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 KASSELAS '5S'3v*=l 
 
 PRINCE o-ABYSSINIA 
 
 BY 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON, 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER. 
 
 1887. 
 
•ARGYLE PRESS, 
 
 Printing and Bookbinding, 
 24 & 26 wooster st., n. y. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Description of a Palace in a Valley, , 5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Discontent of Rasselas in the Happy Valley, 7 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Wants of Him That Wants Nothing, . 9 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Prince Continues to Grieve and Muse, 10 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Prince Meditates his Escape, , 12 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 A Dissertation on the Art of Flying, . 13 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Prince Finds a Man of Learning, . 16 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The History of Imlac, . . .17 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The History of Imlac Continued, , 19 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Imlac's History Continued— A Dissertation on 
 Poetry, ..... 23 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Imlac's Narrative Continued — A Hint on Pil- 
 grimage, .... 24 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The Story of Imlac Continued, , , 26 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Rasselas Discovers the Means of Escape, . 29 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Rasselas and Imlac Receive an Unexpected 
 Visit 31 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 The Prince and Princess Leave the Valley, 
 and see Many Wonders, , , 33 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 They Enter Cairo, and Find Every Man Happy, 33 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 The Prince Associates with Young Men of 
 Spirit and Gayety, ... 36 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 The Prince Finds a Wise and Happy Man, . 37 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 A Glimpse of Pastoral Life, . . 39 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 The Danger of Prosperity, . , ,40 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 The Happiness of Solitude. The Hermit's 
 History, .... 41 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 The Happiness of a Life Led According to 
 
 Nature, ..... 43 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 The Prince and His Sister Divide Between 
 them the "Work of Observation, . 44 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 The Prince Examines the Happiness of High 
 Stations, . . . . .45 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 The Princess Pursues Her Inquiry with More 
 Diligence than Success, . . 46 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 The Princess Continues Her Remarks Upon 
 Private Life, . . . .48 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 Disquisition UiDon Greatness, . . 50 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 Rasselas and Nekayah Continue Their Con- 
 versation, . . . .61 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 The Debate of Marriage Continued, . 58 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 Imlac Enters and Changes the Conversation, 56 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 They Visit the Pyramids, . , , 58 
 
(lONTENTS. ' 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 They Enter the Pyramids, ... 59 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 The Princess Meets With an Unexpected Mis- 
 fortune, . . . . .60 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 They Return to Cairo Without Pekuah, . 61 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 The Princess Languishes for Want of Pekuah, 63 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 Pekuah is Still Remembered. The Progress of 
 Sorrow, .... 66 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 The Princess Hears News of Pekuah, , 67 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 The Adventures of the Lady Pekuah, . 68 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 The Adventures of Pekuah, Continued, , 71 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 The History of a Man of Learning, , 74 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 The Astronomer Discovers the Cause of the 
 Uneasiness, . . , .76 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 The Opinion of the Astronomer is explained 
 
 and Justified, .... 77 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 The Astronomer Leaves Imlac His Directions, 78 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 The Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination, 79 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 They Discourse With an Old Man, , . 81 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 The Princess and Pekuah Visit the Astronomer $3 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 The Prince Enters and Brings a New Topic, 87 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 Imlac Discourses on the Nature of the Soul, 89 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 The Conclusion, in Which Nothing is Concluded, 93 
 
CHAPITER I. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY. 
 
 Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fan- 
 cy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope, 
 who expect that age will perform the promises of 
 youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will 
 be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of 
 Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia. 
 
 Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty emperor 
 in whose dominions tlie Father of Waters begins his 
 course; whose bounty pours down the streams of 
 plenty and scatters over half 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, witn the 
 other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty, till 
 the order of succession should call them to the throne. 
 
 The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity 
 had destined for the residence of the Abyssinian 
 princes was a spacious valley in the kingdom of Am- 
 hara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which 
 the snmmits overhang the middle part. The only 
 passage by which it could be entered was a cavern 
 that passed under a rock, of which it has long been 
 disbuted whether it was the work of nature or of hu- 
 man industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed 
 by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into 
 the valley was closed with gates of iron forged by the 
 artificers of ancient days, so massy that no man could 
 without the help of engines open or shut them. 
 
 From the mountains on every side, rivulets descended 
 that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and 
 formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every 
 species, and frequented by every fowl whom nature 
 has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake dis- 
 charge its superfluities by a stream which entered a 
 dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and 
 fell with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice till 
 it was heard no more. 
 
 The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, 
 the banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers ; 
 every blast shook spices from the rocks, and every 
 
6 RASSELAS. 
 
 month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals 
 that bite the grass or browse the shrub, whether wild 
 or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured 
 from beasts of prey by the mountains which confined 
 them, on one part were flocks and herds feeding in 
 the pastures, on another all the beasts of chase frisk- 
 ing in the lawns ; the sprightly kid was bounding on 
 the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, 
 and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the 
 diversities of the world were brought together, the 
 blessings of nattue 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 super- 
 fluities were added at the annual visit which the Em- 
 peror paid his children, when the iron gate was opened 
 to the sound of music ; and during eight days every 
 one that resided in the valley was required to propose 
 whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, 
 to fill up the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tedi- 
 ousness of time. Every desire was immediately gran- 
 ted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to 
 gladden the festivity ; the musicians exerted the power 
 of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity be- 
 fore the princes, in hope that they should pass their 
 lives in this blissful captivity ; to which those only were 
 admitted whose performance was thought able to add 
 novelty to luxmy. Such w^as the appearance of secur- 
 ity and delight which this retirement aftorded that they 
 to whom it was new always desired that it might be 
 jperiDetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had 
 once closed were never sufl'ered to return, the effect of 
 longer exj)erience could not be known. Thus every 
 year produced new schemes of delight and new com- 
 petitors for imprisonment. 
 
 The palace stood on an eminence raised about thirty 
 paces above the surface of the lake. It was divided 
 into many squares or courts, built with greater or less 
 magnificence, according to the rank of those for whom 
 they were designed. The roofs were turned into arch. 
 es of massy stone, joined by a cement that grew harder 
 by time, and the building stood from century to cen- 
 tmy deriding the solstitial rains and equinoctial 
 hm-ricanes, without need of reparation. 
 
 This house, which was so large as to be fully known 
 to none but some ancient officers who successively in- 
 herited 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 subterranean passages 
 from the lower apartment^. 
 
RASSELAS. 7 
 
 Many of the columns liad unsuspected cavities, in 
 wliich a long race of monarclis had deposited their 
 treasvu-es. Tliey tlieu closed up the opening with mar- 
 ble,, which was never to be i-emoved but in the utmost 
 exigencies of the kingdom, and recorded their accum- 
 ulations in a book, which was itself concealed in a 
 tower not entered but by the emperor, attended by 
 the prince who stood next in succession. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY 
 VALLEY. 
 
 Here the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only 
 to know the soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, 
 attended by all that were skilful to delight, and gratified 
 with whatever the senses can enjoy. They wandered 
 in gardens of fragrance and slept in the fortresses of 
 secm-ity. Every art was practiced to make them pleas- 
 ed with their own condition. The sages, who instructed 
 tliem, told them of nothmg but the miseries of public 
 life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions 
 of calamity, where discord was always raging, and 
 where man preyed upon man . 
 
 To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they 
 were daily entertained with songs, the subject of which 
 was the happy valley. 
 
 Then* appetites were excited by frequent enumer- 
 ations of different enjoyments; and revehy and 
 merriment was the business of every hour from the 
 dawn of morning to the close of even. 
 
 These methods were generally successful ; few of 
 the princes had ever wished to enlarge their bounds, 
 but passed theu' lives in full conviction that they had 
 all within then- reach that art or nature could bestow, 
 and pitied those whom fate had excluded from this seat 
 of tranquillity, as the sport of chance and the slaves of 
 misery. 
 
 Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at 
 night, pleased with each other and with themselves ; 
 all butRasselas, who in the twenty-sixth year of his age 
 began to withdraw himself from their x)astimes and 
 assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent 
 meditation. 
 
 He often sat before tables covered with luxury and 
 forgot to taste the dainties that were placed before 
 him; he rose abruptly in the midst of the song and 
 hastily retired beyond the sound of music. 
 
S RASSELAS. 
 
 His attendants observed the change and endeavored 
 to renew his love of pleasure; he neglected their offic- 
 iousness and repulsed their invitations, and spent day 
 after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered witli trees, 
 where he sometimes listened to the birds in the branch- 
 es, sometimes observed the fish playing in the stream, 
 and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures and mountains 
 filled with animals, of which some were biting the 
 herbage and some sleeping among the bushes. 
 
 This singularity of his humor made him much obser- 
 ved. One of the sages, in whose conversation he had 
 formerly delighted, followed him secretly, in hope of 
 discovering the cause of his disquiet. Kasselas, who 
 knew not that anyone was near him, having for some 
 time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were browsing 
 among the rocks, began to compare their condition 
 with his own. 
 
 '* What," said he, "makes the difference between man 
 and all the rest of the animal creation ? Every beast 
 that strays beside me has the same corporeal necessities 
 with myself : he is hungry and crops the grass, he is 
 thirsty and drinks the stream, his thirst and hunger are 
 appeased, he is satisfied and sleeps; he rises again and 
 is hungry, he is again fed and is at rest. 1 am hungry 
 and thirsty like him, but when thirst and hunger cease 
 I am not at rest ; I am, like him, pained with want, 
 but am not, like him, satisfied with fulness. The inter- 
 mediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to 
 be hungry, that I may again quicken my attention. 
 
 The birds pick the berries or the corn, and fly away to 
 the groves, where they sit in seeming happiness on the 
 branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried 
 series of sounds. I likewise can call the 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 within me no power of per- 
 ception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, 
 yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man surely has 
 some latent sense for which this place affords no grati- 
 fication ; or he has some desires, distinct from sense, 
 which must be satisfied before he can be happy. " 
 
 After this he lifted up his head, and, seeing the 
 moon rising walked towards the x)alace. As he pased 
 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. 1 have many distresses 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. Sm'ely the equity of 
 
RASSELAS. 9 
 
 Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with pecul- 
 iar enjoyments. " 
 
 With observations like these the prince amused 
 himself as he returned ; uttering them with a plaintive 
 voice, yet with a look that discovered him to feel some 
 complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive 
 some solace of the miseries of life from consciousness 
 of the delicacy with which he felt and the eloquence 
 with which he bewailed them. He mingled cheerfully 
 in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find 
 that his heart was lightened. 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 
 THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHINa. 
 
 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 offici- 
 ously sought an opportunity of conference; which the 
 prmce, having long considered him as one whose intel- 
 lects were exhausted, was not very willing to afford, 
 " VV hy," said he," does this man thus intrude upon me; 
 shall I be never suffered to forget those lectm-es which 
 pleased only Mdiile they were new, and to become new 
 again must be forgotten ? " He then walked into the 
 wood, and composed himself to his usual meditations; 
 when, before his thoughts had taken any settled form, 
 he perceived his pursuer at his side, and was at first 
 prompted by his impatience to go hastily away; but, 
 being unwilling to offend a man whom he had once 
 reverenced and still loved, he invited him to sit down 
 with him on the bank. 
 
 The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the 
 change which had been lately observed in the prince, 
 and to inquire why he so often retired from the pleasures 
 of the palace to loneliness and silence ? " I fly from 
 pleasure," said the prince "because pleasure has ceased 
 to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am 
 unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of 
 others." "You, sir," said the sage, "are the first who 
 has complained of misery in the happy valley. I hope 
 to convince you that your complaints have no real cause. 
 You are here in full possession of all that the emperor 
 of Abyssinia 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 
 
10 RASSELAS. 
 
 wish; that wish would excite eudeavor, and I should 
 not then repine to see the sun move so slowly toward 
 the western mountain, or 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, 1 find one 
 day and one hour exactly like another, except that the 
 latter is still more tedious than the former. Let your 
 experience inform me how the day may now seem 
 as short as in my childhood, while nature was yet fresh, 
 and every moment showed me what I never had 
 observed before. I have already enjoyed too much; 
 give me something to desh-e." 
 
 The old man was surprised at this new species of 
 affliction, and knew not what to reply, yet was unwill- 
 ing to be silent. *' Sir," said he, " if you had seen the 
 miseries of the world you would know how to value 
 your present state." *' Now," said the prince, " you 
 have given me something to desire; I shall long to see 
 the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is 
 necessary to happiness." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PRINCE CONTINUES TO GRIEVE AND MUSE. 
 
 At this time the sound of music proclaimed the hour 
 of repast, and the conversation was concluded. The 
 old man went away sufiiciently discontented, to find 
 that his reasonings had produced the only conclusion 
 which tliey were intended to prevent. But in the de- 
 cUne of life shame and grief are of short duration; 
 whether it be that we bear easily what we have borne 
 long, or that, finding ourselves in age less regarded, we 
 less regard others, or that we look with slight regard 
 upon afflictions to which we know that the hand of 
 death is about to put an end. 
 
 The prince, wliose views were extended to a wider 
 space, could not speedily quiet his emotions. He had 
 been before terrified at the length of life which nature 
 promised him, because he considered that in a long- 
 time much must be endured ; he now rejoiced in his 
 youth, because in many years much might be done. 
 
 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 dis- 
 tinctness either end or means. 
 
 He was now no longer gloomy and unsocial ; but, 
 considering himself as master of a secret stock of happi- 
 
RASSELAS. 11 
 
 ness, which lie could enjoy only by concealmg it, he 
 affected to be busy in all schemes of diversion, and 
 endeavored to make others pleased with the state of 
 which he himself was weary. But pleasures never 
 can be so multiplied or continued as not to leave much 
 of life unemployed : there were many hours, both of 
 the night and day, which he could spend without sus- 
 picion'in solitary thought. The load of life was much 
 lightened ; he went eagerly into the assemblies, be- 
 cause he supposed the h-equency of his presence nec- 
 essary to the success of his purposes ; he retired gladly 
 to privacy, because he had now a subject of thought. 
 
 His chief amusement was to picture to himself that 
 world which he had never seen ; to place himself in 
 various conditions ; to be entangled in imaginary diffi- 
 culties, and to be engaged in wild adventures ; but his 
 benevolence always terminated his projects in the re- 
 lief 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, amid hourly prepara- 
 tions for the various incidents of human affairs, neg- 
 lected to consider by what means he should mingle 
 with mankind. 
 
 One daj^, 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 restitu- 
 tion and redress. So strongly was the image impressed 
 upon his mind that he started up in the maid's defence, 
 and ran forward to seize the plunderer, with all the 
 eagerness of real pursuit. Fear naturally quickens the 
 flight of guilt. Rasselas could not catch the fugitive 
 with his utmost efforts ; but resolving to weary by per- 
 severance him whom he could not surpass in speed, he 
 pressed on till the foot of the mountain stopped his 
 course. 
 
 Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own 
 useless impetuosity. Then, raising his eyes to the 
 mountain, " This," said he, " is the fatal obstacle that 
 hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure and the exer- 
 cise of virtue. How long is it that my hopes and wishes 
 have flown beyond this boundary of my life, which 
 yet I never have attempted to surmount ? " 
 
 Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse ; 
 and remembered, that ■^'ace he fli'st resolved to escape 
 from his conflnemeL„, the sun had passed twice over 
 him in his annual course. He now felt a degree of re- 
 gret with which he had never been before acquainted. 
 He considered how much might have been done in the 
 time which had passed, and left nothing leal behind it. 
 He compared twenty niontiis witli the life of man. 
 
10 RASSELAS. 
 
 " In life," said he, "is not to be counted the ignorance 
 of infancy or imbecility of age. We are long before 
 we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power 
 of acting. The true period of human existence may be 
 reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have 
 mused away the four-and-twentieth part. What I have 
 lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed it 3 but 
 of twenty months to come who can assure me ? " 
 
 The consciousness of his own folly pierced him 
 deeply, and he was long before he could be reconciled 
 to himself. "The rest of my time," said he, "has 
 been lost by the crime or folly of my ancestors and the 
 absurd institutions of my country ; I remember it with 
 disgust, yet without remorse ; but the months that 
 have passed since new light darted into my soul, since 
 I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have been 
 squandered by my own fault, I have lost that which 
 can never be restored : I have seen the sun rise and set 
 for twenty months, an idle gazer on the light of 
 heaven ; in this time the birds have left the nest of 
 then- mother and committed themselves to the woods 
 and to the skies : the kid has forsaken the teat and 
 learned by degrees to climb the rocks in quest of inde- 
 pendent sustenance. I only have made no advances, 
 but am still helpless and ignorant. The moon, by 
 more than twenty changes, admonished me of the flux 
 of life ; the stream that rolled before my feet up- 
 braided my inactivity. I sat feasting on intellectual 
 luxury, regardless alike of the examples of the earth 
 and of the instructions of the planets. Twenty months 
 are passed j who shall restore them ? " 
 
 These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; 
 he passed fom' months in resolving to lose no more 
 time in idle resolves ; and was awakened to more vig- 
 orous exertion by hearing a maid, who had broken a 
 porcelain cup, remark that what cannot be repaired is 
 not to be regretted. 
 
