. 
 
" Rasselas, having for some time fixed his eyes upon the goats that 
 were browsing among the rocks, began to compare their condition with 
 his own." 
 
RASSELAS. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON, L.L.D 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 WILLIS P. HAZARD, 
 
 190 CHESTNUT STREET-. 
 
 1856. 
 
 - 
 

RASSELAS. 
 
 CHAP. 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 mor- 
 row ; attend to the nistory of Rasselas prince of Abissinia. 
 
 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 daugh- 
 ters of Abissinian 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 Abissinian 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 enter- 
 ed 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 an- 
 cient days, so massy, that no man, without the help of en- 
 gines, could open or shut them. 
 
4 RASSELAS. 
 
 From the mountains on every side rivulets descended, tha 
 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 j 
 blast shook spices from \he 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 moun- 
 tains 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 
 en the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and 
 the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the diversi- 
 ties of the world were brought together. The blessings of 
 Mature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded. 
 
 The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with 
 the necessaries of life ; and all delights and superfluities were 
 added at the annual visit which the emperor paid his chil- 
 dren, 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 immedi- 
 ately 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 perform- 
 ance 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 im- 
 prisonment. 
 
 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 magnifi- 
 
RASSELAS. 5 
 
 cence, according to the rank of those for whom they wert 
 designed. The roofs were turned into arches of massj 
 stdne, joined by a cement that grew harder by time ; and th 
 building stood trom 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 tc 
 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 stories by private galleries, or by 
 subterraneous passages from the lower apartments. Many 
 of the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race 
 of mpnarchs had reposited their treasures. They then clos 
 ed up the opening with marble, which was never to be re- 
 moved but in the utmost exigencies of the kingdom ; and re 
 corded their accumulations in a book, which was itself con 
 ceaieid in a tower, not entered-feut by the emperor attendet 
 by the prince who stood next in succession. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 The Discontent ofRasselas in the Happy Valley. 
 HERE the sons and daughters of Abissinia lived only ta 
 mow the soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended 
 by all that were skilful to delight, and gratified with what- 
 ever the senses can enjoy. They wandered in gardens ol 
 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 ol 
 nothing but the miseries of public life, and described all 
 beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where discord 
 was always raging, arid 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 enumera- 
 tions of different enjoyments, and revelry and merriment 
 were the business of every hour, from the dawn of the 
 morning to the close of the evening. 
 
 These methods were generally successful : few of the 
 princes had ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but pass- * 
 ed 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. 
 
RASSELAS. 
 
 Thus they rose m the morning and lay down at night, 
 pleased with each other and with themselves, all but Ras- 
 selas, 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 sal 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 endeavored 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, some- 
 times observed the fish playing in the stream, and anon cast 
 his eyes upon the pastures and mountains filled with ani- 
 mals, of which some were biting the herbage, and some 
 sleeping among the bushes. This singularity of his humor 
 made him much observed. One of the sages, in whose con- 
 versation 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 hinij 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 my- 
 self: 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, 
 hke 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 quick- 
 en the attention. The birds peck the berries of 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 lutanist 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 sureiy has some latent sense, for which this place af- 
 fords no gratification ; or he has some desires distinct from 
 sense, which must be satisfied before he can be happy." 
 
RASSELAS. 7 
 
 After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon ris- 
 ing, 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 dis- ^ 
 tresses from which ye are free ; I fear pain when I do not 
 feel it ; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and some- 
 times start at evils anticipated : surely the equity of Provi- 
 dence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoy- 
 ments." 
 
 With observations like these the prince amused himself as 
 he returned, uttering them with a plaintivfc voice, yet with a 
 look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own 
 perspicacitv, 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 min- 
 gled cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all re- 
 joiced to find that his heart was lightened. 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 The IVants 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 op- 
 portunity of conference, which the prince, having long con- 
 sidered him as one whose intellects were exhausted, was not 
 very willing to afford. " Why," said he, " does this man 
 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 in- 
 to 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 
 Dy 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 hapoiness of others." " You, sir," said the 
 
8 RASSELAS, 
 
 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 Abissmia can bestow ; here is neither labor 
 to be endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that 
 labor 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 endeavor, and I should not then repine to see the sun 
 move so slowly to^irds 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 in- 
 form me how the day may now seem as short as in my child- 
 hood, while nature was yet fresh, and every moment showed 
 me what 1 never had observed before. T have already en- 
 jjfc^Joyed 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 
 Hong to see the miseries of ihe world, since the sight of then: 
 is necessary to happiness." 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 The Prince continues to grieve and muse. 
 AT this time the sound of music proclaimed the hour ot 
 repast, and the conversation was concluded. The old man 
 went away sufficiently discontented to find that his reason- 
 ings had produced the only conclusion which they were in- 
 tended to prevent. But in the decline of life, shame and 
 grief are of short duration : whether it be that we bear easi- 
 ly what we have borne long ; or that, finding ourselves in age 
 less regarded, we less regard others; or that we look wit' 
 slight regard upon afflictions, to which we know that the ** 
 of death is about to put an end. 
 
RASSELAS. 9 
 
 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, be- 
 cause he considered that in a long time much must be en- 
 dured : he now rejoiced in his youth, because in many years 
 much might be done. This 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 distinct- 
 ness, 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 
 endeavored to make others pleased with the state of which 
 he himself was weary. But pleasures can never be so mul 
 tiplied 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 assem- 
 blies, because he supposed the frequency of his presence ne- 
 cessary 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 whicli 
 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 va- 
 rious 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 catcti the fugitive 
 with his utmost efforts : but, resolving to weary by perseve- 
 rance 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," 
 
10 RASSELAS. 
 
 said he, " is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the en- 
 joyment 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 remem 
 bered, that since he first resolved to escape from his con- 
 finement, the sun had passed twice over him in his annual 
 course. He now felt a degree >f regret with which he had 
 never been before acquainted He considered how much 
 might have been done in the tirr 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 be- 
 fore we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power 
 of acting. The true period of human existence may be rea- 
 sonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused 
 away the four-and-twentieth part. What I have lost w*.s 
 certain, for I have certainly possessed it; but of twenty 
 months to come who can assure me ?" 
 
 The consciousness of his folly pierced him deeply, and he 
 was long before he could be reconciled to himself. " The 
 rest of my time," said he, "h?s beer lost by the crime or 
 folly of my ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my coun- 
 try ; 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. 1 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 com- 
 mitted 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 ad- 
 vances, 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 in- 
 activity. I sat feasting on intellectual luxury, regardless 
 alike of the examples of the earth and the instructions of the 
 pla.nets. Twenty months are passed, who shall restore 
 vhem ?" 
 
 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 
 
 vhat cannot be repaired is not to be regretted. 
 
V RASSELAS. 11 
 
 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 ardor to distant views, neglects 
 the truths that lie opened before her. He, for a few hours, 
 regreUed his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind 
 upon the means of escaping from the valley of happiness. 
 
 CHAP. 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 na- 
 ture, which had never yet been broken, and by the gate, 
 through which none that had once passed it were ever ahle to 
 return. He was now impatient as an eagle in a grate." He 
 passed week after week in clambering the mountains Jto see 
 if there was any aperture which the bushes might conceal, 
 but found all the summits inaccessible by their prominence. 
 The irjoft-gate he despaired to open ; for it was not only se- 
 cured 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,i 
 having now known the blessing of hope, resolved never tcl 
 despair. ^ 
 
 In these fruitless researches he spent tenjojonths. The * 
 time, however, passed cheerfully away ; in the morning he 
 rose with new hope, in the evening applauded his own dili- 
 gence, and in the night slept sound after his fatigue.*. He met 
 a thousand amusements, which beguiled his labor and diver- 
 sified his thoughts. He discerned the various instincts of ani- 
 mals, 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 endeavors, though yet unsuccessful, 
 had supplied him with a source of inexhaustible inquiry. 
 
 But his original curiosity was not yet abated ; he resolved 
 
12 RASSELAS. 
 
 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 ner 
 toils for interstices which he knew could not be found, yet de* 
 termined to keep his design always in view, and lay hold of 
 any expedient time should offer. 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 A Dissertation on the Art of Flying, 
 
 AMONG the artists that had been allured into the happy 
 valley, to labor for the accommodation and pleasure of its in- 
 habitants, was a man eminent for his knowledge of the me- 
 chanic powers, who had contrived many engines both o .* 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 thai 
 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 im- 
 pulse 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 him- 
 self in his usual manner, and found the master busy in build- 
 ing a sailing chariot : he saw that the design was practicable 
 upon a tevel 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 honors. " Sir," said he, " you have seen but a 
 small part of what the mechanic science 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 tha* 
 only ignorance and idleness need crawl upon the ground." 
 
 This hint rekindled the prince's desire of passing the moun- 
 tains. Having seen what the mechanist had already perform- 
 ed, he was willing to fancy that he could do more ; yet resolv- 
 ed to inquire farther 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 thar you now 
 
RASSELAS. 13 
 
 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 beast the earth." " So," replied the mechanist 
 " fishes have the water, in which yet beasts can swim by na- 
 ture, 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 upborne by the air, if 
 you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can re- 
 cede 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 labor 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 gra- I 
 vity, will be gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at a re- I 
 gion where the man shall float in the air without any tenden- " \ 
 3V to fall ; no care will then be necessary but to move forward, 
 which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir, whose curi 
 osity 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 mo- 
 tion, 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 se- 
 curity 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 state 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 respi- 
 ration is difficult upon lofty mountains ; yet from these preci- 
 pices, 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 /. 
 ill possible objections must be first overcome. If you will 
 
14 RASSELAS. 
 
 favor 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 bats' wings most easily accom- 
 modated 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 out our- 
 selves." 
 
 " 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 re- 
 pay 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 J 
 neither walls, mountains, nor seas, could affora security. A I 
 flight of northern savages might hover in the wind, and light 
 with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region. 
 Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of happi- 
 ness, 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 perfor- 
 mance, 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 con- 
 tagion 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 wav- 
 ed his pinions a while 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 vex- 
 ation. 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 The Pnnce finds a Man of learning. 
 
 THE prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, haying 
 suffered himself to hope for a happier event only because 
 he had no other means of escape in view. He still persisted 
 
RASSELAS. 15 
 
 41 his design to leave the happy valley by the first oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 His imagination was now at a stand ; he had no prospect 
 of entering into the world ; and, notwithstanding all his en- 
 deavors 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 moun- 
 tains, 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 re- 
 treated to the mountains. 
 
