Vanity Fair

Bunyan is tough to imitate. I was told that he wrote the best and the second-best allegories in the English language (The Holy War), and his images enriched English literature amazingly.

Nevertheless I think Hawthorne did a worth job re-describing Vanity Fair in "The Celestial Railroad". A snippet:

There was a sort of stock or scrip, called Conscience, which seemed to be in great demand, and would purchase almost anything. Indeed, few rich commodities were to be obtained without paying a heavy sum in this particular stock, and a man's business was seldom very lucrative unless he knew precisely when and how to throw his hoard of conscience into the market. Yet as this stock was the only thing of permanent value, whoever parted with it was sure to find himself a loser in the long run.