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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, by Samuel Johnson
+(#2 in our series by Samuel Johnson)
+
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+Title: Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Release Date: September, 1996  [EBook #652]
+[This file was first posted on September 17, 1996]
+[Most recently updated: September 8, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell & Company edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY.
+
+
+
+Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue
+with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will
+perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the
+present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history
+of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
+
+Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty Emperor in whose
+dominions the father of waters begins his course--whose bounty
+pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over the world the
+harvests of Egypt.
+
+According to the custom which has descended from age to age among
+the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private
+palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty,
+till the order of succession should call him to the throne.
+
+The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for
+the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley in
+the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of
+which the summits overhang the middle part.  The only passage by
+which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of
+which it had long been disputed whether it was the work of nature
+or of human industry.  The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a
+thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed
+with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so
+massive that no man, without the help of engines, could open or
+shut them.
+
+From the mountains on every side rivulets descended that filled all
+the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the
+middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every
+fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water.  This lake
+discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark
+cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell with dreadful
+noise from precipice to precipice till it was heard no more.
+
+The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the banks of
+the brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast shook spices
+from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground.
+All animals that bite the grass or browse the shrubs, whether wild
+or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of
+prey by the mountains which confined them.  On one part were flocks
+and herds feeding in the pastures, on another all the beasts of
+chase frisking in the lawns, the sprightly kid was bounding on the
+rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn
+elephant reposing in the shade.  All the diversities of the world
+were brought together, the blessings of nature were collected, and
+its evils extracted and excluded.
+
+The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with all
+the necessaries of life, and all delights and superfluities were
+added at the annual visit which the Emperor paid his children, when
+the iron gate was opened to the sound of music, and during eight
+days every one that resided in the valley was required to propose
+whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up
+the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of time.
+Every desire was immediately granted.  All the artificers of
+pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians
+exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity
+before the princes, in hopes that they should pass their lives in
+blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose
+performance was thought able to add novelty to luxury.  Such was
+the appearance of security and delight which this retirement
+afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might
+be perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed
+were never suffered to return, the effect of longer experience
+could not be known.  Thus every year produced new scenes of
+delight, and new competitors for imprisonment.
+
+The palace stood on an eminence, raised about thirty paces above
+the surface of the lake.  It was divided into many squares or
+courts, built with greater or less magnificence according to the
+rank of those for whom they were designed.  The roofs were turned
+into arches of massive stone, joined by a cement that grew harder
+by time, and the building stood from century to century, deriding
+the solstitial rains and equinoctial hurricanes, without need of
+reparation.
+
+This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none but
+some ancient officers, who successively inherited the secrets of
+the place, was built as if Suspicion herself had dictated the plan.
+To every room there was an open and secret passage; every square
+had a communication with the rest, either from the upper storeys by
+private galleries, or by subterraneous passages from the lower
+apartments.  Many of the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which
+a long race of monarchs had deposited their treasures.  They then
+closed up the opening with marble, which was never to be removed
+but in the utmost exigences of the kingdom, and recorded their
+accumulations in a book, which was itself concealed in a tower, not
+entered but by the Emperor, attended by the prince who stood next
+in succession.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.
+
+
+
+Here the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to know the
+soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were
+skilful to delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can
+enjoy.  They wandered in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the
+fortresses of security.  Every art was practised to make them
+pleased with their own condition.  The sages who instructed them
+told them of nothing but the miseries of public life, and described
+all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where discord was
+always racing, and where man preyed upon man.  To heighten their
+opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained with
+songs, the subject of which was the Happy Valley.  Their appetites
+were excited by frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and
+revelry and merriment were the business of every hour, from the
+dawn of morning to the close of the evening.
+
+These methods were generally successful; few of the princes had
+ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full
+conviction that they had all within their reach that art or nature
+could bestow, and pitied those whom nature had excluded from this
+seat of tranquillity as the sport of chance and the slaves of
+misery.
+
+Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with
+each other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in the
+twenty-sixth year of his age, began to withdraw himself from the
+pastimes and assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and
+silent meditation.  He often sat before tables covered with luxury,
+and forgot to taste the dainties that were placed before him; he
+rose abruptly in the midst of the song, and hastily retired beyond
+the sound of music.  His attendants observed the change, and
+endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure.  He neglected their
+officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent day after day
+on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes
+listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the fish
+playing in the streams, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures
+and mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the
+herbage, and some sleeping among the bushes.  The singularity of
+his humour made him much observed.  One of the sages, in whose
+conversation he had formerly delighted, followed him secretly, in
+hope of discovering the cause of his disquiet.  Rasselas, who knew
+not that any one was near him, having for some time fixed his eyes
+upon the goats that were browsing among the rocks, began to compare
+their condition with his own.
+
+"What," said he, "makes the difference between man and all the rest
+of the animal creation?  Every beast that strays beside me has the
+same corporal necessities with myself:  he is hungry, and crops the
+grass; he is thirsty, and drinks the stream; his thirst and hunger
+are appeased; he is satisfied, and sleeps; he rises again, and is
+hungry; he is again fed, and is at rest.  I am hungry and thirsty,
+like him, but when thirst and hunger cease, I am not at rest.  I
+am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, satisfied
+with fulness.  The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I
+long again to be hungry that I may again quicken the attention.
+The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves,
+where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste
+their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds.  I likewise
+can call the lutist and the singer; but the sounds that pleased me
+yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-
+morrow.  I can discover in me no power of perception which is not
+glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself
+delighted.  Man surely has some latent sense for which this place
+affords no gratification; or he has some desire distinct from
+sense, which must be satisfied before he can be happy."
+
+After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon rising,
+walked towards the palace.  As he passed through the fields, and
+saw the animals around him, "Ye," said he, "are happy, and need not
+envy me that walk thus among you, burdened with myself; nor do I,
+ye gentle beings, envy your felicity; for it is not the felicity of
+man.  I have many distresses from which you are free; I fear pain
+when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and
+sometimes start at evils anticipated:  surely the equity of
+Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar
+enjoyments."
+
+With observations like these the Prince amused himself as he
+returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look
+that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own
+perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life
+from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt and the
+eloquence with which he bewailed them.  He mingled cheerfully in
+the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find that his
+heart was lightened.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHING.
+
+
+
+On the next day, his old instructor, imagining that he had now made
+himself acquainted with his disease of mind, was in hope of curing
+it by counsel, and officiously sought an opportunity of conference,
+which the Prince, having long considered him as one whose
+intellects were exhausted, was not very willing to afford.  "Why,"
+said he, "does this man thus intrude upon me?  Shall I never be
+suffered to forget these lectures, which pleased only while they
+were new, and to become new again must be forgotten?"  He then
+walked into the wood, and composed himself to his usual
+meditations; when, before his thoughts had taken any settled form,
+he perceived his pursuer at his side, and was at first prompted by
+his impatience to go hastily away; but being unwilling to offend a
+man whom he had once reverenced and still loved, he invited him to
+sit down with him on the bank.
+
+The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the change which had
+been lately observed in the Prince, and to inquire why he so often
+retired from the pleasures of the palace to loneliness and silence.
+"I fly from pleasure," said the Prince, "because pleasure has
+ceased to please:  I am lonely because I am miserable, and am
+unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."
+"You, sir," said the sage, "are the first who has complained of
+misery in the Happy Valley.  I hope to convince you that your
+complaints have no real cause.  You are here in full possession of
+all the Emperor of Abyssinia can bestow; here is neither labour to
+be endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that labour or
+danger can procure or purchase.  Look round and tell me which of
+your wants is without supply:  if you want nothing, how are you
+unhappy?"
+
+"That I want nothing," said the Prince, "or that I know not what I
+want, is the cause of my complaint:  if I had any known want, I
+should have a certain wish; that wish would excite endeavour, and I
+should not then repine to see the sun move so slowly towards the
+western mountains, or to lament when the day breaks, and sleep will
+no longer hide me from myself.  When I see the kids and the lambs
+chasing one another, I fancy that I should be happy if I had
+something to pursue.  But, possessing all that I can want, I find
+one day and one hour exactly like another, except that the latter
+is still more tedious than the former.  Let your experience inform
+me how the day may now seem as short as in my childhood, while
+nature was yet fresh, and every moment showed me what I never had
+observed before.  I have already enjoyed too much:  give me
+something to desire."  The old man was surprised at this new
+species of affliction, and knew not what to reply, yet was
+unwilling to be silent.  "Sir," said he, "if you had seen the
+miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present
+state."  "Now," said the Prince, "you have given me something to
+desire.  I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the
+sight of them is necessary to happiness."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--THE PRINCE CONTINUES TO GRIEVE AND MUSE.
+
+
+
+At this time the sound of music proclaimed the hour of repast, and
+the conversation was concluded.  The old man went away sufficiently
+discontented to find that his reasonings had produced the only
+conclusion which they were intended to prevent.  But in the decline
+of life, shame and grief are of short duration:  whether it be that
+we bear easily what we have borne long; or that, finding ourselves
+in age less regarded, we less regard others; or that we look with
+slight regard upon afflictions to which we know that the hand of
+death is about to put an end.
+
+The Prince, whose views were extended to a wider space, could not
+speedily quiet his emotions.  He had been before terrified at the
+length of life which nature promised him, because he considered
+that in a long time much must be endured:  he now rejoiced in his
+youth, because in many years much might be done.  The first beam of
+hope that had been ever darted into his mind rekindled youth in his
+cheeks, and doubled the lustre of his eyes.  He was fired with the
+desire of doing something, though he knew not yet, with
+distinctness, either end or means.  He was now no longer gloomy and
+unsocial; but considering himself as master of a secret stock of
+happiness, which he could only enjoy by concealing it, he affected
+to be busy in all the schemes of diversion, and endeavoured to make
+others pleased with the state of which he himself was weary.  But
+pleasures can never be so multiplied or continued as not to leave
+much of life unemployed; there were many hours, both of the night
+and day, which he could spend without suspicion in solitary
+thought.  The load of life was much lightened; he went eagerly into
+the assemblies, because he supposed the frequency of his presence
+necessary to the success of his purposes; he retired gladly to
+privacy, because he had now a subject of thought.  His chief
+amusement was to picture to himself that world which he had never
+seen, to place himself in various conditions, to be entangled in
+imaginary difficulties, and to be engaged in wild adventures; but,
+his benevolence always terminated his projects in the relief of
+distress, the detection of fraud, the defeat of oppression, and the
+diffusion of happiness.
+
+Thus passed twenty months of the life of Rasselas.  He busied
+himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his real
+solitude; and amidst hourly preparations for the various incidents
+of human affairs, neglected to consider by what means he should
+mingle with mankind.
+
+One day, as he was sitting on a bank, he feigned to himself an
+orphan virgin robbed of her little portion by a treacherous lover,
+and crying after him for restitution.  So strongly was the image
+impressed upon his mind that he started up in the maid's defence,
+and ran forward to seize the plunderer with all the eagerness of
+real pursuit.  Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.
+Rasselas could not catch the fugitive with his utmost efforts; but,
+resolving to weary by perseverance him whom he could not surpass in
+speed, he pressed on till the foot of the mountain stopped his
+course.
+
+Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own useless
+impetuosity.  Then raising his eyes to the mountain, "This," said
+he, "is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of
+pleasure and the exercise of virtue.  How long is it that my hopes
+and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of my life, which yet I
+never have attempted to surmount?"
+
+Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse, and remembered
+that since he first resolved to escape from his confinement, the
+sun had passed twice over him in his annual course.  He now felt a
+degree of regret with which he had never been before acquainted.
+He considered how much might have been done in the time which had
+passed, and left nothing real behind it.  He compared twenty months
+with the life of man.  "In life," said he, "is not to be counted
+the ignorance of infancy or imbecility of age.  We are long before
+we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power of acting.
+The true period of human existence may be reasonably estimated at
+forty years, of which I have mused away the four-and-twentieth
+part.  What I have lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed
+it; but of twenty months to come, who can assure me?"
+
+The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was
+long before he could be reconciled to himself.  "The rest of my
+time," said he, "has been lost by the crime or folly of my
+ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my country; I remember it
+with disgust, yet without remorse:  but the months that have passed
+since new light darted into my soul, since I formed a scheme of
+reasonable felicity, have been squandered by my own fault.  I have
+lost that which can never be restored; I have seen the sun rise and
+set for twenty months, an idle gazer on the light of heaven; in
+this time the birds have left the nest of their mother, and
+committed themselves to the woods and to the skies; the kid has
+forsaken the teat, and learned by degrees to climb the rocks in
+quest of independent sustenance.  I only have made no advances, but
+am still helpless and ignorant.  The moon, by more than twenty
+changes, admonished me of the flux of life; the stream that rolled
+before my feet upbraided my inactivity.  I sat feasting on
+intellectual luxury, regardless alike of the examples of the earth
+and the instructions of the planets.  Twenty months are passed:
+who shall restore them?"
+
+These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he passed four
+months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, and was
+awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid, who had
+broken a porcelain cup, remark that what cannot be repaired is not
+to be regretted.
+
+This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself that he had not
+discovered it--having not known, or not considered, how many useful
+hints are obtained by chance, and how often the mind, hurried by
+her own ardour to distant views, neglects the truths that lie open
+before her.  He for a few hours regretted his regret, and from that
+time bent his whole mind upon the means of escaping from the Valley
+of Happiness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--THE PRINCE MEDITATES HIS ESCAPE.
+
+
+
+He now found that it would be very difficult to effect that which
+it was very easy to suppose effected.  When he looked round about
+him, he saw himself confined by the bars of nature, which had never
+yet been broken, and by the gate through which none that had once
+passed it were ever able to return.  He was now impatient as an
+eagle in a grate.  He passed week after week in clambering the
+mountains to see if there was any aperture which the bushes might
+conceal, but found all the summits inaccessible by their
+prominence.  The iron gate he despaired to open for it was not only
+secured with all the power of art, but was always watched by
+successive sentinels, and was, by its position, exposed to the
+perpetual observation of all the inhabitants.
+
+He then examined the cavern through which the waters of the lake
+were discharged; and, looking down at a time when the sun shone
+strongly upon its mouth, he discovered it to be full of broken
+rocks, which, though they permitted the stream to flow through many
+narrow passages, would stop any body of solid bulk.  He returned
+discouraged and dejected; but having now known the blessing of
+hope, resolved never to despair.
+
+In these fruitless researches he spent ten months.  The time,
+however, passed cheerfully away--in the morning he rose with new
+hope; in the evening applauded his own diligence; and in the night
+slept soundly after his fatigue.  He met a thousand amusements,
+which beguiled his labour and diversified his thoughts.  He
+discerned the various instincts of animals and properties of
+plants, and found the place replete with wonders, of which he
+proposed to solace himself with the contemplation if he should
+never be able to accomplish his flight--rejoicing that his
+endeavours, though yet unsuccessful, had supplied him with a source
+of inexhaustible inquiry.  But his original curiosity was not yet
+abated; he resolved to obtain some knowledge of the ways of men.
+His wish still continued, but his hope grew less.  He ceased to
+survey any longer the walls of his prison, and spared to search by
+new toils for interstices which he knew could not be found, yet
+determined to keep his design always in view, and lay hold on any
+expedient that time should offer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--A DISSERTATION ON THE ART OF FLYING.
+
+
+
+Among the artists that had been allured into the Happy Valley, to
+labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a
+man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanic powers, who had
+contrived many engines both of use and recreation.  By a wheel
+which the stream turned he forced the water into a tower, whence it
+was distributed to all the apartments of the palace.  He erected a
+pavilion in the garden, around which he kept the air always cool by
+artificial showers.  One of the groves, appropriated to the ladies,
+was ventilated by fans, to which the rivulets that ran through it
+gave a constant motion; and instruments of soft music were played
+at proper distances, of which some played by the impulse of the
+wind, and some by the power of the stream.
+
+This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas who was pleased with
+every kind of knowledge, imagining that the time would come when
+all his acquisitions should be of use to him in the open world.  He
+came one day to amuse himself in his usual manner, and found the
+master busy in building a sailing chariot.  He saw that the design
+was practicable upon a level surface, and with expressions of great
+esteem solicited its completion.  The workman was pleased to find
+himself so much regarded by the Prince, and resolved to gain yet
+higher honours.  "Sir," said he, "you have seen but a small part of
+what the mechanic sciences can perform.  I have been long of
+opinion that, instead of the tardy conveyance of ships and
+chariots, man might use the swifter migration of wings, that the
+fields of air are open to knowledge, and that only ignorance and
+idleness need crawl upon the ground."
+
+This hint rekindled the Prince's desire of passing the mountains.
+Having seen what the mechanist had already performed, he was
+willing to fancy that he could do more, yet resolved to inquire
+further before he suffered hope to afflict him by disappointment.
+"I am afraid," said he to the artist, "that your imagination
+prevails over your skill, and that you now tell me rather what you
+wish than what you know.  Every animal has his element assigned
+him; the birds have the air, and man and beasts the earth."  "So,"
+replied the mechanist, "fishes have the water, in which yet beasts
+can swim by nature and man by art.  He that can swim needs not
+despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is
+to swim in a subtler.  We are only to proportion our power of
+resistance to the different density of matter through which we are
+to pass.  You will be necessarily up-borne by the air if you can
+renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the
+pressure."
+
+"But the exercise of swimming," said the Prince, "is very
+laborious; the strongest limbs are soon wearied.  I am afraid the
+act of flying will be yet more violent; and wings will be of no
+great use unless we can fly further than we can swim."
+
+"The labour of rising from the ground," said the artist, "will be
+great, as we see it in the heavier domestic fowls; but as we mount
+higher the earth's attraction and the body's gravity will be
+gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at a region where the
+man shall float in the air without any tendency to fall; no care
+will then be necessary but to move forward, which the gentlest
+impulse will effect.  You, sir, whose curiosity is so extensive,
+will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished
+with wings and hovering in the sky, would see the earth and all its
+inhabitants rolling beneath him, and presenting to him
+successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the
+same parallel.  How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the
+moving scene of land and ocean, cities and deserts; to survey with
+equal security the marts of trade and the fields of battle;
+mountains infested by barbarians, and fruitful regions gladdened by
+plenty and lulled by peace.  How easily shall we then trace the
+Nile through all his passages, pass over to distant regions, and
+examine the face of nature from one extremity of the earth to the
+other."
+
+"All this," said the Prince, "is much to be desired, but I am
+afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these regions of
+speculation and tranquillity.  I have been told that respiration is
+difficult upon lofty mountains, yet from these precipices, though
+so high as to produce great tenuity of air, it is very easy to
+fall; therefore I suspect that from any height where life can be
+supported, there may be danger of too quick descent."
+
+"Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be attempted if all
+possible objections must be first overcome.  If you will favour my
+project, I will try the first flight at my own hazard.  I have
+considered the structure of all volant animals, and find the
+folding continuity of the bat's wings most easily accommodated to
+the human form.  Upon this model I shall begin my task to-morrow,
+and in a year expect to tower into the air beyond the malice and
+pursuit of man.  But I will work only on this condition, that the
+art shall not be divulged, and that you shall not require me to
+make wings for any but ourselves."
+
+"Why," said Rasselas, "should you envy others so great an
+advantage?  All skill ought to be exerted for universal good; every
+man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the kindness that
+he has received."
+
+"If men were all virtuous," returned the artist, "I should with
+great alacrity teach them to fly.  But what would be the security
+of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky?
+Against an army sailing through the clouds neither walls,
+mountains, nor seas could afford security.  A flight of northern
+savages might hover in the wind and light with irresistible
+violence upon the capital of a fruitful reason.  Even this valley,
+the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated
+by the sudden descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on
+the coast of the southern sea!"
+
+The Prince promised secrecy, and waited for the performance, not
+wholly hopeless of success.  He visited the work from time to time,
+observed its progress, and remarked many ingenious contrivances to
+facilitate motion and unite levity with strength.  The artist was
+every day more certain that he should leave vultures and eagles
+behind him, and the contagion of his confidence seized upon the
+Prince.  In a year the wings were finished; and on a morning
+appointed the maker appeared, furnished for flight, on a little
+promontory; he waved his pinions awhile to gather air, then leaped
+from his stand, and in an instant dropped into the lake.  His
+wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained him in the water;
+and the Prince drew him to land half dead with terror and vexation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII-- THE PRINCE FINDS A MAN OF LEARNING.
+
+
+
+The Prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, having suffered
+himself to hope for a happier event only because he had no other
+means of escape in view.  He still persisted in his design to leave
+the Happy Valley by the first opportunity.
+
+His imagination was now at a stand; he had no prospect of entering
+into the world, and, notwithstanding all his endeavours to support
+himself, discontent by degrees preyed upon him, and he began again
+to lose his thoughts in sadness when the rainy season, which in
+these countries is periodical, made it inconvenient to wander in
+the woods.