 This inundation confined all the princes to domestic amuse- ._ 
 ments ; and the attention of Rasselas was particularly seized 
 by a poem, which Imlac^jpehearsed, upon the various condi- 
 tions of humanity7~~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 skil- 
 fully 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 enter- 
 tained 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 1m* 
 jac 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, Rassela* 
 was called to a concert, and obliged to restrain hifi curiosity 
 till the evening. 
 
 CHAP. 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 
 
1 RASSELAS. 
 
 theieioro midnight before the music ceased and the princess- 
 es retired. Rasselas then called for his companion, and re- 
 quired 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 dis- 
 tance 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 governor of the provinces." 
 
 " 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 be op- 
 pressed 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 em- 
 peror!" 
 
 " Sir," said Imlac, " your ardor is the natural effect of 
 virtue animated by youth : the lime will come when you will 
 acquit your father, and perhaps hear with less impatience of 
 the governor. Oppression is, in the Abissinian dominions, 
 , r neither frequent nor tolerated ; but no form of government 
 / has been yet discovered, by which cruelty can be wholly pre- 
 vented. Subordination supposes power on one part and sub- 
 jection on the other ; and u 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 
 
RASSELAS. 17 
 
 hope that I should be some time the richest man in Abissi- 
 nia." 
 
 "Why," said the prince, " did thy father desire the in-^ 
 crease of his wealth, when it was already greater than he 
 durst discover or enjoy ? C am unwilling to doubt thy veraci- 
 ty, 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 con- 
 ceive. 1 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 inven- 
 .-on, I began silently to despise riches, and determined to 
 disappoint the purposes of my father, whose grossness of 
 conception raised ray 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 gratifica- 
 tions ; but, as I advanced towards manhood, I lost much of 
 the reverence with which I had been used to look on my in- 
 structors ; 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 to 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 ol 
 growing rich. 
 
 " We laid our money upon camels, concealed in bales 01 
 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 unextin- 
 guishable curiositv kindle in my mind, and resolved to snatch 
 
18 RASSELAS. 
 
 this opportunity of seeing the manners of other nations, and 
 of learning sciences unknown in Abissinia. 
 
 " I remembered that my father had obliged me to the im- 
 provement 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 connexion with my 
 father, it was easy for me to become acquainted with the 
 master of a ship, and procure a passage to some other coun- 
 try. 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 en- 
 tered a ship bound for Surat, having left a letter for my father 
 declaring ny intention."^* 
 
 CHAP. 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, ima- 
 gined that I could gaze around for ever without satiety ; but, 
 m a short time, I grew weary of looking on barren unifoimity, 
 where I could only see again what I had already seen. I 
 then descended into the snip, and doubted for a while whe- 
 ther all my future pleasures would not end, like this, in disgust 
 and disappointment. Yet surely, said I, the ocean arid 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 con- 
 trary 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 my- 
 self during the voyage, sometimes by learning from the sail- 
 ors 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, purchas- 
 ing sorns 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, 
 
RASSELAS. 10 
 
 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, with- 
 out any advantage to themselves, but that of rejoicing in the 
 superiority of their own knowledge." ^^ ^ 
 
 " Stop a moment," said the prince : " is there suob de 
 pravity in man, as that he should injure another without be- 
 nefit 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; arid the knowledge 
 
 tself 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 
 taken motives." ' 
 
 " In this company," said Imlac, " I arrived at 
 
 capital of Indostan, the city in which the Great Mogul com. 
 monly 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 them- 
 selves; and some showed that the end of their studies wasta 
 gain the dignity of instructing. 
 
 " To the Tutor of the young princes I recommended my. 
 self 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 any thini thau ne 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. [ was surprised at their confidence 
 of solicitation, and gently reproached them with their prac- 
 tices on the road. They heard me with cold indifference, anc 
 showed no tokens of shame or sorrow. 
 
20 RASSELArf. 
 
 " They then urged their request with the offer of a unbo , 
 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, Infflf-trBserved many new accommo- 
 dations of life. The Persians are a nation "eminently social, 
 and their assemblies afforded me daily opportunities of re- 
 marking characters and manners, and of tracing human na- 
 ture through all its variations. 
 
 " From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a na- 
 tion pastoral and warlike ; who lifa*N>ithout any settled ha- 
 bitation, whose wealth is their flocks and herds, arid who have 
 carried on, through ages, an hereditary war with mankind, 
 though they never covet nor envy their possessions." 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 Imlac's History continued. A Dissertation upon Poetry. 
 
 .**- v WHEREVER 1 went, 1 tounn that poetry was considered 
 as ftie highest learning, and regarded with a veneration some- 
 what approaching to that which man would pay to angelic na- 
 ture. 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 ac 
 quisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred a' 
 once ; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them 
 as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it re- 
 ceived 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 strik- 
 ing objects for description and the most probable occurrences 
 for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed the.m but 
 transcription of the same events, and new combinations a 
 the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is common!}) 
 _ 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 frater- 
 nity. I read all the poets of Persia a*id 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 
 
RASSELAS. 21 
 
 ever great by imitation. My desire of excellence impeuea 
 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 opi- 
 nions I did not understand. 
 
 " Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw every thing with 
 a new purpose ; my sphere of attention was suddenly mag- 
 nified; 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 ana 
 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. Tn a poet _no- 
 thing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and whatever 
 isOTe*a:dftn, 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 mi- 
 nerals 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 reli- 
 gious 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 na-ture I was therefore careful to 
 study ; and every country \vnich I have surveyed has contri- 
 Duted something* to my poetical powers." 
 
 " In so wide a survey," said the prince, " you must surely 
 nave left much unobserved. I have lived till now within the 
 circuit of the mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad with- 
 out the sight of something which I had never beheld before, 
 or never heeded." 
 
 " The business of a poet," said Imlac, " is to examine, 
 not the individual, but the species ; to remark "general pro- 
 perties 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 01 
 nature such prominent and striking features as recall the 
 original to every mind ; and must neglect the minuter dis- 
 criminations, which one may have remarked, and anothei 
 have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike ob- 
 vious to vigilance and carelessness. ,j 
 
 " But .the knowledge of nature is only half the task oLa ^ 
 ooet; hemust be acquainted likewise with all the modes of 
 
22 RASSELAS. 
 
 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 abstract- 
 ed 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 pre- 
 siding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, 
 as a being superior to time and place. 
 
 " His labor is not yet at an end ; he must know many Ian- / 
 guages and many sciences ; and, that his style may be wor- 1 
 thy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, familiarize / 
 to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony." 
 
 CHAP. XI. 
 
 Imlac's Narrative continued. A Hint on Pilgrimage. 
 
 IMLAC now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to 
 aggrandize his own profession, when the 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 labors. 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 con- 
 versed with great numbers of the norm em and western na- 
 tions of Europe ; the nations which are now in possession 
 of all power and all knowledge , whose armies are irresisti- 
 ble, and whose fleets command the remotest parts of the 
 globe. When I compared these men with the natives oJ. 
 our own kingdom and those that surround us, they appeared 
 almost another order of beings. In their countries it is diffi- 
 cult to wish for any thing that may not be obtained : a thou- 
 sand arts, of which we never heard, are continually laboring 
 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 European! 
 
RASSELAS. 23 
 
 thus powerful ? or why, since they can so easily visit Asia 
 and Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the Asiatics and 
 Africans invade their coasts, 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 Im- 
 lac, " because they are wiser ; knowledge will always pre- 
 dominate 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 princi- 
 ples 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 dis- 
 pose us to view that country whence our religion had its be- 
 ginning ; 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 uncom- 
 mon manner, is an opinion which hourly experience will jus- 
 tify. He who supposes that his vices may be more success- 
 
24 RASSELAS 
 
 ully combated in Palestine will, perhaps, find himself mis- 
 taken ; yet he mav go thither without folly : he who thinks 
 they will be more freely pardoned, dishonors at once his rea- 
 son and religion." 
 
 " These," said tne prince, tl 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 dis- 
 tresses 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 in- 
 creasing 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, with- 
 out 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 learn- 
 ing, we grow more happy as our 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 pe- 
 rish. We suffer inclemencies of weather which they can 
 obviate. They have engines for the despatch of many labo- 
 rious 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 upon their 
 rivers. And, if we descend to the privacies of life, theii 
 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 every 
 where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to 
 be enjoyed." 
 
RASSELAS. 25 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 The Story of Imlac continued. 
 
 " I AM not willing," said the prince, " to suppose that hap* 
 piness 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 dis- 
 tress, 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 
 wre, 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 re- 
 verence ? All this may be done without the help of Euro- 
 pean refinements, which appear by their effects to be rather 
 specious than useful. Let us leave them, and pursue our 
 journev." 
 
 " From Palestine," said Imlac, " I passed through manv 
 regions of Asia ; in the more civilized kingdoms as a trader 
 and among the barbarians of the mountains as a pilgrim. Af 
 last I began to long for my native country, that I might re- 
 pose 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 dawn- 
 ing 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 Abissmia. I hastened into Egypt, and, notwith- 
 standing my impatience, was detained ten months in the con- 
 templation of its ancient magnificence, and in inquiries after 
 the remains of its ancient learning. I found in Cairo a mix- 
 ture of all nations; some brought thither by die l&ViJ Ul 
 knowledge, some by the hope of gain, many by the desire o 
 living after their own manner without observation, and of ly- 
 ja^lud in the obscurity of multitudes : for in a city populous 
 
26 RASSELAS. 
 
 as Cairo, it is possible to obtain at the same time the gratifi- 
 cations of society, and the secrecy of solitude. 
 
 " From Cairo I travelled to Suez, and embarked or) 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 honor 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 were in the grave; of the 
 rest, some could with difficulty remember me, and some con- 
 sidered me as one corrupted by foreign manners. 
 
 " A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected. I 
 forgot, after a time, my disappointment, and endeavored to 
 recommend myself to the nobles of the kingdom : they ad- 
 mitted me to their tables, heard my story, and dismissed me. 
 I opened a school, and was prohibited to teach. I then re- 
 solved 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 
 vftien the gate of the happy valley should open, that I might 
 bid farewell to hope and fear : the day came ; my perform- 
 ^ance was distinguished with favor, 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 condi- 
 tion ? 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 soli- 
 tude by the renovation of the knowledge which begins to fade 
 from my memory, and by recollection of the accidents of my 
 
RASSELA8. 2? 
 