 This was obvious ; and Rasselas reproached himself 
 that he had not discovered it, having not known or not 
 considered how many useful hints are obtained by 
 chance, and how often the mind, hurried by her owm 
 ardor to distant views, neglects the truths that lie open 
 before her. He, for a few hours, regretted his regret, 
 and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means 
 of escaping from the valley of happiness. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PRINCE MEDITATES HIS ESCAPE. 
 
 He now found that it would be very difficult to effect 
 tiiat which it was very easy to suppose eii'ected. Wheu 
 
RASSELAS. 13 
 
 he looked round about him, he saw hhnself confined 
 by the bars of nature, which had never yet been 
 broken, and by tlie gate, through which none that 
 once had passed it were ever able to retui'n. He was 
 now impatient as an eagle in the grate. He passed 
 week after week in clambering the mountains, to see 
 if there was any aperture which the bushes might con- 
 ceal, but found all the summits inaccessible by their 
 prominence. The iron gate he despaired to open; for 
 it was not only secured with all the powers of art, but 
 was alwaj^s 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 shown 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 retm-ned, discouraged and dejected ; but, having 
 now known the blessing of hope, resolved never to 
 despair. 
 
 In these fruitless searches he spent ten months. 
 The time, however, passed cheerfully away : in the 
 morning he rose with new hope, in the evening ap- 
 plauded his own diligence, and in the night slept 
 sound after his fatigue. He met a thousand amuse- 
 ments which beguiled his labor and diversified his 
 thoughts. He discerned the various instincts of ani- 
 mals and properties of plants, and found the place re- 
 plete with wonders, of which he pm-posed to solace 
 himself with the contemplation, if he should never be 
 able to accomplish his flight ; rejoicing that his en- 
 deavors, though yet unsuccessful, had supplied him 
 with a source or inexhaustible inquiry. 
 
 But his original curiosity was not yet abated ; he re- 
 solved to obtain some knowledge of the ways of men. 
 His wish still continued, but his hope grew less. He 
 ceased to sm'vey any longer the walls of his prison, and 
 spared to search by new toils for interstices which he 
 knew could not be found, yet determined to keep his 
 design always in view, and lay hold on any expedient 
 that time should offer. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 A DISSERTATION ON THE ART OP FLYING. 
 
 Among the artists that had been allm-ed into the 
 happy \alley, to labor for the accommodation and 
 pleasure of its inhabitants, was a man eminent for his 
 
14 RASSELAS. 
 
 knowledge of the mechanic powers, who had contrived 
 many engines, both of use and recreation. By a wheel 
 which the stream turned he forced the water into 
 a tower, whence it was distributed to all the apart- 
 ments of the palace. He erected a pavilion in the gar- 
 den, around which he kept the air always cool by arti- 
 ficial showers. One of the groves, appropriated to the 
 ladies, was ventilated by fans, to which the rivulet that 
 run through it gave a constant motion; the instru- 
 ments of soft music were placed at proper distances, of 
 which some played by the impulse of the wind and 
 some by the power of the stream. 
 
 This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas, who 
 was pleased with every kind of knowledge, imagining 
 that the time would come when all his acqu^iiitions 
 should be of use to him in the open world. He came 
 one day to amuse himself in his usual manner, and 
 found the master busy in building a sailing chariot; he 
 saw that the design was practicable upon a level sur- 
 face, 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 
 iDut a small part of what the mechanic sciences can 
 perform. I have been long of opinion, that instead of 
 the tardy conveyance of ships and chariots, man might 
 use the swifter migration of wings ; that the fields of 
 air are open to knowledge, and that only ignorance 
 and idleness need crawl upon the ground." 
 
 This hint rekindled the prince's desire of passing the 
 mountams : having seen what the machinist had 
 already performed, he was willing to fancy that he 
 could do more, yet resolved to inquire further before 
 suffered hope to afflict him by disappointment ; "I am 
 afraid," said he to the artist, " that your imagination 
 prevails over your skill, and that you now tell me 
 rather what you wish than what you know. Every 
 animal has his element assigned him ; the birds have 
 the air, and man and beasts the earth." "So," re- 
 plied the machinist, " fishes have the water, in which 
 yet beasts can swim by nature and men by art. He 
 that can swim needs not despah to fiy ; to swim is to 
 fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. 
 We are only to proportion om' 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 recede from the pressure." 
 
 "But the exercise of ssvimming," said the prince, 
 "is veiy laborious; the strongest limbs are soon 
 wearied ; I am afraid the act of flying will be yet more 
 
RASSELAS. 15 
 
 violent ; and wings will be of no gi-eat use unless we 
 can fly farther than we can swim." 
 
 •'The labor of rising from the ground," said the 
 artist, "will be great, as we see it in the heavier do- 
 mestic fowls, but as we mount higher, the earth's 
 attraction and the body's gravity will be gradually 
 diminished, till we shall arrive at a region where the 
 man will float in the air without any tendency to fall ; 
 no care will then be necessary but to move forward, 
 wiiicli the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir, 
 whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive 
 with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished with wings 
 and hovering in the sky, would see the earth and all its 
 inhabitants rolling beneath him, and presenting to him 
 successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries 
 within the same pai-allel. How must it amuse the 
 pendent spectator to see the moving scene of land and 
 ocean, cities and deserts ! To sm-vey with equal sere- 
 nity the marts of trade and the fields of battle ; moun- 
 tains infested by barbarians, and fruitful regions glad- 
 dened by plenty and lulled by peace ! How easily shall 
 we then trace the Nile through all his passage ; pass 
 over to distant regions, and examine the face of nature 
 from one extremity 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 tranquility. 1 have 
 been told that respiration is diflicult upoji lofty moun- 
 tains, yet from these precipices, though so high as to 
 produce great tenuity of air, it is very easy to fall; 
 therefore I suspect that from any height where life can 
 be supported there may be danger of too quicli de- 
 scent," 
 
 "Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be at- 
 tempted if all possible objections must be first over- 
 come. If you will favor my project, I will try the first 
 flight at my own hazard. I have considered the struc- 
 ture of all volant animals, and find the folding contin- 
 uity of the bat's wings most easily accommodated to 
 the human form. Upon this model I shall begin my 
 task to-morrow, and in a year expect to tower into the 
 air beyond the malice ancl pursuit of man. But I will 
 work only on this condition, that the art shall not be 
 divulged, and that you shall not require me to make 
 wings for any but ourselves." 
 
 "Why," said liasselas, "should you envy others so 
 great an advantage ? All skill ought to be exerted for 
 universal good ; every man has owed much to others, 
 and ought to repay the kindness that he has received." 
 
 "If men were all virtuous," returned the artist, "I 
 should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But 
 what would be the security of the good if the bad 
 
16 RASSELAS. 
 
 could at pleasure invade them from the sky ? Agamst 
 an army sailing through the clouds, neither walls, nor 
 mountains, nor seas could afford any security. A flight 
 of northern savages might hover in the wind and light 
 at once with irresistible violence upon the capital of a 
 fruitful region that was rolling under them. 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 swayu on the coast of the 
 southern sea." 
 
 The prince promised secrecy and waited for the per- 
 formance, 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 vul- 
 tures and eagles behind him, and the contagion of his 
 confidence seized upon the prince. 
 
 In a year the wings were finished ; and on a morn- 
 ing appointed, the maker appeared furnished for flight 
 on a little promontory ; he waved his pinions awhile 
 to gather ak, 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 di'ew iiim to land, half dead with terror and 
 vexation. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PRINCE FINDS A MAN OF LEARNING. 
 
 The prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, 
 having suffered himself to hope for a happier event, 
 only because he had no other means of escape in view. 
 He still persisted in his design to leave the happy val- 
 ley by the fii-st opportunity. 
 
 His imagination was now at a stand ; he had no 
 prospect of entering into the world; and, notwith- 
 standing all his endeavors to support himself, discon- 
 tent by degrees preyed upon him, and he began again 
 to lose his thoughts in sadness, when the rainey sea- 
 son, which in these countries is periodical, made it in- 
 convenient to wander in the woods. 
 
 The rain continued longer and with more violence 
 than had ever been known; the clouds broke on the 
 surrounding mountains, and the torrents streamed into 
 the plain on every side, till the cavern was too narrow 
 to discharge the water. The lake overflowed its banks, 
 and all the level of the valley was covered with the in- 
 undation. Tiie eminence on which the palace was 
 
RASSELAS. 17 
 
 built and some other spots of rising ^ound were all 
 that the eye could now discover. The herds and 
 flocks left the pastures, and both the wild beasts and 
 the tame retreated to the mountains. 
 
 This inundation confined all the princes to domestic 
 amusements, and the attention of Kasselas was partic- 
 ularly seized by a poem, which Imlac rehearsed, upon 
 the varions conditions of humanity. He commanded 
 the poet to attend him in his apartment and recite his 
 verses a second time; then entering into familiar talk, 
 he thought himself happy in having found a man who 
 knew the world so well, and could so skilfully paiiit 
 the scenes of life. He asked a thousand questions 
 about things, to which, though common to all other 
 mortals, his confinement from childhood had kept him 
 a stranger. The poet pitied his ignorance and loved 
 his curiosity, and entertained him from day to day with 
 novelty and instruction, so that the prince regretted 
 the necessity of sleep and longed till the morning 
 should renew his pleasure. 
 
 As they were sitting together, the prince com- 
 manded Imlac to relate his history, and to tell by what 
 accident he was forced, or by what motive induced, to 
 close his life in the happy valley. As he was going to 
 begin his narrative, Rasselas was called to a concert, 
 and obliged to restrain his curiosity till the evening. 
 
 CHAPTER Vin. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF IMLAC. 
 
 The close of the day is, in the regions of the torrid 
 zone, the only season of diversion and entertainment, 
 and it was therefore midnight before the music ceased 
 and the prmcesses retired. Rasselas then called for 
 his com^Danion and required him to begin the story of 
 his life. 
 
 " Sir," said Imlac, " my history will not be long; the 
 life that is devoted to knowledge passes silently away, 
 and is very little diversified by events. To talk in pub- 
 lic, 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 kingdoni of Goiama, at no great 
 distance from the fountain of the Nile. My father was 
 a wealthy merchant, who traded between the inland 
 countries of Africa and the ports of the Red Sea. He 
 was honest, frugal, and diligent, but of mean senti- 
 ments and narrow comprehension : he desired only to 
 be rich, and to con.eeal his riches, lest he should be 
 spoiled by the governors of the province." 
 
18 RASSELAS. 
 
 *' Surely," said the prince, " my father must be neg- 
 ligent 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 per- 
 mitted as well as done ? If I were emperor, not the 
 meanest of my subjects should be oppressed with im- 
 punity. My blood boils Vhen I am told that a mer- 
 chant durst not enjoy his honest gains for fear of 
 losing them by the rapacity of power. Name the gov- 
 ernor who robbed the people that I may declare his 
 crimes to the emperor." 
 
 *' Sir," said Imlac, " your ardor is the natural effect 
 of virtue animated by youth; the time will come when 
 you will acquit your father, and perhaps hear with less 
 impatience of the governor. Oppression is, in the 
 Abyssinian dominions, neither frequent nor tolerated; 
 but no form of government has yet been discovered by 
 which cruelty can be wholly prevented. Subordina- 
 tion supposes power on the one part and subjection on 
 the other, and if power be in the hands of men it will 
 sometimes be abused. The vigilance of the supreme 
 magistrate may do much, but much will still remain 
 undone. He can never know all the crimes that are 
 committed, and can seldom punish all that he knows." 
 
 "This," said the prince, "I do not understand, but 
 I had rather hear thee than dispute. Continue thy 
 narration." 
 
 " My father," proceeded Imlac, " originally intended 
 that I should have no other education than such as 
 might qualify me for commerce; and, discovering in 
 me great strength of memory and quickness of appre- 
 hension, often declared his hope that I should be some 
 time the richest man in Abyssinia." 
 
 " Wh}^," said the prince, " did thy father desire the 
 increase of his wealth, when it was already greater 
 than he durst discover or enjoy ? I am unwilling to 
 doubt thy veracity, yet inconsistencies cannot both be 
 true." 
 
 "Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both 
 be right; but, imputed to man, they may both be true. 
 Yet diversity is not inconsistency. My father might 
 expect a time of greater security. However, some de- 
 sire is necessary to keep life In motion; and he whose 
 real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy." 
 
 "This," said the prince, "I can in some measure 
 conceive. I repent that I interrupted thee." 
 
 " With this hope," proceeded Imlac, " he sent me to 
 school; but when I had once found the delight of 
 knowledge, and felt the pleasure of intelligence and 
 the pride of invention, I began silently to despise 
 riches, and determined to disappoint the purpose of my 
 father, whose grossness of conception raised my pity. 
 
RASSELAS. .19 
 
 I was twenty years old before his tenderness would ex- 
 pose ine to tlie fatigue of travel, in which time I had 
 been instructed, by successive masters, in all the liter- 
 ature of my native country. As every hour taught nie 
 somethmg new, I lived in a continual course of gratifi- 
 cations; but as I advanced toward manhood I lost 
 much of the reverence with Vhich I had been used to 
 look on my instructors; because, when the lesson was 
 ended, I did not find them wiser or better than com- 
 mon men. 
 
 " At length my father resolved to initiate me in com- 
 merce; and opening one of his subterranean treas- 
 uries 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 the fifth part, 
 and you see how diligence and parsimony have in- 
 creased it. This is yom* own to waste or to imj)rove. 
 If you squander it by negligence or caprice, jou must 
 wait for my death before you will be rich; if in four 
 years you double your stock, we will thenceforward 
 let subordination cease, and live together as friends 
 and partners; for he shall be always equal with me 
 who is equally skilled in the art of growhig rich.'" 
 
 " We laid our money upon camels, concealed in 
 hales of cheap goods, and travelled to the shore of the 
 Eed Sea. When I cast my eye upon the expanse of 
 waters, my heart hounded like that of a jDrisoner es- 
 caped. I felt an unextinguishable curiosity kindle in 
 my mind and resolved to snatch this opportunity of 
 seeing the manners of other nations, and of learnmg 
 sciences unknown in Abyssinia. 
 
 "I remembered that my father had obliged me to 
 the improvement of my stock, not by a promise which 
 I ought not to violate, but by a penalty which I Avas at 
 liberty to incur; and therefore determined to gi-atify 
 my predominant desire, and, by drinking at the foun- 
 tains of knowledge, to quench the thirst of curiosity. 
 
 *' As I was supposed to trade without connection 
 with my father, it was easy for me to become ac- 
 quainted with the master of a ship and procure a pas- 
 sage to some other country. I had no motives of 
 choice to regulate my voyage; it was sufficient for me 
 that wherever I wandered I should see a country which 
 1 had not seen before, I therefore entered a ship 
 bound for Surat, having left a letter for my father de- 
 claring my intention." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF IMLAC CONTINUED. 
 ''When I first entered upon the world of waters, 
 and lost sight of land, I looked round about me 
 
20 RASSELAS. 
 
 with pleasing terror, and, thinking my soul enlarged 
 by the boundless prospect, imagined that I could gaze 
 round without satiety; but in a short time I grew 
 weary of looking on barren uniformity, where I could 
 only see again what I had already seen. I then de- 
 scended into the ship and doubted for a while whether 
 all my future pleasm-es would not end like this, in dis- 
 gust and disappointment. Yet surely, said I, the ocean 
 and the land are very different; the only variety of 
 water is rest and motion, but the eartli has mountains 
 and valleys, deserts and cities; it is inhabited my men 
 of different customs and contrary opinions; and I may 
 hope to find variety in life though I should miss it in 
 nature, 
 
 " With this thought I quieted my mind, and amused 
 myself during the voyage, sometimes by learning from 
 the sailors the art of navigation, which I have never 
 practised, and sometimes by forming schemes for my 
 conduct in different situations, in not one of which I 
 have ever been placed. 
 
 " I was almost weary of my naval amusements when 
 we landed safely at Surat. 1 secured my money, and 
 purchasing some commodities for show, joined myself 
 to a caravan that was passing into the inland country. 
 My companions, for some reason or other, conjectur- 
 ing that I was rich, and, by my inquiries and admha- 
 tion, finding that I was ignorant, considered me as a 
 novice whom they had a right to cheat, and who was to 
 learn at the usual expense the art of fraud. They ex- 
 posed me to the theft of servants and the exaction of 
 officers, and saw me plundered upon false pretences, 
 without any advantage to themselves but that of rejoic- 
 ing in the superiority of then" own knowledge." 
 
 " Stop a moment," said the prince. " Is there such 
 depravity in man as that he should injure another 
 without benefit to himself? I can easily conceive that 
 all are pleased with superiority; but your ignorance 
 was merely accidental, which being neither your crime 
 nor your folly, could afford them no reason to applaud 
 themselves; and the knowledge which they had, and 
 which you wanted, they might as effectually have 
 shown by warning as betraying you. 
 
 "Pride," said Imlac, "is seldom delicate; it will 
 please itself with very mean advantages; and envy 
 feels not its own happiness but when it may be com- 
 pared with the misery of others. They were my ene- 
 mies because they grieved to think me rich, and my 
 oppressors because they delighted to find me weak." 
 