+
+The rain continued longer and with more violence than had ever been
+known; the clouds broke on the surrounding mountains, and the
+torrents streamed into the plain on every side, till the cavern was
+too narrow to discharge the water.  The lake overflowed its banks,
+and all the level of the valley was covered with the inundation.
+The eminence on which the palace was built, and some other spots of
+rising ground, were all that the eye could now discover.  The herds
+and flocks left the pasture, and both the wild beasts and the tame
+retreated to the mountains.
+
+This inundation confined all the princes to domestic amusements,
+and the attention of Rasselas was particularly seized by a poem
+(which Imlac rehearsed) upon the various conditions of humanity.
+He commanded the poet to attend him in his apartment, and recite
+his verses a second time; then entering into familiar talk, he
+thought himself happy in having found a man who knew the world so
+well, and could so skilfully paint the scenes of life.  He asked a
+thousand questions about things to which, though common to all
+other mortals, his confinement from childhood had kept him a
+stranger.  The poet pitied his ignorance, and loved his curiosity,
+and entertained him from day to day with novelty and instruction so
+that the Prince regretted the necessity of sleep, and longed till
+the morning should renew his pleasure.
+
+As they were sitting together, the Prince commanded Imlac to relate
+his history, and to tell by what accident he was forced, or by what
+motive induced, to close his life in the Happy Valley.  As he was
+going to begin his narrative, Rasselas was called to a concert, and
+obliged to restrain his curiosity till the evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--THE HISTORY OF IMLAC.
+
+
+
+The close of the day is, in the regions of the torrid zone, the
+only season of diversion and entertainment, and it was therefore
+midnight before the music ceased and the princesses retired.
+Rasselas then called for his companion, and required him to begin
+the story of his life.
+
+"Sir," said Imlac, "my history will not be long:  the life that is
+devoted to knowledge passes silently away, and is very little
+diversified by events.  To talk in public, to think in solitude, to
+read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business
+of a scholar.  He wanders about the world without pomp or terror,
+and is neither known nor valued but by men like himself.
+
+"I was born in the kingdom of Goiama, at no great distance from the
+fountain of the Nile.  My father was a wealthy merchant, who traded
+between the inland countries of Africa and the ports of the Red
+Sea.  He was honest, frugal, and diligent, but of mean sentiments
+and narrow comprehension; he desired only to be rich, and to
+conceal his riches, lest he should be spoiled by the governors of
+the province."
+
+"Surely," said the Prince, "my father must be negligent of his
+charge if any man in his dominions dares take that which belongs to
+another.  Does he not know that kings are accountable for injustice
+permitted as well as done?  If I were Emperor, not the meanest of
+my subjects should he oppressed with impunity.  My blood boils when
+I am told that a merchant durst not enjoy his honest gains for fear
+of losing them by the rapacity of power.  Name the governor who
+robbed the people that I may declare his crimes to the Emperor!"
+
+"Sir," said Imlac, "your ardour is the natural effect of virtue
+animated by youth.  The time will come when you will acquit your
+father, and perhaps hear with less impatience of the governor.
+Oppression is, in the Abyssinian dominions, neither frequent nor
+tolerated; but no form of government has been yet discovered by
+which cruelty can be wholly prevented.  Subordination supposes
+power on one part and subjection on the other; and if power be in
+the hands of men it will sometimes be abused.  The vigilance of the
+supreme magistrate may do much, but much will still remain undone.
+He can never know all the crimes that are committed, and can seldom
+punish all that he knows."
+
+"This," said the Prince, "I do not understand; but I had rather
+hear thee than dispute.  Continue thy narration."
+
+"My father," proceeded Imlac, "originally intended that I should
+have no other education than such as might qualify me for commerce;
+and discovering in me great strength of memory and quickness of
+apprehension, often declared his hope that I should be some time
+the richest man in Abyssinia."
+
+"Why," said the Prince, "did thy father desire the increase of his
+wealth when it was already greater than he durst discover or enjoy?
+I am unwilling to doubt thy veracity, yet inconsistencies cannot
+both be true."
+
+"Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right; but,
+imputed to man, they may both be true.  Yet diversity is not
+inconsistency.  My father might expect a time of greater security.
+However, some desire is necessary to keep life in motion; and he
+whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy."
+
+"This," said the Prince, "I can in some measure conceive.  I repent
+that I interrupted thee."
+
+"With this hope," proceeded Imlac, "he sent me to school.  But when
+I had once found the delight of knowledge, and felt the pleasure of
+intelligence and the pride of invention, I began silently to
+despise riches, and determined to disappoint the purposes of my
+father, whose grossness of conception raised my pity.  I was twenty
+years old before his tenderness would expose me to the fatigue of
+travel; in which time I had been instructed, by successive masters,
+in all the literature of my native country.  As every hour taught
+me something new, I lived in a continual course of gratification;
+but as I advanced towards manhood, I lost much of the reverence
+with which I had been used to look on my instructors; because when
+the lessons were ended I did not find them wiser or better than
+common men.
+
+"At length my father resolved to initiate me in commerce; and,
+opening one of his subterranean treasuries, counted out ten
+thousand pieces of gold.  'This, young man,' said he, 'is the stock
+with which you must negotiate.  I began with less than a fifth
+part, and you see how diligence and parsimony have increased it.
+This is your own, to waste or improve.  If you squander it by
+negligence or caprice, you must wait for my death before you will
+be rich; if in four years you double your stock, we will
+thenceforward let subordination cease, and live together as friends
+and partners, for he shall be always equal with me who is equally
+skilled in the art of growing rich.'
+
+"We laid out our money upon camels, concealed in bales of cheap
+goods, and travelled to the shore of the Red Sea.  When I cast my
+eye on the expanse of waters, my heart bounded like that of a
+prisoner escaped.  I felt an inextinguishable curiosity kindle in
+my mind, and resolved to snatch this opportunity of seeing the
+manners of other nations, and of learning sciences unknown in
+Abyssinia.
+
+"I remembered that my father had obliged me to the improvement of
+my stock, not by a promise, which I ought not to violate, but by a
+penalty, which I was at liberty to incur; and therefore determined
+to gratify my predominant desire, and, by drinking at the fountain
+of knowledge, to quench the thirst of curiosity.
+
+"As I was supposed to trade without connection with my father, it
+was easy for me to become acquainted with the master of a ship, and
+procure a passage to some other country.  I had no motives of
+choice to regulate my voyage.  It was sufficient for me that,
+wherever I wandered, I should see a country which I had not seen
+before.  I therefore entered a ship bound for Surat, having left a
+letter for my father declaring my intention."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--THE HISTORY OF IMLAC (continued).
+
+
+
+"When I first entered upon the world of waters, and lost sight of
+land, I looked round about me in pleasing terror, and thinking my
+soul enlarged by the boundless prospect, imagined that I could gaze
+around me for ever without satiety; but in a short time I grew
+weary of looking on barren uniformity, where I could only see again
+what I had already seen.  I then descended into the ship, and
+doubted for awhile whether all my future pleasures would not end,
+like this, in disgust and disappointment.  'Yet surely,' said I,
+'the ocean and the land are very different.  The only variety of
+water is rest and motion.  But the earth has mountains and valleys,
+deserts and cities; it is inhabited by men of different customs and
+contrary opinions; and I may hope to find variety in life, though I
+should miss it in nature.'
+
+"With this thought I quieted my mind, and amused myself during the
+voyage, sometimes by learning from the sailors the art of
+navigation, which I have never practised, and sometimes by forming
+schemes for my conduct in different situations, in not one of which
+I have been ever placed.
+
+"I was almost weary of my naval amusements when we safely landed at
+Surat.  I secured my money and, purchasing some commodities for
+show, joined myself to a caravan that was passing into the inland
+country.  My companions, for some reason or other, conjecturing
+that I was rich, and, by my inquiries and admiration, finding that
+I was ignorant, considered me as a novice whom they had a right to
+cheat, and who was to learn, at the usual expense, the art of
+fraud.  They exposed me to the theft of servants and the exaction
+of officers, and saw me plundered upon false pretences, without any
+advantage to themselves but that of rejoicing in the superiority of
+their own knowledge."
+
+"Stop a moment," said the Prince; "is there such depravity in man
+as that he should injure another without benefit to himself?  I can
+easily conceive that all are pleased with superiority; but your
+ignorance was merely accidental, which, being neither your crime
+nor your folly, could afford them no reason to applaud themselves;
+and the knowledge which they had, and which you wanted, they might
+as effectually have shown by warning as betraying you."
+
+"Pride," said Imlac, "is seldom delicate; it will please itself
+with very mean advantages, and envy feels not its own happiness but
+when it may be compared with the misery of others.  They were my
+enemies because they grieved to think me rich, and my oppressors
+because they delighted to find me weak."
+
+"Proceed," said the Prince; "I doubt not of the facts which you
+relate, but imagine that you impute them to mistaken motives."
+
+"In this company," said Imlac, "I arrived at Agra, the capital of
+Hindostan, the city in which the Great Mogul commonly resides.  I
+applied myself to the language of the country, and in a few months
+was able to converse with the learned men; some of whom I found
+morose and reserved, and others easy and communicative; some were
+unwilling to teach another what they had with difficulty learned
+themselves; and some showed that the end of their studies was to
+gain the dignity of instructing.
+
+"To the tutor of the young princes I recommended myself so much
+that I was presented to the Emperor as a man of uncommon knowledge.
+The Emperor asked me many questions concerning my country and my
+travels, and though I cannot now recollect anything that he uttered
+above the power of a common man, he dismissed me astonished at his
+wisdom and enamoured of his goodness.
+
+"My credit was now so high that the merchants with whom I had
+travelled applied to me for recommendations to the ladies of the
+Court.  I was surprised at their confidence of solicitation and
+greatly reproached them with their practices on the road.  They
+heard me with cold indifference, and showed no tokens of shame or
+sorrow.
+
+"They then urged their request with the offer of a bribe, but what
+I would not do for kindness I would not do for money, and refused
+them, not because they had injured me, but because I would not
+enable them to injure others; for I knew they would have made use
+of my credit to cheat those who should buy their wares.
+
+"Having resided at Agra till there was no more to be learned, I
+travelled into Persia, where I saw many remains of ancient
+magnificence and observed many new accommodations of life.  The
+Persians are a nation eminently social, and their assemblies
+afforded me daily opportunities of remarking characters and
+manners, and of tracing human nature through all its variations.
+
+"From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation pastoral
+and warlike, who lived without any settled habitation, whose wealth
+is their flocks and herds, and who have carried on through ages an
+hereditary war with mankind, though they neither covet nor envy
+their possessions."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--IMLAC'S HISTORY (continued)--A DISSERTATION UPON POETRY.
+
+
+
+"Wherever I went I found that poetry was considered as the highest
+learning, and regarded with a veneration somewhat approaching to
+that which man would pay to angelic nature.  And yet it fills me
+with wonder that in almost all countries the most ancient poets are
+considered as the best; whether it be that every other kind of
+knowledge is an acquisition greatly attained, and poetry is a gift
+conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation
+surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent
+which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province
+of poetry is to describe nature and passion, which are always the
+same, the first writers took possession of the most striking
+objects for description and the most probable occurrences for
+fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them but
+transcription of the same events and new combinations of the same
+images.  Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the
+early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of
+art; that the first excel in strength and invention, and the latter
+in elegance and refinement.
+
+"I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fraternity.  I
+read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, and was able to repeat by
+memory the volumes that are suspended in the mosque of Mecca.  But
+I soon found that no man was ever great by imitations.  My desire
+of excellence impelled me to transfer my attention to nature and to
+life.  Nature was to be my subject, and men to be my auditors.  I
+could never describe what I had not seen.  I could not hope to move
+those with delight or terror whose interests and opinions I did not
+understand.
+
+Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw everything with a new
+purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified; no kind of
+knowledge was to be overlooked.  I ranged mountains and deserts for
+images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of
+the forest and flower of the valley.  I observed with equal care
+the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace.  Sometimes I
+wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the
+changes of the summer clouds.  To a poet nothing can be useless.
+Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be familiar to
+his imagination; he must be conversant with all that is awfully
+vast or elegantly little.  The plants of the garden, the animals of
+the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must
+all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety; for every
+idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or
+religious truth, and he who knows most will have most power of
+diversifying his scenes and of gratifying his reader with remote
+allusions and unexpected instruction.
+
+"All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to study,
+and every country which I have surveyed has contributed something
+to my poetical powers."
+
+"In so wide a survey," said the Prince, "you must surely have left
+much unobserved.  I have lived till now within the circuit of the
+mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of
+something which I had never beheld before, or never heeded."
+
+"This business of a poet," said Imlac, "is to examine, not the
+individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large
+appearances.  He does not number the streaks of the tulip, or
+describe the different shades of the verdure of the forest.  He is
+to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking
+features as recall the original to every mind, and must neglect the
+minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked and another
+have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike obvious
+to vigilance and carelessness.
+
+"But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he
+must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life.  His
+character requires that he estimate the happiness and misery of
+every condition, observe the power of all the passions in all their
+combinations, and trace the changes of the human mind, as they are
+modified by various institutions and accidental influences of
+climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the
+despondence of decrepitude.  He must divest himself of the
+prejudices of his age and country; he must consider right and wrong
+in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present
+laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths,
+which will always be the same.  He must, therefore, content himself
+with the slow progress of his name, contemn the praise of his own
+time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity.  He must
+write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind,
+and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of
+future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
+
+"His labour is not yet at an end.  He must know many languages and
+many sciences, and, that his style may be worthy of his thoughts,
+must by incessant practice familiarise to himself every delicacy of
+speech and grace of harmony."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--IMLAC'S NARRATIVE (continued)--A HINT OF PILGRIMAGE.
+
+
+
+Imlac now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to
+aggrandise his own profession, when then Prince cried out:
+"Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a
+poet.  Proceed with thy narration."
+
+"To be a poet," said Imlac, "is indeed very difficult."
+
+"So difficult," returned the Prince, "that I will at present hear
+no more of his labours.  Tell me whither you went when you had seen
+Persia."
+
+"From Persia," said the poet, "I travelled through Syria, and for
+three years resided in Palestine, where I conversed with great
+numbers of the northern and western nations of Europe, the nations
+which are now in possession of all power and all knowledge, whose
+armies are irresistible, and whose fleets command the remotest
+parts of the globe.  When I compared these men with the natives of
+our own kingdom and those that surround us, they appeared almost
+another order of beings.  In their countries it is difficult to
+wish for anything that may not be obtained; a thousand arts, of
+which we never heard, are continually labouring for their
+convenience and pleasure, and whatever their own climate has denied
+them is supplied by their commerce."
+
+"By what means," said the Prince, "are the Europeans thus powerful?
+or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or
+conquest, cannot the Asiatics and Africans invade their coast,
+plant colonies in their ports, and give laws to their natural
+princes?  The same wind that carries them back would bring us
+thither."
+
+"They are more powerful, sir, than we," answered Imlac, "because
+they are wiser; knowledge will always predominate over ignorance,
+as man governs the other animals.  But why their knowledge is more
+than ours I know not what reason can be given but the unsearchable
+will of the Supreme Being."
+
+"When," said the Prince with a sigh, "shall I be able to visit
+Palestine, and mingle with this mighty confluence of nations?  Till
+that happy moment shall arrive, let me fill up the time with such
+representations as thou canst give me.  I am not ignorant of the
+motive that assembles such numbers in that place, and cannot but
+consider it as the centre of wisdom and piety, to which the best
+and wisest men of every land must be continually resorting."
+
+"There are some nations," said Imlac, "that send few visitants to
+Palestine; for many numerous and learned sects in Europe concur to
+censure pilgrimage as superstitious, or deride it as ridiculous."
+
+"You know," said the Prince, "how little my life has made me
+acquainted with diversity of opinions; it will be too long to hear
+the arguments on both sides; you, that have considered them, tell
+me the result."
+
+"Pilgrimage," said Imlac, "like many other acts of piety, may be
+reasonable or superstitious, according to the principles upon which
+it is performed.  Long journeys in search of truth are not
+commanded.  Truth, such as is necessary to the regulation of life,
+is always found where it is honestly sought.  Change of place is no
+natural cause of the increase of piety, for it inevitably produces
+dissipation of mind.  Yet, since men go every day to view the
+fields where great actions have been performed, and return with
+stronger impressions of the event, curiosity of the same kind may
+naturally dispose us to view that country whence our religion had
+its beginning, and I believe no man surveys those awful scenes
+without some confirmation of holy resolutions.  That the Supreme
+Being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another
+is the dream of idle superstition, but that some places may operate
+upon our own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which hourly
+experience will justify.  He who supposes that his vices may be
+more successfully combated in Palestine, will perhaps find himself
+mistaken; yet he may go thither without folly; he who thinks they
+will be more freely pardoned, dishonours at once his reason and
+religion."
+
+"These," said the Prince, "are European distinctions.  I will
+consider them another time.  What have you found to be the effect
+of knowledge?  Are those nations happier than we?"
+
+"There is so much infelicity," said the poet, "in the world, that
+scarce any man has leisure from his own distresses to estimate the
+comparative happiness of others.  Knowledge is certainly one of the
+means of pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which
+every mind feels of increasing its ideas.  Ignorance is mere
+privation, by which nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity in
+which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction,
+and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and
+grieve when we forget.  I am therefore inclined to conclude that if
+nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we grow
+more happy as out minds take a wider range.
+
+"In enumerating the particular comforts of life, we shall find many
+advantages on the side of the Europeans.  They cure wounds and
+diseases with which we languish and perish.  We suffer inclemencies
+of weather which they can obviate.  They have engines for the
+despatch of many laborious works, which we must perform by manual
+industry.  There is such communication between distant places that
+one friend can hardly be said to be absent from another.  Their
+policy removes all public inconveniences; they have roads cut
+through the mountains, and bridges laid over their rivers.  And, if
+we descend to the privacies of life, their habitations are more
+commodious and their possessions are more secure."
+
+"They are surely happy," said the Prince, "who have all these
+conveniences, of which I envy none so much as the facility with
+which separated friends interchange their thoughts."
+
+"The Europeans," answered Imlac, "are less unhappy than we, but
+they are not happy.  Human life is everywhere a state in which much
+is to be endured and little to be enjoyed."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--THE STORY OF IMLAC (continued).
+
+
+
+"I am not willing," said the Prince, "to suppose that happiness is
+so parsimoniously distributed to mortals, nor can I believe but
+that, if I had the choice of life, I should be able to fill every
+day with pleasure.  I would injure no man, and should provoke no
+resentments; I would relieve every distress, and should enjoy the
+benedictions of gratitude.  I would choose my friends among the
+wise and my wife among the virtuous, and therefore should be in no
+danger from treachery or unkindness.  My children should by my care
+be learned and pious, and would repay to my age what their
+childhood had received.  What would dare to molest him who might
+call on every side to thousands enriched by his bounty or assisted
+by his power?  And why should not life glide away in the soft
+reciprocation of protection and reverence?  All this may be done
+without the help of European refinements, which appear by their
+effects to be rather specious than useful.  Let us leave them and
+pursue our journey."
+
+"From Palestine," said Imlac, "I passed through many regions of
+Asia; in the more civilised kingdoms as a trader, and among the
+barbarians of the mountains as a pilgrim.  At last I began to long
+for my native country, that I might repose after my travels and
+fatigues in the places where I had spent my earliest years, and
+gladden my old companions with the recital of my adventures.  Often
+did I figure to myself those with whom I had sported away the gay
+hours of dawning life, sitting round me in its evening, wondering
+at my tales and listening to my counsels.
+
+"When this thought had taken possession of my mind, I considered
+every moment as wasted which did not bring me nearer to Abyssinia.
+I hastened into Egypt, and, notwithstanding my impatience, was
+detained ten months in the contemplation of its ancient
+magnificence and in inquiries after the remains of its ancient
+learning.  I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations:  some brought
+thither by the love of knowledge, some by the hope of gain; many by
+the desire of living after their own manner without observation,
+and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a city
+populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time the
+gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.
+
+"From Cairo I travelled to Suez, and embarked on the Red Sea,
+passing along the coast till I arrived at the port from which I had
+departed twenty years before.  Here I joined myself to a caravan,
+and re-entered my native country.
+
+"I now expected the caresses of my kinsmen and the congratulations
+of my friends, and was not without hope that my father, whatever
+value he had set upon riches, would own with gladness and pride a
+son who was able to add to the felicity and honour of the nation.
+But I was soon convinced that my thoughts were vain.  My father had
+been dead fourteen years, having divided his wealth among my
+brothers, who were removed to some other provinces.  Of my
+companions, the greater part was in the grave; of the rest, some
+could with difficulty remember me, and some considered me as one
+corrupted by foreign manners.