 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 pre- 
 cludes malice, and where all envy is repressed by communi- 
 ty 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 an- 
 other: he that knows himself despised will always be en- 
 vious : and still more envious and malevolent if he is con- 
 demned 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 in^risoned 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 d^ficult, 
 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 
 arid boiling with whirlpools; you will be sometimes over- 
 4 whelmed 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 
 
28 RASSELAS. 
 
 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 con- 
 sequence 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." 
 
 CHAP. XIII. 
 
 Rasselas discovers the Means of Escape. 
 
 THE prince now dismissed his favorite to rest, but the nar- 
 rative of wonders and novelties filled his mind with pertur- 
 bation. He revolved all that he had heard, and prepared in- 
 numerable questions for the morning. 
 
 Much of his uneasiness was now removed. He had a 
 friend to whom he could impart his thoughts, and whose ex- 
 perience 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, wnose 
 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 ; " know- 
 ledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of me- 
 chanics 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 conies, 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 ani- 
 mals ; let us, therefore^ not think ourselves degraded by learn- 
 

 
 RASSELAS. 
 
 ing from the cony. We may escape by piercing the moun -- 
 tain in the same direction. We will begin where the sum 
 mit hangs over the middle part, and labor upward till we shaD 
 issue out beyond the prominence." 
 
 The eyes of the prince, when he heard this proposal, spark- 
 led with joy. The execution was easy, and the success cer 
 
 No time was now lost. They hastened early in the morn- 
 ing to choose a place proper for their mine. They clamber 
 ed with great fatigue among crags and brambles, and return*, 
 ed without having discovered any part that favored their de- 
 sign. The second and the third day were spent in the same 
 Banner, and with the same frustration. But on the fourth -* 
 they found a small cavern, concealed by a thicket, where they 
 resolved to make their experiment. 
 
 Imlac procured instruments proper to hew stone and re- 
 move earth, and they fell to their work the next day with 
 more eagerness than vigor. They were presently exhausted 
 oy their efforts, and sat down to pant upon the grass. The 
 prince, for a moment, appeared to be discouraged. " Sir," 
 said his companion, " practise will enable us to continue our 
 labor for a longer time : mark, however, how far we have ad- 
 vanced, and ye will find that our toil will some time have an 
 end. Great works are performed not by strength, but per- ' 
 severance : yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet 
 you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with 
 vigor 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 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.'' 
 
 CHAP. XIV. 
 
 Rasselas and Imlac receive an unexpected Visit. 
 THEY had now wrought their way to the middle, and so- 
 .aced their toil with the approach of liberty, when the prince, 
 
30 RASSELAS. 
 
 coming down to refresn himself with air, found his sister Ne 
 S kayah 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 pre- 
 ference than a cooler shade, or more fragrant bank; nor fol- 
 lowed you with any other design than to partake of your con- 
 versation. Since, then, not suspicion but fondness has de- 
 tected 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 rne to accompany you, but cannot hinder me 
 from following." 
 
 The prince, who loved Ntjk^aysth 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 vo- 
 luntary communication. It was therefore agreed, that she 
 should leave the valley with them ; and that, in the mean 
 time, she should watch lest any other straggler should, by 
 chance or curiosity, follow them to the mountain. 
 
 At length their labor was at an end : they saw light be- 
 yond the prominence, and, issuing to the top of the moun- 
 tain, beheld the Nile, yet a narrow current, wandering be- 
 neath 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 no* 
 thing now remained but to prepare for their departure. 
 
RASSELAS. 
 
 CHAP. 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 prin- 
 cess was followed only by a single favorite, 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 al- 
 most 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 emo- 
 tions, though he thought it more manly to conceal them. 
 
 Imlac smiled at their terrors, and encouraged them to pro- 
 ceed ; 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 fruit before them. The princess wonder- 
 ed 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 flavor than the products of the valley. 
 
 They travelled forward by easy journeys, being all unac- 
 customed to toil and difficulty, and knowing that, though they 
 might be missed, they could not be pursued. In a few days 
 chey came into a more populous region, where Imlac was di- 
 verted 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 sus 
 picion of having any thing to conceal ; yet the prince, wher- 
 ever he came, expected to be obeyed, and the princess was 
 frighted, because those who came into her presence did not 
 orostrate themselves. Imlac was forced to observe them 
 
^ RASSELAS. 
 
 *rith great vigilance, lest they should betray their rank by 
 Jieir unusual behavior, 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 pro- 
 cure. 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 every thing 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 pre- 
 tensions 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 pre- 
 vailed on the princess to enter the vessel. They had a quick 
 tnd prosperous voyage ; and from Suez travelled by land to 
 Cairo. 
 
 CHAP. XVI. 
 
 They enter Cairo, andjind every Man happy. 
 
 As they approached the city, which filled the strangers with 
 astonishment, " This," said Imlac to the prince, " is the 
 olace where travellers and merchants assemble from all cor- 
 ners of the earth. You will here find men of every charac- 
 ter, and every occupation. Commerce is here honorable : 
 I will act as 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 of- 
 fended by the crowds. Instruction had not yet so prevailed 
 over habit, but thai they wondered to see themselves pass 
 un listinguishod along the streets, and met by the lowest 01 
 
RASSELAS. 3'i 
 
 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 favorite, Pekuah, as in the palace of the vat- 
 ley. 
 
 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 acquaintance, and his generosity made him courted by 
 many dependants. His companions, not being able to mix in 
 the conversation, could n*a,ke 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 any thing 
 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 die 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 ap- 
 peared to him really happy. Wherever he went he met gay- 
 ety 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 T\ 
 
 Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was unwilling 
 to crush the hope of inexperience : till one day, having sat a 
 while 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 cfaserful, but feel my 
 own mind restless and uneasy. I am ^satisfied with those 
 pleasures which I seem most to court. I live in the crowds 
 3 
 
34 RASSELAS. 
 
 of jollity, not so mucn 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 ia the minds of others : when you 
 feel that your own gayety 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 con- 
 vinced 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, forme'd 
 to inhabit serener regions, inaccessible to care or sorrow : yet. 
 believe me, prince, there was 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 ia 
 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 acci- 
 "i dents 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 ~ 
 
 ely," 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 with- 
 out his f res ig nt ) an ^ w " n which he did not always willingly 
 co-operatej) and therefore you will rarely meet one who doea 
 t think the lot of his neighbor 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 somewher* 
 o be found."' 
 
RASSELAS. 35 
 
 CHAP. XVII. 
 The Prince associates with young Men nj spirit and gayety. 
 
 RASSELAS rose next day, and resolve*! to begin his experi- 
 ments upon life. " Youth," cried he, " is the time of glad- 
 ness : I will join myself to the young men, whose only busi- 
 ness 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 plea- 
 sures 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 r.hance. "Happiness," said he, 
 " must be something solid and permanent, without fear and 
 without uncertainty." 
 
 But his young companions had gained so much of his re- 
 gard by their frankness and courtesy, that he could not leav* 
 them without warning and remonstrance. " IVly friends,* 
 said he, " I have seriously considered our manners arid out 
 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 
 fepirits 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 phan- 
 toms 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 pow- 
 er : 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 
 
36 RASSELAS. 
 
 last, drove him away by a general chorus of continued laugh- 
 ter. 
 
 The consciousness that his sentiments were just, and M 
 intention kind, was scarcely sufficient to support him against 
 the horror of derision. But he recovered his tranquillity, and 
 pursued his search. 
 
 g 
 h 
 
 CHAP. XVIII. 
 
 The Prince Jinds 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 au- 
 ditory. 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 sbowed, with 
 reat strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, tha* 
 uman nature is degraded and debased, when the lower facul- 
 es 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 mo- 
 tion 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 immoveable 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. 3 
 
 Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to the in- 
 structions of a superior being, and, waiting for him at the door 
 humbly implored the liberty of visiting so great a master o 
 true wisdom. The lecturer hesitated a moment, when Ras 
 selas 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 at- 
 tention 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." 
 
 RasseTas, who could not conceive how any man could rea- 
 son so forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own argu- 
 ments, 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 re- 
 medied, 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 I 
 wise man can never be surprised : we know that death is al- I 
 ways near, and it should therefore always be expected." I 
 " 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, u can truth arid 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 emptinesi 
 
38 RASSELAS. 
 
 of rhetorical sounds, and the inefficacy of polished period* 
 and studied sentences. 
 
 CHAP. 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 th 
 Nile, and filled the whole country with the fame of his sane, 
 tity, resolved to visit his retreat, and inquire whether that fe- 
 licity, which public life could not afford, was to be found in 
 solitnde ; and whether a man, whose age and virtues made 
 him venerable, could teach any peculiar art of shunning evils, 
 or enduring them. 
 
 Imlac and the princess agreed to accompany him ; ana 
 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. 
 u This," said the poet, " is the life which has been often ce- 
 lebrated 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 shep- 
 herds, 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 occupa- 
 tion, 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 labor 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 spe- 
 cimens 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 he justly preferred 
 to the placid gratifications 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 read- 
 ing in the shade. 
 
RASSELAS. 
 
 CHAP. 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 
 /iey saw a thick wood, which they no sooner entered than 
 mey perceived they were approaching the habitations of men. 
 The shrubs were diligently cut away to open walks whre 
 the shades were darkest ; the boughs of opposite trees were - 
 artificially interwoven, seats of flowery turf were raised in va- 
 cant spaces, and a rivulet, that wantoned along the side of a 
 winding path, had its banks sometimes opened into small ba- 
 sins, and its streams 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 harm- 
 less luxury. 
 
 As they advanced they heard the sound of music, and saw 
 youths and virgins dancing in the grove ; and, going still far- ., 
 ther, beheld a stately palace built upon a hill, surrounded with 
 woods. The laws of eastern hospitality allowed them to en- 
 ter, 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 mag- 
 nificence. The eloquence of Imlac caught his attention, and I 
 tne 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 ap- 
 pearance of happiness, but appearances are delusive. My 
 prosperity puts my life in danger; the Bassa of Egypt is my 
 <memy, incensed only by my wealth and popularity. I have 
 
40 RASSELAS, 
 
 been hitherto protected against him by the princess of the 
 country : but, as the favor 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 fol- 
 low them. Then will my enemies riot in my mansion, and 
 enjoy the gardens wnich I have planted." 
 