 "Proceed," said the prince; "I doubt not of the 
 facts which you relate, but imagine that you impute 
 them to mistaken motives." 
 
RAS8ELAS. 21 
 
 " In this company," said Inilac, " 1 arrived at Agi-a, 
 tlie capital of Indostan, the city in which tlie Great 
 Mogul commonly resides. I applied myself to the 
 language of the country, and in a few months was able 
 to converse with the learned men, some of whom I 
 found morose and reserved, and others easy and 
 communicative; some were unwilling to teach another 
 what they had with difficulty learned themselves, and 
 some showed that the end of their studies was to gain 
 the dignity of instructing. 
 
 '* To the tutor of the young princess I recommended 
 myself so much that I was presented to the emporer as 
 a man of uncommon knowledge. The emperor asked 
 me many questions concerning my country and my 
 travels; and though I cannot now recollect anything 
 that he uttered above the power of a common man, he 
 dismissed me astonished at his wisdom and enamom-ed 
 of his goodness. 
 
 *'My credit was now so high that the merchants 
 with whom I travelled applied to me for recommenda- 
 tions to the ladies of the court. I was surprised at 
 their confidence of solicitation, and gently reproached 
 them with their practices on the road. They heard 
 me with cold indifference, and showed no tokens of 
 shame or sorrow. 
 
 *' They then urged their request with the offer of a 
 bribe; but what I would not do for kindness, 1 would 
 not do for money; and refused them, not because they 
 had injured me, but because I would not enable them 
 to injure others; for I knew they would have made 
 use of my credit to cheat those who should buy their 
 wares. 
 
 " Having resided at Agra till there was no more to 
 be learned, I travelled into Persia, where I saw many 
 remains of ancient magnificence, and observed many 
 new accommodations of life. The Persians are a na- 
 tion eminently social, and their assemblies afforded me 
 daily opportunities of remarking characters and man- 
 ners, and of tracing human nature through all its vari- 
 ations. 
 
 " From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw 
 a nation at once pastoral and warlike; who live with- 
 out any settled habitation; whose only wealth is their 
 flocks and herds; and who have yet carried on, through 
 all ages, an hereditary war with all mankind, though 
 they neither covet nor envy theii* possessions." 
 
23 RASSELAS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IMIiAC'S HISTORY CONTINUED.— A DISSERTATION 
 ON POETRY, 
 
 " Wherever I went, I found that poetry was con- 
 sidei-ed as the highest learning, and regarded with a 
 veneration somewhat approaching to that which man 
 would pay to the Angelic Nature. And yet it fills me 
 with wonder that in almost all countries the most an- 
 cient poets are considered as the best j whether it be that 
 every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradu- 
 ally attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once, or 
 that the first poetry of every nation surpuiaed them as 
 a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it 
 received by accident at first; or whether, as the pro- 
 vince of poetry is to describe nature and passion, which 
 are always the same, the first writers took possession 
 of the most striking objects for description and the 
 most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing 
 to those that followed them, but transcription of the 
 same events and new combinations of the same images, 
 whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that 
 the early writers are in possession of nature, and theu* 
 followers of art; that the first excel in strength and 
 invention, and the latter in elegance and refinement. 
 
 "I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious 
 fraternity. I read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, 
 and was able to repeat by memory the volumes that 
 are suspended in the mosque of Mecca. But I soon 
 found that no man was ever great by imitation. My 
 desire of excellence impelled me to transfer my atten- 
 tion to nature and to life. Nature was to be my sub- 
 ject, and men to be my auditors : I could never describe 
 what I had not seen : I could not hope to move those 
 with delight or terror whose interests and opinions I 
 did not understand. 
 
 " Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw everything 
 with a new purpose; my sphere of attention was sud- 
 denly magnified: no kind of knowledge was to be 
 overlooked. I ranged mountains and deserts for 
 images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind 
 every tree of the forest and flower of the valley. I ob- 
 served with equal care the crags of the rock and the 
 pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wandered along 
 the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the 
 changes of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can 
 be useless. Whatever is beautiful and whatever is 
 dreadful must be familiar to his imagination : he must 
 be conversant with all that is awfully vast or elegantly 
 little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the 
 wood, the minerals of the earth and meteors of tlH> 
 sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhausii- 
 
RASSELAS. 28 
 
 ble variety : for every idea is useful for the enforce- 
 ment or decoration of moral or religious trutli; and he 
 who knows most will have most i)Ower of diversifying 
 his scenes, and of gratifyino- Jus reader with remote 
 allusions and unexpected instruction. 
 
 " All the appearances of nature I was therefore care- 
 ful to study; and evei*}' country which 1 have surveyed 
 has contributed something to my poetical powei'S." 
 
 " In so wide a survey," said the prince, " you must 
 surely have left much unobserved. I liave lived, till 
 now, within the circuit of these mountains, and yet 
 cannot walk abroad without the sight of something 
 whieli I had never beheld before or never heeded." 
 
 *' The business of a poet," said Imlac, " is to exam- 
 ine, not the individual but the species; to remark gen- 
 eral properties and large appearances; he does not 
 number the streaks of the tulip or describe the different 
 shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in 
 his portraits of nature such prominent and striking f ea- 
 tm*es as recall the original to every mind; and must neg- 
 lect the minuter discriminations, which one may have re- 
 marked, and another have neglected, for those char- 
 acteristics which are alike obvious to vigilance and 
 carelessness. 
 
 " But the knowledge of nature is only half the task 
 of a poet; he must be acquainted likewise with all the 
 modes of life. His character requires that he estimate 
 the happiness and misery of every condition, observe 
 the power of all the passions in all then' combinations, 
 and trace the changes of the human mind as they are 
 modified by various institutions and accidental influ- 
 ences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of 
 infancy to the despondence of decrepitude. He must 
 divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; 
 he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted 
 and invariable state; he must disregard present laws 
 and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental 
 truths, which will always be the same; he must there- 
 fore content himself with the slow progi-ess of his 
 name; contemn the applause of his own time, and 
 commit his claims to the Justice of posterity. He must 
 write as the interpreter oi nature and the legislator of 
 mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the 
 thoughts and manners of future generations; as a be- 
 ing superior to time and place. 
 
 ''His labor is not yet at an end; he must know many- 
 languages and many sciences; and, that his style may 
 be worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, 
 familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and 
 grace of harmony.'* 
 
24 RASSELAS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 IMLAC'S NARRATIVE COISTTmUED, — A HIXT 01^ PIL- 
 GRIMAGE. 
 
 Imlac now felt the enthusiastic lit, and was pro- 
 ceeding to aggrandize liis own profession wlien the 
 prince cried out, "Enough! thou hast convinced me 
 that no human being can ever be a jioet. Proceed with 
 tliy narration." 
 
 *' To be a poet," said Imlac, " is indeed very diffi- 
 cult." 
 
 *' So difficult," returned the prince, " that I will au 
 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 tlii'ee years resided in Palestine, where 
 I conversed with great numbers of the northern and 
 western nations of Europe; the nations which are now 
 in possession of all power and all knowledge; whose 
 armies are irresistible, and whose fleets command the 
 remotest parts of the globe. When I compared these 
 men with the natives of our own kingdom, and those 
 that surround us, they appeared almost another order 
 of beings. In their countries it is difficult to wish for 
 anything that may not be obtained : a thousand arts, 
 of which we never heard, are continually laboring foi- 
 their convenience and pleasure; and whatever their 
 own chmate has denied them is supplied by theii- 
 commerce." 
 
 " By what means, " said the prince, " are the Euro- 
 peans thus powerful ; or why, since they can so easily 
 visit Asia or Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the 
 Asiatic and Africans invade their coasts, plant colonies 
 in their ports, and give laws to their natural princes ? 
 The same wind that cal-ries them back would bring 
 us thither, " 
 
 "They are more powerful, sir, than we, "answered 
 Imlac, " because they are wiser; knowledge will always 
 predominate over ignorance, as man governs the other 
 animals. But why their knowledge is more than ours 
 I know not what reason can be given but the unsearch- 
 able will of the Supreme Being. " 
 
 "When," said the prince, with a sigh, "shall I be 
 able to visit Palestine, and mingle with this mighty con- 
 fluence of nations ? Till that happy moment shall 
 arrive, let me flll up the time with such representations 
 as thou canst give me. I am not ignorant of the mo- 
 tive that assembles such numbers" in that place, and 
 cannot but consider it as the centre of wisdom and ]:»iety , 
 to which the best and wisest of every land must be coii- 
 tinually resorting. " 
 
RASSRLAS. 35 
 
 " There are some nations," saidlmlac, " tliat 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 residt." 
 
 " Pilgrimage, " said Imlac, " hke many other acts of 
 piety, may be reasonable or superstitious, according to 
 the principles upon which it is performed. Long jour- 
 neys 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 inevita- 
 bly produces dissipation of mind. Yet since men go 
 every day to view the fields where great actions have 
 been performed, and return with stronger impressions 
 of the event, curiosity of the same kind may naturally 
 dispose us to view that country whence our religion 
 had its beginning ; and I beheve no man surveys those 
 awful scenes witliout some confirmation of holy res- 
 olutions. That the Supreme Being may be more easi- 
 ly propitiated in one place than in another is the 
 dream of idle superstition; but that some places may 
 operate upon our minds in an uncommon manner is an 
 opinion which hourly experience will justify. He 
 who supposes that his vices may be more successfully 
 combated in Palestine will, perhaps, find himself mis- 
 taken ; yet he may go thither without folly : he who 
 thinks they will be more freely pardoned dishonors at 
 once his reason and religion. " 
 
 "These, "said the prince, "are European distinc- 
 tions. I will consider them another time. What have 
 you found to be the effect of knowledge? Are those 
 nations haj^pier than we ? ' ' 
 
 " There is so much infelicity," said the poet, " in the 
 world, that scarce any man lias leisure from his own 
 distresses to estimate the comparative happiness of 
 others. Knowledge is certainly one of the means of 
 pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which 
 every mind feels of increasing its ideas, i Ignorance 
 is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced : 
 it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and 
 torpid for want of attraction; and, without knowing 
 why,we always rejoice when we learn and grieve when 
 we forget. I am therefore inclined to conclude that if 
 nothmg 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 
 
26 RASSELAS. 
 
 Europeans. They cure wounds and diseases with 
 which we languish and perish. We suffer inclemen- 
 cies of weather which they can obviate. They have 
 engines for the dis])atch of many laborious works 
 which we must performby manual industry. There 
 is such conmiunication between distant places 
 that one friend can hardly be said to be absent from 
 another. Their policy removes all public inconven- 
 iences ; they have roads cut through their mountains, 
 and bridges laid upon their rivers. And if we descend 
 to the privacies of life, their habitations are more com- 
 modious and their possessions are more secure. " 
 
 "They are surely happj^ '' said the prince, " who 
 have ail these conveniences, of which I envy none so 
 much as the facility with which separated friends inter- 
 change their thoughts. " 
 
 " The Europeans, " answered Tmlac, " are less un- 
 happy than we, but they are not happy. Human 
 life is everjrwhere a state in which much is to be 
 endured and little to be enjoyed." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE STORY OF IMLAC CONTII^-UED. 
 
 "I AM not yet willing," said the prince, " to sup- 
 pose that happiness is so parsimoniously distributed 
 to mortals; nor can 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 re- 
 sentment; I would relieve every distress, and should 
 enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I would choose 
 my friends among the wise and my wife among the 
 virtuous; and therefore should be in no danger from 
 treachery or unkindness. My children should, by my 
 care, be learned and pious, and would repay to my age 
 what their childhood had received. What would dare 
 to molest him who might call on every side to thou- 
 sands enriched by his bounty or assisted by his power? 
 And why should not life glide quietly away in the 
 'soft reciprocation of protection and reverence ? All 
 this may be done without the help of European 
 refinements, which appear by then- effects to be rather 
 specious than useful. Let us leave them, and pursue 
 our journey " 
 
 " From Palestine, " said Imlac, " I passed through 
 many regions of Asia, in the more civilized kingdoms 
 as a trader, and among the barbarians of the mountains 
 as a pilgrim. At last I began to long for my native 
 country, that I might repose, after my travels and fa- 
 
EASSELAS. 27 
 
 tlgues, in the places where I had spent my earliest years, 
 and gladden my old companions with the I'ecital of my 
 adventures. Often did I figure to myself those witii 
 whom I had sported away the gay liours of dawning 
 life, sitting round me in its evening, wondering at my 
 tales and listening to my counsels. 
 
 " When this tliought had taken possession of my 
 mind, I considered every moment as wasted which did 
 not bring me nearer to Abyssinia. I hastened into 
 Egypt, and notwithstanding my impatience, was de- 
 tained ten months in the contemplation of its ancient 
 magnificence and in inquiries after the remains of its 
 ancient learning. I found in Cairo a mixture of all 
 nations; some brought thither by the love of knowl- 
 edge, some by the hope of gain, and many by the- 
 desire of living after then- own manner without ob- 
 servation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of multi- 
 tudes ; for in a city populous as Cairo it is possible 
 to obtain at the same time the gratifications of society 
 and the secrecy of solitude. 
 
 *' From Caho I travelled to Suez and embarked on 
 the Red Sea, passing along the coast till I arrived 
 at the port from which I had departed twenty years 
 before. Here I joined myself to a caravan and re- 
 entered my native country. 
 
 "■ I now expected the caresses of my kinsmen and 
 the congratulations of my friends, and was not without 
 hope that my father, whatever value he had set upon 
 riches, would own with gladness and pride a son who 
 was able to add to the felicity and honor of the nation. 
 But I was soon convinced that my thoughts were vain. 
 My father had been dead fourteen years, having divid- 
 ed his wealth among my brothers, who were removed 
 to some other provinces. Of my companions the great- 
 er ]jart was in the grave; of the rest, some could with 
 difficulty remember me, and some considered me as one 
 coi'rupted by foreign manners. 
 
 " A man used to' vicissitudes is not easily dejected. 
 I forgot, after a time, my disappointment, and endeav- 
 ored to recommend myself to the nobles of the king- 
 dom; they admitted me to their tables, heard ni}^ story, 
 and dismissed me. I opened a school, and was pro- 
 hibited to teach; I then resolved to sit down in the 
 quiet of domestic life, and addressed a lad}^ ihat was 
 fond of my conversation, but rejected my suit because 
 my father was a merchanr. 
 
 "Wearied at last with solicitation and repulses, I 
 resolved to hide myself forever from the world, and 
 depend no longer on the opinion or ca])rice of others. 
 I waited for a time when the gate of the happy valley 
 should open, that I might bid farewell to hope and 
 fear: the day came; my performanc e was distinguished 
 
28 ^ASfeELAS. 
 
 with favor, and 1 resigned myselt -wiih joy to perpetual 
 conrinerneiit." 
 
 '•Hast thou here found happiness at last? Tell me 
 without reserve; art thou content with thy condition ? 
 or dost thou wish to be again wandering and inquiring? 
 All the inhabitants of this valley celebrate their lot, and 
 at tlie annual visit of the emperor invite others to par 
 take of tlieir felicity." 
 
 " Great prince," said Imlac, " I shall speak the trutii 3 
 1 know not one of all your attendants who does not la. 
 nient the hour when he entered this retreat. I am less 
 unhappy than the rest, because 1 have a mind replete 
 with images, which I can vary and combine at pleas, 
 ure. I can amuse my solitude by the renovation of 
 the knowledge which begins to fade from my memory 
 and by recollections of the incidents of my past life. 
 Yet all this ends in the sorrowful consideration that my 
 acquirements are now useless, and that none of my 
 pleasures can be again enjoyed. The rest, whoso 
 minds have no impression but that of the present mo- 
 ment, 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 im- 
 l^otence precludes malice, and whei'e all envy is re- 
 pressed by community of enjoyments." 
 
 "There may be community," said Imlac, "of ma 
 terial possessions, but there can never be community et 
 love or of esteem. It must happen that one will pleasb 
 more than another; he that knows himself despisev:^ 
 will always be envious; and still more envious and ma- 
 levolent if he is condemned to live in the presence of 
 those who despise liim. The invitations bj- which they 
 allure others to a state which they feel to be wretched 
 proceed from the natural malignity of hopeless misery. 
 They are weary of themselves and of each other, and 
 expect to find relief in new companions. They envy 
 the liberty which their folly has forfeited, and would 
 gladly see all mankind imprisoned like themselves." 
 
 "From this crime, however, I am wholly free. No 
 man can say that he is wretched by my persuasion. I 
 look with pity on the crowds who are annually solicit- 
 ing admission into captivity, and wish that it was law- 
 ful 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 es- 
 cape from the happy valley, 1 have examined the 
 mountains on every side, and 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 direc- 
 tor in the choice of life.'' 
 
RASSELAS. 29 
 
 *' Sii-, ** answered tlie poet, ''your escape will be 
 difficult; and perhaps you may soon repent your curi- 
 osity. The world, which you figure to yourself smooch 
 and quiet as the lake in the valley, you will find a sea 
 foaming with tempests and boiling with whirlpools; 
 you will be sometimes overwhelmed with the waves of 
 violence, and sometimes dashed against the rocks of 
 treachery. Amid wrongs and frauds, competitions 
 and anxieties, you will wish a thousand times for these 
 ♦seats of quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from 
 . fear." 
 