+
+"A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.  I forgot,
+after a time, my disappointment, and endeavoured to recommend
+myself to the nobles of the kingdom; they admitted me to their
+tables, heard my story, and dismissed me.  I opened a school, and
+was prohibited to teach.  I then resolved to sit down in the quiet
+of domestic life, and addressed a lady that was fond of my
+conversation, but rejected my suit because my father was a
+merchant.
+
+"Wearied at last with solicitation and repulses, I resolved to hide
+myself for ever from the world, and depend no longer on the opinion
+or caprice of others.  I waited for the time when the gate of the
+Happy Valley should open, that I might bid farewell to hope and
+fear; the day came, my performance was distinguished with favour,
+and I resigned myself with joy to perpetual confinement."
+
+"Hast thou here found happiness at last?" said Rasselas.  "Tell me,
+without reserve, art thou content with thy condition, or dost thou
+wish to be again wandering and inquiring?  All the inhabitants of
+this valley celebrate their lot, and at the annual visit of the
+Emperor invite others to partake of their felicity."
+
+"Great Prince," said Imlac, "I shall speak the truth.  I know not
+one of all your attendants who does not lament the hour when he
+entered this retreat.  I am less unhappy than the rest, because I
+have a mind replete with images, which I can vary and combine at
+pleasure.  I can amuse my solitude by the renovation of the
+knowledge which begins to fade from my memory, and by recollection
+of the accidents of my past life.  Yet all this ends in the
+sorrowful consideration that my acquirements are now useless, and
+that none of my pleasures can be again enjoyed.  The rest, whose
+minds have no impression but of the present moment, are either
+corroded by malignant passions or sit stupid in the gloom of
+perpetual vacancy."
+
+"What passions can infest those," said the Prince, "who have no
+rivals?  We are in a place where impotence precludes malice, and
+where all envy is repressed by community of enjoyments."
+
+"There may be community," said Imlac, "of material possessions, but
+there can never be community of love or of esteem.  It must happen
+that one will please more than another; he that knows himself
+despised will always be envious, and still more envious and
+malevolent if he is condemned to live in the presence of those who
+despise him.  The invitations by which they allure others to a
+state which they feel to be wretched, proceed from the natural
+malignity of hopeless misery.  They are weary of themselves and of
+each other, and expect to find relief in new companions.  They envy
+the liberty which their folly has forfeited, and would gladly see
+all mankind imprisoned like themselves.
+
+"From this crime, however, I am wholly free.  No man can say that
+he is wretched by my persuasion.  I look with pity on the crowds
+who are annually soliciting admission to captivity, and wish that
+it were lawful for me to warn them of their danger."
+
+"My dear Imlac," said the Prince, "I will open to thee my whole
+heart.  I have long meditated an escape from the Happy Valley.  I
+have examined the mountain on every side, but find myself
+insuperably barred--teach me the way to break my prison; thou shalt
+be the companion of my flight, the guide of my rambles, the partner
+of my fortune, and my sole director in the CHOICE OF LIFE.
+
+"Sir," answered the poet, "your escape will be difficult, and
+perhaps you may soon repent your curiosity.  The world, which you
+figure to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake in the valley, you
+will find a sea foaming with tempests and boiling with whirlpools;
+you will be sometimes overwhelmed by the waves of violence, and
+sometimes dashed against the rocks of treachery.  Amidst wrongs and
+frauds, competitions and anxieties, you will wish a thousand times
+for these seats of quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from
+fear."
+
+"Do not seek to deter me from my purpose," said the Prince.  "I am
+impatient to see what thou hast seen; and since thou art thyself
+weary of the valley, it is evident that thy former state was better
+than this.  Whatever be the consequence of my experiment, I am
+resolved to judge with mine own eyes of the various conditions of
+men, and then to make deliberately my CHOICE OF LIFE."
+
+"I am afraid," said Imlac, "you are hindered by stronger restraints
+than my persuasions; yet, if your determination is fixed, I do not
+counsel you to despair.  Few things are impossible to diligence and
+skill."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII--RASSELAS DISCOVERS THE MEANS OF ESCAPE.
+
+
+
+The Prince now dismissed his favourite to rest; but the narrative
+of wonders and novelties filled his mind with perturbation.  He
+revolved all that he had heard, and prepared innumerable questions
+for the morning.
+
+Much of his uneasiness was now removed.  He had a friend to whom he
+could impart his thoughts, and whose experience could assist him in
+his designs.  His heart was no longer condemned to swell with
+silent vexation.  He thought that even the Happy Valley might be
+endured with such a companion, and that if they could range the
+world together he should have nothing further to desire.
+
+In a few days the water was discharged, and the ground dried.  The
+Prince and Imlac then walked out together, to converse without the
+notice of the rest.  The Prince, whose thoughts were always on the
+wing, as he passed by the gate said, with a countenance of sorrow,
+"Why art thou so strong, and why is man so weak?"
+
+"Man is not weak," answered his companion; "knowledge is more than
+equivalent to force.  The master of mechanics laughs at strength.
+I can burst the gate, but cannot do it secretly.  Some other
+expedient must be tried."
+
+ As they were walking on the side of the mountain they observed
+that the coneys, which the rain had driven from their burrows, had
+taken shelter among the bushes, and formed holes behind them
+tending upwards in an oblique line.   "It has been the opinion of
+antiquity," said Imlac, "that human reason borrowed many arts from
+the instinct of animals; let us, therefore, not think ourselves
+degraded by learning from the coney.  We may escape by piercing the
+mountain in the same direction.  We will begin where the summit
+hangs over the middle part, and labour upward till we shall issue
+out beyond the prominence."
+
+The eyes of the Prince, when he heard this proposal, sparkled with
+joy.  The execution was easy and the success certain.
+
+No time was now lost.  They hastened early in the morning to choose
+a place proper for their mine.  They clambered with great fatigue
+among crags and brambles, and returned without having discovered
+any part that favoured their design.  The second and the third day
+were spent in the same manner, and with the same frustration; but
+on the fourth day they found a small cavern concealed by a thicket,
+where they resolved to make their experiment.
+
+Imlac procured instruments proper to hew stone and remove earth,
+and they fell to their work on the next day with more eagerness
+than vigour.  They were presently exhausted by their efforts, and
+sat down to pant upon the grass.  The Prince for a moment appeared
+to be discouraged.  "Sir," said his companion, "practice will
+enable us to continue our labour for a longer time.  Mark, however,
+how far we have advanced, and ye will find that our toil will some
+time have an end.  Great works are performed not by strength, but
+perseverance; yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you
+see its height and spaciousness.  He that shall walk with vigour
+three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the
+circumference of the globe."
+
+They returned to their work day after day, and in a short time
+found a fissure in the rock, which enabled them to pass far with
+very little obstruction.  This Rasselas considered as a good omen.
+"Do not disturb your mind," said Imlac, "with other hopes or fears
+than reason may suggest; if you are pleased with the prognostics of
+good, you will be terrified likewise with tokens of evil, and your
+whole life will be a prey to superstition.  Whatever facilitates
+our work is more than an omen; it is a cause of success.  This is
+one of those pleasing surprises which often happen to active
+resolution.  Many things difficult to design prove easy to
+performance."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV--RASSELAS AND IMLAC RECEIVE AN UNEXPECTED VISIT.
+
+
+
+They had now wrought their way to the middle, and solaced their
+toil with the approach of liberty, when the Prince, coming down to
+refresh himself with air, found his sister Nekayah standing at the
+mouth of the cavity.  He started, and stood confused, afraid to
+tell his design, and yet hopeless to conceal it.  A few moments
+determined him to repose on her fidelity, and secure her secrecy by
+a declaration without reserve.
+
+"Do not imagine," said the Princess, "that I came hither as a spy.
+I had long observed from my window that you and Imlac directed your
+walk every day towards the same point, but I did not suppose you
+had any better reason for the preference than a cooler shade or
+more fragrant bank, nor followed you with any other design than to
+partake of your conversation.  Since, then, not suspicion, but
+fondness, has detected you, let me not lose the advantage of my
+discovery.  I am equally weary of confinement with yourself, and
+not less desirous of knowing what is done or suffered in the world.
+Permit me to fly with you from this tasteless tranquillity, which
+will yet grow more loathsome when you have left me.  You may deny
+me to accompany you, but cannot hinder me from following."
+
+The Prince, who loved Nekayah above his other sisters, had no
+inclination to refuse her request, and grieved that he had lost an
+opportunity of showing his confidence by a voluntary communication.
+It was, therefore, agreed that she should leave the valley with
+them; and that in the meantime she should watch, lest any other
+straggler should, by chance or curiosity, follow them to the
+mountain.
+
+At length their labour was at an end.  They saw light beyond the
+prominence, and, issuing to the top of the mountain, beheld the
+Nile, yet a narrow current, wandering beneath them.
+
+The Prince looked round with rapture, anticipated all the pleasures
+of travel, and in thought was already transported beyond his
+father's dominions.  Imlac, though very joyful at his escape, had
+less expectation of pleasure in the world, which he had before
+tried and of which he had been weary.
+
+Rasselas was so much delighted with a wider horizon, that he could
+not soon be persuaded to return into the valley.  He informed his
+sister that the way was now open, and that nothing now remained but
+to prepare for their departure.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV--THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS LEAVE THE VALLEY, AND SEE MANY
+WONDERS.
+
+
+
+The Prince and Princess had jewels sufficient to make them rich
+whenever they came into a place of commerce, which, by Imlac's
+direction, they hid in their clothes, and on the night of the next
+full moon all left the valley.  The Princess was followed only by a
+single favourite, who did not know whither she was going.
+
+They clambered through the cavity, and began to go down on the
+other side.  The Princess and her maid turned their eyes toward
+every part, and seeing nothing to bound their prospect, considered
+themselves in danger of being lost in a dreary vacuity.  They
+stopped and trembled.  "I am almost afraid," said the Princess, "to
+begin a journey of which I cannot perceive an end, and to venture
+into this immense plain where I may be approached on every side by
+men whom I never saw."  The Prince felt nearly the same emotions,
+though he thought it more manly to conceal them.
+
+Imlac smiled at their terrors, and encouraged them to proceed.  But
+the Princess continued irresolute till she had been imperceptibly
+drawn forward too far to return.
+
+In the morning they found some shepherds in the field, who set some
+milk and fruits before them.  The Princess wondered that she did
+not see a palace ready for her reception and a table spread with
+delicacies; but being faint and hungry, she drank the milk and ate
+the fruits, and thought them of a higher flavour than the products
+of the valley.
+
+They travelled forward by easy journeys, being all unaccustomed to
+toil and difficulty, and knowing that, though they might be missed,
+they could not be pursued.  In a few days they came into a more
+populous region, where Imlac was diverted with the admiration which
+his companions expressed at the diversity of manners, stations, and
+employments.  Their dress was such as might not bring upon them the
+suspicion of having anything to conceal; yet the Prince, wherever
+he came, expected to be obeyed, and the Princess was frighted
+because those who came into her presence did not prostrate
+themselves.  Imlac was forced to observe them with great vigilance,
+lest they should betray their rank by their unusual behaviour, and
+detained them several weeks in the first village to accustom them
+to the sight of common mortals.
+
+By degrees the royal wanderers were taught to understand that they
+had for a time laid aside their dignity, and were to expect only
+such regard as liberality and courtesy could procure.  And Imlac
+having by many admonitions prepared them to endure the tumults of a
+port and the ruggedness of the commercial race, brought them down
+to the sea-coast.
+
+The Prince and his sister, to whom everything was new, were
+gratified equally at all places, and therefore remained for some
+months at the port without any inclination to pass further.  Imlac
+was content with their stay, because he did not think it safe to
+expose them, unpractised in the world, to the hazards of a foreign
+country.
+
+At last he began to fear lest they should be discovered, and
+proposed to fix a day for their departure.  They had no pretensions
+to judge for themselves, and referred the whole scheme to his
+direction.  He therefore took passage in a ship to Suez, and, when
+the time came, with great difficulty prevailed on the Princess to
+enter the vessel.
+
+They had a quick and prosperous voyage, and from Suez travelled by
+land to Cairo.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI--THEY ENTER CAIRO, AND FIND EVERY MAN HAPPY.
+
+
+
+As they approached the city, which filled the strangers with
+astonishment, "This," said Imlac to the Prince, "is the place where
+travellers and merchants assemble from all corners of the earth.
+You will here find men of every character and every occupation.
+Commerce is here honourable.  I will act as a merchant, and you
+shall live as strangers who have no other end of travel than
+curiosity; it will soon be observed that we are rich.  Our
+reputation will procure us access to all whom we shall desire to
+know; you shall see all the conditions of humanity, and enable
+yourselves at leisure to make your CHOICE OF LIFE."
+
+They now entered the town, stunned by the noise and offended by the
+crowds.  Instruction had not yet so prevailed over habit but that
+they wondered to see themselves pass undistinguished along the
+streets, and met by the lowest of the people without reverence or
+notice.  The Princess could not at first bear the thought of being
+levelled with the vulgar, and for some time continued in her
+chamber, where she was served by her favourite Pekuah, as in the
+palace of the valley.
+
+Imlac, who understood traffic, sold part of the jewels the next
+day, and hired a house, which he adorned with such magnificence
+that he was immediately considered as a merchant of great wealth.
+His politeness attracted many acquaintances, and his generosity
+made him courted by many dependants.  His companions, not being
+able to mix in the conversation, could make no discovery of their
+ignorance or surprise, and were gradually initiated in the world as
+they gained knowledge of the language.
+
+The Prince had by frequent lectures been taught the use and nature
+of money; but the ladies could not for a long time comprehend what
+the merchants did with small pieces of gold and silver, or why
+things of so little use should be received as an equivalent to the
+necessaries of life.
+
+They studied the language two years, while Imlac was preparing to
+set before them the various ranks and conditions of mankind.  He
+grew acquainted with all who had anything uncommon in their fortune
+or conduct.  He frequented the voluptuous and the frugal, the idle
+and the busy, the merchants and the men of learning.
+
+The Prince now being able to converse with fluency, and having
+learned the caution necessary to be observed in his intercourse
+with strangers, began to accompany Imlac to places of resort, and
+to enter into all assemblies, that he might make his CHOICE OF
+LIFE.
+
+For some time he thought choice needless, because all appeared to
+him really happy.  Wherever he went he met gaiety and kindness, and
+heard the song of joy or the laugh of carelessness.  He began to
+believe that the world overflowed with universal plenty, and that
+nothing was withheld either from want or merit; that every hand
+showered liberality and every heart melted with benevolence:  "And
+who then," says he, "will be suffered to be wretched?"
+
+Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was unwilling to crush
+the hope of inexperience:  till one day, having sat awhile silent,
+"I know not," said the Prince, "what can be the reason that I am
+more unhappy than any of our friends.  I see them perpetually and
+unalterably cheerful, but feel my own mind restless and uneasy.  I
+am unsatisfied with those pleasures which I seem most to court.  I
+live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to
+shun myself, and am only loud and merry to conceal my sadness."
+
+"Every man," said Imlac, "may by examining his own mind guess what
+passes in the minds of others.  When you feel that your own gaiety
+is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to suspect that of your
+companions not to be sincere.  Envy is commonly reciprocal.  We are
+long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found,
+and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of
+obtaining it for himself.  In the assembly where you passed the
+last night there appeared such sprightliness of air and volatility
+of fancy as might have suited beings of a higher order, formed to
+inhabit serener regions, inaccessible to care or sorrow; yet,
+believe me, Prince, was there not one who did not dread the moment
+when solitude should deliver him to the tyranny of reflection."
+
+"This," said the Prince, "may be true of others since it is true of
+me; yet, whatever be the general infelicity of man, one condition
+is more happy than another, and wisdom surely directs us to take
+the least evil in the CHOICE OF LIFE."
+
+"The causes of good and evil," answered Imlac, "are so various and
+uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by
+various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be
+foreseen, that he who would fix his condition upon incontestable
+reasons of preference must live and die inquiring and
+deliberating."
+
+"But, surely," said Rasselas, "the wise men, to whom we listen with
+reverence and wonder, chose that mode of life for themselves which
+they thought most likely to make them happy."
+
+"Very few," said the poet, "live by choice.  Every man is placed in
+the present condition by causes which acted without his foresight,
+and with which he did not always willingly co-operate, and
+therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of
+his neighbour better than his own."
+
+"I am pleased to think," said the Prince, "that my birth has given
+me at least one advantage over others by enabling me to determine
+for myself.  I have here the world before me.  I will review it at
+leisure:  surely happiness is somewhere to be found."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII--THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUNG MEN OF SPIRIT AND
+GAIETY.
+
+
+
+Rasselas rose next day, and resolved to begin his experiments upon
+life.  "Youth," cried he, "is the time of gladness:  I will join
+myself to the young men whose only business is to gratify their
+desires, and whose time is all spent in a succession of
+enjoyments."
+
+To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few days brought
+him back weary and disgusted.  Their mirth was without images,
+their laughter without motive; their pleasures were gross and
+sensual, in which the mind had no part; their conduct was at once
+wild and mean--they laughed at order and at law, but the frown of
+power dejected and the eye of wisdom abashed them.
+
+The Prince soon concluded that he should never be happy in a course
+of life of which he was ashamed.  He thought it unsuitable to a
+reasonable being to act without a plan, and to be sad or cheerful
+only by chance.  "Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and
+permanent, without fear and without uncertainty."
+
+But his young companions had gained so much of his regard by their
+frankness and courtesy that he could not leave them without warning
+and remonstrance.  "My friends," said he, "I have seriously
+considered our manners and our prospects, and find that we have
+mistaken our own interest.  The first years of man must make
+provision for the last.  He that never thinks, never can be wise.
+Perpetual levity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it
+may fire the spirits for an hour, will make life short or
+miserable.  Let us consider that youth is of no long duration, and
+that in mature age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and
+phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no
+comforts but the esteem of wise men and the means of doing good.
+Let us therefore stop while to stop is in our power:  let us live
+as men who are some time to grow old, and to whom it will be the
+most dreadful of all evils to count their past years by follies,
+and to be reminded of their former luxuriance of health only by the
+maladies which riot has produced."
+
+They stared awhile in silence one upon another, and at last drove
+him away by a general chorus of continued laughter.
+
+The consciousness that his sentiments were just and his intention
+kind was scarcely sufficient to support him against the horror of
+derision.  But he recovered his tranquillity and pursued his
+search.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII--THE PRINCE FINDS A WISE AND HAPPY MAN.
+
+
+
+As he was one day walking in the street he saw a spacious building
+which all were by the open doors invited to enter.  He followed the
+stream of people, and found it a hall or school of declamation, in
+which professors read lectures to their auditory.  He fixed his eye
+upon a sage raised above the rest, who discoursed with great energy
+on the government of the passions.  His look was venerable, his
+action graceful, his pronunciation clear, and his diction elegant.
+He showed with great strength of sentiment and variety of
+illustration that human nature is degraded and debased when the
+lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the
+parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues
+but the natural effect of unlawful government, perturbation, and
+confusion; that she betrays the fortresses of the intellect to
+rebels, and excites her children to sedition against their lawful
+sovereign.  He compared reason to the sun, of which the light is
+constant, uniform, and lasting; and fancy to a meteor, of bright
+but transitory lustre, irregular in its motion and delusive in its
+direction.
+
+He then communicated the various precepts given from time to time
+for the conquest of passion, and displayed the happiness of those
+who had obtained the important victory, after which man is no
+longer the slave of fear nor the fool of hope; is no more emaciated
+by envy, inflamed by anger, emasculated by tenderness, or depressed
+by grief; but walks on calmly through the tumults or privacies of
+life, as the sun pursues alike his course through the calm or the
+stormy sky.
+
+He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable by pain or
+pleasure, who looked with indifference on those modes or accidents
+to which the vulgar give the names of good and evil.  He exhorted
+his hearers to lay aside their prejudices, and arm themselves
+against the shafts of malice or misfortune, by invulnerable
+patience:  concluding that this state only was happiness, and that
+this happiness was in every one's power.
+
+Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to the
+instructions of a superior being, and waiting for him at the door,
+humbly implored the liberty of visiting so great a master of true
+wisdom.  The lecturer hesitated a moment, when Rasselas put a purse
+of gold into his hand, which he received with a mixture of joy and
+wonder.
+
+"I have found," said the Prince at his return to Imlac, "a man who
+can teach all that is necessary to be known; who, from the unshaken
+throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the scenes of life
+changing beneath him.  He speaks, and attention watches his lips.
+He reasons, and conviction closes his periods.  This man shall be
+my future guide:  I will learn his doctrines and imitate his life."
+
+"Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the teachers
+of morality:  they discourse like angels, but they live like men."
+
+Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man could reason so
+forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own arguments, paid his
+visit in a few days, and was denied admission.  He had now learned
+the power of money, and made his way by a piece of gold to the
+inner apartment, where he found the philosopher in a room half
+darkened, with his eyes misty and his face pale.  "Sir," said he,
+"you are come at a time when all human friendship is useless; what
+I suffer cannot be remedied:  what I have lost cannot be supplied.