 They all joined in lamenting his danger, and" deprecating 
 his exile ; and the princess was so much disturbed with the tu- 
 mult of grief and indignation, that she retired to her apart- 
 ment. They continued with their kind inviter a few days 
 longer, and then went to find the hermit. 
 
 CHAP. XXI. 
 The Happiness of Solitude. The Hermit's History. 
 
 THEY came, on tne 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 composed the mind to pensive me- 
 ditation, especially when it was assisted by the wind whist- 
 ling among the branches. The first rude essay of nature had 
 been so much improved by human labor, that the cave con- 
 tained several apartments appropriated to different uses, and 
 often afforded lodging to travellers, whom darkness or tem- 
 pests happened to overtake. 
 
 The hermit sat on a bench at the door, to enjoy the cool- 
 ness 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 lie 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 chil- 
 dren," said he, " if you have lost your way, you shall be wil- 
 lingly 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 upoa fruits and wa- 
 ter. His discourse was cheerful without levity, and pious 
 
RASSELAS. 4* 
 
 without enthusiasm. He soon gained the esteem of his guests, 
 and the princess repented her nasty 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, f 
 than to remove from all apparent evil." 
 
 " He will most certainly remove from evil," said the prince, ^ 
 I" 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 vas 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 vigor 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 nnal residence. I employed ar- 
 tificers 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 harbor, being delighted 
 with the sudden change of the noise and hurry of war to still- 
 ness and repose. When the pleasure of novelty went away,** 
 I employed my hours in examining the plants which grow m 
 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 dis- 
 turbed 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, ana begin to suspect 
 that I was rather impelled by resentment than led by devo- 
 tion 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 re- 
 solve to return into the world to-morrow, The life of a soli- 
 
42 RASSELAS. 
 
 tary man will be certainly miserable, but not certain* 
 devout." 
 
 They heard his resolution with surprise, hut, after a shor 
 pause, offered to conduct him to Cairo. He dug up a co 
 siderable treasure which he had hid among the rocks, arid ac- 
 companied them to the city, on which, as he approached . 
 he gazed with rapture. 
 
 CHAP. XXII. 
 
 The Happiness of a Life led according to Nature. f 
 
 RASSELAS went often to an assembly of learned men, who 
 ""met at stated times to unbend their rninds 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 they began. 
 Some faults were almost general among them : every one ' 
 was desirous to dictate to the rest, and 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 va- 
 rious. Some were of opinion, that the folly of his choice had 
 been justly punished by condemnation to perpetual persever- 
 ance. One of the youngest among them, with great vehe- 
 mence, pronounced him a hypocrite. Some talked of the 
 right of society to the labor of individuals, and considered re- 
 tirement 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 happi- 
 ness," 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 mi- 
 sery ; yet, when the same state is again at a distance, ima- 
 gination paints it as desirable. But the time will surely 
 
RASSELAS. 43 
 
 come, when desire will no longer be our torment, ana no 
 man shall bo wretched but by his own fault." 
 
 " This," said a philosopher, who had heard him with to 
 kens 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, f The way to be happy, is to live 
 according to nature, | in "obedience to that universal and 
 unalterable law wrttrrvhich every heart is originally impress- 
 ed ; 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 no- 
 thing from the delusions of hope or importunities of desire , 
 he will receive and reject with equability of temper ; and act 
 or sutfer 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 incumbrance 
 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 de- 
 viation 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, u as I, like all 
 the rest of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest at- 
 tention 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. 1 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 uni- 
 versal felicity ; to co-operate with the general disposition 
 and tendency of the present system of things." i 
 
 The prince soon found that this was one of the sages 
 whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. 
 
44 RASSKLAS. 
 
 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. 
 
 CHAP. 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 remain- 
 ing for more experiments, and farther inquiries. He com- 
 municated 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 sistei, wo 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 vet 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 favors not our search, lest we 
 should in time find him mistaken. f We will divide the task 
 between us : you shall try what is to be found in the splen-, 
 dor of courts, and I will range the shadej of humbler life. I 
 Perhaps command and authority may be the supreme bless- 
 ings, 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 peaury and distress. 
 
 CHAP. 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 coun- 
 tries, to an intimacy with the great officers, and frequent 
 conversation with the Bassa himself. 
 w e was at first inclined to believe, that the man must be 
 
RASSELAfi. 45 
 
 pleased with his own condition, whom all approached with 
 reverence, and heard with obedience, and who had the po\* 
 er to extend his edicts to a whole kingdom. " There can 
 be no pleasure," said he, u 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 harriiy be subjected to the 
 will of a single man, only to fill his particular breast with 
 incommunicable content." 
 
 These thoughts were often in his miner, and he found no 
 solution of the difficulty. But as pr^frut.?. and civilities 
 gained him more familiarity, he fourr! thai inmost every 
 man who stood high in emplovmen' baied a ' ti-e rest, am? 
 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 men 
 tioned no more. 
 
 " What are we now to think of the prerogatives of pow- 
 er ?" said Rasselas to his sister : " is it without any 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 sub- 
 ject 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 Janiza 
 nes, and his successor had other views and different fa- 
 vorites. 
 
 CHAP. XXV. 
 
 The Princess pursues her Inquiry with more Diligence than 
 Success. 
 
 THE princess, in the mean time, insinuated herself into 
 many families : for there are few doors through which li- 
 berality, joined with good humor, cannot find its way. The 
 daughters of many houses were airy and cheerful ; but 
 Nekayah had been too long accustomed to the conversation 
 
46 RAfeSELAS. 
 
 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 
 artih'cial. Their pleasures, poor as they were, could not 
 be preserved pure, but were imbittered by petty competi- 
 tions 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 ; every thing 
 floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so 
 that one desire easily gave way to anothet , as a second stone 
 cast into the water effaces arid 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, arid 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 pleasures. 
 
 The princess and her brother commonly met in the even- 
 ing in a private summer-house 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 floods 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 [ con- 
 cluded that there it could not be found. But I saw many 
 ?oor whom I had supposed to live in affluence. Poverty 
 
RASSELAS. 47 
 
 has, in large cities, very different appearances ; it is often 
 concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the 
 care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indi- 
 gence 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 exigences 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 favors." 
 
 CHAP. XXVI. 
 
 The Princess continues her Remarks upon Private Life. 
 
 NEKAYAH, perceiving her brother's attention fixed, pro- 
 ceeded 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 
 [actions and exposed to revolutions. An unpractised obser- 
 ver 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 allayed by reproaches, and 
 gratitude debased bv envy. 
 
 " Parents and children seldom act in concert; each child 
 endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the pa- 
 reats ; 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 despondence, of expectation arid eJfyerience, without 
 crime or folly on either side. The colors of life in youth and 
 age appear different, as the face of nature in spring and win- 
 ter. And how can children credit the assertions of parents, 
 which tht-ir own eyes show them to be false ? 
 
 " Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce 
 lu-ir n\a.\iius Ity the credit of their lives. The old man trusts 
 
49 RASSELAS. 
 
 wholly to slow contrivance and gradual progression ; th* 
 youth expects to force his way by genius, vigor, and precipi- 
 tance. 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 
 tnan, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and 
 therefore acts with openness and candor : but his father, hav- 
 ing 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 scrupulo- 
 sity 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 consolation?" 
 
 "Surely," said the prince, "you must have been unfortu- 
 nate in your choice of acquaintance : I am unwilling to be- 
 lieve 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 fttLaiJim"ji ; buf^yet it is not easily avoided. We sel- 
 dom 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 ex- 
 tremes. 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 re- 
 lations, 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 
 
 \ 
 
 I shall for the future think it dangerous to connect my in- 
 terest with that of another, lest I should be unhappy by my 
 partner's fault." 
 
 " I have met," said the princess, " with many who live sin- 
 gle 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 amuse- 
 me-nts or vicious delights. They act as beings under the 
 constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their mind? 
 
RASSELAS. 49 
 
 with rancor, 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 Ras'selas ; " the more 
 we inqufre the less we can resolve. Surely he is most likely 
 to please himself that has no other inclination to regard." 
 
 CHAP. XXVII. 
 
 Disquisition upon Greatness. 
 
 THE conversation had a short pause. The prince, having 
 considered his sister's observations, 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 Irnlac were but faint sketches of the evils painted by Ne- 
 Kayah. I have been lately convinced that quiet is not the 
 daughter of grandeur, or of power : that her presence is not to 
 oe bought by wealth, or 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 favored will think themselves injured ; and, since 
 favors can be conferred but upon few, the greater number will 
 be always discontented." 
 
 " The discontent," said the princess, " which is thus un- 
 reasonable, 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 administra- 
 tion of public affairs. None, however attentive, can always 
 discover that merit which indigence or faction may happen to 
 obscure ; and non, however powerful, can always reward it. 
 Yet, he that sees inferior desert advanced above him will na- 
 turally impute that preference to partiality or caprice ; and, 
 indeed, it can scarcely be hoped that any man, however mag- 
 
50 RASSELAS. 
 
 nanimous 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 favorites : 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 en- 
 deavor to give it. Thus will recommendations sometimes 
 prevail which were purchased by money, or by the more de- 
 structive bribery of flattery and servility. 
 
 " He that hath much to do will do something wrong, and on 
 that wrong must suffer the consequences ; and if it were pos- 
 sible that he should always act rightly, yet when such num- 
 bers 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 ade- 
 quate to his employments, who sees with his own eyes the 
 whole circuit of his influence, who chooses by his own know- 
 ledge all whom he trusts, and whom none are tempted to de- 
 ceive 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 per- 
 fect goodness," said Nekayah, " this world will never afford 
 an opportunity of deciding. But this, at least, may be main- 
 tained, that we do not always find visible happiness in pro- 
 portion to visible virtue. All natural, and almost all political 
 evils, are incident alike to the bad and good : they are con- 
 founded in the misery of a famine, and not much Astingushed 
 in the fury of a faction ; they sink together in a utnpest, 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 
 suppose pain." * 
 
 CHAP. XXVIII. 
 
