a blurted out in the fervour of
his Puritanical z cal by the otherwise all-but in-
spired Tinker-All egorist, we should exult, without
one qualm, over I .his further popularisation of his
msrvellous.y imp ressive narrative. Ad it is—being
a Puritan—the T ioker speaks the Truth but frag-
mentarily. But., As it is, he cries it aloud with
strange enthrall, ing eloqUtlite, that, ever since the
allegory of tile "Pilgrim's Progress" was written,

has fixed the attention and fired the imagination of
generation after generation. With this one, but im-
portant reservation of approval we have spoken of,
attaching simply to the original text, we cannot but
admire the enterprise of the well known publishing
house to which the English public are indebted for
the issue of this singularly cheap and surprisingly
beautiful edition of the Tinker's Dream of the Path
leading up from Earth to Heaven.

STANFORD'S MAP OF THE KINGDOM OF

POLAND.

An admirably distinct and peculiarly well-timed
" Map of the Kingdom of Poland"—as it was ! and
as it may yet be again !—has just now been issued
from the press by Mr. Stanford, of Charing-cross.
It will be heartily welcomed by every earnest stu-
dent of contemporary European History into whose
hands it may fall. For it shows more clearly than
almost any atlas map of the country here delineated,
not only its past and present extent, but the succes•
sive Seizures of its Territory, by Russia, Austria, and
Prussia. Seizures made, some of them, further
back than the first of the three infamous partitions
—1772 being the date of the First Partition-1793
the date of the Second Partition-1795 of the third
and final Partition. The anticipative cessions of
Polish territory being made--one of them as far
back as 1660, namely, that of Esthonia to
Sweden. Another, a larger one, in 1667, to Russia.
A third, in 1721, again to Russia, the latter
cession (being that of the little northern State of
Livonia. And so bit by bit, within a period of
considerably less than two centuries, has Sarmatia
been stealthily at first (in 1660) flagrantly, brutally,
and insolently at last (in 1795) been disintegrated,
and its blood- stained soil divided among its robber
neighbours. Every murdered Pole buried away
artier it, however, by Russia, Austria, or Prussia is
proving now to have been but as dragon's tooth
sown in its soil. One ready ever to leap up
afterwards at the first opportunity, an armed
patriot, eager to fight or die in vindcation
once more of his country's independence! Looking
at this excellent map of Poland, as it was and as it
yet may be again, we can hardly doubt but that it
will be so, that it must he so in the end—Poland
being at heart manifestly resolved to struggle to
the last gasp for its independence, and Europe, the
whole of Europe, saving only the three robber
nations who have shared its spoils amongst them,
sympathising earnestly in that sublime deter.
mination.