 " Do not seek to deter me from my purpose," said 
 the prince; "I am impatient to see what thou hast 
 seen; and since thou art thyself weary of the valley, 
 it is evident that thy former state was better than this. 
 Whatever be the consequence of my experiment, I am 
 resolved to judge with mine own eyes of the various 
 conditions of men, and then to make deliberately my 
 choice of life.'" 
 
 "lam afraid," said Imlac, ^'you are hindered by 
 stronger restraints than my persuasions; yet, if your 
 determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. 
 Few things are impossible to diligence and skill." 
 
 CHAPTER Xlll. 
 
 RASSELAS DISCOVERS THE MEANS OF ESCAPE. 
 
 The prince now dismissed his favorite to rest, but 
 the narrative of wonders and novelties filled his mind 
 with perturbation. He revolved all that he had heard, 
 and prepared innumerable questions for the morning. 
 
 Much of his uneasiness was now removed. He had 
 a friend to whom he could impart his thoughts, and 
 whose experience could assist him in his designs. His 
 heart was no longer condemned to swell in silent vexa- 
 tion. 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 fur- 
 ther to desire. 
 
 In a few days the water was discharged, and the 
 ground dried. The prince and Imlac then walked out 
 together to converse without the notice of the rest. 
 The prince, whose thoughts were always on the wing, 
 as he passed by the gate, said, with a countenance of 
 sorrow, "Why art thou so strong, and why i* man so 
 weak?" 
 
 "Man is not weak," answered his companion; 
 '* knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The 
 master of mechanics laughs at strength. I can bm'st 
 
30 RASSELAS. 
 
 the gate, but cannot do it secretly. Some other ex- 
 X)e(lient must be tried." 
 
 As they were walking on the side of the mountain, 
 they observed that they conies, which the rain had 
 driven from their burrows, had taken shelter among 
 tiie bushes and formed holes behind them, tending 
 upward in an oblique line. " It has been the opinion 
 of antiquity," said Inilac, "that human reason bor- 
 rowed many arts from tiie instinct of animals; let us, 
 therefore, not think ourselves degraded by learning 
 from the cony. We may escape by piercing the j noun- 
 tain in the same direction. We will begin where the 
 summit hangs over the middle part, and labor upward 
 till we shall issue up beyond the prominence." 
 
 The eyes of the prince, when he heard this proposal, 
 sparkled with Joy. The execution was easy and the 
 success certain. 
 
 No time was now lost. They hastened early in the 
 morning to choose a place proper for their mind. They 
 clambered with great fatigue among crags and bram- 
 bles, and returned without having discovered any part 
 that favored their design. The second and third day 
 were spent in the same manner 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 
 remove earth, and they fell to their work the next day 
 v^ilh more eagerness than vigor. They were presently 
 exhausted by their efforts, and sat down to pant upon 
 the grass. The prince for a moment appeared to be 
 discouraged. *' Sir," said his companion, " practice 
 will enable us to continue our labor for a longer time; 
 mark, however, how far we have advanced, and you 
 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 daj-; and in a 
 sliort 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 
 iare pleased with prognostics of good, you will be ter- 
 ritied likewise with tokens of evil, and your whole life 
 will be a prey to superstition, fWhatever fueilitates 
 our work is more than an omen, it is a cause of suc- 
 cess. This is one of those pleasing surprises which 
 
RASSELAS. 31 
 
 often happen to active resolution. Many things diffi- 
 cult to design prove easy to performance. '1 
 
 CHAPITER XIV, 
 
 RASSELAS AND IMLAC RECEIVE AN UNEXPECTED 
 
 VISIT. 
 
 They had now wrought their way to the middle, 
 and solaced their thoughts with the approach of 
 liberty, when the prince, coining down to refresh him- 
 self with air found his sister Nekayah standing before 
 the mouth of the cavity. He started and stood con- 
 fused, 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 declara- 
 tion without i-eserve, 
 
 " Do not imagine," said the princess, " that I came 
 hither as a spyj'l had long observed from my window 
 that you and Imlac directed your walk every clay to- 
 ward tlie same point, but I did not suppose you had any 
 better reason for the preference than a cooler shade or 
 more fragrant bank j nor followed you with any other 
 design than to partake of your conversation. Since, 
 then, not suspicion but fondness has detected you, let 
 me not lose the advantage of my discovery. I am 
 equally weary of confinement with yourself, and not 
 less desirous of knowing wliat is done or sulTered in the 
 world. Permit me to fiy with you from tliis tasteless 
 tranquility, which will yet grow more loathsome when 
 you have left me. You may deny me to accompany 
 you, but cannot hinder me from following." 
 
 The prince, who loved Nekayah above his other sis- 
 ters, had no inclination to refuse her request, and 
 grieved that he had lost an opportunity of showing his 
 confidence by a voluntary communication. It was 
 therefore agreed that she should leave tlie valley with 
 them; and that, in the mean time, she should watch 
 lest any other straggler should, by chance or curiosity, 
 follow tliem to theinountain. 
 
 At length their labor was at an end : they saw light 
 beyond the prominence, and, issuing to the top of the 
 mountain beheld the Nile, yet a narrow current, wan- 
 dering beneath them. 
 
 The prince looked round with rapture, anticipated 
 all tile pleasure of travel, and iii thought was already 
 transported beyond his' fathei''s dominions. Imlac, 
 though very joyful at his escape, had less expectation 
 of pleasure iii the world, which he had before tried, 
 ^xid of which he had been weary. 
 
83 RASSELAS. 
 
 Rasselas was so much delighted with a wider horizon 
 tliat he could not soon be persuaded to return into tlie 
 valley. He informed his sister that the way was open, 
 and that nothing now remained hut to prepare for 
 their departure. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS LEAVE THE VALLEY, 
 AND SEE MANY WONDERS. 
 
 The prince and princess had jewels sufficient to 
 make them rich whenever they came into a place of 
 commerce, which, by Imlac's direction, they might 
 hide in their clothes ; and, on the night of the next 
 full moon all left the valley. The princess was fol- 
 lowed 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 noth- 
 ing to bound their prospect, considered themselves as 
 in danger of being lost in a d4-eary vacuity. They 
 stopped and trembled. "1 am almost afraid," said 
 the princess, " to begin a journey of which I cannot 
 perceive an end, and to venture into this immense 
 plain, where I may be approached on every side by 
 men whom I never saw." The prince felt nearly the 
 same emotions, though he thought it more manly to 
 conceal them. 
 
 Imlac smiled at their terrors and encouraged them 
 to proceed ; but the princess continued irresolute till 
 she had been imperceptibly drawn forward too far to 
 return. 
 
 In the morning they found some shepherds in the 
 field, who set milk and fruits before them. The prin- 
 cess wondered that she did not see a palace ready for 
 her reception, and a table spread with delicacies ; but, 
 being faint and hungry, she drank the milk and ate 
 the fruits, and thought them of a higher flavor than 
 the products of the valley. 
 
 They traveled forward by easy journeys, being all 
 unaccustomed to toil or difficulty, and knowing that 
 though they might be missed, they could not be pur- 
 sued. In a few days they came into a more ]-)Opulou^t 
 region, where Imlac was diverted with the admiratioit 
 which his companions expressed at the diversity ot 
 manners, stations, and employments. 
 
 Then- dress was such as might not bring upon them 
 the suspicion of having anything to conceal] yet the 
 
RASSELAS. 88 
 
 prince, wherever he came, expected to be obeyed, and 
 the princess was friglitened because those that came 
 into her presence did not prostrate themselves before 
 her. Imlac was forced to observe them with great 
 vigilance, lest they slionld betray their rank by their 
 unusual behavior, and detained them several weelcs in 
 the first village, to accustom them to tlie sight of com- 
 mon mortals. 
 
 By degrees the royal wanderers were taught to un- 
 derstand that they had for a time laid aside their dig- 
 nity, and were to expect only such regard as 
 liberality and courtesy could procure. And Im- 
 lac having, by many admonitions, prepared them to 
 endure the tumults of a port and the ruggedness of the 
 commercial race, brought them down to the sea-coast. 
 
 The prince and his sister, to whom everything was 
 new, were gratified equally at all jDlaces, and there- 
 fore remained for some months at the port, without any 
 inclination to pass farther. 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 dis- 
 covered, and proposed to fix a day for their depart- 
 ure. They had no pretensions to judge for them- 
 selves, and referred the whole scheme to his direction. 
 He therefore took passage in a ship to Suez ; and, 
 when the time came, with great difficulty prevailed on 
 the princess to enter the yessel. They had a quick 
 and prosperous voyage j and from Suez traveled by 
 land to Cairo. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THEY ENTER CAIRO, AND FIND EVERY MAN 
 HAPPY. 
 
 As they approached the city, which filled the 
 strangers with astonishment, " This," said Imlac to the 
 prince, "is the place where travelers and merchants 
 assemble from all the corners of the earth. You will 
 here find men of every character and every occupation. 
 Commerce is here honorable: I will act as a merchant 
 who has 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 will see all the conditions of humanity, and enable 
 yourself at leisure to make your cJioice of life." 
 
 They now entered the town, stunned by the noise 
 and offended by the crowds. Instruction had not yet 
 
34 KASSELAS. 
 
 so prevailed over habit but that tliey wondered to see 
 themselves pass undistinguished along the street, and 
 met by the lowest of the people without reverence or 
 notice. The princess could not at first bear the thought 
 of being levelled with the vulgar, and for some days 
 continued in her chamber, where she was served by 
 her favorite Pekuah as in the palace of the valley. 
 
 Imlac, who understood traffic, sold part of the Jewels 
 the next day, and hired a house, which he adorned 
 with such magnificence that he was immediately con- 
 sidered as a merchant of great wealth. His politeness 
 attracted many acquaintance, and his generosity made 
 him courted by many dependents. His table was 
 crowded by men of every nation, who all admired liis 
 knowledge and solicited his favor. His companions, 
 not being able to mix in the conversation, could make 
 no discovery of their ignorance or surprise, and were 
 gradually initiated in the world as they gained knovsl- 
 edge 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 equivalent to the 
 necessaries of life. 
 
 They studied tlie language two years, while Imlac 
 was preparing to set before them the various ranks and 
 conditions of mankind. He grew acquainted with all 
 who had anything uncommon in their fortune or con- 
 duct. He frequented the voluptuous and tiie frugal, 
 the idle and the bus}^ the merchants and the men of 
 learning. 
 
 The prince being now able to converse with fluency, 
 and having learned the caution n'ecessary to be observed 
 in his intercourse with strangers, began to accompany 
 Imlac to places of resort, and to enter into all assem- 
 blies, that he might make his cJioice of life. 
 
 For some time he thought choice needless, because 
 all appeared to him equally happy. Wherever he 
 went he met gayety and kindness, and heard the song 
 of joy or the "laugh of carelessness. He began to be- 
 lieve that the world overflowed with universal plenty, 
 and that nothing was withheld eitlier from want or 
 merit; that every hand showered liberality, and every 
 heart melted with benevolence; " and who, then," says 
 he, '• will be suftered to be wretched? " 
 
 Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was un- 
 willing to crush the hope of inexperience, till one day, 
 having sat awhile silent, "I know not," said the 
 prince, "what can be the reason that I am more un- 
 happy than any of our friends. I see them perpetually 
 and unalterably cheerful, but feel uiy own mind rest- 
 
RASSELAkS. 35 
 
 less and uneasy. I am unsatisfied witli those i)leasures 
 which I seem most to court. I live in the crowds of 
 jolHty, not so mucli to enjoy company as to shun my- 
 self, and am only loud and merry to conceal my 
 sadness." 
 
 ^'' Every man," said Inilac^ "may by examining his 
 own mind guess what passes in the mhids of others: 
 when you feel that your own gayety is counterfeit, it 
 may juJitly lead you to suspect that of your compan- 
 ions not to he sincere^ Envy is commonly reciprocal. 
 We are long before we are convinced that happiness is 
 never to be" found, and each believes it possessed by 
 otheis to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for him- 
 self. In the assembly where j^ou passed tiie last night 
 there appeared such sprightliness of air and volatility 
 of fancy as might have suited beings of a higher order 
 formed to inhabit serener regions, inaccessible to care 
 or sorrow; yet believe me, prince ^ 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 is true of me ; yet whatever be the general 
 infelicity of man, one condition is more happy than 
 another, and wisdom surely directs us to take the least 
 evil in the choice of life J' 
 
 "The causes of good and evil," answered Imlac, 
 " are so various and uncertain, so often entangled with 
 each otlier, so diversified by various relations, and so 
 much subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen, 
 that he wiio would fix his' condition upon incontestable 
 reasons of preference must live and die inquiring and 
 deliberating." 
 
 " But surely," said Rasselas, "the wise men, to whom 
 we listen with reverence and wonder, chose that mode 
 of life for themselves which they thought most lilvely 
 to make them happy." 
 yi Very few," said the poet, " live by choice. Every 
 man is placed in his present condition by causes which 
 acteil without his foi'esight, ajid with which he did not 
 always willingly co-0[)erate;j and therefore you will 
 rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neigh- 
 bor better than his own." 
 
 "I am pleased to think," said the prince, "that 
 my birth has given me at least one advantage over 
 others, by enabling me to determine for myself. I 
 have here the world before me. I will review it at 
 leisure ; surely happiness is somewhere to be found." 
 
36 KASSELAS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUN© MEN OF 
 SPIRIT AND GAYETY. 
 
 RasselAS rose next day, and resolved to begin his 
 experiments upon life. "Youth," cried he, "is the 
 time of gladness : I will join myself to the young men 
 whose only business is to gratify their desires, and 
 whose time is all spent in a succession of enjoyments." 
 To such societies he was readily admitted j but a 
 few days brought him back weary and disgusted. 
 Their mirth was without images ; their laughter with- 
 out motive ; their pleasures were gross and sensual, 
 in which the mind had no part; their conduct was at 
 once wild and mean j they laughed at order and 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 uu suitable to a reasonable being to act 
 without ^ plan, and to be sad or cheerful only by 
 chance. [ " Happiness," said he, " must be something 
 solid an(i permanent, without fear and without uncer- 
 tainty. "7 
 
 But his young companions liad gained so much of 
 his regard by their frankness and courtesy that he 
 could not leave them without warning and remon- 
 strance. "My friends," said he, "I have seriously 
 considered our manners and our prospects, and find 
 that we have mistaken our own interest. The first 
 years of man must make provision for the last. He 
 that never thinks never can be wise. Perpetual levity 
 must end in ignorance ; and intemperance, tliough it 
 may fire the spirits for an liour, will make life short or 
 miserable. Let us consider that youth is of no long 
 duration, and that in maturer age, when the encliant- 
 ments of fancy shall cease, and phantoms of delight 
 dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts 
 but the esteem of wise men, and the means of doing 
 good. Let us, therefore, stop while to stop is in our 
 power ; let us live as men who are some time to grow 
 old, and to whom it will be the most dreadful of all 
 evils not to count their past years by follies, and to be 
 reminded of their former luxuriance of health only by 
 the maladies which riot has produced." 
 
 They stared awhile in silence one upon another, and 
 at last drove Mm away by a general chorus of contin- 
 ued laughter. 
 
 The consciousness that his sentiments were just and 
 his intentions kind was scarcely sufficient to support 
 
RASSELAS. 87 
 
 him agaiiigt the horror of derision. But he recovered 
 traaquility and x)ursued his search. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE PRINCE FINDS A WISK AND HAPPY MAN. 
 
 As he was one day walkino- 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 pro- 
 fessors read lectures to then- auditory. He fixed his 
 eye upon a sage raised above the rest, who discoursed 
 with great energy on the government of the passions. 
 His look was venerable, his action graceful, his pro- 
 nunciation clear, and his diction elegant. He showed 
 with great strength of sentiment and variety of illus- 
 tration, that human nature is degraded and debased 
 when the lower faculties predominate over the higher; 
 that when fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the 
 dominion of the mind, nothing ensues but the natural 
 effect of unlawful government, perturbation, and con- 
 fusion ; that she betraj^s the fortresses of the intellect 
 to rebels, and excites her children to sedition against 
 reason, 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 tran- 
 sitory lustre, irregular in its motion and delusive in its 
 direction. 
 
 He then communicated the various precepts given 
 from time to time for the conquest of passion, and dis- 
 played 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 immov- 
 able 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 happi- 
 ness and that this happiness was in eYery one's power. 
 
 Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to 
 the instructions of a superior being ; and, waiting for 
 him at the door, humbly implored the liberty of visit- 
 ing so great a master of true wisdom . The lecturer 
 
38 RASSELAS. 
 
 hesitated a moment, when Rasselas put a purse of gjold 
 into his hand, which he received with a mixture of joy 
 and wonder. 
 
 *' I have found," said the prince, at his return to Im- 
 lac, " a man who can teach all that is necessary to be 
 known, who, from the unshaken throne of rational for- 
 titude, looks down on the scenes of life changing be- 
 neath him. He Si:»eaks, and attention watches his 
 lips. He reasons, and conviction ©loses 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 ad- 
 mire the teachers of morality ; they discourse like 
 angels, but they live like men." 
 
 Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man 
 could reason so forcibly without feeling the cogency of 
 his own arguments, paid his visit in a few days, and 
 was denied admission. He had now learned the power 
 of money, and made his way by a piece of gold to the 
 inner apartment, where he found the philosopher in a 
 room half darkened, with his eyes misty and his face 
 pale. " Sir," said he, " you are come at a time when 
 all human friendship is useless ; what I suffer cannot 
 be remedied, what I iiave lost cannot be supplied. My 
 daughtei-, my only daughter, from whose tenderness 1 
 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 so- 
 ciety." 
 
 *' Sir," said the prince, " mortality is an event by 
 which a wise man can never be surprised : we know 
 that death is always near, and it should therefore al- 
 ways be expected." " Young man," answered the 
 philosopher, " you speak like one that has never felt 
 the pangs of separation." " Have you then forgot the 
 precepts," said Rasselas, "which you so powerfully 
 enforced ? Has wisdom no strength to arm the heart 
 against calamity ? Consider that external things are 
 naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the 
 same." "What comfort," said the mourner, "can 
 truth and reason afford me ? of what effect are they now 
 but to tell ine that my daughter will not be restored? " 
 
 The prince, wiiose humanity would not suffer him to 
 insult misery with reproof, went away convinced of 
 the emptiness of rhetorical sound and the mefficacy of 
 polished periods and studied sentences. 
 
RASSELAS. SO 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF PASTORAL LIFE. 
 
 He was still eager upon the same inqiiirj' ; and 
 having heard of a hermit that lived near the lowest 
 cataract of the Nile, and filled the whole country with 
 the fame of his sanctity, resolved to visit his retre:it, 
 and inquire whether that felicity which public life 
 could not afford was to be found in solitude, and 
 whether a man whose age and virtue made him vener- 
 able could teach any peculiar art of shunning evils or 
 enduring them ? 
 
 Imlac and the princess agreed to accompany him ; 
 and, after tlie necessary preparations, they began 
 their journey. Their way lay through the fields, 
 where shepherds tended their flocks and the lambs 
 were playing upon the pasture. " This," said the poet, 
 "is the life which has been often celebrated for its 
 innocence and quiet ; let us pass the heat of the day 
 among the shepherds' tents, and know whether all 
 our searches are not to terminate in pastoral simplicity." 
 
 The proposal pleased them, and they induced the 
 she[)herds^ by small presents and familiar questions, 
 to tell their opinion of their own state ; tliey were so 
 rude and ignorant, so little able to compare the good 
 with the evil of the occupation, and so indistinct in 
 their narratives and descriptions, that very little could 
 be learned from them. But it was evident that their 
 hearts were cankered with discontent j thac they con- 
 sidered themselves as condemned to labor for the lux- 
 ury of the rich, and looked up with stupid malevo- 
 lence toward those that were placed above them. 
 
 The princess pronounced with vehemence that she 
 would never suffer these envious savages to be her com- 
 panions, and that she should not soon be desirous 
 of seeing any more specimens of rustic happiness ; but 
 could not believe that all the accounts of primeval 
 pleasures were fabulous ; and was yet in doubt whether 
 life had anything that could be justly preferred to the 
 placid gratifications of fields and woods. She hoped 
 tliat the time would come when, with a few virtuous 
 and elegant companions, she should gather flowers 
 planted by her own hand, fondle the lambs of her own 
 ewe, and listen, without care, among brooks and 
 breezes, to one of her maidens reading in the shade. 
 
40 RASSELAS. 
 
 CHAPTER XX, 
 
 THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY. 
 
 On the next day rliey continued their journey till the 
 heat compelled them to look round for shelter. At a 
 small distance they saw a thick wood, which they no 
 sooner entered than they perceived that they were ap- 
 proaching the habitations of men. The shrubs were 
 diligently cut away to open walks where the shades 
 were darkest ; the boughs of op]DOsite trees were arti- 
 ficially interwoven ; seats of flowery turf were raised 
 in vacant spaces; and a rivulet that wantoned along 
 the side of a winding path had its banks sometimes 
 opened into small basins, and its stream sometimes ob- 
 structed 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 conjectiuing what or who he could be that, 
 in those rude and unfrequented regions, had leisure 
 and art for such harmless luxury. 
 
 As they advanced, they heard the sound of music, 
 and saw youths and virgins dancing in the grove; and, 
 going still farther, beheld a stately palace, built upon 
 a hill surrounded with woods. The laws of eastern 
 hospitality allowed them to enter, and the master 
 welcomed them like a man liberal and wealthy. 
 
 He was skilful enough in appearances soon to discern 
 that they were no common guests, and spread his table 
 with magnificence. The eloquence of Imlac caught 
 his attention, and the lofty courtesy of the princess ex- 
 cited his respect. When they olfered to depart he en- 
 treated their staj^, and was the next day still more un- 
 willing to dismiss them than before. They were easily 
 persuaded to stop, and civility grew up in time to free- 
 dom 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 congratu- 
 lating the master upon his possessions, he answered with 
 a sigh, " My condition has indeed the aj^peai-ance of 
 happiness, but appearances are delusive. My prosper- 
 ity puts my life in danger; the Bassa of Egypt is my 
 enemy, incensed only b\^ my wealth and popularity. 
 I have hitherto been protected against him by the 
 princes of the country; but as the favor of the great 
 s uncertain, I know not how soon my defenders may 
 e persuaded to share the plunder with the Bassa. I 
 ave sent my treasures into a distant country, and 
 upon the first alarm am prepared to follow them , Then 
 
RASSELAS. 41 
 
 will my enemies riot in my mansion and enjoy the gar- 
 dens which I have planted." 
 
 They all joined in lamentinoj his danger and depre- 
 cating his exile; and the princess was so much dis- 
 tui'bed with the tumult of grief and indignation that 
 she retired to her apartment. 
 
 They continued with their kind inviter a few days 
 longer, and then went forward to find the hermit. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE HAPPINESS OP SOLITUDE.— THE HERMIT'S 
 HISTORY. 
 
 They came on the third day, by the direction of the 
 peasants, to the hermit's cell. It was a cavern in the 
 side of a mountain, overshadowed with palm-trees; at 
 such a distance from the cataract that nothing more 
 was heard than a gentle uniform murmur, such as 
 composed the mind to pensive meditation, especially 
 when it was assisted by the wind whistling among the 
 branches. The first rude essay of nature had been so 
 much improved by human labor that the cave con- 
 tained several apartments appropriated to diiferent 
 uses, and often afforded lodging to travelers whom 
 darkness or tempests happened' to overtake. 
 
 The hermit sat on a bench at the door to enjoy the 
 coolness of the evening. On one side lay a book with 
 pens and papers, on the other mechanical instruments 
 of various kinds. As they approached him unregarded, 
 the princess observed that he had not the countenance 
 of a man that had found or could teach the way to hap- 
 piness. 
 
 They saluted him with great respect, which he repaid 
 like a man not unaccustomed to the forms of the 
 courts. '*My children," said he, "if you have lost 
 your way, you shall be willingly supplied with such 
 conveniences for the night as this cavern will afford. I 
 have all that nature requires, and you will not expect 
 delicacies in a hermit's cell." 
 
 They thanked him, and, entering, were pleased with 
 the neatness and regularity of the place. The hermit 
 set flesh and wine before them, though he fed only 
 upon fruits and water. His discourse was cheerful 
 without levity, and pious without enthusiasm. He 
 soon gained the esteem of his guests, and the prin- 
 cess repented of her hasty censure. 
 
 At last Imlac began thusj *'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 
 
42 RASSELAS. 
 
 yonr direction for this young man and maiden in the 
 choice of life."" 
 
 "To him that hves well," answered the hermit, 
 " every form of life is good; nor can I give any other 
 rule for choice than to remove from all apparent evil." 
 
 " He will remove most certainly from evil," said the 
 prince, " who shall devote himself to that solitude 
 which you have recommended by yom- example." 
 
 " I liave indeed lived fifteen years in solitude," said 
 the hermit, " but have no desire that my examjjle 
 should gain any imitators. In my youth I ])i-ofessed 
 aiTiis, and was raised by degrees to the highest mili- 
 tary rank. I have traversed wide countries at 
 the head of my troops, and seen many battles 
 and sieges. At last, being disgusted by the pre- 
 ferments 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 io for my final residence. 
 I employed artificers to form it into chambers, and 
 stored it with all that I was likely to want. 
 
 " For some time after my retreat, I rejoiced like a 
 tempest-beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbor, 
 being delighted with the sudden change of the noise 
 and hurry of war to stillness and repose. When the 
 pleasures of novelty went away, I employed my hours 
 in examining the plants which grew in the valley and 
 the minerals which I collected from the rocks. But 
 that inquiry is now grown tasteless and irksome. I 
 iiave been for some time unsettled and distracted; my 
 mind is disturbed with a tliousand perplexities of doubt 
 and vanities of imagination which hourly prevail upon 
 me, because I have no opportunities of relaxation or 
 diversion. I am sometimes ashamed to think that I 
 could not secure myself from vice but by retiring from 
 the exercise of virtue, and begin to suspect that I was 
 rather impelled by resentment than led by devotion 
 into solitude. My fancy riots in scenes of folly, and 1 
 lament tliat I have lost so much and have gained s^ 
 little. In solitude, if I escape the example of bad 
 men, I want likewise the counsel and conversation of 
 the good. I have been long comparing the evils with 
 the advantages of society, and resolve to return into 
 the world to-morrow. The life of a solitary man will 
 be certainly miserable but not certainly devout." 
 
 They heard his resolution with surprise, but after a 
 short pause ofTered to conduct him to Cairo. He dug 
 up a considerable treasure which he had hid among the 
 rocks, and accompanied tiiem to the city, on which, as 
 he approached it, he gazed with rapture. 
 
RASSELAS. 43 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 i'HE HAPPmESS OF A LIFE LED ACCORDING TO 
 NATURE. 
 
 RASSELAS went often to an assembly of learned 
 men, who met at stated times to unbend their minds 
 and compare tlieir opinions. Their manners were 
 somewhat coarse, but their conversation was instruct- 
 ive and their disputations acute, though sometimes too 
 violent, and often continued till neither controvertist 
 i-emembered 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 
 l)leased 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 deliber- 
 ately chosen and so laudably followed. The senti- 
 ments of the hearers were various. Some were of 
 opinion that the folly of his choice had been justly pun- 
 ished by condemnation to perpetual perseverance. One 
 of the youngest among them, with great vehemence, 
 pronounced him a hypocrite. Some talked of the 
 right of society to the labor of individuals, and con- 
 sidered retirement as a desertion from duty. Others 
 readily allowed that there was a time when the claims 
 of the public were satisfied, and when a man might 
 pi-operly sequester himself, to review his life and 
 purify his heart. 
 
 One, who ai)peared more affected with tiie narrative 
 than the rest, thought it likely that the hermit would 
 in a few years, go back to his retreat, and perhaps, if 
 shame did not restrain or death intercept him, return 
 once more from his retreat into the world : " For the 
 hope of happiness," said he, " is so strongly impressed 
 that the longest experience is not able to efface it. Of 
 the present state, whatever it be, we feel, and are 
 forced to confess, the misery ; yet when the same 
 state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as 
 desirable. But the time will surely come when desire 
 will be no longer our torment, and no man shall be 
 wretched but by Ills own fault." 
 
 '^ This," said a philosopher, who had heard him with 
 tokens of great impatience, *'is the present condition 
 of a wise man. The time is already come when none 
 are wretched but by their own fault. Nothing is more 
 idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has 
 kindly placed within our reach. '11 le wa}' to be happy 
 is to live according to nature, in obe<lieuce to that uni- 
 versal and unalterabiQ law with which every heart is 
 
44 RASSELAS. 
 
 originally impressed ; which is not wi'itten on it by 
 precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by edu- 
 cation, but infused at our nativity. He that lives ac- 
 cording to nature will suffer nothing from the delu- 
 sions of hope or importunities of desire ; he will re- 
 ceive and reject with equability of temper, and act or 
 sufferas the reason of things shall alternatel}^ prescribe. 
 Other men may amuse themselves with subtle defini- 
 tions or intricate ratiocinations. Let them learn to 
 be wise by easier means ; let them observe the hind of 
 the forest and the linnet of the gi'ovej let them con- 
 sider 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 intel- 
 ligible maxim. That deviation from nature is devia- 
 tion from happiness." 
 
 When he had spoken, he looked round him with a 
 placid air, and enjoyed the consciousness of his own 
 beneficence. " Sir," said the prince, with great 
 modesty, "as I, like all the rest of mankind, am de- 
 sirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed 
 upon your discourse'; I doubt not the truth of a position 
 which a man so learned has so confidently advanced. 
 Let me only know what it is to live according to 
 nature?" 
 
 " When I find young men so humble and so docile," 
 said the philosopher, " I can deny them no information 
 which my studies have enabled me to afford. To live 
 according to nature is to act always with due regard -to 
 the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of 
 causes and effects ; to concur with the great and un- 
 changeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate 
 with the general disposition and tendency of the 
 present system of things." 
 
 The prince soon found that this was one of the sages 
 whom he should understand less as he heard him 
 longer. He therefore bowed and was silent; and the 
 philosopher, supposing him satisfied and the rest van- 
 quished, rose up and departed with the air of a man 
 that had co-operated with the present system. 
 
 CHAPTER XXm. 
 
 THE PRIKXIE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN 
 THEM THE WORK OF OBSERVATION. 
 
 Rasselas returned liorae full of reflections, doubt- 
 ful how to direct his future steps. Of the way to hap- 
 
RA8SELAS. ' 45 
 
 piness he found the learned and simple equally 
 ignorant; but as he was yet young he flattered himself 
 that he had time remaining for more experiments and 
 further inquiries. He communicated to Inilac his ob- 
 servations and his doubts, bnt was answered by him 
 with new doubts, and remarks that gave him no com- 
 fort. He therefore discoursed more frequently and 
 freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with 
 himself, and always assisted him to give some reason 
 why, though he had beeJi hitherto frustrated, he might 
 succeed at last. 
 
 *' We have hitherto," said she, " known but little of 
 the world: we have never yet been either great or 
 mean. In our own country, though we had royalty, 
 we had no power; and in this we have not yet seen the 
 private recesses of domestic peace. Imlac favors not 
 our search, lest we should in time find him mistaken. 
 We will divide the task betw^een us: you shall try what 
 is to be found in the splendor of courts, and I will 
 range the shades of humbler life. Perhaps command 
 and authority may be the supreme blessings, as they 
 afford most opportunities of doing good; or, perhaps, 
 what this world can give may be found in the modest 
 liabitations of middle fortune; too low for great de- 
 signs, and too high for penury and distress." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE PRINCE EXAMINES THE HAPPINESS OF 
 HIGH STATIOA^S. 
 
 Rasselas applauded the design, and appeared next 
 day with a splendid retinue at the court of the Bassa. 
 He was soon distinguished for his magnificence, and 
 admitted, as a prince whose curiosity had brought him 
 from distant countries, to an intimacy with the great 
 ofiicers and frequent conversation with the Bassa 
 himself. 
 
 He was at first inclined to believe that the man must 
 be pleased with his own condition whom all approached 
 with reverence, and heard with obedience, and who 
 had the power to extend his edicts to a whole kingdom. 
 "There can be no pleasure," said he, *' equal to that 
 of feeling at once the joy of thousands all made happy 
 by wise administration. Yet, since by the law of 
 subordination, this sublime delight can be in one nation 
 but the lot of one, it is surely reasonable to think that 
 there is some satisfaction more popular and accessible, 
 and that millions can hardly be subjected to the will of 
 a single man, only to fill his particular breast witti 
 incommunicable content." 
 
46 • RASSELAS. 
 
 These thoughts were often hi his mind, and he found 
 no solution of the difficulty. But as presents and 
 civilities gained him more familiarity, he found that 
 almost every man who stood high in employment hated 
 all the rest, and was hated by them, and that their 
 lives were a continual succession of plots and detec- 
 tions, stratagems and escapes, faction and treachery. 
 JVJany of those who suiTOunded the Bassa were sent 
 only to watch and report his conduct; every tongue 
 was muttering censure and every eye was searching 
 for a fault. 
 
 At last the letters of revocation arrived, the Bassa 
 was carried in chains to Constantinople, and his name 
 was mentioned no more. 
 
 "What are we now to think of the prerogatives of 
 power ? " said Rasselas to his sister; '* is it without 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 subject to the torments of suspicion and 
 the dread of enemies ? " 
 
 In a short time the second Bassa was deposed. The 
 Sultan that had advanced him was murdered by the 
 Janizaries, and his successor had other views and 
 different favorites. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE PRIJyCESS PURSUES HER INQUIRY WITH MORE 
 DILIGENCE THAN SUCCESS. 
 