 Rasselas and Nekayah continue their Conversation. 
 " DEAR princess," said Rasselas, " you fall into the com- 
 mon errors of exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a 
 
RASSELAS. 51 
 
 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 ordain- 
 ed 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 locusts, 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 hap- 
 pen, they must be endured. But it is evident, that these 
 bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt ; thou- 
 sands and ten 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 an- 
 vil, and the husbandman drives his plough forward ; the ne- 
 cessaries of life are required and obtained, and the succes- 
 sive business of the seasons continues to make its wonted 
 revolutions. 
 
 " Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never hap- 
 pen, and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human 
 speculation. We will not endeavor to modify the motions of 
 the elements, or to fix the destiny of kingdoms. It is our 
 ousiness to consider what beings like us may perform ; each 
 laboring for his own happiness, by promoting within his cir- 
 cle, however narrow, the happiness of others. 
 
 'MMarriage is evidently the Hictatej?f p n tur ft j "IPJI "ftd. 
 
 omen were madeTo be the compamonsof each other ; and, 
 rergfore^i cannot be persuaded but thai marriage" is onej)i 
 
 ejn^us^ojJnapp^ne^L^ 
 
 ~~~*f\ know nof^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 in- 
 felicity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversi- 
 ties 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 some- 
 times disposed to think, with the severer casuists of most 
 nations, that marriage is rather permitted than approved, 
 
52 RASSELAS. 
 
 and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too much 
 indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compacts." 
 
 " 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 worst. 
 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 frail- 
 ty. To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare 
 with exactness objects vast in their extent, and various in 
 their parts. Where we see or conceive the whole at once, 
 we readily note the discriminations, and decide the prefer- 
 ence : but of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed 
 by any human being in its full compass and magnitude, and 
 multiplicity of complication, where is the wonder, that, judg- 
 ing 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 muUifarious 
 relations of politics and morality ; but when we perceive tJv 
 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 endeavor to vie with 
 each other in subtleties 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 
 
 niisrbe peopled by mar ciage, or peupjed 
 w~THe worm ls~ to be peopled," returned Nekayah, 
 " is not my care, and needs 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." 
 
 CHAP. XXIX. 
 
 The Debate on Marriage continued. 
 
 " THE good of the whole," said Rasselas, " is the same 
 with the good of ail its parts. If marriage be best for man- 
 
RASSELAS. 53 
 
 kind, it must be evidently best for individuals ; or a perma- 
 nent 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 ap- 
 pears 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 Jthat prudence and benevolence will make marriage 
 happy. j The general folly of mankind is the cause of general 
 complaint. What r an hg.g Y p*MTted hllf disa.ppointmmt and 
 repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, 
 in the ardor 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 i 
 of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diver- 
 sify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are 
 apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy to- 
 gether. They marry, and discover what nothing but volun- 
 lary blindness before had concealed ; they wear out life in 
 altercations, and charge nature with cruelty. 
 
 11 From those early marriages proceeds likewise the rival- 
 ry 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 be- 
 gins 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 delibera- 
 tion 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 ad- 
 vantage at least will be certain ; the parents will be visibly 
 older than their children." 
 
 " What reason cannot collect," said Nekayah, " and what 
 experiment has not yet taught, can be known only from the 
 report of others. I hj^ijejjnJoljUhaLLjte marriages are not 
 eminently-happy. This is a question too important to be neg- 
 lected ; and I hdve often proposed it to those, whose accuracy 
 of remark and comprehensiveness of knowledge made their 
 suffrages worthy of regard. They have generally determin- 
 ed, that it is dangerous for a man and woman to suspend their 
 
54 RASSELAS. 
 
 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 pros- 
 pects. 
 
 " It is scarcely possible, that two travelling through the 
 world under the conduct of chance should have been both di- 
 r ected 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 regular- 
 ity, it is soon succeeded by pride ashamed to yield, or obsti- 
 nacy 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 di- 
 rection of the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to the 
 manners. Long customs are not easily broken ; he that at- 
 tempts to change the course of his own life very often labors 
 in vain, and how shall we do that for others which we are sel- 
 dom 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 de- 
 ceived. There are a thousand familiar disputes which rea- 
 son can never 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 occa- 
 sions, 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 domes- 
 tic day. 
 
 " TfcrkgA-mhn rmrry at a.n advance^ flgft will probably es- 
 cape the encroachmgJilauiClh^ctnjd^en f but in the diminu- 
 tion 61' tllly advantage, theyw^TTWTiEelytoJ^Eve them, ig- 
 norant ancflTfelpte'&^Jo a ^uardiatt*"mfi3T^T^r if that should 
 not hagpeli>4beylfiust at lea^TgcTput of the world before thev 
 'Qee tho^wlftftn-tfrgyTove best either wise or great. 
 """"F ronTfheiT^cnTldreh, if tKey have less*to fear, they have 
 less also to hope ; and they lose, without an equivalent, the 
 joys of early love, and the convenience of uniting with man- 
 ners pliant, and minds susceptible of new impressions, which 
 
RASSELAS. 55 
 
 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 T 
 I best pleased with their children, and those who marry early A* 
 I with their partners." "\y 
 
 * " Tte 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 pre- 
 judice in favor of the position so often uttered by the mouth j 
 I of Imlac, ' That nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on ; 
 I 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 canno* 
 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 dnfts nptfring wj?n endp.avnrs to 
 *" do mojr j gj:han is plowed to humanity. Flatter not yourself 
 ^ ^^ritncontrarietieTof pleasure. Ofthe 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." 
 
 CHAP. XXX. 
 
 Imlac enters, and changes the Coversatton. 
 
 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 mak- 
 ing 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 fa- 
 mous among the earliest monarchies for the power and wis- 
 dom 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 
 
66 RASSELA3. 
 
 is confessed to fade away. The ruins of tneir architecture 
 are the schools of modern builders, and from the wonders 
 which time has spared, we may conjecture, though uncer- 
 tainly, what it has destroyed." 
 
 " My curiosity," said Rasselas, " does not very strongly 
 lead me to survey piles of stone, or mounds of earth ; my bu- 
 siness 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 never can return, and heroes, whose form of life was 
 different from all that the present condition of mankind requires 
 or allows ?" 
 
 " To know any thing," 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 incited, 
 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 ob- 
 ject : and the future, of hope and fear : even love and hatred 
 respect the past, for the cause must have been before the ef- 
 fect. 
 
 ^Thepresent state ol Jhin%s_is Ifcq consequence of the 
 former; ajvtiHtTS^atural to inquire what were the sources of 
 fKe 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 intrusted with the care of others, it is 
 not just. N I|^iojailce^wJinjt^s^^ criminal : and 
 
 ne may properly be chltrgecTwitirevil who~fefused to learn 
 now 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 re- 
 suscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual 
 world. If accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly 
 the business of princes, the useful and elegant arts are not 
 
RASSELAS. 57 
 
 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 labors of art are always at hand for 
 those who desire to know what art has been able to per- 
 form. 
 
 " When the eye, or the imagination, is struck with any un- 
 common 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 compjirp our pwn with former times. and either r- 
 ur improvements, or, what is the first motion to- 
 
 , discover our defects." 
 
 I am witting," said the prince, " to see all that can de- 
 serve 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 hav 
 seen them, within and without, with my own eyes." 
 
 CHAP. XXXI. 
 
 They visit the Pyramids. 
 
 THE resolution being thus taken, they set out the net 
 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 every thing remark- 
 able, stopped from time to time and conversed with the in- 
 habitants, and observed the various appearances of towns 
 ruined and inhabited, of wild and cultivated nature. 
 
 When they came to the great pyramid, they were asto- 
 nished at the extent of the base, and the height of the top. 
 Imlac explained to them the principles upon which th** PJ ra - \ 
 Tnidal forth was cho"eh ibr a fabric intended to ccnextend its 
 duration with that of the world : he showed that its gradual 
 
58 RASSELAS. 
 
 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 favorite of the princess, look- 
 ing into the cavity, stepped back and trembled. " Pekuah,'' 
 said the princess, " of what art thou afraid ?" 
 
 " Of the narrow entrance," answered the lady, " and ot 
 the dreadful gloom. I dare not enter a place which must 
 surely be inhabited by unquiet souls. The original posses- 
 sors of these dreadful vaults will start up before us, and per- 
 haps 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." 
 -- *Pffatthe dead are 'seen no more,*-Said Imlac, I will 
 not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unva- 
 ried 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, 
 
 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 Abissinia ?" 
 
 " If the princess is pleased that her servant should die, 11 
 returned the lady, " let her command some death less dread- 
 ful than inclosure in this horrid cavern. You know I dare 
 
RASSELAS. 
 
 59 
 
 not disobey you ; I must go if you command me ; but, if 1 
 once enter, I never shall come back." 
 
 The princess saw that her fear was too strong for expostu- 
 lation or reproof, and, embracing her, told her that she should 
 stay in the tent till their return. Pekuah was not yet satis- 
 fied, 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 l^arn cowardice ; nor leave at last undone what I came 
 hither only to do." 
 
 CHAP. XXXII. 
 
 They enter the Pyramid. 
 descended to the tents, and the rest entered the 
 
 o te ouner s suppose o ave een reposte. ey 
 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 se- 
 cured a wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of 
 
 TTIIW iiw.ii uniiv, iw ...m_, t"./tu vu 111 upon the inhabitants of pea 
 ful 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 labor of the work. The narrowrif ^y 
 of the chambers proves that it could afford no retreat f > 
 enemies, and treasures might have been reposited at far less 
 expense with equal security. ^It sterns to have been erected 
 oniyin compliance with that nunuti uf imagination which 
 preys mlin^sanLl\ruporrri!e r and must be always~appfiasHH fry 
 wine employment. Those who have already all that they can 
 
 enjoy, must enlarge their desires, {Jf ^ft! ha.s built for use 
 4J.U use is supplied, must begin to buIM for_yjajuj.y , and extend 
 ms plaT^to tneutmosrpower Tfl human performance, thaTRe 
 may not "Be soon recfacen 10 lor^n anotner wish. 
 
 " I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the 
 
60 RASSELAS. 
 
 insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king, whose power 
 is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and ima- 
 ginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyra- 
 mid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, 
 and to amuse the tediousness of declining life, by seeing thou- 
 sands laboring 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 magnifi- 
 cence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the 
 appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the 
 pyramids, and confess thy folly !" 
 
 CHAP. 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 favorite 
 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 carne 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 im- 