+My daughter, my only daughter, from whose tenderness I expected all
+the comforts of my age, died last night of a fever.  My views, my
+purposes, my hopes, are at an end:  I am now a lonely being,
+disunited from society."
+
+"Sir," said the Prince, "mortality is an event by which a wise man
+can never be surprised:  we know that death is always near, and it
+should therefore always be expected."  "Young man," answered the
+philosopher, "you speak like one that has never felt the pangs of
+separation."  "Have you then forgot the precepts," said Rasselas,
+"which you so powerfully enforced?  Has wisdom no strength to arm
+the heart against calamity?  Consider that external things are
+naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the same."
+"What comfort," said the mourner, "can truth and reason afford me?
+Of what effect are they now, but to tell me that my daughter will
+not be restored?"
+
+The Prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult misery
+with reproof, went away, convinced of the emptiness of rhetorical
+sounds, and the inefficacy of polished periods and studied
+sentences.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX--A GLIMPSE OF PASTORAL LIFE.
+
+
+
+He was still eager upon the same inquiry; and having heard of a
+hermit that lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile, and filled
+the whole country with the fame of his sanctity, resolved to visit
+his retreat, and inquire whether that felicity which public life
+could not afford was to be found in solitude, and whether a man
+whose age and virtue made him venerable could teach any peculiar
+art of shunning evils or enduring them.
+
+Imlac and the Princess agreed to accompany him, and after the
+necessary preparations, they began their journey.  Their way lay
+through the fields, where shepherds tended their flocks and the
+lambs were playing upon the pasture.  "This," said the poet, "is
+the life which has been often celebrated for its innocence and
+quiet; let us pass the heat of the day among the shepherds' tents,
+and know whether all our searches are not to terminate in pastoral
+simplicity."
+
+The proposal pleased them; and they induced the shepherds, by small
+presents and familiar questions, to tell the opinion of their own
+state.  They were so rude and ignorant, so little able to compare
+the good with the evil of the occupation, and so indistinct in
+their narratives and descriptions, that very little could be
+learned from them.  But it was evident that their hearts were
+cankered with discontent; that they considered themselves as
+condemned to labour for the luxury of the rich, and looked up with
+stupid malevolence towards those that were placed above them.
+
+The Princess pronounced with vehemence that she would never suffer
+these envious savages to be her companions, and that she should not
+soon be desirous of seeing any more specimens of rustic happiness;
+but could not believe that all the accounts of primeval pleasures
+were fabulous, and was in doubt whether life had anything that
+could be justly preferred to the placid gratification of fields and
+woods.  She hoped that the time would come when, with a few
+virtuous and elegant companions, she should gather flowers planted
+by her own hands, fondle the lambs of her own ewe, and listen
+without care, among brooks and breezes, to one of her maidens
+reading in the shade.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX--THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY.
+
+
+
+On the next day they continued their journey till the heat
+compelled them to look round for shelter.  At a small distance they
+saw a thick wood, which they no sooner entered than they perceived
+that they were approaching the habitations of men.  The shrubs were
+diligently cut away to open walks where the shades ware darkest;
+the boughs of opposite trees were artificially interwoven; seats of
+flowery turf were raised in vacant spaces; and a rivulet that
+wantoned along the side of a winding path had its banks sometimes
+opened into small basins, and its stream sometimes obstructed by
+little mounds of stone heaped together to increase its murmurs.
+
+They passed slowly through the wood, delighted with such unexpected
+accommodations, and entertained each other with conjecturing what
+or who he could be that in those rude and unfrequented regions had
+leisure and art for such harmless luxury.
+
+As they advanced they heard the sound of music, and saw youths and
+virgins dancing in the grove; and going still farther beheld a
+stately palace built upon a hill surrounded by woods.  The laws of
+Eastern hospitality allowed them to enter, and the master welcomed
+them like a man liberal and wealthy.
+
+He was skilful enough in appearances soon to discern that they were
+no common guests, and spread his table with magnificence.  The
+eloquence of Imlac caught his attention, and the lofty courtesy of
+the Princess excited his respect.  When they offered to depart, he
+entreated their stay, and was the next day more unwilling to
+dismiss them than before.  They were easily persuaded to stop, and
+civility grew up in time to freedom and confidence.
+
+The Prince now saw all the domestics cheerful and all the face of
+nature smiling round the place, and could not forbear to hope that
+he should find here what he was seeking; but when he was
+congratulating the master upon his possessions he answered with a
+sigh, "My condition has indeed the appearance of happiness, but
+appearances are delusive.  My prosperity puts my life in danger;
+the Bassa of Egypt is my enemy, incensed only by my wealth and
+popularity.  I have been hitherto protected against him by the
+princes of the country; but as the favour of the great is uncertain
+I know not how soon my defenders may be persuaded to share the
+plunder with the Bassa.  I have sent my treasures into a distant
+country, and upon the first alarm am prepared to follow them.  Then
+will my enemies riot in my mansion, and enjoy the gardens which I
+have planted."
+
+They all joined in lamenting his danger and deprecating his exile;
+and the Princess was so much disturbed with the tumult of grief and
+indignation that she retired to her apartment.  They continued with
+their kind inviter a few days longer, and then went to find the
+hermit.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI--THE HAPPINESS OF SOLITUDE--THE HERMIT'S HISTORY.
+
+
+
+They came on the third day, by the direction of the peasants, to
+the hermit's cell.  It was a cavern in the side of a mountain,
+overshadowed with palm trees, at such a distance from the cataract
+that nothing more was heard than a gentle uniform murmur, such as
+composes the mind to pensive meditation, especially when it was
+assisted by the wind whistling among the branches.  The first rude
+essay of Nature had been so much improved by human labour that the
+cave contained several apartments appropriated to different uses,
+and often afforded lodging to travellers whom darkness or tempests
+happened to overtake.
+
+The hermit sat on a bench at the door, to enjoy the coolness of the
+evening.  On one side lay a book with pens and paper; on the other
+mechanical instruments of various kinds.  As they approached him
+unregarded, the Princess observed that he had not the countenance
+of a man that had found or could teach the way to happiness.
+
+They saluted him with great respect, which he repaid like a man not
+unaccustomed to the forms of Courts.  "My children," said he, "if
+you have lost your way, you shall be willingly supplied with such
+conveniences for the night as this cavern will afford.  I have all
+that Nature requires, and you will not expect delicacies in a
+hermit's cell."
+
+They thanked him; and, entering, were pleased with the neatness and
+regularity of the place.  The hermit set flesh and wine before
+them, though he fed only upon fruits and water.  His discourse was
+cheerful without levity, and pious without enthusiasm.  He soon
+gained the esteem of his guests, and the Princess repented her
+hasty censure.
+
+At last Imlac began thus:  "I do not now wonder that your
+reputation is so far extended:  we have heard at Cairo of your
+wisdom, and came hither to implore your direction for this young
+man and maiden in the CHOICE OF LIFE."
+
+"To him that lives well," answered the hermit, "every form of life
+is good; nor can I give any other rule for choice than to remove
+all apparent evil."
+
+"He will most certainly remove from evil," said the Prince, "who
+shall devote himself to that solitude which you have recommended by
+your example."
+
+"I have indeed lived fifteen years in solitude," said the hermit,
+"but have no desire that my example should gain any imitators.  In
+my youth I professed arms, and was raised by degrees to the highest
+military rank.  I have traversed wide countries at the head of my
+troops, and seen many battles and sieges.  At last, being disgusted
+by the preferments of a younger officer, and feeling that my vigour
+was beginning to decay, I resolved to close my life in peace,
+having found the world full of snares, discord, and misery.  I had
+once escaped from the pursuit of the enemy by the shelter of this
+cavern, and therefore chose it for my final residence.  I employed
+artificers to form it into chambers, and stored it with all that I
+was likely to want.
+
+"For some time after my retreat I rejoiced like a tempest-beaten
+sailor at his entrance into the harbour, being delighted with the
+sudden change of the noise and hurry of war to stillness and
+repose.  When the pleasure of novelty went away, I employed my
+hours in examining the plants which grow in the valley, and the
+minerals which I collected from the rocks.  But that inquiry is now
+grown tasteless and irksome.  I have been for some time unsettled
+and distracted:  my mind is disturbed with a thousand perplexities
+of doubt and vanities of imagination, which hourly prevail upon me,
+because I have no opportunities of relaxation or diversion.  I am
+sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure myself from vice
+but by retiring from the exercise of virtue, and begin to suspect
+that I was rather impelled by resentment than led by devotion into
+solitude.  My fancy riots in scenes of folly, and I lament that I
+have lost so much, and have gained so little.  In solitude, if I
+escape the example of bad men, I want likewise the counsel and
+conversation of the good.  I have been long comparing the evils
+with the advantages of society, and resolve to return into the
+world to-morrow.  The life of a solitary man will be certainly
+miserable, but not certainly devout."
+
+They heard his resolution with surprise, but after a short pause
+offered to conduct him to Cairo.  He dug up a considerable treasure
+which he had hid among the rocks, and accompanied them to the city,
+on which, as he approached it, he gazed with rapture.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII--THE HAPPINESS OF A LIFE LED ACCORDING TO NATURE.
+
+
+
+Rasselas went often to an assembly of learned men, who met at
+stated times to unbend their minds and compare their opinions.
+Their manners were somewhat coarse, but their conversation was
+instructive, and their disputations acute, though sometimes too
+violent, and often continued till neither controvertist remembered
+upon what question he began.  Some faults were almost general among
+them:  every one was pleased to hear the genius or knowledge of
+another depreciated.
+
+In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview with the
+hermit, and the wonder with which he heard him censure a course of
+life which he had so deliberately chosen and so laudably followed.
+The sentiments of the hearers were various.  Some were of opinion
+that the folly of his choice had been justly punished by
+condemnation to perpetual perseverance.  One of the youngest among
+them, with great vehemence, pronounced him a hypocrite.  Some
+talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals, and
+considered retirement as a desertion of duty.  Others readily
+allowed that there was a time when the claims of the public were
+satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself, to
+review his life and purify his heart.
+
+One who appeared more affected with the narrative than the rest
+thought it likely that the hermit would in a few years go back to
+his retreat, and perhaps, if shame did not restrain or death
+intercept him, return once more from his retreat into the world.
+"For the hope of happiness," said he, "is so strongly impressed
+that the longest experience is not able to efface it.  Of the
+present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess
+the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance,
+imagination paints it as desirable.  But the time will surely come
+when desire will no longer be our torment and no man shall be
+wretched but by his own fault.
+
+"This," said a philosopher who had heard him with tokens of great
+impatience, "is the present condition of a wise man.  The time is
+already come when none are wretched but by their own fault.
+Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness which Nature
+has kindly placed within our reach.  The way to be happy is to live
+according to Nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable
+law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not
+written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny; not instilled by
+education, but infused at our nativity.  He that lives according to
+Nature will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope or
+importunities of desire; he will receive and reject with equability
+of temper; and act or suffer as the reason of things shall
+alternately prescribe.  Other men may amuse themselves with subtle
+definitions or intricate ratiocination.  Let them learn to be wise
+by easier means:  let them observe the hind of the forest and the
+linnet of the grove:  let them consider the life of animals, whose
+motions are regulated by instinct; they obey their guide, and are
+happy.  Let us therefore at length cease to dispute, and learn to
+live:  throw away the encumbrance of precepts, which they who utter
+them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with
+us this simple and intelligible maxim:  that deviation from Nature
+is deviation from happiness.
+
+When he had spoken he looked round him with a placid air, and
+enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.
+
+"Sir," said the Prince with great modesty, "as I, like all the rest
+of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been
+fixed upon your discourse:  I doubt not the truth of a position
+which a man so learned has so confidently advanced.  Let me only
+know what it is to live according to Nature."
+
+"When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the
+philosopher, "I can deny them no information which my studies have
+enabled me to afford.  To live according to Nature is to act always
+with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and
+qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and
+unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate with the
+general disposition and tendency of the present system of things."
+
+The Prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should
+understand less as he heard him longer.  He therefore bowed and was
+silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied and the rest
+vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-
+operated with the present system.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII--THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN THEM THE
+WORK OF OBSERVATION.
+
+
+
+Rasselas returned home full of reflections, doubting how to direct
+his future steps.  Of the way to happiness he found the learned and
+simple equally ignorant; but as he was yet young, he flattered
+himself that he had time remaining for more experiments and further
+inquiries.  He communicated to Imlac his observations and his
+doubts, but was answered by him with new doubts and remarks that
+gave him no comfort.  He therefore discoursed more frequently and
+freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself, and
+always assisted him to give some reason why, though he had been
+hitherto frustrated, he might succeed at last.
+
+"We have hitherto," said she, "known but little of the world; we
+have never yet been either great or mean.  In our own country,
+though we had royalty, we had no power; and in this we have not yet
+seen the private recesses of domestic peace.  Imlac favours not our
+search, lest we should in time find him mistaken.  We will divide
+the task between us; you shall try what is to be found in the
+splendour of Courts, and I will range the shades of humbler life.
+Perhaps command and authority may be the supreme blessings, as they
+afford the most opportunities of doing good; or perhaps what this
+world can give may be found in the modest habitations of middle
+fortune--too low for great designs, and too high for penury and
+distress."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV--THE PRINCE EXAMINES THE HAPPINESS OF HIGH STATIONS.
+
+
+
+Rasselas applauded the design, and appeared next day with a
+splendid retinue at the Court of the Bassa.  He was soon
+distinguished for his magnificence, and admitted, as a Prince whose
+curiosity had brought him from distant countries, to an intimacy
+with the great officers and frequent conversation with the Bassa
+himself.
+
+He was at first inclined to believe that the man must be pleased
+with his own condition whom all approached with reverence and heard
+with obedience, and who had the power to extend his edicts to a
+whole kingdom.  "There can be no pleasure," said he, "equal to that
+of feeling at once the joy of thousands all made happy by wise
+administration.  Yet, since by the law of subordination this
+sublime delight can be in one nation but the lot of one, it is
+surely reasonable to think that there is some satisfaction more
+popular and accessible, and that millions can hardly be subjected
+to the will of a single man, only to fill his particular breast
+with incommunicable content."
+
+These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found no solution of
+the difficulty.  But as presents and civilities gained him more
+familiarity, he found that almost every man who stood high in his
+employment hated all the rest and was hated by them, and that their
+lives were a continual succession of plots and detections,
+stratagems and escapes, faction and treachery.  Many of those who
+surrounded the Bassa were sent only to watch and report his
+conduct:  every tongue was muttering censure, and every eye was
+searching for a fault.
+
+At last the letters of revocation arrived:  the Bassa was carried
+in chains to Constantinople, and his name was mentioned no more.
+
+"What are we now to think of the prerogatives of power?" said
+Rasselas to his sister:  "is it without efficacy to good, or is the
+subordinate degree only dangerous, and the supreme safe and
+glorious?  Is the Sultan the only happy man in his dominions, or is
+the Sultan himself subject to the torments of suspicion and the
+dread of enemies?"
+
+In a short time the second Bassa was deposed.  The Sultan that had
+advanced him was murdered by the Janissaries, and his successor had
+other views or different favourites.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV--THE PRINCESS PURSUES HER INQUIRY WITH MORE DILIGENCE
+THAN SUCCESS.
+
+
+
+The Princess in the meantime insinuated herself into many families;
+for there are few doors through which liberality, joined with good
+humour, cannot find its way.  The daughters of many houses were
+airy and cheerful; but Nekayah had been too long accustomed to the
+conversation of Imlac and her brother to be much pleased with
+childish levity and prattle which had no meaning.  She found their
+thoughts narrow, their wishes low, and their merriment often
+artificial.  Their pleasures, poor as they were, could not be
+preserved pure, but were embittered by petty competitions and
+worthless emulation.  They were always jealous of the beauty of
+each other, of a quality to which solicitude can add nothing, and
+from which detraction can take nothing away.  Many were in love
+with triflers like themselves, and many fancied that they were in
+love when in truth they were only idle.  Their affection was not
+fixed on sense or virtue, and therefore seldom ended but in
+vexation.  Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient;
+everything floated in their mind unconnected with the past or
+future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second
+stone, cast into the water, effaces and confounds the circles of
+the first.
+
+With these girls she played as with inoffensive animals, and found
+them proud of her countenance and weary of her company.
+
+But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and her affability
+easily persuaded the hearts that were swelling with sorrow to
+discharge their secrets in her ear, and those whom hope flattered
+or prosperity delighted often courted her to partake their
+pleasure.
+
+The Princess and her brother commonly met in the evening in a
+private summerhouse on the banks of the Nile, and related to each
+other the occurrences of the day.  As they were sitting together
+the Princess cast her eyes upon the river that flowed before her.
+"Answer," said she, "great father of waters, thou that rollest thy
+goods through eighty nations, to the invocations of the daughter of
+thy native king.  Tell me if thou waterest through all thy course a
+single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of
+complaint."
+
+"You are then," said Rasselas, "not more successful in private
+houses than I have been in Courts."  "I have, since the last
+partition of our provinces," said the Princess, "enabled myself to
+enter familiarly into many families, where there was the fairest
+show of prosperity and peace, and know not one house that is not
+haunted by some fury that destroys their quiet.
+
+"I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded that there
+it could not be found.  But I saw many poor whom I had supposed to
+live in affluence.  Poverty has in large cities very different
+appearances.  It is often concealed in splendour and often in
+extravagance.  It is the care of a very great part of mankind to
+conceal their indigence from the rest.  They support themselves by
+temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for the
+morrow.
+
+"This, however, was an evil which, though frequent, I saw with less
+pain, because I could relieve it.  Yet some have refused my
+bounties; more offended with my quickness to detect their wants
+than pleased with my readiness to succour them; and others, whose
+exigencies compelled them to admit my kindness, have never been
+able to forgive their benefactress.  Many, however, have been
+sincerely grateful without the ostentation of gratitude or the hope
+of other favours."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI--THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON PRIVATE LIFE.
+
+
+
+Nekayah, perceiving her brother's attention fixed, proceeded in her
+narrative.
+
+"In families where there is or is not poverty there is commonly
+discord.  If a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great family, a
+family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed
+to revolutions.  An unpractised observer expects the love of
+parents and children to be constant and equal.  But this kindness
+seldom continues beyond the years of infancy; in a short time the
+children become rivals to their parents.  Benefits are allowed by
+reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy.
+
+"Parents and children seldom act in concert; each child endeavours
+to appropriate the esteem or the fondness of the parents; and the
+parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their
+children.  Thus, some place their confidence in the father and some
+in the mother, and by degrees the house is filled with artifices
+and feuds.
+
+"The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old,
+are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and
+despondency, of expectation and experience, without crime or folly
+on either side.  The colours of life in youth and age appear
+different, as the face of Nature in spring and winter.  And how can
+children credit the assertions of parents which their own eyes show
+them to be false?
+
+"Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims
+by the credit of their lives.  The old man trusts wholly to slow
+contrivance and gradual progression; the youth expects to force his
+way by genius, vigour, and precipitance.  The old man pays regard
+to riches, and the youth reverences virtue.  The old man deifies
+prudence; the youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance.  The
+young man, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and
+therefore acts with openness and candour; but his father; having
+suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect and too
+often allured to practise it.  Age looks with anger on the temerity
+of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.  Thus
+parents and children for the greatest part live on to love less and
+less; and if those whom Nature has thus closely united are the
+torments of each other, where shall we look for tenderness and
+consolations?"
+
+"Surely," said the Prince, "you must have been unfortunate in your
+choice of acquaintance.  I am unwilling to believe that the most
+tender of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural
+necessity."
+
+"Domestic discord," answered she, "is not inevitably and fatally
+necessary, but yet it is not easily avoided.  We seldom see that a
+whole family is virtuous; the good and the evil cannot well agree,
+and the evil can yet less agree with one another.  Even the
+virtuous fall sometimes to variance, when their virtues are of
+different kinds and tending to extremes.  In general, those parents
+have most reverence who most deserve it, for he that lives well
+cannot be despised.
+
+"Many other evils infest private life.  Some are the slaves of
+servants whom they have trusted with their affairs.  Some are kept
+in continual anxiety by the caprice of rich relations, whom they
+cannot please and dare not offend.  Some husbands are imperious and
+some wives perverse, and, as it is always more easy to do evil than
+good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many
+happy, the folly or vice of one makes many miserable."
+
+"If such be the general effect of marriage," said the Prince, "I
+shall for the future think it dangerous to connect my interest with
+that of another, lest I should be unhappy by my partner's fault."
+
+"I have met," said the Princess, "with many who live single for
+that reason, but I never found that their prudence ought to raise
+envy.  They dream away their time without friendship, without
+fondness, and are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which
+they have no use, by childish amusements or vicious delights.  They
+act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority
+that fills their minds with rancour and their tongues with censure.