 The princess, in the meantime, insinuated herself 
 into many families; for there are few doors through 
 whidi liberality joined with good humor cannot tind its 
 way. The daughters of many houses were airy and 
 cheerful; but Nekayah had been too long accustomed 
 to the conversation of Imlac and her brother to be 
 much pleased with childish levity and prattle which 
 had no meaning. She found their thoughts narrow, 
 their wishes low, and their merriment often artificial. 
 Their pleasures, poor as they were, could not be pre- 
 served pure, but were embittered by petty competitions 
 and worthless emulation. They were always jealous 
 of the beauty of each other; of a quality to which solic- 
 itude 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 affec- 
 tion was not fixed on sense or virtue, and therefore 
 seldom ended but in vexation. Their grief , however, 
 
RASSELAS. 47 
 
 like their joy, was transient;^ eveiything floated in their 
 mind unconnected with tlie past or future, so that one 
 desire easily gave way to anotlier, as a second stone 
 cast into tlie water effaces and confounds tlie circles of 
 the first. 
 
 Witli tliese girls she played as with inoffensive an- 
 imals, and found them proud of her countenance and 
 weary of her company. 
 
 But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and 
 her affability easily persuaded the hearts that were 
 swelling with sorrow to discharge their secrets in her 
 ear j and those whom hope flattered or prosperity de- 
 lighted often courted her to partake their pleasures. 
 
 The princess and her brother commoidy met in the 
 evening, in a private summer-house on the bank of the 
 Nile, and related to each other the occurrences of the 
 day. As they were sitting togethei-, the princess cast 
 her eyes upon the river that flowed before her. " An- 
 swer," said she, "great father of waters, thou that 
 rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invo- 
 cations of the daughter of tliy native king. Tell me if 
 thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habita- 
 tion from which thou dost not here the murmurs of 
 complaint ?" 
 
 " You are then," said Rasselas, "not more success- 
 ful 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 liouse that is 
 not haunted by some fury that destroys their quiet. 
 
 "I did not seek ease among the poor, because I con- 
 cluded that there it could not be found. But I saw 
 many poor whom 1 had supposed to live in affluence. 
 Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances : 
 it is often concealed In splendor and often in extrava- 
 gance. It is the care of a very great part of mankind 
 to conceal their indigence from the rest; they support 
 themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is 
 lost in contriving for the morrow. 
 
 "This, howev'er, was an evil which, though frequent, 
 I saw witli 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 succor them; and others, whose exigencies 
 compelled them to admit my kindness, have never 
 been able to forgive their benefactress. Many, how- 
 ever, liave been sincerely grateful, without the osten- 
 tation of gratitude or the hope of other favors," 
 
48 RASSELAS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI, 
 
 THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPOK" 
 PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 NekAYAH, perceiving her brotlier's attention fixed, 
 proceeded in her narrative. 
 
 " In families where there is or is not poverty there is 
 commonly discord: if a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, 
 a great family, a family likewise is a little kingdom, 
 torn vv^ith factions and exposed to revolutions. An 
 unpractised observer expects the love of parents and 
 children to be constant and equal; but this kindness 
 seldom continues beyond the years of infancy; hi a 
 short time the children become rivals to their parents. 
 Benefits are allayed by reproaches, and gratitude de- 
 based by envy. 
 
 "Parents and children seldom act in concert; each 
 child endeavors to a^Dpropriate the esteem or fondness 
 of the parenrs, and the parents, with yet less tempta- 
 tion, 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 ophnons of children and parents, of the 
 young and the old, are naturally opposite, by the con- 
 trary effects of hope and despondence, of expectation 
 and experience, 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 winter. And how 
 can children credit the assertions of parents, which 
 their own eyes show them to be false ? 
 [ "Few parents act in such a manner as much to en- 
 force their maxims by the credit of their lives. The 
 old man trusts wholly to slow contrivance and gradual 
 progression; the youth expects to force his way by 
 genius, vigor, and precipitance. The old man pays 
 regard to riches, and th^youth reverences virtue. The 
 old man defies prudence; the youth commits himself to 
 magnanimity and chance. The young man, who in- 
 tends no ill, believes that none is intended, and therefore 
 acts with openness and candor; bat his father, having 
 suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, 
 and too often allured to practise it. Age looks with 
 anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with con- 
 tempt on the scrupulosity of age. Thus parents and 
 children, for the greatest part, live on to love less and 
 less; and if those whom nature has thus closely united 
 are the torments of each other, where Shall we look 
 for tenderness and consolation ?") 
 
 "Surely," said the prhice, "you must have been 
 unfortunate in your choice of acquaintance; I am un- 
 
RASSELAS. 49 
 
 willing to believe that the most tender of all relations 
 is thus impeded in its effects by natural necessity." 
 
 " Domestic discord," answered she, " is not inevit- 
 ably and fatally necessary; but yet it is not easily 
 avoided. We seldom see that a wliole family is 
 virtuous; the good and evil cannot well agree; and 
 the evil can yet less agree with one another; even tlie 
 virtuous fall sometimes to variance, when their virtues 
 are of different Jvinds, and tending to extremes. In 
 general, tliose parents have most reverence that most 
 deserve it;(^for he that lives well cannot be despised.^ 
 
 " Many other evils infest private life. Some are the 
 slaves of servants whom they have trusted with their 
 affairs. Some are kept in continual anxiety by the caprice 
 of rich relations, whom they cannot please and dare not 
 offend. Some husbands are imperious, and some wives 
 perverse; and as it is always more easy to do evil than 
 good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very 
 rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one may 
 often make many miserable." 
 
 '^ If such be the general effect of marriage," said the 
 prince, " I shall, for the future, think it dangerous to 
 connect my interest with that of another, lest I should 
 be unhappy by my partner's fault." 
 
 "I have met," said the princess, "with many who 
 live single for that reason; but I never found that 
 their prudence ought to raise enyy. They dream away 
 their time without friendship, without fondness, and 
 are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they 
 have no use, by childish amusements or vicious de- 
 lights. They act as beings under the constant sense of 
 some known inferiority, that fills their minds with 
 rancor and their tongues with censure. They aie 
 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 Kasselas ; " the 
 more we inquire the less we can I'esolve. Surely he is 
 most likely to please himself that has no other inclina- 
 tion to regard." 
 
50 RASSELAS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 DISQUISITION^ UPON" GREATNESS. 
 
 The conversation had a short pause. The prince, 
 having considei'ed his sister's observations, told her 
 that she liad surveyed life with prejudice, and sup- 
 posed misery wliere slie did not find it. " Your nar- 
 rative," says he, "throws yet a darker gloom upon the 
 prospects of futurity; tlie predictions of Iinlac were 
 hut faint sketclies of the evils painted by Nekayali. 1 
 have been lately convinced that quiet is not. the 
 daughter of grandeur or of power; that her presence 
 is not to he bought by wealth nor enforced by con- 
 quest. 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 igno- 
 rant; by sonie 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 conferi-ed but upon few, the greater 
 number will be always discontented." 
 
 " The discontent," said the princess, " which is thus 
 unreasonable, I hope that I shall always liave spirit to 
 despise, and you power to repress." 
 
 " Discontent," answered Rasselas, " will not always 
 be without reason under the most just and vigilant 
 administration of public affairs. None, however atten- 
 tive, can always discover that merit which indigence or 
 faction may happen to obscure; and none however 
 powerful, can always reward it. Yet he that sees in- 
 ferior desert advanced above him will naturally impute 
 that preference to partiality or caprice; and, indeed, 
 it can scarcely be hoped that any man, hovv^ever mag- 
 nanimous by nature or exalted by condition, wdl be 
 able to persist forever in the fixed and inexorable jus- 
 tice of distribution; he will sometimes indulge his own 
 affections, and sometimes those of his favorites; he 
 will iDcrmit some to please him who can never serve 
 him; he will discover, in those whom he loves, qual- 
 ities which in reality they do not possess; and to those 
 from whom he receives pleasure he will in his turn 
 endeavor to give it. Thus will recommendations 
 sometimes prevail which were purchased by money, or 
 by the more destructive bribery of flattery and ser- 
 vility. 
 
 •' He that has much to do will do something wrong, 
 and of this wrong must suffer the consequences; and 
 if it were possible that he should always act rightly, 
 yet wlien sucJi numbers are to judge of his conduct, 
 
RASSEtAS. 51 
 
 the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence, 
 and the good sometimes by mistake. 
 
 "Tlie highest stations cannot therefore hope to be 
 the abodes of happiness, which I would willingly 
 believe to liave fled from thrones and palaces to seats 
 of humble privacy and placid obscurity. For what 
 can hinder the satisfaction or intercept the expecta- 
 tions of him whose abilities are adequate to his em- 
 ployments, who sees with his own eyes the whole 
 circuit of his influence, who chooses by his own knowl- 
 edge all whom he trusts, and whom none are tempted 
 to deceive by hope or fear ? Surely he has nothing to 
 do but to love and to be loved, to be virtuous and to 
 be liappy." 
 
 " Whether perfect happiness would be procured by 
 perfect goodness," said Nekayah, "this world will 
 never atford an opportunity of deciding. But this, at 
 least, may be maintained, that we do not always lind 
 visible happiness in proportion to visible virtue. All 
 natural and almost all political evils are incident alike 
 to the bad and good ; they are confounded in the 
 misery of a famine, and not much distinguished in the 
 fury of a faction; they sink together in a tempest, and 
 are driven together from their country by invaders. 
 All that vh'tue can afford is quietness of conscience, a 
 steady prospect of a happier state: this may enable us 
 to endure calamity with patience; but remember that 
 patience must suppose pain." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVin, 
 
 RASSEIiAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CON- 
 VERSATION. 
 
 " Dear princess," said Rasselas, "you fall into the 
 common errors of exaggeratory declamation, by pro- 
 ducing, in a familiar disquisition, examples of national 
 calamities and scenes of extensive misery, which are 
 found in books rather than in the world, and which, as 
 tliey are horrid, are ordained to be rare. Let us not 
 imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by 
 misrepresentations. I cannot bear that querulous 
 eloquence which threatens every city with a siege like 
 that of Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on every 
 flight of locusts, and suspends pestilence on the wing 
 of every blast that issues from the south. 
 
 "On necessary and inevitable evils, which over- 
 whelm kingdoms at once, all disputation is vain; when 
 they happen, they must be endured. But ft is evident 
 thai these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded 
 
5g RASSPJLAS. 
 
 than felt ; thousands and ten thousands floiu'ish m 
 youth and wither in age, witlioiit the knowledge of any 
 other than domestic evils, and sliare the same pleasures 
 and vexations, whether their kings are mild or cruel, 
 whether the armies of tlieir country pursue their 
 enemies or retreat before them. While courts are dis- 
 turbed with intestine competitions, and ambassadors 
 are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies 
 his anvil and the liusbandman drives his plough for- 
 ward : the necessaries of life are required and obtained; 
 and tlie successive business of tlie seasons continues to 
 make its wonted revolutions. 
 
 " Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may nevei- 
 happen, 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 business to consider what beings 
 like us may perform; each laboring for his own happi- 
 ness by promoting within his circle, however narrow, 
 the happiness of others. 
 
 "Marriage is evidently the dictate of nature; men 
 and women are made to be companions of each other, 
 and therefore I cannot be persuaded but that marriage 
 IS one of the means of happiness." 
 
 "I know not," said the princess, "whether marriage 
 be more than one of the innumerable modes of human 
 misery. When 1 see and reckon the various forms of 
 connubial infelicity, tlie unexpected causes of lasting- 
 discord, the diversities of temper, the oppositions of 
 opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where 
 both are urged by violent impulses, the obstinate con- 
 tests of disagreeable virtues wliere both are supported 
 by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes 
 disposed to think, with the severer casuists of most 
 nations, that marriage is rather permitted than ap- 
 proved, and that no'ne, 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 frailty. To the mind, as to the eye, it is 
 difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their 
 extent and various in their parts. Where we see or 
 conceive the whole at once, we readily note the dis- 
 criminations and decide the preference; but of two 
 systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any 
 
RASSELAS. 58 
 
 human being in its full compass of magnitude and 
 multiplicity of combination, where is the wonder that, 
 judgijig 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 parts of the ques- 
 tion, as in the multifarious relations of politics and 
 morality; but when we perceive the whole at once, as 
 in numerical computations, all agree in one judgment, 
 and none ever varies 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 iji 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 flt that we assist each other. You surely 
 conclude too hastily from the infelicity of marriage 
 against its institution : will not the misery of life prove 
 equally that life cannot be the gift of heaven ? The 
 world must be peopled by marriage or peopled with- 
 out it." 
 
 " How the world is to be peopled," returned Nekayah, 
 **is not my care, and need not be yom's. 1 see no 
 danger that the present generation should omit to leave 
 successors behind them; we are not now inquiring for 
 the world but for ourselves." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE DEBATE OF MARRIAGE CONTINUED. 
 
 " The good of the whole," says Rasselas, "is tlie 
 same with the good of all its parts. If marriage be best 
 for mankind, it must be evidently best for individuals, 
 or a permanent and necessary duty must be the cause 
 of evil, and some must be inevitably sacrificed to the 
 convenience of otliers. In the estimate which you 
 have made of the two states, it appears that the incom- 
 modities of a single life are, in a great measure, neces- 
 sary and certain, but those of the conjugal state 
 accidental and avoidable." 
 
 "I cannot forbear to flatter myself that prudence 
 and benevolence will make marriage happy. The 
 general folly of mankind is the cause of general com- 
 plaint. What can be expected but disappointment and 
 repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of 
 youth, in the ardor of desire, without judgment, 
 without foresight, without inquuy after conformity of 
 opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgment, 
 or purity of sentiment ? 
 
54 RASSELAS. 
 
 *' Such is the common process of marriage. A 
 youth or maiden meeting by chance, or brouglit to- 
 gether by artifice, exciiange glances, reciprocate civil- 
 ities, go home, and dream of one another. Having 
 little to divert attention or diversify thought, they find 
 themselves uneasy wlien they are apart, and therefore 
 conclude that they shall be happy together. They 
 marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary 
 blindness before had concealed ; they wear out life in 
 altercations, and charge natui-e witli crueltj''. 
 
 " From those early marriages proceeds likewise the 
 rivalry of parents and children; the son is eager to 
 enjoy the world before the father is willing to forsake 
 it, and there is hardly room at once for two generations. 
 The daughter begins to bloom before the mother can be 
 content to fade, and neither can forbear to wish for 
 the absence of the other. 
 
 '* Surely all these evils may be avoided by that de- 
 liberation and delay which prudence prescribes to irrev- 
 ocable 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 ex- 
 perience, and wider views will allow better opportu- 
 nities of inquiry and selection : one advantage, 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 have been told that 
 late marriages are not eminently liappy. This is a 
 question too important to be neglected, and 1 have 
 often proposed it to those whose accuracy of remark 
 and comprehensiveness of knowledge made their suf- 
 frages worthy of regard. They have generally deter- 
 mined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to 
 suspend their fate upon each other, at a time when 
 opinions are fixed and habits are established ; when 
 friendships have been contracted on both sides, when 
 life has been planned into method, and the mind has 
 long enjoyed the contemplation of its own prospects. 
 
 " It is scarcely possible that two, traveling through 
 the world, under the conduct of chance, should have 
 been both directed to the same path, and it will not 
 often happen that either will quit the track which 
 custom has made pleasing. When the desultoi y levity 
 of youth has settled into regularity, it is soon suc- 
 ceeded by pride ashamed to yield or obstinacy de- 
 lighting to contend. And even though mutual esteem 
 produces mutual desire to please, time itself, as it 
 modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines 
 likewise the direction of the passions, and gives an in- 
 flexible rigidity to tiie mann&rs. Long customs are 
 
RASSELAS. 55 
 
 not easily broken : he that attempts to change the 
 course of his own life very often labors in vain^ and 
 how shall we do that for others winch we are seldom 
 able to do for ourselves ? " 
 
 '* But surely," interposed the prince, " you suppose 
 the chief motive of ciioice forgotten or neglected. 
 Whenever I shall seek a wife it shall be my first ques- 
 tion whether she be willing to be led by reason ? " 
 
 ** Thus it is," said Nekayali, " that philosophers are 
 deceived. There are a thousand familiar disputes 
 which reason never can decide; questions that elude 
 investigation and make logic ridiculous 3 cases where 
 something must be done and where little can be said. 
 Consider the state of mankind, and mquire how few 
 can be supposed to act upon any occasions, whether 
 small or great, with all the reasons of action present 
 to their minds. Wretched would be the pair above all 
 names of wretchedness who should be doomed to 
 adjust by reason, every morning, all the minute detail 
 of a domestic day. 
 
 *' Those who marry at an advanced age will probably 
 escape the encroachments of their childi-en ; but, in 
 diminution of this advantage, they will be likely to 
 Jeave them, ignorant and helpless, to a guardian's 
 mercy; or, if that should not happen, they must at 
 least go out of the world before they see those whom 
 they love best either wise or great. 
 
 *' From their children, if they have less to fear they 
 have less also to hope; and they lose without equiva- 
 lent the joys of early love and the convenience of 
 uniting with manners i)liant and minds susceptible of 
 new impressions, which might wear away their dis- 
 similitudes by long cohabitation; as softbodieSj by con- 
 tinued attrition, conform their surfaces to each other. 
 
 " I believe it will be found that those wdio marry 
 late are best pleased with their children, and those 
 who marry early with their partners." 
 
 " The union of these two affections," said Rasselas, 
 " would produce all that could be wished. Perhaps 
 there is a time when marriage might unite them, a time 
 neither too early for the father nor too late for the 
 husband." 
 