 mediately inquired. " You had scarcely entered into the pyra- 
 mid," 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 ap- 
 proach 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 insti- 
 gation, 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 ser- 
 vants 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 valor? 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 lamen- 
 tations, and Rasselas could scarcely forbear to reproach them 
 
RASSELAS. 61 
 
 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. 
 
 CHAP. 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 any thing proper to be done. 
 
 Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women at- 
 tempted to comfort her, by telling her that all had their trou- 
 bles, 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 be- 
 fall 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 favorite 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 at- 
 tempt to catch them ; nor indeed could any account or de- 
 scription 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 pre- 
 sently forget tne request when they lose sight of the peti- 
 tioner. 
 
 Imlac then endeavored to gain some intelligence by pri- 
 vate 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 
 ivith money for their journey, and came back no more ; 
 gome were liberally paid for accounts which a few days dis- 
 jovered to be false. But the princess would not suffer any 
 .means, however improbable, to be left untried. While she 
 
62 RASSELAS. 
 
 vas doing something, she kept her hope alive. As one ex- 
 pedient failed, another was suggested ; when one messenger 
 eturned 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 endeavored 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 her- 
 self with the easy compliance by which she permitted her 
 favorite 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 wnich 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 event 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 connexion of causes and events, as 
 that he may venture to do wrong in order to do right.^When 
 we pursue our end by .awful 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 overleaping 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 imbittered. 
 IJHow comfortless is the sorrow of him who feels at once the 
 
 .ngs of guilt, and the vexation of calamity which guilt has 
 
 nought upon hirnJ^y 
 
 " Consider, prmcess, what would have been your condi 
 tion, 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 
 
RASSELAS. 63 
 
 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." 
 
 CHAP. 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 con- 
 scious nes~5"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 sat 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 
 %he deliberated to no other end than to conjecture on any 
 occasion what would have been the opinion and counsel oi 
 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 curi- 
 osity, having no great desire to collect notions which she had 
 no convenience of uttering. Rasselas endeavored first to 
 comfort and afterwards to divert her ; he hired musicians, to 
 whom she seemed to listen, but did not hear them ; and pro- 
 cured 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 excel- 
 lence. And her rnind, 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 an- 
 swer 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, 
 
64 RASSKLAS. 
 
 " to confound impatience with resentment, or to suppose that 
 I charge you with negligence, because I repine at your un- 
 successfulness. 1 do not much wonder at your absence. I 
 know that the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all natu- 
 rally avoid the contagion of misery. To hear complaints ii, 
 wearisome, alike to the wretched and the happy ; for who 
 would cloud, by adventitious grief, the short gleams of gaye- 
 ty 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 soli- 
 tude, without any other care than to compose my thoughts, 
 and regulate my hours by a constant succession of innocent 
 
 j 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 irrevoca- 
 ble determinations, nor increase the burden of life by a vo- 
 luntary accumulation of misery; the weariness of retire- 
 ment will continue or increase when the loss of Pekuah is 
 forgotten. ^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 tbftt-hasjvo 
 *fp> toJpyp or trust, has littleto hope. She wants the radi- 
 cal principle of happiness. We may, perhaps, allow that 
 what satisfaction this world can afford must arise from the 
 conjunction of wealth, knowledge, and goodm 
 nothing but as liti&JieaiJlwjSi, and knowJedVfi. 
 
 ner, and goodness may bo practised in retiremelW." 
 
 " 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 
 
RASSELAS. 65 
 
 new-created earth, who, when the first night came upon them, 
 supposed that day would never return. When the clouds oif 
 sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can 
 imagine how they will be dispelled : yet a new day succeed- 
 ed to the night, and sorrow, is never long witH 1 ! p *" <- 
 ease. But they who restrain themselves from receiving com- \/^C 
 
 tort do as the savages would have done, had they put out / *"V\ i)T" 
 
 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 whiHfme vit^ powers remain 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 favorite, or learn to diffuse yourself in genera; 
 conversation." 
 
 "At least," said the prince, " do not despair before all re- 
 medies have been tried : the inquiry after the unfortunate 
 lady is still continued, and shall be carried on with yet great 
 er diligence, on condition that you will promise to wait ayeai 
 for the event, without any unalterable resolution." 
 
 Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the 
 promise to her brother, who had been advised by Imlac to re- 
 quire it. Imlac had, indeed, no great hope of regaining Pe- 
 kuah ; but he supposed, that if he could secure the interval 
 of a year, the princess would be then in no danger of a clois- 
 ter. 
 
 CHAP. XXXVI. 
 
 Pekuah is still remembered. The Progress of Sorrow. 
 
 NEKAYAH, seeing that nothing was omitted for the reco- 
 very of her favorite, and having, by her promise, set her in- 
 tention of retirement at a distance, began imperceptibly to 
 return to comrnon cares and common pleasures. She rejoic- 
 ed without her own consent at (he 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 medita- 
 tion on the merits and fondness of Pekuah, and for some 
 3 
 
60 RASSELAS. 
 
 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 ; 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 thou- 
 sand occurrences brought her back to memory, and a thou- 
 sand wants, which nothing but the confidence of friendship 
 can supply, made her frequently regretted. f She, therefore r 
 solicited Imlac never to desist from inquiry, and to leave nc 
 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 endeavor to attain that of which the possessior 
 cannot be secured? I shall henceforward fear to yield my 
 heart to excellence, however bright, or to fondness, howevei 
 tender, lest I should lose again what L-have lost in Pekuah." 
 
 CHAP. XXXVII. 
 
 The Princess hears news of Pekuah. 
 
 IN seven months, 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 \ 
 
 X hands of an Arab Qhief, who possessed a castle or tortress on 
 the extremity ol' Egypt. The Arab, whose revenue was 
 plunder, was willing to restOfiher, with her two attendants, 
 for two hundred ounces of gold. 
 
 he price"Was no subject of debate. The princess was in 
 ecstasies when she heard that her favorite was alive, and 
 might so cheaply be ransomed. She could not think of de- 
 laying for a moment Pekuah's happiness or her own, but en- 
 treated 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 liberallv trusted, de- 
 tain at once the money and the captives. He thought it d;m- 
 ge ous to put themselves m the power of the Arab, by goii; 
 
RASSELAS. 
 
 into b-is district ; and could not expect that the rover would so 
 rouch 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 
 f - 
 
 Rasselas was desirous to go with them; but neither his sister 
 nor Imiac would consent. The Arab, according to the custom of 
 his nation, observed the laws of hospitality with great exact- 
 ness to those who put themselves into his power, and, in a few 
 
 all danger of robbery or violence. 
 
 The princess and her favorite embraced each other with 
 transport too violent to be expressed, and went out together 
 to pour the tears of tenderness in secret, and exchange pro- 
 fessions of kindness and gratitude. After a few hours they 
 returned into the refectory of the convent, where, in the pre- 
 sence of the prior and his brethren, the prince required of 
 Pekuah the history of her adventures. 
 
 CHAP. 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 sudden- 
 ness of the event struck me with surprise, and I was at first 
 rather stupified 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. 
 
 " WJien the Arabs saw themselves out. of danger, they, 
 slackened their course ; and as I was less harassed by exter- 
 nal violence, 1 began to feel more uneawness in my mind. 
 After some time, we stopped near a spring shaded with trees, 
 
63 RASSKLAS. 
 
 in a pleasant meadow, where we sat upon the ground, and 
 were offered such refreshments as our masters were partak- 
 ing. I was suffered to sit with my maids apart from the rest, 
 and none attempted to comfort or insult us. Here I first be- 
 gan to feel the full weight of my misery. The girls sat weep- 
 ing in silence, and from time to time looked on me for succor. 
 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 for- 
 bear the gratification of any ardor of desire, or caprice of cru- 
 elty. I, however, kissed my maids, and endeavored 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 u-nfre- 
 quented and pathless country, and came by moonlight to the 
 side of the 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 de- 
 pendants. 
 
 " We were received into a large tent, where we found wo- 
 men who had attended their husbands in tne expedition. They 
 set before us the supper which thty had provided, and I ate 
 k rather to encourage my maids than to comply with any ap- 
 petite 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 ob- 
 served that the women looked very earnestly upon me, not 
 expecting,- 1 suppose, to see me so submissively attended. 
 When my upper vest was taken off, they were apparently 
 struck with the splendor of my clothes, and one of them timo- 
 rously 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 car- 
 pets, where I spent the night quietly with my maids. 
 
 " fn the mo.ning, as I was sitting on the grass, the chief of 
 the troop came towards me. I rose up to receive him, and 
 
RASSELAS. 69 
 
 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, an- 
 swered I, your women have deceived themselves and you ; I 
 am not a princess, but an unhappy stranger, who intended 
 oon to have left this country, in which I am now to be impri- 
 soned for ever. ' Whoever, or whencesoever, you are,' re- 
 turned 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 oi 
 ray incursions is to increase my riches, or more properly to 
 gather tribute. The sons of Ishmael are the natural and he- 
 reditary 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^ruel 
 rovers of the desert ; I know the rules of civil life ^l will 
 fix your ransom, give a passport to your messenger, and per- 
 form my stipulation with nice punctuality^ 
 
 " You will easily believe that I was pleased with his cour- 
 tesy ; and finding that his predominant passion was desire of 
 money, I began now to think my danger less ; for I knew 
 that no sum would be thought too great for the release of Pe- 
 Kuah. 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 de- 
 mand, 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 myjan* 
 som must be two hundred ounces of gold ; which I not only 
 
70 RASSELAS. 
 
 promised him, but told him that I would add fifty more, if 1 
 knd my maids were honorably treated. t 
 / " I never knew the power of gold before/ From that time 
 T 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 con- 
 veniences for travel : my own women were always at my side, 
 and I amused myself with observing the manners of the va- 
 grant 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 -bjLjhe stars or_jhfi_coinpass, 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 4f<jgr when once a country declines from 
 its primitive splendor, the more inhabitants are left, the 
 quicker ruin will be made?N Walls supply stones more easily 
 than quarries ; and palaces and temples will be demolished, 
 to make stables of granite and cottages of porphyry.'* 
 
 y CHAP. XXXIX. 
 
 The Adventures o/Pekuah continued. 
 " WE wandered about in this manner for some weeks, ei- 
 ther, as our chief pretended, for ny gratification, or, as I ra- 
 ther suspected, for some convenience of his own. I endea- 
 vored to appear contented where sullenness and resentment 
 would have been of no use, and that endeavor 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 solici- 
 tude or sorrow. I was pleased with their pleasure, and ani- 