+They are peevish at home and malevolent abroad, and, as the outlaws
+of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to
+disturb that society which debars them from its privileges.  To
+live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without
+adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the
+balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not
+retreat but exclusion from mankind.  Marriage has many pains, but
+celibacy has no pleasures."
+
+"What then is to be done?" said Rasselas.  "The more we inquire the
+less we can resolve.  Surely he is most likely to please himself
+that has no other inclination to regard."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII--DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS.
+
+
+
+The conversation had a short pause.  The Prince, having considered
+his sister's observation, told her that she had surveyed life with
+prejudice and supposed misery where she did not find it.  "Your
+narrative," says he, "throws yet a darker gloom upon the prospects
+of futurity.  The predictions of Imlac were but faint sketches of
+the evils painted by Nekayah.  I have been lately convinced that
+quiet is not the daughter of grandeur or of power; that her
+presence is not to be bought by wealth nor enforced by conquest.
+It is evident that as any man acts in a wider compass he must be
+more exposed to opposition from enmity or miscarriage from chance.
+Whoever has many to please or to govern must use the ministry of
+many agents, some of whom will be wicked and some ignorant, by some
+he will be misled and by others betrayed.  If he gratifies one he
+will offend another; those that are not favoured will think
+themselves injured, and since favours can be conferred but upon few
+the greater number will be always discontented."
+
+"The discontent," said the Princess, "which is thus unreasonable, I
+hope that I shall always have spirit to despise and you power to
+repress."
+
+"Discontent," answered Rasselas, "will not always be without reason
+under the most just and vigilant administration of public affairs.
+None, however attentive, can always discover that merit which
+indigence or faction may happen to obscure, and none, however
+powerful, can always reward it.  Yet he that sees inferior desert
+advanced above him will naturally impute that preference to
+partiality or caprice, and indeed it can scarcely be hoped that any
+man, however magnanimous by Nature or exalted by condition, will be
+able to persist for ever in fixed and inexorable justice of
+distribution; he will sometimes indulge his own affections and
+sometimes those of his favourites; he will permit some to please
+him who can never serve him; he will discover in those whom he
+loves qualities which in reality they do not possess, and to those
+from whom he receives pleasure he will in his turn endeavour to
+give it.  Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail which were
+purchased by money or by the more destructive bribery of flattery
+and servility.
+
+"He that hath much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong
+must suffer the consequences, and if it were possible that he
+should always act rightly, yet, when such numbers are to judge of
+his conduct, the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence
+and the good sometimes by mistake.
+
+"The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of
+happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from
+thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid
+obscurity.  For what can hinder the satisfaction or intercept the
+expectations of him whose abilities are adequate to his
+employments, who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of his
+influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he trusts, and
+whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear?  Surely he has
+nothing to do but to love and to be loved; to be virtuous and to be
+happy."
+
+"Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness,"
+said Nekayah, "this world will never afford an opportunity of
+deciding.  But this, at least, may be maintained, that we do not
+always find visible happiness in proportion to visible virtue.  All
+natural and almost all political evils are incident alike to the
+bad and good; they are confounded in the misery of a famine, and
+not much distinguished in the fury of a faction; they sink together
+in a tempest and are driven together from their country by
+invaders.  All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience
+and a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to
+endure calamity with patience, but remember that patience must
+oppose pain."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII--RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION.
+
+
+
+"Dear Princess," said Rasselas, "you fall into the common errors of
+exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a familiar disquisition
+examples of national calamities and scenes of extensive misery
+which are found in books rather than in the world, and which, as
+they are horrid, are ordained to be rare.  Let us not imagine evils
+which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations.  I
+cannot bear that querulous eloquence which threatens every city
+with a siege like that of Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on
+every flight of locust, and suspends pestilence on the wing of
+every blast that issues from the south.
+
+"On necessary and inevitable evils which overwhelm kingdoms at once
+all disputation is vain; when they happen they must be endured.
+But it is evident that these bursts of universal distress are more
+dreaded than felt; thousands and tens of thousands flourish in
+youth and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than
+domestic evils, and share the same pleasures and vexations, whether
+their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country
+pursue their enemies or retreat before them.  While Courts are
+disturbed with intestine competitions and ambassadors are
+negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil
+and the husbandman drives his plough forward; the necessaries of
+life are required and obtained, and the successive business of the
+season continues to make its wonted revolutions.
+
+"Let us cease to consider what perhaps may never happen, and what,
+when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation.  We will not
+endeavour to modify the motions of the elements or to fix the
+destiny of kingdoms.  It is our business to consider what beings
+like us may perform, each labouring for his own happiness by
+promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of
+others.
+
+"Marriage is evidently the dictate of Nature; men and women were
+made to be the companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be
+persuaded but that marriage is one of the means of happiness."
+
+"I know not," said the Princess, "whether marriage be more than one
+of the innumerable modes of human misery.  When I see and reckon
+the various forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of
+lasting discord, the diversities of temper, the oppositions of
+opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where both are
+urged by violent impulses, the obstinate contest of disagreeing
+virtues where both are supported by consciousness of good
+intention, I am sometimes disposed to think, with the severer
+casuists of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted than
+approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too
+much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compact."
+
+"You seem to forget," replied Rasselas, "that you have, even now
+represented celibacy as less happy than marriage.  Both conditions
+may be bad, but they cannot both be worse.  Thus it happens, when
+wrong opinions are entertained, that they mutually destroy each
+other and leave the mind open to truth."
+
+"I did not expect," answered, the Princess, "to hear that imputed
+to falsehood which is the consequence only of frailty.  To the
+mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness
+objects vast in their extent and various in their parts.  When we
+see or conceive the whole at once, we readily note the
+discriminations and decide the preference, but of two systems, of
+which neither can be surveyed by any human being in its full
+compass of magnitude and multiplicity of complication, where is the
+wonder that, judging of the whole by parts, I am alternately
+affected by one and the other as either presses on my memory or
+fancy?  We differ from ourselves just as we differ from each other
+when we see only part of the question, as in the multifarious
+relations of politics and morality, but when we perceive the whole
+at once, as in numerical computations, all agree in one judgment,
+and none ever varies in his opinion."
+
+"Let us not add," said the Prince, "to the other evils of life the
+bitterness of controversy, nor endeavour to vie with each other in
+subtilties of argument.  We are employed in a search of which both
+are equally to enjoy the success or suffer by the miscarriage; it
+is therefore fit that we assist each other.  You surely conclude
+too hastily from the infelicity of marriage against its
+institution; will not the misery of life prove equally that life
+cannot be the gift of Heaven?  The world must be peopled by
+marriage or peopled without it."
+
+"How the world is to be peopled," returned Nekayah, "is not my care
+and need not be yours.  I see no danger that the present generation
+should omit to leave successors behind them; we are not now
+inquiring for the world, but for ourselves."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX--THE DEBATE ON MARRIAGE (continued).
+
+
+
+"The good of the whole," says Rasselas, "is the same with the good
+of all its parts.  If marriage be best for mankind, it must be
+evidently best for individuals; or a permanent and necessary duty
+must be the cause of evil, and some must be inevitably sacrificed
+to the convenience of others.  In the estimate which you have made
+of the two states, it appears that the incommodities of a single
+life are in a great measure necessary and certain, but those of the
+conjugal state accidental and avoidable.  I cannot forbear to
+flatter myself that prudence and benevolence will make marriage
+happy.  The general folly of mankind is the cause of general
+complaint.  What can be expected but disappointment and repentance
+from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of
+desire, without judgment, without foresight, without inquiry after
+conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of
+judgment, or purity of sentiment?
+
+"Such is the common process of marriage.  A youth and maiden,
+meeting by chance or brought together by artifice, exchange
+glances, reciprocate civilities, go home and dream of one another.
+Having little to divert attention or diversify thought, they find
+themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that
+they shall be happy together.  They marry, and discover what
+nothing but voluntary blindness before had concealed; they wear out
+life in altercations, and charge Nature with cruelty.
+
+"From those early marriages proceeds likewise the rivalry of
+parents and children:  the son is eager to enjoy the world before
+the father is willing to forsake it, and there is hardly room at
+once for two generations.  The daughter begins to bloom before the
+mother can be content to fade, and neither can forbear to wish for
+the absence of the other.
+
+"Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation and
+delay which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice.  In the
+variety and jollity of youthful pleasures, life may be well enough
+supported without the help of a partner.  Longer time will increase
+experience, and wider views will allow better opportunities of
+inquiry and selection; one advantage at least will be certain, the
+parents will be visibly older than their children."
+
+"What reason cannot collect," and Nekayah, "and what experiment has
+not yet taught, can be known only from the report of others.  I
+have been told that late marriages are not eminently happy.  This
+is a question too important to be neglected; and I have often
+proposed it to those whose accuracy of remark and comprehensiveness
+of knowledge made their suffrages worthy of regard.  They have
+generally determined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to
+suspend their fate upon each other at a time when opinions are
+fixed and habits are established, when friendships have been
+contracted on both sides, when life has been planned into method,
+and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its own
+prospects.
+
+"It is scarcely possible that two travelling through the world
+under the conduct of chance should have been both directed to the
+same path, and it will not often happen that either will quit the
+track which custom has made pleasing.  When the desultory levity of
+youth has settled into regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride
+ashamed to yield, or obstinacy delighting to contend.  And even
+though mutual esteem produces mutual desire to please, time itself,
+as it modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines likewise
+the direction of the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to
+the manners.  Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts
+to change the course of his own life very often labours in vain,
+and how shall we do that for others which we are seldom able to do
+for ourselves?"
+
+"But surely," interposed the Prince, "you suppose the chief motive
+of choice forgotten or neglected.  Whenever I shall seek a wife, it
+shall be my first question whether she be willing to be led by
+reason."
+
+"Thus it is," said Nekayah, "that philosophers are deceived.  There
+are a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can decide;
+questions that elude investigation, and make logic ridiculous;
+cases where something must be done, and where little can be said.
+Consider the state of mankind, and inquire how few can be supposed
+to act upon any occasions, whether small or great, with all the
+reasons of action present to their minds.  Wretched would be the
+pair, above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to
+adjust by reason every morning all the minute details of a domestic
+day.
+
+"Those who marry at an advanced age will probably escape the
+encroachments of their children, but in the diminution of this
+advantage they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helpless,
+to a guardian's mercy; or if that should not happen, they must at
+least go out of the world before they see those whom they love best
+either wise or great.
+
+"From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less
+also to hope; and they lose without equivalent the joys of early
+love, and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant and minds
+susceptible of new impressions, which might wear away their
+dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as soft bodies by continual
+attrition conform their surfaces to each other.
+
+"I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best
+pleased with their children, and those who marry early with their
+partners."
+
+"The union of these two affections," said Rasselas, "would produce
+all that could be wished.  Perhaps there is a time when marriage
+might unite them--a time neither too early for the father nor too
+late for the husband."
+
+"Every hour," answered the Princess, "confirms my prejudice in
+favour of the position so often uttered by the mouth of Imlac, that
+'Nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on the left.'  Those
+conditions which flatter hope and attract desire are so constituted
+that as we approach one we recede from another.  There are goods so
+opposed that we cannot seize both, but by too much prudence may
+pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.  This is
+often the fate of long consideration; he does nothing who
+endeavours to do more than is allowed to humanity.  Flatter not
+yourself with contrarieties of pleasure.  Of the blessings set
+before you make your choice, and be content.  No man can taste the
+fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers
+of the spring; no man can at the same time fill his cup from the
+source and from the mouth of the Nile."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX--IMLAC ENTERS, AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION.
+
+
+
+Here Imlac entered, and interrupted them.  "Imlac," said Rasselas,
+"I have been taking from the Princess the dismal history of private
+life, and am almost discouraged from further search."
+
+"It seems to me," said Imlac, "that while you are making the choice
+of life you neglect to live.  You wander about a single city,
+which, however large and diversified, can now afford few novelties,
+and forget that you are in a country famous among the earliest
+monarchies for the power and wisdom of its inhabitants--a country
+where the sciences first dawned that illuminate the world, and
+beyond which the arts cannot be traced of civil society or domestic
+life.
+
+"The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of industry and
+power before which all European magnificence is confessed to fade
+away.  The ruins of their architecture are the schools of modern
+builders; and from the wonders which time has spared we may
+conjecture, though uncertainly, what it has destroyed."
+
+"My curiosity," said Rasselas, "does not very strongly lead me to
+survey piles of stone or mounds of earth.  My business is with man.
+I came hither not to measure fragments of temples or trace choked
+aqueducts, but to look upon the various scenes of the present
+world."
+
+"The things that are now before us," said the Princess, "require
+attention, and deserve it.  What have I to do with the heroes or
+the monuments of ancient times--with times which can never return,
+and heroes whose form of life was different from all that the
+present condition of mankind requires or allows?"
+
+"To know anything," returned the poet, "we must know its effects;
+to see men, we must see their works, that we may learn what reason
+has dictated or passion has excited, and find what are the most
+powerful motives of action.  To judge rightly of the present, we
+must oppose it to the past; for all judgment is comparative, and of
+the future nothing can be known.  The truth is that no mind is much
+employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up
+almost all our moments.  Our passions are joy and grief, love and
+hatred, hope and fear.  Of joy and grief, the past is the object,
+and the future of hope and fear; even love and hatred respect the
+past, for the cause must have been before the effect.
+
+"The present state of things is the consequence of the former; and
+it is natural to inquire what were the sources of the good that we
+enjoy, or the evils that we suffer.  If we act only for ourselves,
+to neglect the study of history is not prudent.  If we are
+entrusted with the care of others, it is not just.  Ignorance, when
+it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with
+evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.
+
+"There is no part of history so generally useful as that which
+relates to the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement
+of reason, the successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of
+learning and ignorance (which are the light and darkness of
+thinking beings), the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the
+revolutions of the intellectual world.  If accounts of battles and
+invasions are peculiarly the business of princes, the useful or
+elegant arts are not to be neglected; those who have kingdoms to
+govern have understandings to cultivate.
+
+"Example is always more efficacious than precept.  A soldier is
+formed in war, and a painter must copy pictures.  In this,
+contemplative life has the advantage.  Great actions are seldom
+seen, but the labours of art are always at hand for those who
+desire to know what art has been able to perform.
+
+"When the eye or the imagination is struck with any uncommon work,
+the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it
+was performed.  Here begins the true use of such contemplation.  We
+enlarge our comprehension by new ideas, and perhaps recover some
+art lost to mankind, or learn what is less perfectly known in our
+own country.  At least we compare our own with former times, and
+either rejoice at our improvements, or, what is the first motion
+towards good, discover our defects."
+
+"I am willing," said the Prince, "to see all that can deserve my
+search."
+
+"And I," said the Princess, "shall rejoice to learn something of
+the manners of antiquity."
+
+"The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and one of the
+most bulky works of manual industry," said Imlac, "are the
+Pyramids:  fabrics raised before the time of history, and of which
+the earliest narratives afford us only uncertain traditions.  Of
+these the greatest is still standing, very little injured by time."
+
+"Let us visit them to-morrow," said Nekayah.  "I have often heard
+of the Pyramids, and shall not rest till I have seen them, within
+and without, with my own eyes."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI--THEY VISIT THE PYRAMIDS.
+
+
+
+The resolution being thus taken, they set out the next day.  They
+laid tents upon their camels, being resolved to stay among the
+Pyramids till their curiosity was fully satisfied.  They travelled
+gently, turned aside to everything remarkable, stopped from time to
+time and conversed with the inhabitants, and observed the various
+appearances of towns ruined and inhabited, of wild and cultivated
+nature.
+
+When they came to the Great Pyramid they were astonished at the
+extent of the base and the height of the top.  Imlac explained to
+them the principles upon which the pyramidal form was chosen for a
+fabric intended to co-extend its duration with that of the world:
+he showed that its gradual diminution gave it such stability as
+defeated all the common attacks of the elements, and could scarcely
+be overthrown by earthquakes themselves, the least resistible of
+natural violence.  A concussion that should shatter the pyramid
+would threaten the dissolution of the continent.
+
+They measured all its dimensions, and pitched their tents at its
+foot.  Next day they prepared to enter its interior apartments, and
+having hired the common guides, climbed up to the first passage;
+when the favourite of the Princess, looking into the cavity,
+stepped back and trembled.  "Pekuah," said the Princess, "of what
+art thou afraid?"
+
+"Of the narrow entrance," answered the lady, "and of the dreadful
+gloom.  I dare not enter a place which must surely be inhabited by
+unquiet souls.  The original possessors of these dreadful vaults
+will start up before us, and perhaps shut us in for ever."  She
+spoke, and threw her arms round the neck of her mistress.
+
+"If all your fear be of apparitions," said the Prince, "I will
+promise you safety.  There is no danger from the dead:  he that is
+once buried will be seen no more."
+
+"That the dead are seen no more," said Imlac, "I will not undertake
+to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all
+ages and of all nations.  There is no people, rude or learned,
+among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed.
+This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is
+diffused, could become universal only by its truth:  those that
+never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which
+nothing but experience can make credible.  That it is doubted by
+single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence, and
+some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears.
+
+"Yet I do not mean to add new terrors to those which have already
+seized upon Pekuah.  There can be no reason why spectres should
+haunt the Pyramid more than other places, or why they should have
+power or will to hurt innocence and purity.  Our entrance is no
+violation of their privileges:  we can take nothing from them; how,
+then, can we offend them?"
+
+"My dear Pekuah," said the Princess, "I will always go before you,
+and Imlac shall follow you.  Remember that you are the companion of
+the Princess of Abyssinia."
+
+"If the Princess is pleased that her servant should die," returned
+the lady, "let her command some death less dreadful than enclosure
+in this horrid cavern.  You know I dare not disobey you--I must go
+if you command me; but if I once enter, I never shall come back."
+
+The Princess saw that her fear was too strong for expostulation or
+reproof, and, embracing her, told her that she should stay in the
+tent till their return.  Pekuah was not yet satisfied, but
+entreated the Princess not to pursue so dreadful a purpose as that
+of entering the recesses of the Pyramids.  "Though I cannot teach
+courage," said Nekayah, "I must not learn cowardice, nor leave at
+last undone what I came hither only to do."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII--THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID.
+
+
+
+Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered the Pyramid.
+They passed through the galleries, surveyed the vaults of marble,
+and examined the chest in which the body of the founder is supposed
+to have been deposited.  They then sat down in one of the most
+spacious chambers to rest awhile before they attempted to return.
+
+"We have now," said Imlac, "gratified our minds with an exact view
+of the greatest work of man, except the wall of China.
+
+"Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive.  It secured a
+wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of barbarians,
+whose unskilfulness in the arts made it easier for them to supply
+their wants by rapine than by industry, and who from time to time
+poured in upon the inhabitants of peaceful commerce as vultures
+descend upon domestic fowl.  Their celerity and fierceness made the
+wall necessary, and their ignorance made it efficacious.
+
+"But for the Pyramids, no reason has ever been given adequate to
+the cost and labour of the work.  The narrowness of the chambers
+proves that it could afford no retreat from enemies, and treasures
+might have been reposited at far less expense with equal security.
+It seems to have been erected only in compliance with that hunger
+of imagination which preys incessantly upon life, and must be
+always appeased by some employment.  Those who have already all
+that they can enjoy must enlarge their desires.  He that has built
+for use till use is supplied must begin to build for vanity, and
+extend his plan to the utmost power of human performance that he
+may not be soon reduced to form another wish.
+
+"I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the
+insufficiency of human enjoyments.  A king whose power is
+unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary
+wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyramid, the
+satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse
+the tediousness of declining life by seeing thousands labouring
+without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another.
+Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition,
+imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that
+command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual
+gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII--THE PRINCESS MEETS WITH AN UNEXPECTED MISFORTUNE.
+
+
+
+They rose up, and returned through the cavity at which they had
+entered; and the Princess prepared for her favourite a long
+narrative of dark labyrinths and costly rooms, and of the different
+impressions which the varieties of the way had made upon her.  But
+when they came to their train, they found every one silent and
+dejected:  the men discovered shame and fear in their countenances,
+and the women were weeping in their tents.
+
+What had happened they did not try to conjecture, but immediately
+inquired.  "You had scarcely entered into the Pyramid," said one of
+the attendants, "when a troop of Arabs rushed upon us:  we were too
+few to resist them, and too slow to escape.  They were about to
+search the tents, set us on our camels, and drive us along before
+them, when the approach of some Turkish horsemen put them to
+flight:  but they seized the Lady Pekuah with her two maids, and
+carried them away:  the Turks are now pursuing them by our
+instigation, but I fear they will not be able to overtake them."
+
+The Princess was overpowered with surprise and grief.  Rasselas, in
+the first heat of his resentment, ordered his servants to follow
+him, and prepared to pursue the robbers with his sabre in his hand.