 " Every hour," answered the princess, " confirms 
 my prejudice in favor of the position so often uttered 
 by the mouth of Imlac, ' That nature sets her gifts on 
 the right hand and on the left.' Those conditions which 
 Hatter hope and attract desire are so constituted that as 
 we approach one we recede from another. There are 
 goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by 
 too much prudence, may pass between them at too 
 great a distance to reach eitlier. This i« often the fate 
 of long consideration; he does nothing who endeavors 
 
56 RABSELAS. 
 
 to do more than is allowed to humanity. Flatter not 
 yourself with contrarieties of pleasure. Of the bless- 
 ings set before you, make your choice, and be con- 
 tent. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he 
 is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring; no 
 man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source 
 and from the mouth of the Nile." 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 IMLAC ENTERS, AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION. 
 
 Here Imlac entered and interrupted them. " Im- 
 lac," said Rasselas, "I have been taking from the 
 princess the dismal history of private life, and am 
 almost discouraged from farther search." 
 
 *' It seems to me," said Imlac, " that while you are 
 making the choice of life you neglect to live. You 
 wander about a single city, which, however large and 
 diversified, can now afford few novelties, and forget 
 that you are in a country famous among the earliest 
 monarchies for. the power and wisdom of its inhabit- 
 ants; a country where the sciences first dawned that 
 illuminate the world, and beyond which the arts can- 
 not be traced of civil society or domestic life. 
 
 "The old Egyptians have left behind them monu- 
 ments of industry and power, before which all Euro- 
 pean magnificence is confessed to fade away. The 
 ruins of then architecture are the schools of modern 
 builders and from the wonders which time has spared 
 we may conjectm-e, though uncertainly, what it has 
 destroyed." 
 
 "My curiosity," said Rasselas, "does not very 
 sti'ongly lead me to survey the piles of stone or 
 mounds of earth; my business is with man. I came 
 hither not to measm-e fragments of temples, or trace 
 choked aqueducts, but to look upcfn the various scenes 
 of the present world." * 
 
 " The things that are now before us," said the prin-'^ 
 cess, " require attention and desei-ve 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 Ufe was different from all that the i^res- 
 ent condition of mankind requires or allows ?" 
 
 " To know anything," returned the poet, " we must 
 know its effects; to see men we must see their works, 
 that we may learn what reason has dictated or passion 
 has 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 
 
ViASSKLAS. f»7 
 
 comparativo, and of the future nothing can be known. 
 The trutii is, tliat no mind is much employed upon the 
 present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all 
 our momentST Our passions are joy and grief, love 
 and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief the past 
 is the object, and the future of hope and fear; even 
 love and hatred respect the past, for the cause must 
 have been before the effect. 
 
 "The present state of things is the consequence of 
 the former, and it is natural to inquire what were the 
 sources of the good that we enjoy or the evil 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 other^,, it is not just. Ignorance, when 
 it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly- 
 charged with evil who refused to learn how he might 
 prevent it. 
 
 "There is no part of history so generally useful as 
 that which relates the progress of the human mind, 
 the gradual improvement of reason, the successive ad- 
 vances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and 
 ignorance, which are the light and darkness of think- 
 ing beings, the extinction and resuscitation of arts, 
 and the revolutions of the intellectual world. If 
 accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly the 
 business of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not 
 to be neglected; those who have kingdoms to govern 
 have understandings to cultivate. 
 
 " Example is always more efficacious than precept. 
 A soldier is formed in war, and a painter must copy- 
 pictures. In this, contemplative life has the advan- 
 tage : 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 perform. 
 
 " When the eye or the imagination is struck with 
 any uncommon work, the next transition of an active 
 mind is to the means by which it was performed. Here 
 begins the true use of such contemplation; we enlarge 
 our comprehension by new ideas, and perhaps recover 
 some art lost to mankind, or learn what is less per- 
 fectly known in our own country. At least we com- 
 pare our own with former times, and either rejoice at " 
 our improvements, or, what is the first motion toward 
 good, discover our defects." 
 
 "lam willing," said the prince, "to see all that 
 can deserve my search." " And I," said the princess, 
 "shall rejoice to learn something of the manners 
 of antiquity." 
 
 " The most pompous monument of Egyptian great- 
 ness, 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. 
 
5S RASSELAS. 
 
 Of these the greatest is still standing, very little injured 
 by time." 
 
 "Let us visit them to-mori'ow," said Nekaj^ah. "1 
 have often heard of the Pyramids, and shall not rest 
 until I have seen them within and M^ithout with my 
 own eyes." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THEY VISIT THE PYRAMIDS. 
 
 The resolution being taken, they set out the next 
 day. They laid tents uiDon their camels, being resolved 
 to stay among the Pyramids till their curiosity was 
 fully satisfied. They travelled gently, tm-ned aside to 
 everything remarkable, stopped from time to time and 
 conversed with the inhabitants and observed the various 
 appearances of towns ruined and inhabited, of wild 
 and cultivated nature. 
 
 When they came to the great pyramid they were 
 astonished at the extent of the base and the height of 
 the top. Iiidac explained to them the principles upon 
 which the pyramidal form was chosen for a fabric 
 intended to co-extend its duration with that of the 
 world; he showed that its gradual diminution gave it 
 such stability as defeated all the common attacks of the 
 elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by earth- 
 quakes 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, chmbed up to the first passage, when the 
 favorite of the princess, looking into tlie cavity, stepped 
 back and trembled. " Pekuali^," said the princess, " of 
 what art thou afraid?" "Of the narrow entrance," 
 answered the lady, "and of the dreadful gloom. I 
 dare not enter a place which must surely be inhabited 
 by unquiet souls. The original possessors of these 
 'Ireadful vaults will start up before us, and perhaps 
 shut us in forever." She spoke, and threw her arms 
 round the neck of her mistress. 
 
 *' If all your fear be of apparitions," said the prince, 
 "I will promise you safety; there is no danger from 
 the dead ; he that is once buried will be "seen no 
 more." 
 
 " That the dead are seen no more," said Imlac, "I 
 will not undertake to maintain, against the concurrent 
 and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations. 
 There is no people, rude or learned, among whom 
 apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. 
 
RASSELAS. 5d 
 
 This opinion, which perliaps prevails as far as human 
 nature is diffused, could become universal only by its 
 truth; those that never heard of one another would 
 not have agreed in a tale which nothing- but experience 
 can make credible. That it is doubted by single 
 cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence; 
 and some who deny it with then- tongues confess it by 
 tlieir fears. 
 
 ' ' Yet 1 do not mean to add new terrors to those 
 which liave already seized upon Pekuah. There can 
 be no reason wliy 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 
 uo violation of their privileges; we can take nothing 
 from them, how then can we oifend them?" 
 
 " My dear Pekuah,'' said the princess, " I will always 
 go before you, and Imlac shall follow you. Remem- 
 ber that you are the companion of the princess of 
 Abyssinia." 
 
 "If the princess is pleased that her servant should 
 die," returned the lady, " let her command some death 
 less dreadful than inclosure in this horrid cavern; you 
 know I dare not disobey you; I must go if you com- 
 mand me ; but if I once enter I never shall come 
 back." 
 
 The princess saw that her fear was too strong for 
 expostulation or reproof; and, embracing her, told her 
 that she should stay in the tent till their return. 
 Pekuah was yet not satisfied, but entreated the princess 
 not to pursue so dreadful a purpose as that of entering 
 the recesses of the pyramid. " Though I cannot teach 
 courage," said Nekayah, "I must not'learn cowardice, 
 nor leave at last undone what 1 came hither only 
 to do." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID. 
 
 Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered 
 the pyramid; they passed through the galleries, sur- 
 veyed the vaults of marble, and examined the chest 
 in which the body of the founder is supposed to have 
 been reposited. They then sat down in one of the 
 most spacious chambers to rest awhile before they at- 
 tempted to return. 
 
 " We have now," said Imlac, "gratified our minds 
 with an exact view of the greatest work of man, ex- 
 cept the wall of China. 
 
 " Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive. 
 It secured a wealthy and timorous nation from the in- 
 cursions of barbarians, whose unskilfulness in arts 
 
60 RASSELAS. 
 
 made it easier for tliem to supply their wants by rapine 
 than by industry, and who from time to time poured 
 in upon the liabitations of peaceful commerce as vult- 
 ures despend upon domestic fowl. Their celerity and 
 fierceness rendered the wall necessary, and their igno- 
 rance made it efficacious. 
 
 *'But for the Pyramids no reason has ever been 
 given adequate to the cost and labor of the work. The 
 narrowness of the chambers proves that it could afford 
 no retreat from enemies, and treasures might have 
 been reposited at far less expense with equal security. 
 It seems to have been erected only in compliance with 
 that hunger of imagination which preys incessantly 
 upon life, and must be always ai)peased by some employ- 
 ment. Those who have already all that they can en- 
 joy must enlarge their desires. He that has built for 
 use, till use is supplied, must begin to build for vanity, 
 and extend his plan to the utmost power of human 
 performance, that he may not be soon reduced to 
 form another wish. 
 
 *' I consider this mighty structure as a monument 
 of the insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king, 
 whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures sur- 
 mount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to 
 solace, by the erection of a pyramid, the satiety of 
 dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse 
 the tediousness of declining life by seeing thousands 
 laboring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, 
 laid upon another. Whoever thou art that, not con- 
 tent with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in 
 royal magnificence, and dreamest that command of 
 riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual 
 gratifications, survey the Pyramids and confess thy 
 folly." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXin. 
 
 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 came to their train they found every one silent and 
 dejected; the men discovered shame and fear in their 
 countenances, and the women were weeping in the 
 tents. 
 
 What had happened they did not try to conjecture, 
 but immediately inquired. * " You had scarcely entered 
 into the pyramid," §aid one of the attendants, " when 
 
RASSELAS. 61 
 
 a troop of Ar«ibs rushed upon us : we were too few to 
 resist them and too slow to escape. Tliey were about 
 to search the tents, set us on our camels, and drive us 
 along before them, when tlie approach of some Turk- 
 ish horsemen put them to fligiit; but they seized the 
 lady Pelvuah 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 overpowei-ed with surprise and grief. 
 Rasselas, in the first heat of his resentment, ordered 
 his servants to follow him, and prepared to pursue the 
 robbers with his sabre in his hand. "Sir," said Ini- 
 lac, " what can you hope from violence or valor ? the 
 Arabs are mounted on horses trained to battle and re- 
 treat; we have only beasts of burden. By leaving our 
 present station we may lose the princess, but cannot 
 hope to regain Pekuah." 
 
 In a short time the Turks returned, having not been 
 able to reach the enemy. The princess burst out into 
 new lamentations, and Rasselas could scarcely forbear 
 to reproach them with cowardice; but Imlac was of 
 opinion that the escape of the Arabs was no addition 
 to their misfortune, for perhaps they would have killed 
 theu' captives rather than have resigned them. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXrV. 
 
 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, lament- 
 ing their own rashness, which had neglected to pro- 
 cure a guard, Imagining many expedients by which the 
 loss of Pekuah might have been prevented, and resolv- 
 ing to do something for her recovery, though none 
 could find anything proper to be done. 
 
 Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women 
 attempted to comfort her, by telling her that all had 
 their troubles, and that lady Pekuah had enjoyed much 
 happiness in the world for a long time, and might 
 reasonably expect a change of fortune. They hoped 
 that some good would befall her wheresoever she was, 
 and that their mistress would find another friend who 
 might su])ply her place. 
 
 The princess made them no answer, and they con- 
 tinued the form of condolence, not much giiev^d In 
 their hearts that the favorite was lost. 
 
62 RASSELAS. 
 
 Next day the prince presented to the Bassa a memo- 
 rial of tiie wrong which lie had suffered, and a peti- 
 tion for redress. The Bassa threatened to punish the 
 rohbers, but did not attempt to catch them, nor indeed 
 could any account or description be given by wliich 
 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 indis- 
 criminate negligence, and presently forget the request 
 when they lose sight of the petitioner. 
 
 Imlac then endeavored to gain some intelligeiK^e by 
 private agents. He found many who pretended to an 
 exact knowledge of all the haunts of the Arabs, and 
 to regular correspondence with their chiefs, and who 
 readily undertook the recovery of Pekuah. Of these, 
 some were furnished with money for their journey, 
 and came back no more; some were liberally paid for 
 accounts which a few days discovered to be false. 
 But the princess would not suffer any means, however 
 improbable, to be left untried. While she was doing 
 something, she kept her hope alive. As one expedient 
 failed, another was suggested; when one messenger 
 returned unsuccessfully, another was dispatched 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, sank 
 down inconsolable in hopeless dejection. A thousand 
 times she reproached herself witli 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 
 seveT-e look would have overpowered her; a peremptory 
 command would have compelled obedience. Why did 
 foolish indulgence prevail upon me r Why did I not 
 speak, and refuse to hear? " 
 
 "Great princess," said Imlac, "do not reproach 
 yourself for your virtue, or consider that as blamable 
 by which evil has accidentally been caused. Your 
 tenderness for the timidity of Pekuah was generous 
 and kind. When we act according to our duty, we 
 commit the 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 our- 
 selves. Man cannot so far know the connection of 
 
RASSELAS. 63 
 
 causes and events as that lie may ventnre to do wrong 
 in order to do rigiit. Wlien we pursue our end by 
 lawful means, we may always console our miscarriage 
 by the hope of future recompense. When we consult 
 only our own policy, aud attempt to find a nearer way 
 to good, by overleaping the settled boundaries of right 
 and wrong, we cannot be happy even by success, be- 
 cause we cannot escape the consciousness of our fault; 
 but, if we miscarry the disappointment is irremediably 
 embittered. How comfortless is the sorrow of him 
 who feels at once the pangs of guilt, and the vexation 
 of calamity which guilt has bi'ought upon him ! 
 
 "Consider, princess, what would have been your 
 condition if the lady Pekuah had entreated to ac- 
 company you, and, being compelled to stay in the 
 tents, had been carried away ; or how would you have 
 borne the thought if you had forced her into the 
 pyramid, and she had died before you in agonies ot 
 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 consequences can 
 oblige us to repent it." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF PEKUAH. 
 
 Nekayah, being thus reconciled to herself, found 
 that no evil is insupportable but that which is accom- 
 panied with consciousness of wrong. She was from 
 that time delivered from the violence of tempestuous 
 sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy 
 tranquility. She sat from morning to evening recol- 
 lecting all that had been done or said by her Pekuali, 
 treasured up with care every trifle on which Pekuah 
 had set an accidental value, and wdiich might recall to 
 mind any little incident or careless conversation. The 
 sentiments of her whom she now expected to see no more 
 were treasured in her memory as rules of life, and she 
 deliberated to no other end than to conjecture on any 
 occasion what would have been the opinion and 
 counsel of Pekuah. 
 
 The women by whom she was attended knew 
 nothing of her real condition, and therefore she could 
 not talk to them but with caution and reserve. She 
 
64 RASSELAS. 
 
 began to remit her curiosity, having no gi'cat desire to 
 collect notions which she had not convenience of 
 uttering. Kasselas endeavored first to comfort and 
 afterward to divert her; he hired musicians, to whom 
 she seemed to listen, but did not hear thenij 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 excellence. And her mind, though forced 
 into short excm'sions, always recurred to the image of 
 her fiiend. 
 
 Imlac w^as every morning earnestly enjoined to 
 renew his inquiries, and was asked every night whether 
 he had yet heard of Pekuah, till not being able to 
 return the princess the answer that she desired, he was 
 less and less willing to come into her presence. She 
 observed his backwardness and commanded him to 
 attend her. " You are not," said she, " to confound 
 impatience with resentment, or to suppose that I 
 charge you with negligence because I rei^ine at your 
 unsuccessxulness. I do not much wonder at yom* 
 absence; I know that the unhappy are never pleasing, 
 and that all naturally avoid tlie contagion of misery. 
 To liear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched 
 and the happy; for wlio would cloud, by adventitious 
 grief, the short gleams of gayety which life allows us ? 
 or who that is struggling under his own evils will add 
 to them the miseiies of another? 
 
 " The time is at hand when none shall be disturbed 
 any longer by the sighs of Nekay ah ; my search after 
 happiness is now at an end. I am resolved to retire 
 from the world, with all its flatteries and deceits, and 
 will hide myself in solitude, without any other care 
 than to compose my thoughts and regulate my hours 
 by a constant succession of innocent occupations, till, 
 with a mind xnnified from all earthly desires, I sliall 
 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, *' bj' 
 irrevocable determinations, nor increase the burden of 
 life by a voluntary accumulation of misery; the weari- 
 ness of retirement will continue or increase when the 
 loss of PekiTah is forgotten. That you have been de- 
 prived of one pleasure is no very good reason for rejec- 
 tion of the rest." 
 
 " Since Pekuah was taken from me," said tlic prin- 
 cess, " I have no pleasure to reject or to I'etain. She 
 that has no one to love or trust lias little to hope. Slu- 
 wants the radical principle of happiness. We may , 
 perhaps, allow, that what satisfaction this world can 
 afford must arise from the conjunction of wealth, 
 knowledge, and goodness: wealth is nothing but ^« it 
 
RASSELAS. 65 
 
 is bestowed, and knowledge nothing but as it is com- 
 municated: they must therefore be imparted to others; 
 and to whom could I now delight to impart them ? 
 Goodness affords the only comfort which can be en- 
 joyed without a partner, and goodness may be prac- 
 tised in retirement." 
 