 mated 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 (fisteTfrpsts-^wfe different in different 
 constitutions of mind ; that which soothes the pride of one 
 will offend the pride of another; but to the favor of the co- 
 vetous there is a ready way bring money, and nothing is 
 denied. 
 
RASSELAS. 71 
 
 " 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 
 Ion is war : I have therefore chosen this obscure re- 
 
 sidence, TroTn 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 DO 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, look'ed 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 splendor of the prospect, 
 and saw many things which I had never seen before. The 
 crocodiles and river horses are common in this unpeopled re- 
 gion ; and I often looked upon them with terror, though I 
 knew that they could not hurt me. For some time I expect- 
 ed 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 endeavored to teach 
 me the names and courses of the stars. I had no great inclina- 
 tion to this study ; but an appearance of attention was neces- 
 aary to please my instructor, who valued himself for his skill, 
 and, in a little while, I found some employment requisite to b*- 
 guile the tediousness of time, which was to be passed always 
 amidst the same objects. I was weary of looking in the morn- 
 ing 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 plea- 
 sure was to talk with my maids about the accident bv which 
 
72 HANSEL AS. 
 
 we were carried away, and the happiness that we should al) 
 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, en- 
 joy their conversation, arid partake their diversions ? In a 
 place where they found business or amusement, why should 
 you sit corroded with idle melancholy ? or why could not you 
 bear for a few months that condition to which they were con- 
 demned 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 whioh they 
 delighted in doing by powers merely sensitive, while my in- 
 tellectual 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 oi 
 their time passed in watching the progress of light bodies that 
 floated on the river, and part in marking the various forma 
 injto which clouds broke in the sky. 
 
 V" Their business was only needleworkjin 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 conver- 
 sation : 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 any thing but their clothes and their food. Asl 
 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 repre- 
 sented 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 
 
RASSELAS. 73 
 
 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 gra- 
 titude : 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 su- 
 perfluous time ; such love as man can bestow upon that which 
 he despises, such as has neither hope nor fear 5 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 intellec- 
 tual famine, to lose such a banquet as Pekuah's conversa- 
 tion J" 
 
 "I am inclined to believe," answered Pekuah, "that he 
 was for some time in suspense ; for notwithstanding his pro- 
 mise, 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 neighboring 
 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 endeavored to advance my acquaintance 
 with the stars. When I importuned him to send away my 
 letters, he soothed me with professions of honor 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 some- 
 times 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 
 
74 RASSELAS. 
 
 long ; for, as I recovered some degree of cheerfulness he re- 
 turned to me, and I could not forbear to despise my former 
 uneasiness. 
 
 " He still delayed to send for my ransom, and would, prr- 
 haps, 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 
 </ir 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 favorite'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. 
 
 CHAP. XL. 
 
 The History of a Man of Learning. 
 
 THEY returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased at find- 
 ing 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 le 
 
 -. troflomerj^ in the world, who has spent forty years in un 
 wearied attention to the motions and appearances of the 
 celestial bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless calcu- 
 lations. 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 delight- 
 ed 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 ot 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 de- 
 sirous of learning, we exchanged our notions with great de- 
 
RASSELAS. 75 
 
 light. I perceived that I had every day more of his confi- 
 dence, 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 favorite studies are willing- 
 ly interrupted for any opportunity of doing good by his coun- 
 sel 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 con- 
 templation of the skies, but me practice of virtue is com- 
 
 " Surely," said the princess, " this man is happy." 
 " I visited him," said Imlac, " with more and more fre- 
 quency, and was every time more enamoured of his con- 
 versation: 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 ne al- 
 ways returned a general answer, and diverted the conversa- 
 tion to some other topic. 
 
 " Amidst this willingness to be pleased, and labor to 
 please, I had quickly reason to imagine that some painful 
 sentiment pressed upon his mind. He often looked up ear- 
 nestly 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 injunctions 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." 
 
 CHAP. XLI. 
 
 The Astronomer discovers the Cause of his Uneasiness. 
 " AT last, the time came when the secret burst his re- 
 serve. We were sitting together last night in the turret of 
 his house, watching the emersion of a satelUte of Jupiter. A 
 sudden tempest clouded the sky, and disappointed our ob- 
 
76 
 
 RASSELAS. 
 
 servation. We sat a while 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 know- 
 J^flge 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 honored by this testimony, and protest- 
 ed that whatever could conduce to his happmess 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 direc- 
 tion : 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 fervors of the 
 crab. ^ he Grinds alpne. of all the elemental powers, have 
 hitherto refused my authority, and multitudes have perished 
 by equinoctial tempests, which I found myself unable to pro- 
 hibit or restrain. I have administered this great office with 
 wcact 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 ?" 
 
 CHAP. 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 f, has this great office been in your 
 hands? 
 
RASSELAS. 77 
 
 " 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 domi- 
 nion, pouring upon this country and that the showers of fertili- 
 ty, 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 inunda- 
 tion. In the hurry of my imagination, I commanded rain to 
 fall ; and by comparing me 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 con- 
 currence ? The Nile does hot always rise on the same day. 
 
 " Do not believe, said he, with impatience, that such ob- 
 jections could escape me : I reasoned long against my own 
 conviction, and labored against truth with the utmost obsti- 
 nacy. 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 evi- 
 lence : and I know too well the laws of demonstration, to 
 -think that my conviction ought to influence another, who can- 
 not, 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 tile" tilinrxvill^oon come, when the 
 regulator of the year must mingle with the dust,AThe care 
 of appointing a successor has long disturbed me\ the night 
 and the day nave been spent in comparisons of-ail the cha- 
 racters which have come to my knowledge, and I have yet 
 found none so worthy as thyself." 
 
RASSELAS. 
 
 CHAP. 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 mil- 
 lions, 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 if. impossible to make ^ disposition by which the 
 world may be advanta-gq^ what gnje -g^innr -gains, ar|.tJiec 
 . even without considering 
 
 ^. 
 
 the. ^ignt p art< ^ ftf the solar_system with which \vr JIIT un 
 acuu^imled/ Do not, therefore, in thy administration of ihe 
 year, indulge thy pride by innovation ; do not please thyself 
 with thinking that thou canst make thyself renowned to all 
 future aes, 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 Isile 
 is sufficient. 
 
 " I promised that when I possessed the power 1 wou.d use 
 it with inflexible integrity ; and he dismissed me, pressing my 
 hand. My heart, said he, will be now at rest, and my be- 
 nevolence 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 ol It-ason'." :? 
 
RASSELAS. 79 
 
 The princess was recollected, and the favorite was abash- 
 ed. Rasselas, more deeply affected, inquired of Imlac, 
 whether he thought such maladies of the mind frequent, and 
 how they were contracted. 
 
 CHAP. XLIV. 
 The Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination. 
 
 " DISORDERS of intellect," answered Imlac, " happen 
 much more often than superficial observers will easily be- 
 lieve. Perhaps if we speak with rigorous exactness, no hu- 
 man mind is in its right state. There is no man whose ima- 
 gination 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 tyrannize, 
 and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober pro- 
 bability. All power of fancy over reason is ft Degree of in- 
 sanity,; but while this power is such as we can control and 
 rapress, it is not visible to others, nor considered as any de- 
 pravation of trTe^nental faculties : it is uot.pronounced mad- 
 ness'lTurwRell iMjBL'oiiHJs 1 Ungovernable, and apparently in- 
 fluenEBs speH!h Of aCliuJL "" 
 
 * '1 1'iidUlge 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 
 
 ness or saueiy. ne wno iius iiuuiuig cAiernai mai can tuveri 
 him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must con- 
 ceive 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 mo- 
 ment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impos- 
 sible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable do- 
 minion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all 
 pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which na- 
 ture and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow. 
 
 " In time^some particular train of ideas fixes the atten- 
 tion : all other intellectual gratifications are rejected ; the 
 Swind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favo- 
 rite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood when- 
 ever 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 .ctions begin to operate as reali- 
 
80 RASSELAS, 
 
 ties, 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 ftflt always promotes goodness, and the 
 
 astronomer's misery has proved to be not always propitious 
 to wisdom." 
 
 " I will no more," said the favorite, " imagine myself the 
 queen of Abissinia. I have often spent the hours, which 
 the princess gave to my own disposal, in adjusting ceremo- 
 nies, 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 bene- 
 ficence of royalty, till, when the princess entered, I had al- 
 most 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 employment, 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 en- 
 countered the wolf. I have a dress like that of the village 
 maids, which I put on to help rny 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 fan- 
 tastic delight more dangerous than yours. I have frequently 
 endeavored to imagine the possibility of a perfect govern- 
 ment, by which all wrong should be restrained, all vice reform- 
 ed, and all the subjects preserved in tranquillity and inno- 
 cence. This thought produced innumerable schemes of re- 
 formation, and dictated many useful regulations and salutary 
 edicts. This has been the sport, and sometimes the labor, 
 of my solitude : and I start, when I think with how little 
 anguish J once supposed the death of my father and my bro- 
 tners." 
 
 " Such, " said Imlac, u are the effects of visionary 
 scnemes : when we first form them, we know them to be ab- 
 surd, but familiarize them by degrees, and in time lose sight 
 of their folly." 
 
 CHAP. XLV. 
 
 They discourse with an old Man. 
 
 THE evening was now far past, and they rose to return 
 home. As they walked alunii the bank of the Nile, delight- 
 
RASSELAS. 81 
 
 ed with ihe 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 vexa- 
 tion, and whether any better hope remains for the latter part 
 of life." 
 
 Here the sage approached and saluted them. They invit- 
 ed him to join their walk, and prattled a while as acquaint- 
 ance 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 honor, 
 and set wine and conserves before him. 
 
 " Sir," said the princess, " an evening walk must give to a 
 man of learning like you pleasures whic'h 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, tne 
 periods in which the planets perform their revolutions. Every 
 thing must supply you with contemplation, and renew the 
 consciousness of your own dignity." 
 
 " Lady," answered he, " let the gay and the vigorous ex- 
 pect pleasure in their excursions : it is enough th 
 
 attain ease. Tn m,e fta wnr|rl has Inaf j|s nnvphy^ I look *>* 
 
 round, and see wKat 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 up- 
 wards, fix them on the changing moon, and think with pain 