+"Sir," said Imlac, "what can you hope from violence or valour?  The
+Arabs are mounted on horses trained to battle and retreat; we have
+only beasts of burden.  By leaving our present station we may lose
+the Princess, but cannot hope to regain Pekuah."
+
+In a short time the Turks returned, having not been able to reach
+the enemy.  The Princess burst out into new lamentations, and
+Rasselas could scarcely forbear to reproach them with cowardice;
+but Imlac was of opinion that the escape of the Arabs was no
+addition to their misfortune, for perhaps they would have killed
+their captives rather than have resigned them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV--THEY RETURN TO CAIRO WITHOUT PEKUAH.
+
+
+
+There was nothing to be hoped from longer stay.  They returned to
+Cairo, repenting of their curiosity, censuring the negligence of
+the government, lamenting their own rashness, which had neglected
+to procure a guard, imagining many expedients by which the loss of
+Pekuah might have been prevented, and resolving to do something for
+her recovery, though none could find anything proper to be done.
+
+Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women attempted to
+comfort her by telling her that all had their troubles, and that
+Lady Pekuah had enjoyed much happiness in the world for a long
+time, and might reasonably expect a change of fortune.  They hoped
+that some good would befall her wheresoever she was, and that their
+mistress would find another friend who might supply her place.
+
+The Princess made them no answer; and they continued the form of
+condolence, not much grieved in their hearts that the favourite was
+lost.
+
+Next day the Prince presented to the Bassa a memorial of the wrong
+which he had suffered, and a petition for redress.  The Bassa
+threatened to punish the robbers, but did not attempt to catch
+them; nor indeed could any account or description be given by which
+he might direct the pursuit.
+
+It soon appeared that nothing would be done by authority.
+Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can
+punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at
+ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the request
+when they lose sight of the petitioner.
+
+Imlac then endeavoured to gain some intelligence by private agents.
+He found many who pretended to an exact knowledge of all the haunts
+of the Arabs, and to regular correspondence with their chiefs, and
+who readily undertook the recovery of Pekuah.  Of these, some were
+furnished with money for their journey, and came back no more; some
+were liberally paid for accounts which a few days discovered to be
+false.  But the Princess would not suffer any means, however
+improbable, to be left untried.  While she was doing something, she
+kept her hope alive.  As one expedient failed, another was
+suggested; when one messenger returned unsuccessful, another was
+despatched to a different quarter.
+
+Two months had now passed, and of Pekuah nothing had been heard;
+the hopes which they had endeavoured to raise in each other grew
+more languid; and the Princess, when she saw nothing more to be
+tried, sunk down inconsolable in hopeless dejection.  A thousand
+times she reproached herself with the easy compliance by which she
+permitted her favourite to stay behind her.  "Had not my fondness,"
+said she, "lessened my authority, Pekuah had not dared to talk of
+her terrors.  She ought to have feared me more than spectres.  A
+severe look would have overpowered her; a peremptory command would
+have compelled obedience.  Why did foolish indulgence prevail upon
+me?  Why did I not speak, and refuse to hear?"
+
+"Great Princess," said Imlac, "do not reproach yourself for your
+virtue, or consider that as blameable by which evil has
+accidentally been caused.  Your tenderness for the timidity of
+Pekuah was generous and kind.  When we act according to our duty,
+we commit the events to Him by whose laws our actions are governed,
+and who will suffer none to be finally punished for obedience.
+When, in prospect of some good, whether natural or moral, we break
+the rules prescribed us, we withdraw from the direction of superior
+wisdom, and take all consequences upon ourselves.  Man cannot so
+far know the connection of causes and events as that he may venture
+to do wrong in order to do right.  When we pursue our end by lawful
+means, we may always console our miscarriage by the hope of future
+recompense.  When we consult only our own policy, and attempt to
+find a nearer way to good by over-leaping the settled boundaries of
+right and wrong, we cannot be happy even by success, because we
+cannot escape the consciousness of our fault; but if we miscarry,
+the disappointment is irremediably embittered.  How comfortless is
+the sorrow of him who feels at once the pangs of guilt and the
+vexation of calamity which guilt has brought upon him!
+
+"Consider, Princess, what would have been your condition if the
+Lady Pekuah had entreated to accompany you, and, being compelled to
+stay in the tents, had been carried away; or how would you have
+borne the thought if you had forced her into the Pyramid, and she
+had died before you in agonies of terror?"
+
+"Had either happened," said Nekayah, "I could not have endured life
+till now; I should have been tortured to madness by the remembrance
+of such cruelty, or must have pined away in abhorrence of myself."
+
+"This, at least," said Imlac, "is the present reward of virtuous
+conduct, that no unlucky consequence can oblige us to repent it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV--THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF PEKUAH.
+
+
+
+Nekayah, being thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil is
+insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of
+wrong.  She was from that time delivered from the violence of
+tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy
+tranquillity.  She sat from morning to evening recollecting all
+that had been done or said by her Pekuah, treasured up with care
+every trifle on which Pekuah had set an accidental value, and which
+might recall to mind any little incident or careless conversation.
+The sentiments of her whom she now expected to see no more were
+treasured in her memory as rules of life, and she deliberated to no
+other end than to conjecture on any occasion what would have been
+the opinion and counsel of Pekuah.
+
+The women by whom she was attended knew nothing of her real
+condition, and therefore she could not talk to them but with
+caution and reserve.  She began to remit her curiosity, having no
+great desire to collect notions which she had no convenience of
+uttering.  Rasselas endeavoured first to comfort and afterwards to
+divert her; he hired musicians, to whom she seemed to listen, but
+did not hear them; and procured masters to instruct her in various
+arts, whose lectures, when they visited her again, were again to be
+repeated.  She had lost her taste of pleasure and her ambition of
+excellence; and her mind, though forced into short excursions,
+always recurred to the image of her friend.
+
+Imlac was every morning earnestly enjoined to renew his inquiries,
+and was asked every night whether he had yet heard of Pekuah; till,
+not being able to return the Princess the answer that she desired,
+he was less and less willing to come into her presence.  She
+observed his backwardness, and commanded him to attend her.   "You
+are not," said she, "to confound impatience with resentment, or to
+suppose that I charge you with negligence because I repine at your
+unsuccessfulness.  I do not much wonder at your absence.  I know
+that the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all naturally avoid
+the contagion of misery.  To hear complaints is wearisome alike to
+the wretched and the happy; for who would cloud by adventitious
+grief the short gleams of gaiety which life allows us, or who that
+is struggling under his own evils will add to them the miseries of
+another?
+
+"The time is at hand when none shall be disturbed any longer by the
+sighs of Nekayah:  my search after happiness is now at an end.  I
+am resolved to retire from the world, with all its flatteries and
+deceits, and will hide myself in solitude, without any other care
+than to compose my thoughts and regulate my hours by a constant
+succession of innocent occupations, till, with a mind purified from
+earthly desires, I shall enter into that state to which all are
+hastening, and in which I hope again to enjoy the friendship of
+Pekuah."
+
+"Do not entangle your mind," said Imlac, "by irrevocable
+determinations, nor increase the burden of life by a voluntary
+accumulation of misery.  The weariness of retirement will continue
+to increase when the loss of Pekuah is forgot.  That you have been
+deprived of one pleasure is no very good reason for rejection of
+the rest."
+
+"Since Pekuah was taken from me," said the Princess, "I have no
+pleasure to reject or to retain.  She that has no one to love or
+trust has little to hope.  She wants the radical principle of
+happiness.  We may perhaps allow that what satisfaction this world
+can afford must arise from the conjunction of wealth, knowledge,
+and goodness.  Wealth is nothing but as it is bestowed, and
+knowledge nothing but as it is communicated.  They must therefore
+be imparted to others, and to whom could I now delight to impart
+them?  Goodness affords the only comfort which can be enjoyed
+without a partner, and goodness may be practised in retirement."
+
+"How far solitude may admit goodness or advance it, I shall not,"
+replied Imlac, "dispute at present.  Remember the confession of the
+pious hermit.  You will wish to return into the world when the
+image of your companion has left your thoughts."
+
+"That time," said Nekayah, "will never come.  The generous
+frankness, the modest obsequiousness, and the faithful secrecy of
+my dear Pekuah will always be more missed as I shall live longer to
+see vice and folly."
+
+"The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity," said Imlac,
+"is like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the new-created earth,
+who, when the first night came upon them, supposed that day would
+never return.  When the clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see
+nothing beyond them, nor can imagine how they will be dispelled;
+yet a new day succeeded to the night, and sorrow is never long
+without a dawn of ease.  But they who restrain themselves from
+receiving comfort do as the savages would have done had they put
+out their eyes when it was dark.  Our minds, like our bodies, are
+in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something
+acquired.  To lose much at once is inconvenient to either, but
+while the vital power remains uninjured, nature will find the means
+of reparation.  Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the
+eye; and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave
+behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach
+increasing in magnitude.  Do not suffer life to stagnate:  it will
+grow muddy for want of motion; commit yourself again to the current
+of the world; Pekuah will vanish by degrees; you will meet in your
+way some other favourite, or learn to diffuse yourself in general
+conversation."
+
+"At least," said the Prince, "do not despair before all remedies
+have been tried.  The inquiry after the unfortunate lady is still
+continued, and shall be carried on with yet greater diligence, on
+condition that you will promise to wait a year for the event,
+without any unalterable resolution."
+
+Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the promise to
+her brother, who had been obliged by Imlac to require it.  Imlac
+had, indeed, no great hope of regaining Pekuah; but he supposed
+that if he could secure the interval of a year, the Princess would
+be then in no danger of a cloister.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI--PEKUAH IS STILL REMEMBERED.  THE PROGRESS OF SORROW.
+
+
+
+Nekayah, seeing that nothing was omitted for the recovery of her
+favourite, and having by her promise set her intention of
+retirement at a distance, began imperceptibly to return to common
+cares and common pleasures.  She rejoiced without her own consent
+at the suspension of her sorrows, and sometimes caught herself with
+indignation in the act of turning away her mind from the
+remembrance of her whom yet she resolved never to forget.
+
+She then appointed a certain hour of the day for meditation on the
+merits and fondness of Pekuah, and for some weeks retired
+constantly at the time fixed, and returned with her eyes swollen
+and her countenance clouded.  By degrees she grew less scrupulous,
+and suffered any important and pressing avocation to delay the
+tribute of daily tears.  She then yielded to less occasions, and
+sometimes forgot what she was indeed afraid to remember, and at
+last wholly released herself from the duty of periodical
+affliction.
+
+Her real love of Pekuah was not yet diminished.  A thousand
+occurrences brought her back to memory, and a thousand wants, which
+nothing but the confidence of friendship can supply, made her
+frequently regretted.  She therefore solicited Imlac never to
+desist from inquiry, and to leave no art of intelligence untried,
+that at least she might have the comfort of knowing that she did
+not suffer by negligence or sluggishness.  "Yet what," said she,
+"is to be expected from our pursuit of happiness, when we find the
+state of life to be such that happiness itself is the cause of
+misery?  Why should we endeavour to attain that of which the
+possession cannot be secured?  I shall henceforward fear to yield
+my heart to excellence, however bright, or to fondness, however
+tender, lest I should lose again what I have lost in Pekuah."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII--THE PRINCESS HEARS NEWS OF PEKUAH.
+
+
+
+In seven mouths one of the messengers who had been sent away upon
+the day when the promise was drawn from the Princess, returned,
+after many unsuccessful rambles, from the borders of Nubia, with an
+account that Pekuah was in the hands of an Arab chief, who
+possessed a castle or fortress on the extremity of Egypt.  The
+Arab, whose revenue was plunder, was willing to restore her, with
+her two attendants, for two hundred ounces of gold.
+
+The price was no subject of debate.  The Princess was in ecstasies
+when she heard that her favourite was alive, and might so cheaply
+be ransomed.  She could not think of delaying for a moment Pekuah's
+happiness or her own, but entreated her brother to send back the
+messenger with the sum required.  Imlac, being consulted, was not
+very confident of the veracity of the relater, and was still more
+doubtful of the Arab's faith, who might, if he were too liberally
+trusted, detain at once the money and the captives.  He thought it
+dangerous to put themselves in the power of the Arab by going into
+his district; and could not expect that the rover would so much
+expose himself as to come into the lower country, where he might be
+seized by the forces of the Bassa.
+
+It is difficult to negotiate where neither will trust.  But Imlac,
+after some deliberation, directed the messenger to propose that
+Pekuah should be conducted by ten horsemen to the monastery of St.
+Anthony, which is situated in the deserts of Upper Egypt, where she
+should be met by the same number, and her ransom should be paid.
+
+That no time might be lost, as they expected that the proposal
+would not be refused, they immediately began their journey to the
+monastery; and when they arrived, Imlac went forward with the
+former messenger to the Arab's fortress.  Rasselas was desirous to
+go with them; but neither his sister nor Imlac would consent.  The
+Arab, according to the custom of his nation, observed the laws of
+hospitality with great exactness to those who put themselves into
+his power, and in a few days brought Pekuah, with her maids, by
+easy journeys, to the place appointed, where, receiving the
+stipulated price, he restored her, with great respect, to liberty
+and her friends, and undertook to conduct them back towards Cairo
+beyond all danger of robbery or violence.
+
+The Princess and her favourite embraced each other with transport
+too violent to be expressed, and went out together to pour the
+tears of tenderness in secret, and exchange professions of kindness
+and gratitude.  After a few hours they returned into the refectory
+of the convent, where, in the presence of the prior and his
+brethren, the Prince required of Pekuah the history of her
+adventures.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII--THE ADVENTURES OF THE LADY PEKUAH.
+
+
+
+"At what time and in what manner I was forced away," said Pekuah,
+"your servants have told you.  The suddenness of the event struck
+me with surprise, and I was at first rather stupefied than agitated
+with any passion of either fear or sorrow.  My confusion was
+increased by the speed and tumult of our flight, while we were
+followed by the Turks, who, as it seemed, soon despaired to
+overtake us, or were afraid of those whom they made a show of
+menacing.
+
+"When the Arabs saw themselves out of danger, they slackened their
+course; and as I was less harassed by external violence, I began to
+feel more uneasiness in my mind.  After some time we stopped near a
+spring shaded with trees, in a pleasant meadow, where we were set
+upon the ground, and offered such refreshments as our masters were
+partaking.  I was suffered to sit with my maids apart from the
+rest, and none attempted to comfort or insult us.  Here I first
+began to feel the full weight of my misery.  The girls sat weeping
+in silence, and from time to time looked on me for succour.  I knew
+not to what condition we were doomed, nor could conjecture where
+would be the place of our captivity, or whence to draw any hope of
+deliverance.  I was in the hands of robbers and savages, and had no
+reason to suppose that their pity was more than their justice, or
+that they would forbear the gratification of any ardour of desire
+or caprice of cruelty.  I, however, kissed my maids, and
+endeavoured to pacify them by remarking that we were yet treated
+with decency, and that since we were now carried beyond pursuit,
+there was no danger of violence to our lives.
+
+"When we were to be set again on horseback, my maids clung round
+me, and refused to be parted; but I commanded them not to irritate
+those who had us in their power.  We travelled the remaining part
+of the day through an unfrequented and pathless country, and came
+by moonlight to the side of a hill, where the rest of the troop was
+stationed.  Their tents were pitched and their fires kindled, and
+our chief was welcomed as a man much beloved by his dependents.
+
+"We were received into a large tent, where we found women who had
+attended their husbands in the expedition.  They set before us the
+supper which they had provided, and I ate it rather to encourage my
+maids than to comply with any appetite of my own.  When the meat
+was taken away, they spread the carpets for repose.  I was weary,
+and hoped to find in sleep that remission of distress which nature
+seldom denies.  Ordering myself, therefore, to be undressed, I
+observed that the women looked very earnestly upon me, not
+expecting, I suppose, to see me so submissively attended.  When my
+upper vest was taken off, they were apparently struck with the
+splendour of my clothes, and one of them timorously laid her hand
+upon the embroidery.  She then went out, and in a short time came
+back with another woman, who seemed to be of higher rank and
+greater authority.  She did, at her entrance, the usual act of
+reverence, and, taking me by the hand placed me in a smaller tent,
+spread with finer carpets, where I spent the night quietly with my
+maids.
+
+"In the morning, as I was sitting on the grass, the chief of the
+troop came towards me.  I rose up to receive him, and he bowed with
+great respect.  'Illustrious lady,' said he, 'my fortune is better
+than I had presumed to hope:  I am told by my women that I have a
+princess in my camp.'  'Sir,' answered I, 'your women have deceived
+themselves and you; I am not a princess, but an unhappy stranger
+who intended soon to have left this country, in which I am now to
+be imprisoned for ever.'  'Whoever or whencesoever you are,'
+returned the Arab, 'your dress and that of your servants show your
+rank to be high and your wealth to be great.  Why should you, who
+can so easily procure your ransom, think yourself in danger of
+perpetual captivity?  The purpose of my incursions is to increase
+my riches, or, more property, to gather tribute.  The sons of
+Ishmael are the natural and hereditary lords of this part of the
+continent, which is usurped by late invaders and low-born tyrants,
+from whom we are compelled to take by the sword what is denied to
+justice.  The violence of war admits no distinction:  the lance
+that is lifted at guilt and power will sometimes fall on innocence
+and gentleness.'
+
+"'How little,' said I, 'did I expect that yesterday it should have
+fallen upon me!'
+
+"'Misfortunes,' answered the Arab, 'should always be expected.  If
+the eye of hostility could learn reverence or pity, excellence like
+yours had been exempt from injury.  But the angels of affliction
+spread their toils alike for the virtuous and the wicked, for the
+mighty and the mean.  Do not be disconsolate; I am not one of the
+lawless and cruel rovers of the desert; I know the rules of civil
+life; I will fix your ransom, give a passport to your messenger,
+and perform my stipulation with nice punctuality.'
+
+"You will easily believe that I was pleased with his courtesy, and
+finding that his predominant passion was desire for money, I began
+now to think my danger less, for I knew that no sum would be
+thought too great for the release of Pekuah.  I told him that he
+should have no reason to charge me with ingratitude if I was used
+with kindness, and that any ransom which could be expected for a
+maid of common rank would be paid, but that he must not persist to
+rate me as a princess.  He said he would consider what he should
+demand, and then, smiling, bowed and retired.
+
+"Soon after the women came about me, each contending to be more
+officious than the other, and my maids themselves were served with
+reverence.  We travelled onward by short journeys.  On the fourth
+day the chief told me that my ransom must be two hundred ounces of
+gold, which I not only promised him, but told him that I would add
+fifty more if I and my maids were honourably treated.
+
+"I never knew the power of gold before.  From that time I was the
+leader of the troop.  The march of every day was longer or shorter
+as I commanded, and the tents were pitched where I chose to rest.
+We now had camels and other conveniences for travel; my own women
+were always at my side, and I amused myself with observing the
+manners of the vagrant nations, and with viewing remains of ancient
+edifices, with which these deserted countries appear to have been
+in some distant age lavishly embellished.
+
+"The chief of the band was a man far from illiterate:  he was able
+to travel by the stars or the compass, and had marked in his
+erratic expeditions such places as are most worthy the notice of a
+passenger.  He observed to me that buildings are always best
+preserved in places little frequented and difficult of access; for
+when once a country declines from its primitive splendour, the more
+inhabitants are left, the quicker ruin will be made.  Walls supply
+stones more easily than quarries; and palaces and temples will be
+demolished to make stables of granite and cottages of porphyry.'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX--THE ADVENTURES OF PEKUAH (continued).
+
+
+
+"We wandered about in this manner for some weeks, either, as our
+chief pretended, for my gratification, or, as I rather suspected,
+for some convenience of his own.  I endeavoured to appear contented
+where sullenness and resentment would have been of no use, and that
+endeavour conduced much to the calmness of my mind; but my heart
+was always with Nekayah, and the troubles of the night much
+overbalanced the amusements of the day.  My women, who threw all
+their cares upon their mistress, set their minds at ease from the
+time when they saw me treated with respect, and gave themselves up
+to the incidental alleviations of our fatigue without solicitude or
+sorrow.  I was pleased with their pleasure, and animated with their
+confidence.  My condition had lost much of its terror, since I
+found that the Arab ranged the country merely to get riches.
+Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice:  other intellectual
+distempers are different in different constitutions of mind; that
+which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another;
+but to the favour of the covetous there is a ready way--bring
+money, and nothing is denied.
+
+"At last we came to the dwelling of our chief; a strong and
+spacious house, built with stone in an island of the Nile, which
+lies, as I was told, under the tropic.  'Lady,' said the Arab, 'you
+shall rest after your journey a few weeks in this place, where you
+are to consider yourself as Sovereign.  My occupation is war:  I
+have therefore chosen this obscure residence, from which I can
+issue unexpected, and to which I can retire unpursued.  You may now
+repose in security:  here are few pleasures, but here is no
+danger.'  He then led me into the inner apartments, and seating me
+on the richest couch, bowed to the ground.
