distance with a perpetual mist clinging to its base and climbing up its sides, which mist the shepherds say to you rises all the year round off the Slough of Despond, while, beyond that again the heavy smoke of the city of Destruction and the town of Stupidity shuts in the whole horizon.  And then, when you turn your back on all that, in favourable states of the weather you can see here and there the shimmer of that river over which there is no bridge; and, then again, so high above the river that it seems to be a city standing in heaven rather than upon the earth, you will see the high towers and shining palace roofs and broad battlements of the New Jerusalem itself.  The two travellers should have spent the past three days among the sights of the Delectable Mountains; and they would have done so had not the elder traveller misled the younger.  But now that they were set free and fairly on the right road again, the way they had spent the past three days and three nights made the gardens and the orchards and the pastures that ran round the bottom and climbed up the sides of the Delectable Mountains delectable beyond all description to them.

Now, there were on the tops of those mountains certain shepherds feeding their flocks, and they stood by the highway side.  The two travellers therefore went up to the shepherds, and leaning upon their staves (as is common with weary travellers when they stand to talk with any by the way), they asked:  Whose delectable mountains are these? and whose be the sheep that feed upon them?  These mountains, replied the shepherds, are Immanuel’s Land, and they are within sight of the city; the sheep also are His, and He laid down His life for them.  After some more talk like this by the wayside, the shepherds, being pleased with the pilgrims, looked very lovingly upon them and said:  Welcome to the Delectable Mountains.  The shepherds then, whose names were Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere, took them by the hand to lead them to their tents, and made them partake of what was ready at present.  They said, moreover:  We would that you should stay with us a while to be acquainted with us, and yet more to solace yourselves with the cheer of these Delectable Mountains.  Then the travellers told them they were content to stay; and so they went to rest that night because it was now very late.  The four shepherds lived all summer-time in a lodge of tents well up among their sheep, while their wives and families had their homes all the year round in the land of Beulah.  The four men formed a happy fraternity, and they worked among and watched over their Master’s sheep with one united mind.  What one of those shepherds could not so well do in the tent or in the fold or out on the hillside, some of the others better did.  And what one of them could do to any perfection all the others by one consent left that to him to do.  You would have thought that they were made by a perfect miracle to fit into