 on the vicissitudes of life. I have ceased to take much de- 
 light in physical truth ; for what have I to do with those things 
 which I am soon to leave ? M 
 
 " You may at least recreate yourself," said Imlac, " with 
 the recollection of an honorable 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 honors ol 
 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 withapplause 
 ^jMBcagse it isconsidered as tttcTearnest of some fulur^gbod, 
 
82 KASSELAS. 
 
 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 
 ;ost 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 ; endeavor to abstract my thoughts 
 from hopes and cares, which, though reason knows them to 
 ae vain, still try to keep their old possession of the heart ; ex- 
 pect, with serene humility, that hour which nature cannot 
 long delay, and hope to possess, in a better state, that hap- 
 piness 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 him- 
 self with remarking, that it was not reasonable to be disap- 
 pointed 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 vigor 
 and alacrity might be happy : that the noon of life might be 
 Dright, if the evening could be calm. 
 
 The princess suspected that age was querulous and ma- 
 Lgnant, and delighted to repress the expectations of those 
 wno had newly entered the world. She had seen the pos- 
 sessors of estates look with envy on their heirs, and known 
 many who enjoyed pleasure no longer than they could con- 
 fine it to themselves. 
 
 Pekuah conjectured that the man was older than he ap- 
 peared, and was willing to impute his complaints to delirious 
 dejection ; or else supposed mat he had been unfortunate, 
 and was therefore discontented : " For nothing," said she, 
 lf is more common than to call our own condition the condi- 
 tion of life." 
 
 Imlac, who had no desire to see them depressed, smiled at 
 the comforts which they could so readily procure to them- 
 selves ; 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 im- 
 press. The princess and her lady retired ; the madness of 
 
RASSELAS. 83 
 
 iho astronomer hung upon their minds; and they desired 
 Imlac to enter upon his office, and delay next morning the 
 rising of the sun. 
 
 CHAP. XL VI. 
 
 The Princess and Pekuah visit the Astronomer. 
 
 THE princess and Pekuah having talked in private of 
 Mac'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 au^ viiJllM Irom wunibli^ though he lived in a city" 
 that llad lli 11 llia.iij' Euiupeaus,^ho 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 intro- 
 duce 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 de- 
 cently importune him often. " This," said Rasselas, " is 
 true : but I have yet a stronger objection against the mis- 
 representation 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, whe- 
 ther on great or little occasions. All imposture weakens 
 confidence, and chills benevolence. Wnen the sage tinds 
 thatydu are not whaf you seemed, he will feel the resent- 
 ment natural to a man who, conscious of great abilities, dis- 
 covers 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 anhonest pretence for a visit to 
 the astronomer, for she would s* jici^ermissioiTto continue 
 under him the studies jnjwhich ..shfiJiaQeeTTimtiated by the 
 Arab^jincT the princess might go with her, eitherlDs a fellow- 
 siudent, or because a woman could not decently come alone. 
 
84 RASSELAS. 
 
 " I am afraid," said Imlac, " that he will soon be weary ot 
 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 
 ca'pable 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, 1 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 delibera- 
 tion, 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 splen- 
 did an appearance. In the exchange of the first civilities, 
 he was timorous and bashful ; but when the talk became re- 
 gular, 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 oi 
 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 endeavored to amuse them, 
 that they might prolong their visits, for he found his thoughts 
 grow brighter in their company ; the clouds of solicitude 
 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 favorite 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 con 
 trived to bring him to an open declaration ; but he easily 
 
RASSELAS. 85 
 
 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 extra- 
 ordinary respect. He began gradually to delight in sublu- 
 nary pleasures. He came early, and departed late ; labored 
 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 nis 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 01 domestic tenderness. If I have obtained any 
 prerogatives above other students, they have been accompa- 
 nied with fear, disquiet, and scrupulosity ; but even of these 
 prerogatives, whatever the^ were, I have, since my thoughts 
 have been diversified by more intercourse with the world, be- 
 gun 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 suffer- 
 ed 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 
 
86 RASSELAS. 
 
 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 rea- 
 son 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 con- 
 versation, 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 intrusted. If I favor 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 fftrm nf rkityj theylay Hold on the faculties without 
 
 ^opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or banisJLlbSn. 
 
 "TP'or this reason the superstifioil^rft ffrten 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 proba- 
 bility of the obligation, which, when you consider it with free- 
 dom, 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 im- 
 portune 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 supernatura. 
 favors or afflictions." 
 
RASSELAS. 87 
 
 CHAP. XL VII. 
 
 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 uncontrol- 
 iable 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 melan- 
 choly 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 
 aie, and the latter part of my days will be spent in peace," 
 
 " Your learning and virtue," said Imlac, " may justly giro 
 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^bythe anticipation of change : the ^ 
 changertself is nothing ;wn en we "have made it. the next 
 -^lfristo cfiange again^, The world is not yet~exhaustecT; 
 let me see something to-morrow which I never saw before." 
 
 " ~\ariety," said Rasselas, " is so necessary to content, 
 that even tne happy valley disgusted me by the recurrence ot " 
 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 Abissinian princes in their pri- 
 son of pleasure. Whatever is done by the mon'-s is incited 
 Oy an adequate and reasonable motive. Their labor supplies 
 them with necessaries ; it therefore cannot be omitted, and is 
 certainly rewarded. Their devotion prepares them for ano- 
 ther 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 
 
88 RASSELAS. 
 
 nour; and their toils are cheerful, because they consider them 
 as acts of piety, by which they are always advancing towards 
 endless felicity." 
 
 4 '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 open- 
 ly with mankind, who succors 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 con 
 dition 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, every one is 
 not able to stem the temptations of public life ; and, if he can- 
 not conquer, he may properly retreat. Some have liifle 
 power to do good, ancl have likewise little strength to resist 
 evil. Many are weary of their 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 Im- 
 lac, " will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what 
 pleasures are harmless. The evil of any pleasure that Ne- 
 kayah can image is not in the act itself, but in its conse- 
 quences. Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischiev- 
 ous, 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. Mortifica- 
 tion 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 plea- 
 sure without danger, and security without restraint." 
 
RASSELAS. gf) 
 
 The princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the as- 
 fronomer, asked him whether he could not delay her retreat, 
 iy 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 * 
 m ttowmenders of this connf f ry an? the r.qjacombg. or the ancient 
 jreppsitorifi^ in which the bodies of the earliest generations 
 we're lodged, and where, by the virtue of the gums which em- 
 balmed 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 many 
 other things which I have done, because I would do some- 
 thing." 
 
 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 be- 
 tween 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. 
 
 CHAP. XLVJII. 
 Imlac discourses on the Nature of the Soul. 
 
 " WHAT reason," said the prince, " can be given, why the 
 Egyptians should thus expensively preserve those carcasses 
 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 ?" 
 
 " Xhe original of ancient customs," said Imlac, " is com- 
 jnonlJlUIlknown i foiTthe practiclToften continues when the 
 cause has ceased : and concerning superstitious ceremonies, 
 it is vain to conjecture ; for_juzlkt. .reason did not dictate, 
 reason cannot explain. I 'nave long believed that the prac- 
 ticg-Qi^fimffrtilli'Miu ijfjEse 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 
 
90 RASSELAS 
 
 the living. I jaipiK)se only the rich or honorable were se- 
 cured from corruptiofr, and the rest let't to the courseof na- 
 thti'u. 
 
 "-*HBut 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 sepa- 
 ration, 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 dis- 
 puted, 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 ot 
 reason enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the notices 
 of sense and investigations of science concur to prove the un- 
 consciousness of matter. 
 
 " It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in mat- 
 tor, or that every particle is a thinking being. Yet if any 
 part of matter be devoid of thought, what part can wfe sup-** 
 pose to think ? IV^^ter, can diflk&Jrom matter only ifcTmynV 
 density, bulk, motion, and direction of motion. To whicnof 
 these, however varied or combined, can consciousness be an- 
 nexed ? To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be 
 great or little, to be moved slowly or swiftly, one way or an- 
 other, 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 uncon- 
 nected with cogitative powers." 
 
 " But the materialists," said the astronomer, " urge that 
 matter may hi" Q ^["/^ it ifii : i Ht-h which, we are u < niM'iflff gi f fi f * " 
 
 " 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 reason- 
 able beings. All that we know of matter is, that matter is 
 inert, senseless, and lifeless ; and if this conviction cannot be 
 opposed but by referring us to something that we know not, 
 we have all the evidence that human intellect can admit. 
 
RASSELAS. 91 
 
 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 
 kimit the Creator's power." 
 
 " It is no limitation of Omnipotence," replied the poet, 
 " to suppose that one thing is r nt y n TK ls tPnt r' tjr ^ "*'"- J 
 that the same propdsiriTffr cannot ne at once true and false, 
 that the same number cannot be even and odd, that cogita- 
 tion 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 na- 
 tural power of perpetual duration as a consequence of ex- 
 emption 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 any 
 thing 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, thaii 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 in- 
 discerptible." 
 
 " 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 Tmlac, " since, 
 however unperishable, 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 
 
92 RASSELAS. 
 
 not be annihilated by Him that made it, we must humbly 
 learn from higher authority." 
 
 The whole assembly stood a while silent, and collected. 
 " Let us return," said Rasselas, " from this scene of mor- 
 tality. How gloomy would be those 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 He 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 tne 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. 
 
 CHAP. 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 riseT 
 
 They were confined to their house. /The whole region 
 being under water, gave them no invitation to any excur- 
 sions ; 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 !A.rab 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 ex- 
 pectation and disgust, and would gladly be fixed in some 
 un variable state. 
 
 The princess thought, that, of all sublunary things, know- 
 ledge was the best. She desired first to learn all sciences, 
 ana then purposed 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 
 "uvernment with his own eyes ; but he could never fix the 
 
RASSELAS. 93 
 
 iimits of his dominion, and was always adding to the number 
 of his subjects. 
 
 Tmlac and the astronomer were contented to be driven 
 along the stream of life, without directing their course to any 
 particular port. 
 
 Of these wishes that they had formed, they well knew that 
 none could be obtained. They deliberated a while what was 
 to be done, and resolved, when the inundation should cease, 
 to return to Abissinia. 
 
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