+
+"His women, who considered me as a rival, looked on me with
+malignity; but being soon informed that I was a great lady detained
+only for my ransom, they began to vie with each other in
+obsequiousness and reverence.
+
+"Being again comforted with new assurances of speedy liberty, I was
+for some days diverted from impatience by the novelty of the place.
+The turrets overlooked the country to a great distance, and
+afforded a view of many windings of the stream.  In the day I
+wandered from one place to another, as the course of the sun varied
+the splendour of the prospect, and saw many things which I had
+never seen before.  The crocodiles and river-horses are common in
+this unpeopled region; and I often looked upon them with terror,
+though I knew they could not hurt me.  For some time I expected to
+see mermaids and tritons, which, as Imlac has told me, the European
+travellers have stationed in the Nile; but no such beings ever
+appeared, and the Arab, when I inquired after them, laughed at my
+credulity.
+
+"At night the Arab always attended me to a tower set apart for
+celestial observations, where he endeavoured to teach me the names
+and courses of the stars.  I had no great inclination to this
+study; but an appearance of attention was necessary to please my
+instructor, who valued himself for his skill, and in a little while
+I found some employment requisite to beguile the tediousness of
+time, which was to be passed always amidst the same objects.  I was
+weary of looking in the morning on things from which I had turned
+away weary in the evening:  I therefore was at last willing to
+observe the stars rather than do nothing, but could not always
+compose my thoughts, and was very often thinking on Nekayah when
+others imagined me contemplating the sky.  Soon after, the Arab
+went upon another expedition, and then my only pleasure was to talk
+with my maids about the accident by which we were carried away, and
+the happiness we should all enjoy at the end of our captivity."
+
+"There were women in your Arab's fortress," said the Princess; "why
+did you not make them your companions, enjoy their conversation,
+and partake their diversions?  In a place where they found business
+or amusement, why should you alone sit corroded with idle
+melancholy? or why could not you bear for a few months that
+condition to which they were condemned for life?"
+
+"The diversions of the women," answered Pekuah, "were only childish
+play, by which the mind accustomed to stronger operations could not
+be kept busy.  I could do all which they delighted in doing by
+powers merely sensitive, while my intellectual faculties were flown
+to Cairo.  They ran from room to room, as a bird hops from wire to
+wire in his cage.  They danced for the sake of motion, as lambs
+frisk in a meadow.  One sometimes pretended to be hurt that the
+rest might be alarmed, or hid herself that another might seek her.
+Part of their time passed in watching the progress of light bodies
+that floated on the river, and part in marking the various forms
+into which clouds broke in the sky.
+
+"Their business was only needlework, in which I and my maids
+sometimes helped them; but you know that the mind will easily
+straggle from the fingers, nor will you suspect that captivity and
+absence from Nekayah could receive solace from silken flowers.
+
+"Nor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their conversation:
+for of what could they be expected to talk?  They had seen nothing,
+for they had lived from early youth in that narrow spot:  of what
+they had not seen they could have no knowledge, for they could not
+read.  They had no idea but of the few things that were within
+their view, and had hardly names for anything but their clothes and
+their food.  As I bore a superior character, I was often called to
+terminate their quarrels, which I decided as equitably as I could.
+If it could have amused me to hear the complaints of each against
+the rest, I might have been often detained by long stories; but the
+motives of their animosity were so small that I could not listen
+without interrupting the tale."
+
+"How," said Rasselas, "can the Arab, whom you represented as a man
+of more than common accomplishments, take any pleasure in his
+seraglio, when it is filled only with women like these?  Are they
+exquisitely beautiful?"
+
+"They do not," said Pekuah, "want that unaffecting and ignoble
+beauty which may subsist without sprightliness or sublimity,
+without energy of thought or dignity of virtue.  But to a man like
+the Arab such beauty was only a flower casually plucked and
+carelessly thrown away.  Whatever pleasures he might find among
+them, they were not those of friendship or society.  When they were
+playing about him he looked on them with inattentive superiority;
+when they vied for his regard he sometimes turned away disgusted.
+As they had no knowledge, their talk could take nothing from the
+tediousness of life; as they had no choice, their fondness, or
+appearance of fondness, excited in him neither pride nor gratitude.
+He was not exalted in his own esteem by the smiles of a woman who
+saw no other man, nor was much obliged by that regard of which he
+could never know the sincerity, and which he might often perceive
+to be exerted not so much to delight him as to pain a rival.  That
+which he gave, and they received, as love, was only a careless
+distribution of superfluous time, such love as man can bestow upon
+that which he despises, such as has neither hope nor fear, neither
+joy nor sorrow."
+
+"You have reason, lady, to think yourself happy," said Imlac, "that
+you have been thus easily dismissed.  How could a mind, hungry for
+knowledge, be willing, in an intellectual famine, to lose such a
+banquet as Pekuah's conversation?"
+
+"I am inclined to believe," answered Pekuah, "that he was for some
+time in suspense; for, notwithstanding his promise, whenever I
+proposed to despatch a messenger to Cairo he found some excuse for
+delay.  While I was detained in his house he made many incursions
+into the neighbouring countries, and perhaps he would have refused
+to discharge me had his plunder been equal to his wishes.  He
+returned always courteous, related his adventures, delighted to
+hear my observations, and endeavoured to advance my acquaintance
+with the stars.  When I importuned him to send away my letters, he
+soothed me with professions of honour and sincerity; and when I
+could be no longer decently denied, put his troop again in motion,
+and left me to govern in his absence.  I was much afflicted by this
+studied procrastination, and was sometimes afraid that I should be
+forgotten; that you would leave Cairo, and I must end my days in an
+island of the Nile.
+
+"I grew at last hopeless and dejected, and cared so little to
+entertain him, that he for a while more frequently talked with my
+maids.  That he should fall in love with them or with me, might
+have been equally fatal, and I was not much pleased with the
+growing friendship.  My anxiety was not long, for, as I recovered
+some degree of cheerfulness, he returned to me, and I could not
+forbear to despise my former uneasiness.
+
+"He still delayed to send for my ransom, and would perhaps never
+have determined had not your agent found his way to him.  The gold,
+which he would not fetch, he could not reject when it was offered.
+He hastened to prepare for our journey hither, like a man delivered
+from the pain of an intestine conflict.  I took leave of my
+companions in the house, who dismissed me with cold indifference."
+
+Nekayah having heard her favourite's relation, rose and embraced
+her, and Rasselas gave her a hundred ounces of gold, which she
+presented to the Arab for the fifty that were promised.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL--THE HISTORY OF A MAN OF LEARNING.
+
+
+
+They returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased at finding
+themselves together that none of them went much abroad.  The Prince
+began to love learning, and one day declared to Imlac that he
+intended to devote himself to science and pass the rest of his days
+in literary solitude.
+
+"Before you make your final choice," answered Imlac, "you ought to
+examine its hazards, and converse with some of those who are grown
+old in the company of themselves.  I have just left the observatory
+of one of the most learned astronomers in the world, who has spent
+forty years in unwearied attention to the motion and appearances of
+the celestial bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless
+calculations.  He admits a few friends once a month to hear his
+deductions and enjoy his discoveries.  I was introduced as a man of
+knowledge worthy of his notice.  Men of various ideas and fluent
+conversation are commonly welcome to those whose thoughts have been
+long fixed upon a single point, and who find the images of other
+things stealing away.  I delighted him with my remarks.  He smiled
+at the narrative of my travels, and was glad to forget the
+constellations and descend for a moment into the lower world.
+
+"On the next day of vacation I renewed my visit, and was so
+fortunate as to please him again.  He relaxed from that time the
+severity of his rule, and permitted me to enter at my own choice.
+I found him always busy, and always glad to be relieved.  As each
+knew much which the other was desirous of learning, we exchanged
+our notions with great delight.  I perceived that I had every day
+more of his confidence, and always found new cause of admiration in
+the profundity of his mind.  His comprehension is vast, his memory
+capacious and retentive, his discourse is methodical, and his
+expression clear.
+
+"His integrity and benevolence are equal to his learning.  His
+deepest researches and most favourite studies are willingly
+interrupted for any opportunity of doing good by his counsel or his
+riches.  To his closest retreat, at his most busy moments, all are
+admitted that want his assistance; 'For though I exclude idleness
+and pleasure, I will never,' says he, 'bar my doors against
+charity.  To man is permitted the contemplation of the skies, but
+the practice of virtue is commanded.'"
+
+"Surely," said the Princess, "this man is happy."
+
+"I visited him," said Imlac, "with more and more frequency, and was
+every time more enamoured of his conversation; he was sublime
+without haughtiness, courteous without formality, and communicative
+without ostentation.  I was at first, great Princess, of your
+opinion, thought him the happiest of mankind, and often
+congratulated him on the blessing that he enjoyed.  He seemed to
+hear nothing with indifference but the praises of his condition, to
+which he always returned a general answer, and diverted the
+conversation to some other topic.
+
+"Amidst this willingness to be pleased and labour to please, I had
+quickly reason to imagine that some painful sentiment pressed upon
+his mind.  He often looked up earnestly towards the sun, and let
+his voice fall in the midst of his discourse.  He would sometimes,
+when we were alone, gaze upon me in silence with the air of a man
+who longed to speak what he was yet resolved to suppress.  He would
+often send for me with vehement injunction of haste, though when I
+came to him he had nothing extraordinary to say; and sometimes,
+when I was leaving him, would call me back, pause a few moments,
+and then dismiss me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI--THE ASTRONOMER DISCOVERS THE CAUSE OF HIS UNEASINESS.
+
+
+
+"At last the time came when the secret burst his reserve.  We were
+sitting together last night in the turret of his house watching the
+immersion of a satellite of Jupiter.  A sudden tempest clouded the
+sky and disappointed our observation.  We sat awhile silent in the
+dark, and then he addressed himself to me in these words:  'Imlac,
+I have long considered thy friendship as the greatest blessing of
+my life.  Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and
+knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.  I have
+found in thee all the qualities requisite for trust--benevolence,
+experience, and fortitude.  I have long discharged an office which
+I must soon quit at the call of Nature, and shall rejoice in the
+hour of imbecility and pain to devolve it upon thee.'
+
+"I thought myself honoured by this testimony, and protested that
+whatever could conduce to his happiness would add likewise to mine.
+
+"'Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit.  I
+have possessed for five years the regulation of the weather and the
+distribution of the seasons.  The sun has listened to my dictates,
+and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds at my
+call have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my
+command.  I have restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated
+the fervours of the crab.  The winds alone, of all the elemental
+powers, have hitherto refused my authority, and multitudes have
+perished by equinoctial tempests which I found myself unable to
+prohibit or restrain.  I have administered this great office with
+exact justice, and made to the different nations of the earth an
+impartial dividend of rain and sunshine.  What must have been the
+misery of half the globe if I had limited the clouds to particular
+regions, or confined the sun to either side of the equator?'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII--THE OPINION OF THE ASTRONOMER IS EXPLAINED AND
+JUSTIFIED.
+
+
+
+"I suppose he discovered in me, through the obscurity of the room,
+some tokens of amazement and doubt, for after a short pause he
+proceeded thus:-
+
+"'Not to be easily credited will neither surprise nor offend me,
+for I am probably the first of human beings to whom this trust has
+been imparted.  Nor do I know whether to deem this distinction a
+reward or punishment.  Since I have possessed it I have been far
+less happy than before, and nothing but the consciousness of good
+intention could have enabled me to support the weariness of
+unremitted vigilance.'
+
+"'How long, sir,' said I, 'has this great office been in your
+hands?'
+
+"'About ten years ago,' said he, 'my daily observations of the
+changes of the sky led me to consider whether, if I had the power
+of the seasons, I could confer greater plenty upon the inhabitants
+of the earth.  This contemplation fastened on my mind, and I sat
+days and nights in imaginary dominion, pouring upon this country
+and that the showers of fertility, and seconding every fall of rain
+with a due proportion of sunshine.  I had yet only the will to do
+good, and did not imagine that I should ever have the power.
+
+"'One day as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I
+felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the
+southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation.  In the
+hurry of my imagination I commanded rain to fall; and by comparing
+the time of my command with that of the inundation, I found that
+the clouds had listened to my lips.'
+
+"'Might not some other cause,' said I, 'produce this concurrence?
+The Nile does not always rise on the same day.'
+
+"'Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, 'that such objections
+could escape me.  I reasoned long against my own conviction, and
+laboured against truth with the utmost obstinacy.  I sometimes
+suspected myself of madness, and should not have dared to impart
+this secret but to a man like you, capable of distinguishing the
+wonderful from the impossible, and the incredible from the false.'
+
+"'Why, sir,' said I, 'do you call that incredible which you know,
+or think you know, to be true?'
+
+"'Because,' said he, 'I cannot prove it by any external evidence;
+and I know too well the laws of demonstration to think that my
+conviction ought to influence another, who cannot, like me, be
+conscious of its force.  I therefore shall not attempt to gain
+credit by disputation.  It is sufficient that I feel this power
+that I have long possessed, and every day exerted it.  But the life
+of man is short; the infirmities of age increase upon me, and the
+time will soon come when the regulator of the year must mingle with
+the dust.  The care of appointing a successor has long disturbed
+me; the night and the day have been spent in comparisons of all the
+characters which have come to my knowledge, and I have yet found
+none so worthy as thyself.'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII--THE ASTRONOMER LEAVES IMLAC HIS DIRECTIONS.
+
+
+
+"'Hear, therefore, what I shall impart with attention, such as the
+welfare of a world requires.  If the task of a king be considered
+as difficult, who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he
+cannot do much good or harm, what must be the anxiety of him on
+whom depends the action of the elements and the great gifts of
+light and heat?  Hear me, therefore, with attention.
+
+"'I have diligently considered the position of the earth and sun,
+and formed innumerable schemes, in which I changed their situation.
+I have sometimes turned aside the axis of the earth, and sometimes
+varied the ecliptic of the sun, but I have found it impossible to
+make a disposition by which the world may be advantaged; what one
+region gains another loses by an imaginable alteration, even
+without considering the distant parts of the solar system with
+which we are acquainted.  Do not, therefore, in thy administration
+of the year, indulge thy pride by innovation; do not please thyself
+with thinking that thou canst make thyself renowned to all future
+ages by disordering the seasons.  The memory of mischief is no
+desirable fame.  Much less will it become thee to let kindness or
+interest prevail.  Never rob other countries of rain to pour it on
+thine own.  For us the Nile is sufficient.'
+
+"I promised that when I possessed the power I would use it with
+inflexible integrity; and he dismissed me, pressing my hand.  'My
+heart,' said he, 'will be now at rest, and my benevolence will no
+more destroy my quiet; I have found a man of wisdom and virtue, to
+whom I can cheerfully bequeath the inheritance of the sun.'"
+
+The Prince heard this narration with very serious regard; but the
+Princess smiled, and Pekuah convulsed herself with laughter.
+"Ladies," said Imlac, "to mock the heaviest of human afflictions is
+neither charitable nor wise.  Few can attain this man's knowledge
+and few practise his virtues, but all may suffer his calamity.  Of
+the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and
+alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason."
+
+The Princess was recollected, and the favourite was abashed.
+Rasselas, more deeply affected, inquired of Imlac whether he
+thought such maladies of the mind frequent, and how they were
+contracted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV--THE DANGEROUS PREVALENCE OF IMAGINATION.
+
+
+
+"Disorders of intellect," answered Imlac, "happen much more often
+than superficial observers will easily believe.  Perhaps if we
+speak with rigorous exactness, no human mind is in its right state.
+There is no man whose imagination does not sometimes predominate
+over his reason who can regulate his attention wholly by his will,
+and whose ideas will come and go at his command.  No man will be
+found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannise, and
+force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.
+All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity, but while
+this power is such as we can control and repress it is not visible
+to others, nor considered as any deprivation of the mental
+faculties; it is not pronounced madness but when it becomes
+ungovernable, and apparently influences speech or action.
+
+"To indulge the power of fiction and send imagination out upon the
+wing is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent
+speculation.  When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour
+of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of inquiry
+will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety.  He who has nothing
+external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own
+thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is
+pleased with what he is?  He then expatiates in boundless futurity,
+and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present
+moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible
+enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion.  The
+mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all
+combinations, and riots in delights which Nature and fortune, with
+all their bounty, cannot bestow.
+
+"In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all
+other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in
+weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite
+conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is
+offended with the bitterness of truth.  By degrees the reign of
+fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious and in time despotic.
+Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten
+upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.
+
+"This, sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the hermit has
+confessed not always to promote goodness, and the astronomer's
+misery has proved to be not always propitious to wisdom."
+
+"I will no more," said the favourite, "imagine myself the Queen of
+Abyssinia.  I have often spent the hours which the Princess gave to
+my own disposal in adjusting ceremonies and regulating the Court; I
+have repressed the pride of the powerful and granted the petitions
+of the poor; I have built new palaces in more happy situations,
+planted groves upon the tops of mountains, and have exulted in the
+beneficence of royalty, till, when the Princess entered, I had
+almost forgotten to bow down before her."
+
+"And I," said the Princess, "will not allow myself any more to play
+the shepherdess in my waking dreams.  I have often soothed my
+thoughts with the quiet and innocence of pastoral employments, till
+I have in my chamber heard the winds whistle and the sheep bleat;
+sometimes freed the lamb entangled in the thicket, and sometimes
+with my crook encountered the wolf.  I have a dress like that of
+the village maids, which I put on to help my imagination, and a
+pipe on which I play softly, and suppose myself followed by my
+flocks."
+
+"I will confess," said the Prince, "an indulgence of fantastic
+delight more dangerous than yours.  I have frequently endeavoured
+to imagine the possibility of a perfect government, by which all
+wrong should be restrained, all vice reformed, and all the subjects
+preserved in tranquillity and innocence.  This thought produced
+innumerable schemes of reformation, and dictated many useful
+regulations and salutary effects.  This has been the sport and
+sometimes the labour of my solitude, and I start when I think with
+how little anguish I once supposed the death of my father and my
+brothers."
+
+"Such," said Imlac, "are the effects of visionary schemes.  When we
+first form them, we know them to be absurd, but familiarise them by
+degrees, and in time lose sight of their folly."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV--THEY DISCOURSE WITH AN OLD MAN.
+
+
+
+The evening was now far past, and they rose to return home.  As
+they walked along the banks of the Nile, delighted with the beams
+of the moon quivering on the water, they saw at a small distance an
+old man whom the Prince had often heard in the assembly of the
+sages.  "Yonder," said he, "is one whose years have calmed his
+passions, but not clouded his reason.  Let us close the
+disquisitions of the night by inquiring what are his sentiments of
+his own state, that we may know whether youth alone is to struggle
+with vexation, and whether any better hope remains for the latter
+part of life."
+
+Here the sage approached and saluted them.  They invited him to
+join their walk, and prattled awhile as acquaintance that had
+unexpectedly met one another.  The old man was cheerful and
+talkative, and the way seemed short in his company.  He was pleased
+to find himself not disregarded, accompanied them to their house,
+and, at the Prince's request, entered with them.  They placed him
+in the seat of honour, and set wine and conserves before him.
+
+"Sir," said the Princess, "an evening walk must give to a man of
+learning like you pleasures which ignorance and youth can hardly
+conceive.  You know the qualities and the causes of all that you
+behold--the laws by which the river flows, the periods in which the
+planets perform their revolutions.  Everything must supply you with
+contemplation, and renew the consciousness of your own dignity."
+
+"Lady," answered he, "let the gay and the vigorous expect pleasure
+in their excursions:  it is enough that age can attain ease.  To me
+the world has lost its novelty.  I look round, and see what I
+remember to have seen in happier days.  I rest against a tree, and
+consider that in the same shade I once disputed upon the annual
+overflow of the Nile with a friend who is now silent in the grave.
+I cast my eyes upwards, fix them on the changing moon, and think
+with pain on the vicissitudes of life.  I have ceased to take much
+delight in physical truth; for what have I to do with those things
+which I am soon to leave?"
+
+"You may at least recreate yourself," said Imlac, "with the
+recollection of an honourable and useful life, and enjoy the praise
+which all agree to give you."
+
+"Praise," said the sage with a sigh, "is to an old man an empty
+sound.  I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation
+of her son, nor wife to partake the honours of her husband.  I have
+outlived my friends and my rivals.  Nothing is now of much
+importance; for I cannot extend my interest beyond myself.  Youth
+is delighted with applause, because it is considered as the earnest
+of some future good, and because the prospect of life is far
+extended; but to me, who am now declining to decrepitude, there is
+little to be feared from the malevolence of men, and yet less to be
+hoped from their affection or esteem.  Something they may yet take
+away, but they can give me nothing.  Riches would now be useless,
+and high employment would be pain.  My retrospect of life recalls
+to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time
+squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and vacancy.  I
+leave many great designs unattempted, and many great attempts
+unfinished.  My mind is burdened with no heavy crime, and therefore
+I compose myself to tranquillity; endeavour to abstract my thoughts
+from hopes and cares which, though reason knows them to be vain,
+still try to keep their old possession of the heart; expect, with
+serene humility, that hour which nature cannot long delay, and hope
+to possess in a better state that happiness which here I could not
+find, and that virtue which here I have not attained."
+
+He arose and went away, leaving his audience not much elated with
+the hope of long life.  The Prince consoled himself with remarking
+that it was not reasonable to be disappointed by this account; for
+age had never been considered as the season of felicity, and if it
+was possible to be easy in decline and weakness, it was likely that
+the days of vigour and alacrity might be happy; that the noon of
+life might be bright, if the evening could be calm.
+
+The Princess suspected that age was querulous and malignant, and
+delighted to repress the expectations of those who had newly
+entered the world.  She had seen the possessors of estates look
+with envy on their heirs, and known many who enjoyed pleasures no
+longer than they could confine it to themselves.
+
+Pekuah conjectured that the man was older than he appeared, and was
+willing to impute his complaints to delirious dejection; or else
+supposed that he had been unfortunate, and was therefore
+discontented.  "For nothing," said she, "is more common than to
+call our own condition the condition of life."
+
+Imlac, who had no desire to see them depressed, smiled at the
+comforts which they could so readily procure to themselves; and
+remembered that at the same age he was equally confident of
+unmingled prosperity, and equally fertile of consolatory
+expedients.  He forbore to force upon them unwelcome knowledge,
+which time itself would too soon impress.  The Princess and her
+lady retired; the madness of the astronomer hung upon their minds;
+and they desired Imlac to enter upon his office, and delay next
+morning the rising of the sun.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI--THE PRINCESS AND PEKUAH VISIT THE ASTRONOMER.
+
+
+
+The Princess and Pekuah, having talked in private of Imlac's
+astronomer, thought his character at once so amiable and so strange
+that they could not be satisfied without a nearer knowledge, and
+Imlac was requested to find the means of bringing them together.
+
+This was somewhat difficult.  The philosopher had never received
+any visits from women, though he lived in a city that had in it
+many Europeans, who followed the manners of their own countries,
+and many from other parts of the world, that lived there with
+European liberty.  The ladies would not be refused, and several
+schemes were proposed for the accomplishment of their design.  It
+was proposed to introduce them as strangers in distress, to whom
+the sage was always accessible; but after some deliberation it
+appeared that by this artifice no acquaintance could be formed, for
+their conversation would be short, and they could not decently
+importune him often.  "This," said Rasselas, "is true; but I have
+yet a stronger objection against the misrepresentation of your
+state.  I have always considered it as treason against the great
+republic of human nature to make any man's virtues the means of
+deceiving him, whether on great or little occasions.  All imposture
+weakens confidence and chills benevolence.  When the sage finds
+that you are not what you seemed, he will feel the resentment
+natural to a man who, conscious of great abilities, discovers that
+he has been tricked by understandings meaner than his own, and
+perhaps the distrust which he can never afterwards wholly lay aside
+may stop the voice of counsel and close the hand of charity; and
+where will you find the power of restoring his benefactions to
+mankind, or his peace to himself?"
+
+To this no reply was attempted, and Imlac began to hope that their
+curiosity would subside; but next day Pekuah told him she had now
+found an honest pretence for a visit to the astronomer, for she
+would solicit permission to continue under him the studies in which
+she had been initiated by the Arab, and the Princess might go with
+her, either as a fellow-student, or because a woman could not
+decently come alone.  "I am afraid," said Imlac, "that he will soon
+be weary of your company.  Men advanced far in knowledge do not
+love to repeat the elements of their art, and I am not certain that
+even of the elements, as he will deliver them, connected with
+inferences and mingled with reflections, you are a very capable
+auditress."  "That," said Pekuah, "must be my care.  I ask of you
+only to take me thither.  My knowledge is perhaps more than you
+imagine it, and by concurring always with his opinions I shall make
+him think it greater than it is."
+
+The astronomer, in pursuance of this resolution, was told that a
+foreign lady, travelling in search of knowledge, had heard of his
+reputation, and was desirous to become his scholar.  The
+uncommonness of the proposal raised at once his surprise and
+curiosity, and when after a short deliberation he consented to
+admit her, he could not stay without impatience till the next day.
+
+The ladies dressed themselves magnificently, and were attended by
+Imlac to the astronomer, who was pleased to see himself approached
+with respect by persons of so splendid an appearance.  In the
+exchange of the first civilities he was timorous and bashful; but
+when the talk became regular, he recollected his powers, and
+justified the character which Imlac had given.  Inquiring of Pekuah
+what could have turned her inclination towards astronomy, he
+received from her a history of her adventure at the Pyramid, and of
+the time passed in the Arab's island.  She told her tale with ease
+and elegance, and her conversation took possession of his heart.
+The discourse was then turned to astronomy.  Pekuah displayed what
+she knew.  He looked upon her as a prodigy of genius, and entreated
+her not to desist from a study which she had so happily begun.
+
+They came again and again, and were every time more welcome than
+before.  The sage endeavoured to amuse them, that they might
+prolong their visits, for he found his thoughts grow brighter in
+their company; the clouds of solitude vanished by degrees as he
+forced himself to entertain them, and he grieved when he was left,
+at their departure, to his old employment of regulating the
+seasons.
+
+The Princess and her favourite had now watched his lips for several
+months, and could not catch a single word from which they could
+judge whether he continued or not in the opinion of his
+preternatural commission.  They often contrived to bring him to an
+open declaration; but he easily eluded all their attacks, and, on
+which side soever they pressed him, escaped from them to some other
+topic.
+
+As their familiarity increased, they invited him often to the house
+of Imlac, where they distinguished him by extraordinary respect.
+He began gradually to delight in sublunary pleasures.  He came
+early and departed late; laboured to recommend himself by assiduity
+and compliance; excited their curiosity after new arts, that they
+might still want his assistance; and when they made any excursion
+of pleasure or inquiry, entreated to attend them.
+
+By long experience of his integrity and wisdom, the Prince and his
+sister were convinced that he might be trusted without danger; and
+lest he should draw any false hopes from the civilities which he
+received, discovered to him their condition, with the motives of
+their journey, and required his opinion on the choice of life.
+
+"Of the various conditions which the world spreads before you which
+you shall prefer," said the sage, "I am not able to instruct you.
+I can only tell that I have chosen wrong.  I have passed my time in
+study without experience--in the attainment of sciences which can
+for the most part be but remotely useful to mankind.  I have
+purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of
+life; I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship,
+and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.  If I have obtained
+any prerogatives above other students, they have been accompanied
+with fear, disquiet, and scrupulosity; but even of these
+prerogatives, whatever they were, I have, since my thoughts have
+been diversified by more intercourse with the world, begun to
+question the reality.  When I have been for a few days lost in
+pleasing dissipation, I am always tempted to think that my
+inquiries have ended in error, and that I have suffered much, and
+suffered it in vain."
+
+Imlac was delighted to find that the sage's understanding was
+breaking through its mists, and resolved to detain him from the
+planets till he should forget his task of ruling them, and reason
+should recover its original influence.
+
+From this time the astronomer was received into familiar
+friendship, and partook of all their projects and pleasures; his
+respect kept him attentive, and the activity of Rasselas did not
+leave much time unengaged.  Something was always to be done; the
+day was spent in making observations, which furnished talk for the
+evening, and the evening was closed with a scheme for the morrow.
+
+The sage confessed to Imlac that since he had mingled in the gay
+tumults of life, and divided his hours by a succession of
+amusements, he found the conviction of his authority over the skies
+fade gradually from his mind, and began to trust less to an opinion
+which he never could prove to others, and which he now found
+subject to variation, from causes in which reason had no part.  "If
+I am accidentally left alone for a few hours," said he, "my
+inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are
+chained down by some irresistible violence; but they are soon
+disentangled by the Prince's conversation, and instantaneously
+released at the entrance of Pekuah.  I am like a man habitually
+afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at
+the dread which harassed him in the dark; yet, if his lamp be
+extinguished, feels again the terrors which he knows that when it
+is light he shall feel no more.  But I am sometimes afraid, lest I
+indulge my quiet by criminal negligence, and voluntarily forget the
+great charge with which I am entrusted.  If I favour myself in a
+known error, or am determined by my own ease in a doubtful question
+of this importance, how dreadful is my crime!"
+
+"No disease of the imagination," answered Imlac, "is so difficult
+of cure as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt; fancy
+and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift
+their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from
+the dictates of the other.  If fancy presents images not moral or
+religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain; but
+when melancholy notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the
+faculties without opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or
+banish them.  For this reason the superstitious are often
+melancholy, and the melancholy almost always superstitious.
+
+"But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your better
+reason; the danger of neglect can be but as the probability of the
+obligation, which, when you consider it with freedom, you find very
+little, and that little growing every day less.  Open your heart to
+the influence of the light, which from time to time breaks in upon
+you; when scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments
+know to be vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or to
+Pekuah; and keep this thought always prevalent, that you are only
+one atom of the mass of humanity, and have neither such virtue nor
+vice as that you should be singled out for supernatural favours or
+afflictions."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII--THE PRINCE ENTERS, AND BRINGS A NEW TOPIC.
+
+
+
+"All this," said the astronomer, "I have often thought; but my
+reason has been so long subjugated by an uncontrollable and
+overwhelming idea, that it durst not confide in its own decisions.
+I now see how fatally I betrayed my quiet, by suffering chimeras to
+prey upon me in secret; but melancholy shrinks from communication,
+and I never found a man before to whom I could impart my troubles,
+though I had been certain of relief.  I rejoice to find my own
+sentiments confirmed by yours, who are not easily deceived, and can
+have no motive or purpose to deceive.  I hope that time and variety
+will dissipate the gloom that has so long surrounded me, and the
+latter part of my days will be spent in peace."
+
+"Your learning and virtue," said Imlac, "may justly give you
+hopes."
+
+Rasselas then entered, with the Princess and Pekuah, and inquired
+whether they had contrived any new diversion for the next day.
+"Such," said Nekayah, "is the state of life, that none are happy
+but by the anticipation of change; the change itself is nothing;
+when we have made it the next wish is to change again.  The world
+is not yet exhausted:  let me see something to-morrow which I never
+saw before."
+
+"Variety," said Rasselas, "is so necessary to content, that even
+the Happy Valley disgusted me by the recurrence of its luxuries;
+yet I could not forbear to reproach myself with impatience when I
+saw the monks of St. Anthony support, without complaint, a life,
+not of uniform delight, but uniform hardship."
+
+"Those men," answered Imlac, "are less wretched in their silent
+convent than the Abyssinian princes in their prison of pleasure.
+Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an adequate and
+reasonable motive.  Their labour supplies them with necessaries; it
+therefore cannot be omitted, and is certainly rewarded.  Their
+devotion prepares them for another state, and reminds them of its
+approach while it fits them for it.  Their time is regularly
+distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left
+open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades
+of listless inactivity.  There is a certain task to be performed at
+an appropriated hour, and their toils are cheerful, because they
+consider them as acts of piety by which they are always advancing
+towards endless felicity."
+
+"Do you think," said Nekayah, "that the monastic rule is a more
+holy and less imperfect state than any other?  May not he equally
+hope for future happiness who converses openly with mankind, who
+succours the distressed by his charity, instructs the ignorant by
+his learning, and contributes by his industry to the general system
+of life, even though he should omit some of the mortifications
+which are practised in the cloister, and allow himself such
+harmless delights as his condition may place within his reach?"
+
+"This," said Imlac, "is a question which has long divided the wise
+and perplexed the good.  I am afraid to decide on either part.  He
+that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a
+monastery.  But perhaps everyone is not able to stem the
+temptations of public life, and if he cannot conquer he may
+properly retreat.  Some have little power to do good, and have
+likewise little strength to resist evil.  Many are weary of the
+conflicts with adversity, and are willing to eject those passions
+which have long busied them in vain.  And many are dismissed by age
+and diseases from the more laborious duties of society.  In
+monasteries the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered, the
+weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate.  Those retreats of
+prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of
+man, that perhaps there is scarcely one that does not purpose to
+close his life in pious abstraction, with a few associates serious
+as himself."
+
+"Such," said Pekuah, "has often been my wish, and I have heard the
+Princess declare that she should not willingly die in a crowd."
+
+"The liberty of using harmless pleasures," proceeded Imlac, "will
+not be disputed, but it is still to be examined what pleasures are
+harmless.  The evil of any pleasure that Nekayah can image is not
+in the act itself but in its consequences.  Pleasure in itself
+harmless may become mischievous by endearing to us a state which we
+know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts
+from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning,
+and of which no length of time will bring us to the end.
+Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use but
+that it disengages us from the allurements of sense.  In the state
+of future perfection to which we all aspire there will be pleasure
+without danger and security without restraint."
+
+The Princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the astronomer,
+asked him whether he could not delay her retreat by showing her
+something which she had not seen before.
+
+"Your curiosity," said the sage, "has been so general, and your
+pursuit of knowledge so vigorous, that novelties are not now very
+easily to be found; but what you can no longer procure from the
+living may be given by the dead.  Among the wonders of this country
+are the catacombs, or the ancient repositories in which the bodies
+of the earliest generations were lodged, and where, by the virtue
+of the gums which embalmed them, they yet remain without
+corruption."
+
+"I know not," said Rasselas, "what pleasure the sight of the
+catacombs can afford; but, since nothing else is offered, I am
+resolved to view them, and shall place this with my other things
+which I have done because I would do something."
+
+They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited the
+catacombs.  When they were about to descend into the sepulchral
+caves, "Pekuah," said the Princess, "we are now again invading the
+habitations of the dead; I know that you will stay behind.  Let me
+find you safe when I return."  "No, I will not be left," answered
+Pekuah, "I will go down between you and the Prince."
+
+They then all descended, and roved with wonder through the
+labyrinth of subterraneous passages, where the bodies were laid in
+rows on either side.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII--IMLAC DISCOURSES ON THE NATURE OF THE SOUL.
+
+
+
+"What reason," said the Prince, "can be given why the Egyptians
+should thus expensively preserve those carcases which some nations
+consume with fire, others lay to mingle with the earth, and all
+agree to remove from their sight as soon as decent rites can be
+performed?"
+
+"The original of ancient customs," said Imlac, "is commonly
+unknown, for the practice often continues when the cause has
+ceased; and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is vain to
+conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain.
+I have long believed that the practice of embalming arose only from
+tenderness to the remains of relations or friends; and to this
+opinion I am more inclined because it seems impossible that this
+care should have been general; had all the dead been embalmed,
+their repositories must in time have been more spacious than the
+dwellings of the living.  I suppose only the rich or honourable
+were secured from corruption, and the rest left to the course of
+nature.
+
+"But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed the soul
+to live as long as the body continued undissolved, and therefore
+tried this method of eluding death."
+
+"Could the wise Egyptians," said Nekayah, "think so grossly of the
+soul?  If the soul could once survive its separation, what could it
+afterwards receive or suffer from the body?"
+
+"The Egyptians would doubtless think erroneously," said the
+astronomer, "in the darkness of heathenism and the first dawn of
+philosophy.  The nature of the soul is still disputed amidst all
+our opportunities of clearer knowledge; some yet say that it may be
+material, who, nevertheless, believe it to be immortal."
+
+"Some," answered Imlac, "have indeed said that the soul is
+material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it
+who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of reason enforce
+the immateriality of mind, and all the notices of sense and
+investigations of science concur to prove the unconsciousness of
+matter.
+
+"It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in matter, or
+that every particle is a thinking being.  Yet if any part of matter
+be devoid of thought, what part can we suppose to think?  Matter
+can differ from matter only in form, density, bulk, motion, and
+direction of motion.  To which of these, however varied or
+combined, can consciousness be annexed?  To be round or square, to
+be solid or fluid, to be great or little, to be moved slowly or
+swiftly, one way or another, are modes of material existence all
+equally alien from the nature of cogitation.  If matter be once
+without thought, it can only be made to think by some new
+modification; but all the modifications which it can admit are
+equally unconnected with cogitative powers."
+
+"But the materialists," said the astronomer, "urge that matter may
+have qualities with which we are unacquainted."
+
+"He who will determine," returned Imlac, "against that which he
+knows because there may be something which he knows not; he that
+can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged certainty, is
+not to be admitted among reasonable beings.  All that we know of
+matter is, that matter is inert, senseless, and lifeless; and if
+this conviction cannot he opposed but by referring us to something
+that we know not, we have all the evidence that human intellect can
+admit.  If that which is known may be overruled by that which is
+unknown, no being, not omniscient, can arrive at certainty."
+
+"Yet let us not," said the astronomer, "too arrogantly limit the
+Creator's power."
+
+"It is no limitation of Omnipotence," replied the poet, "to suppose
+that one thing is not consistent with another, that the same
+proposition cannot be at once true and false, that the same number
+cannot be even and odd, that cogitation cannot be conferred on that
+which is created incapable of cogitation."
+
+"I know not," said Nekayah, "any great use of this question.  Does
+that immateriality, which in my opinion you have sufficiently
+proved, necessarily include eternal duration?"
+
+"Of immateriality," said Imlac, "our ideas are negative, and
+therefore obscure.  Immateriality seems to imply a natural power of
+perpetual duration as a consequence of exemption from all causes of
+decay:  whatever perishes is destroyed by the solution of its
+contexture and separation of its parts; nor can we conceive how
+that which has no parts, and therefore admits no solution, can be
+naturally corrupted or impaired."
+
+"I know not," said Rasselas, "how to conceive anything without
+extension:  what is extended must have parts, and you allow that
+whatever has parts may be destroyed."
+
+"Consider your own conceptions," replied Imlac, "and the difficulty
+will be less.  You will find substance without extension.  An ideal
+form is no less real than material bulk; yet an ideal form has no
+extension.  It is no less certain, when you think on a pyramid,
+that your mind possesses the idea of a pyramid, than that the
+pyramid itself is standing.  What space does the idea of a pyramid
+occupy more than the idea of a grain of corn? or how can either
+idea suffer laceration?  As is the effect, such is the cause; as
+thought, such is the power that thinks, a power impassive and
+indiscerptible."
+
+"But the Being," said Nekayah, "whom I fear to name, the Being
+which made the soul, can destroy it."
+
+"He surely can destroy it," answered Imlac, "since, however
+imperishable, it receives from a superior nature its power of
+duration.  That it will not perish by any inherent cause of decay
+or principle of corruption, may be shown by philosophy; but
+philosophy can tell no more.  That it will not be annihilated by
+Him that made it, we must humbly learn from higher authority."
+
+The whole assembly stood awhile silent and collected.  "Let us
+return," said Rasselas, "from this scene of mortality.  How gloomy
+would be these mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he
+should never die; that what now acts shall continue its agency, and
+what now thinks shall think on for ever.  Those that lie here
+stretched before us, the wise and the powerful of ancient times,
+warn us to remember the shortness of our present state; they were
+perhaps snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the CHOICE
+OF LIFE."
+
+"To me," said the Princess, "the choice of life is become less
+important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of
+eternity."
+
+They then hastened out of the caverns, and under the protection of
+their guard returned to Cairo.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX--THE CONCLUSION, IN WHICH NOTHING IS CONCLUDED.
+
+
+
+It was now the time of the inundation of the Nile.  A few days
+after their visit to the catacombs the river began to rise.
+
+They were confined to their house.  The whole region being under
+water, gave them no invitation to any excursions; and being well
+supplied with materials for talk, they diverted themselves with
+comparisons of the different forms of life which they had observed,
+and with various schemes of happiness which each of them had
+formed.
+
+Pekuah was never so much charmed with any place as the Convent of
+St. Anthony, where the Arab restored her to the Princess, and
+wished only to fill it with pious maidens and to be made prioress
+of the order.  She was weary of expectation and disgust, and would
+gladly be fixed in some unvariable state.
+
+The Princess thought that, of all sublunary things, knowledge was
+the best.  She desired first to learn all sciences, and then
+proposed to found a college of learned women, in which she would
+preside, that, by conversing with the old and educating the young,
+she might divide her time between the acquisition and communication
+of wisdom, and raise up for the next age models of prudence and
+patterns of piety.
+
+The Prince desired a little kingdom in which he might administer
+justice in his own person and see all the parts of government with
+his own eyes; but he could never fix the limits of his dominion,
+and was always adding to the number of his subjects.
+
+Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be driven along the
+stream of life without directing their course to any particular
+port.
+
+Of those wishes that they had formed they well knew that none could
+be obtained.  They deliberated awhile what was to be done, and
+resolved, when the inundation should cease, to return to Abyssinia.
+
+
+
+
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