 " How far solitude may admit goodness or advance 
 it, I shall not," replied Imlac, " dispute at present. 
 Remember the confession of the pious hermit. You 
 will wish to return into the world when the image of 
 your companion has left your thoughts." 
 
 " That time," said Nekayah, " will never come. The 
 generous frankness, the modest obsequiousness, and 
 the faithful secrecy of my dear Pekuah will always be 
 more missed as I shall live longer to see vice and 
 folly." 
 
 "The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden ca- 
 lamity," said Imlac, "is like that @f the fabulous in- 
 habitants of the new-created earth, who, when the 
 first night came upon them, supposed that day would 
 never return. When the clouds of sorrow gather over 
 us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can imagine how 
 they will be dispelled: yet a new day succeeded to the 
 night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of 
 ease. But they who restrain themselves from receiv- 
 ing comfort do as the savages would have done, liad 
 they put out their eyes when it was dark. Oar minds, 
 like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is 
 hourly lost and something acquired. To lose much at 
 once is inconvenient to either, but while the vital 
 powers remain uninjured nature will find the mean^ 
 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 general conver- 
 sation." 
 
 " At least," said the prince, " do not despair before 
 all remedies have been tried ; the inquiry after the un- 
 fortunate lady is still continued, and shall be carried 
 on with yet greater diligence, on condition that you will 
 promise to wait a year for the event, without any un- 
 alterable resolution." 
 
 Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and 
 made the promise to her brother, who had been ad- 
 vised by Imlac to require it. Imlac had, indeed, no 
 great hope of regaining Pekuah; but he supposed that 
 
66 KASSELAS. 
 
 if he could secure the interval of a year the princess 
 would then be in no danger of a cloister. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 PEKUAH IS STILIi REMEMBERED.— THE PROGRESS 
 OF SORROW. 
 
 NekAYAH, seeing that nothing was omitted for the 
 recovery of her favorite, and having, hy her promise, 
 set her intention of retirement at a distance, began 
 imperceptibly to return to common cares and common 
 pleasures. She rejoiced without her own consent at 
 the suspension of her sorrows, and sometimes caught 
 herself with indignation in the act of turning away her 
 mind from the remembrance of her whom she yet re- 
 solved never to forget. 
 
 She then appointed a certain hour of the day for 
 meditation on the merits and fondness of Pekuah, 
 and for some weeks retired constantly at the time 
 fixed, and returned with her eyes swollen and her 
 countenance clouded. By degrees she grew less scru- 
 pulous, and suffered any important and pressing avo- 
 cation 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 re- 
 leased herself from the duty of periodical affliction, 
 
 Her real love of Pekuah was not yet diminished. A 
 thousand occurrences brought her back to memory, 
 and a thousand wants, which nothing but the confi- 
 dence of friendship can supply, made her frequently 
 regretted. She therefore solicited Imlac never to 
 desist from inquiry, and to leave no art of intelligence 
 untried, that at least she might have the comfort of 
 knowing that she did not suffer by negligence or slug- 
 gishness. " 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 possession cannot be secured? I shall 
 henceforward fear to yield my heart to excellence, 
 however bright, or to fondness, however tender, lest I 
 should lose again what I have lost in Pekuah. 
 
RAlSSELAiS. 67 
 
 CHAPTER 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 prhicess, returned, after many unsuc- 
 cessful rambles, from the borders of Nubia, with an 
 account that Pelvuah was in the hands of an Arab 
 chief, who possessed a castle or fortress on the ex- 
 tremity of Egypt. The Aiab, whose revenue was plun- 
 der, was willing to restore lier, with her two attendants, 
 for two hundred ounces of gold. 
 
 The price was no subject of debate. Tlie princess 
 was in ecstasies when she heard that her favorite was 
 alive, and mighc so cheaply be ransomed. She could 
 not think of delaying for a moment Pekuah's happi- 
 ness or her own, but entreated her brother to send 
 back the messenger with the sum required. Imlac 
 being consulted was not veiy confident of the veracity 
 of the relator, and was still more doubtful of the Arab's 
 faith, who might, if he were too liberally trusted, 
 detain at once tiie money and the captives. He thought 
 it dangerous to put themselves in the power of the 
 Arab by going into his district, and could not expect 
 that the rover would so much expose himself as to come 
 into the lower country, where he might be seized by 
 the forces of the Bassa. 
 
 It is difficult to negotiate where neither will trust. 
 But Imlac, after some deliberatioi], directed the mes- 
 senger to propose that Pekuah should be conducted by 
 ten horsemen to the monastery of 8t. Antony, which 
 is situated in the deserts of Upper Egypt, where she 
 should be met by the same number, and her ransom 
 should be paid. 
 
 That no time might be lost, as they expected that 
 the proposal would not be refused, they immediately 
 began their journey to the monastery; and when they 
 arrived, Imlac went forward with the former mes- 
 senger to the Arab's fortress. Rasselas was desirous 
 to go with them; but neither his sister nor Imlac would 
 consent. The Arab, according to the custom of his 
 nation, observed the laws of hospitality with great ex- 
 actness to those who put themselves into his power, 
 and in a few days brought Pekuah, with her maids, 
 by easy Journeys, to the place appointed, where, re- 
 ceiving the stipulated price, he restored her with great 
 respect to liberty and her friends, and undertook to 
 conduct them back towards Cairo, beyond all danger 
 of robbery or violence. 
 
 The princess and her favorite embraced each other 
 with transport too violent to be expressed, and went 
 
68 RASSELAS. 
 
 out together to pour the tears of tenderness in secret, 
 and exchange professions of l<indness and gratitude. 
 After a few liours they returned into tlie refectory of 
 tlie convent, wliere in the presence of tlie prior and his 
 brethren, the prince required of Pekuah the history of 
 her adventures. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF THE LADY PEKUAH. , 
 
 " At what time and in what manner I was forced 
 away," said Pekuah, "your servants have told you. 
 Tlie suddenness of the event struclt me with surprise, 
 and I was at first rather stupefied than agitated with 
 any passion of either fear or sorrow. My confusion 
 was increased by the speed and tumult of our flight, 
 while we were followed hy ihe Turks, who, as it 
 seemed, soon despaired to overtake us, or were afraid 
 of those whom they made a show of menacing. 
 
 "When the Arabs saw themselves out of danger 
 they slackened their course, and as I was less harassed 
 by external violence, I began to feel more uneasiness 
 in my mind. After some time we stopped near a 
 spring, shaded with trees in a pleasant meadow, where 
 we were set upon the ground and oflered such re- 
 freshments as our masters were iDartakiug. I was 
 suffered to sit with my maids apart from the rest, and 
 none attempted to comfort or insult us. Here I first 
 began to feel the full weight of my misery. The 
 girls sat w^eeping in silence, and from time to time 
 looked on me for succor. I knew^ not to what condi- 
 tion 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 rob- 
 bers and savages, and had no reason to suppose that 
 their pity was more than their justice, or that they 
 would forbear the gratification of any ardor of 
 desire or caprice of cruelty. 1, 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 traveled the remaining part of the 
 day through an unfrequented and pathless country, 
 and came by moonlight to the side of a hill, where the 
 rest of the troop was stationed. Their tents were 
 
RASSELAS. 69 
 
 pitched and their lires kindled, and our chief was wel- 
 comed as a man much beloved by his dependents. 
 
 " We were received into a large tent, where we 
 found women who had attended their husbands in the 
 expedition. They set before us the supper which they 
 had provided, and I ate it ratlier to encourage my 
 maids than to comply with any appetite of my own. 
 When the meat was taken away they spread the car- 
 pets for repose. 1 was weary, and hoped to lind in 
 sleep that remission of distress wiiich natiu-e seldom 
 denies. Ordering myself therefore to be undressed, I 
 observed that the women looked very earnestly upon 
 me, not expecting, I suppose, to see me so submis- 
 sively attended. When my upper vest was taken off, 
 they were apparently struck by the splendor of my 
 clothes, and one of them timorously laid her hand 
 upon the embroidery. She then went out, and in a 
 short time came back with another woman, who 
 seemed to be of higher rank and greater authority. 
 She did, at her entrance, the usual act of reverence, 
 and, taking me by the hand, placed me in a smaller 
 tent, spread with finer carpets, where I spent the night 
 quietly with my maids. 
 
 '• In the morning, as I was sitting on the grass, the 
 chief of the troop came toward me. I rose up to receive 
 him, and he bowed with great respect. "Illustrious 
 lady," said he, "my fortune is better than I had pre- 
 sumed to hope; I am told by my women that I have a 
 princess in my camp. * Sir,' answered I, ' your 
 women have deceived themselves and you; I am not a 
 princess, but an unhappy stranger who intended soon 
 to have left this country, in which I am now to be im- 
 prisoned forever.' ' Whoever or whencesoever you 
 are,' returned the Arab, ' jour 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 pro- 
 cure your ransom, think yourself in danger of perpet- 
 ual captivity? The purpose of my incursions is to 
 increase my riches, or, more properly, to gather trib- 
 ute. The sons of Ishmael are the natural and heredi- 
 tary 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 eve of hostility could learn rev- 
 erence or pity, eivcellence like yours had been exempt 
 from injury. But the angels of affliction spread their 
 
YO RASSELAS. 
 
 toils alike for the virtuous and the wicked, for the 
 mighty and the mean. Do not be disconsolate: I am 
 not one of the lawless and cruel rovers of the desert; 1 
 know the rules of civil life; I will fix your ransom, 
 give a passport to your messenger, and perform my 
 stipulation with nice punctuality.' 
 
 " You will easily believe that I was pleased with 
 his courtesy; and, finding that his predominant pas- 
 sion 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 Pekuah. I told him that 
 he sliould have no reason to charge me with ingi-ati- 
 tude, if I was used with kindness, and that any ran- 
 som which could be expected from a maid of common 
 rank would be paid; but that he must not persist to 
 rate me as a princess. He said he would consider 
 what he should demand, and then, smiling, bowed and 
 retired. 
 
 " Soon after the women came about me, each con- 
 tending to be more officious than the other, and my 
 maids themselves were served with reverence. We 
 traveled onward by short journeys. On the fourth 
 day the chief told me that my ransom must be two 
 hundred ounces of gold; which I not only promised 
 him, but told him that I would add fifty more if I and 
 my maids were honorably treated, 
 
 " I never knew the power of gold before; from that 
 time I was the leader of the troop. The march of 
 every day was longer or shorter as I commanded, 
 and the tents were pitched where I chose to rest. We 
 now had camels and other conveniences for travel, my 
 own women were always at my side, and I amused 
 myself with observing the manners of the vagrant 
 nations, and with viewing remains of ancient edifices, 
 with which these deserted countries appear to have 
 been, in some distant age, lavishly embellished. 
 
 " The chief of the band was a man far from illiter- 
 ate: he was able to travel by the stars or the compass, 
 and had marked, in his erratic expeditions, such ])laces 
 as are most worthy the notice of a passenger. He ob- 
 served to me that buildings are always best preserved 
 in places little frequented and difficult of access; for, 
 when once a country declines from Its primitive 
 splendor, the more inhabitants are left the quicker 
 ruin will be made. Walls supply stones more easily 
 than quarries, and palaces and temples will be demol- 
 ished to make stables of granite and cottages of por- 
 phyry." 
 
RASSELAS. ' 71 
 
 CHAPITER XXXIX. 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PEKUAH CONTINUED. 
 
 **We wandered about in this manner for some 
 weeks, wlietlier, as our chief pretended, for my gratifi- 
 cation, or, as I rather suspected, for some convenience 
 of his own. I endeavored to appear contented where 
 snllenness and resentment would liave been of no use, 
 and that endeavor conduced mucli to the cahnness of 
 my mind; but my heart was always with Nekayah, 
 and the troubles of the night mucli overbalanced the 
 amusements of the day. My women, who threw all 
 their cares upon their mistress, set their minds at ease 
 from the time when they saw me treated with respect, 
 and gave themselves up to the incidental alleviations of 
 our fatigue without solicitude or sorrow. J was pleased 
 with their pleasure and animated with their confidence. 
 My condition had lost much of its terror, since I found 
 tliat the Arab ranged the country merely for riches. 
 Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice; other intel- 
 lectual distempers are different in different constitu- 
 tions of mind; that which soothes the pride of one 
 will offend the pride of another; but to the favor of 
 the covetous there is a ready way; bring money, and 
 nothing is denied. 
 
 " At last we came to the dwelling of our chief, a 
 strong and spacious house built with stone in an island 
 of the Nile, which lies, as I was told, under the tropic. 
 * Lady,' said the Arab, * you shall rest after your 
 journey a few weeks in this place, where you are to 
 consider yourself as sovereign. My occupation is war: 
 I have therefore chosen this obscure residence, from 
 which I can issue unexpected, and to which I can 
 retire unpursued. You may now repose in security : 
 here are few pleasures, but here is no danger.' He 
 then led me into the inner apartments, and, seating 
 me on the richest couch, bowed to the ground. His 
 women, who considered me as a rival, looked on me 
 with malignity; but being soon informed that I was 
 a great lady detained only for my ransom, they began 
 to vie with each other in obsequiousness and reverence. 
 
 ' ' Being again comforted with new assm-ances of 
 speedy libertj^, I was for some days diverted from im- 
 patience 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 1 had never seen before. 
 The crocodiles and river-horses are common in this 
 unpeopled region, and I often looked upon them with 
 
72 RASSELAS. 
 
 terror, though I knew tiiat they could not hurt me. 
 For some time I expected to see mermaids and tritons, 
 which, as Imlac has told me, the European travelers 
 have stationed in the Nile; but no such heings ever ap- 
 peared, and the Arab, v/hen 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 endeav- 
 ored to teach me the names and com'ses of the stars. I 
 had no great inclination to this study, but an appear- 
 ance of attention was necessaiy to please my instructor, 
 who valued himself for his skill; and in a little while 1 
 found some employment requisite to beguile the 
 tediousness of time, which was to be passed always 
 amid the same objects. I was weary of looking in the 
 morning on things from which I had turned away 
 weary in the evening; I therefore was at last willing 
 to observe the stars rather than do nothing, but could 
 not always compose my thoughts, and was very often 
 thinking on Nekayah when others imagined me con- 
 templating the sky. Soon after the Arab went upon 
 another expedition, and then my only pleasure was to 
 talk with my maids about the accident by which we 
 were carried away, and the hapi^iness that we should 
 all enjoy at the end of our captivity." 
 
 " There were women in your Arab's fortress," said 
 the princess, "why did you not make them your com- 
 panions, enjoy their conversation, and partake their 
 diversions ? In a place where they found business or 
 amusement, why should you alone sit corroded with 
 idle melancholy ? or why could not you bear for a 
 few months that condition to which they were con- 
 demned for life?" 
 
 *'The diversions of the women," answered Pekuah, 
 *' were only childish play, by which the mind, accus- 
 tomed to stronger operations, could not be kept busy. 
 I could do all which they delighted in doing by powers 
 merely sensitive, while my intellectual faculties were 
 flown to Cairo. They ran from room to room, as a 
 bird hops from wke to wire in his cage. They danced 
 for the sake of motion, as lambs frisk in a meadow. 
 One sometimes pretended to be hurt that the rest 
 might be alarmed; or hid herself, that another might 
 seek her. Part of their time passed in watching the 
 progress of light bodies that floated on the river, and 
 part in marking the various forms into which clouds 
 broke in the sky. 
 
 " Their business was only needlework, in which I 
 and my maids sometimes helped them; but you know 
 that the mind will easily straggle from the fingei-s, nor 
 will you suspect that captivity and absence from 
 Nekayah could receive solace from silken flowers. 
 
RASSELAS. 73 
 
 " Nor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their 
 conversation j for of what could they be expected to 
 tallv ? 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 ideas but of tiie 
 few things that were within their view, and had hardly 
 names for anything but their clothes and their food. 
 As I bore a superior character, I was often called to 
 terminate their quarrels, wiiich I decided as equitably 
 as 1 could. If it could have anmsed me to hear the 
 complaints of each against the rest, I might have been 
 often detained by long stories ; but the motives of 
 their animosity were so small that I could not listen 
 without interrupting the tale." 
 
 " How," said Rasselas, " can the Arab, whom you 
 represented as a man of more than common accom- 
 plishments, take any pleasure in his seraglio, when it is 
 filled only with women like these ? 'Are the exqui- 
 sitely beautiful?" 
 
 "They do not," said Pekuah, *' want that unaffect- 
 ing and ignoble beauty which may subsist without 
 sprightliness or sublimity, without energy of thought 
 or dignity of virtue. But to a man like the Arab, such 
 beauty was only a flower casually plucked and care- 
 lessly 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 j when they 
 vied for his regard, he sometimes turned away dis- 
 gusted. As they had no knowledge, their talk could 
 take nothing from the tediousness of life; as they had 
 no choice, their fondness, or appearance of fondness, 
 excited in him neither pride nor gratitude : he was not 
 exalted in his own esteem by the smiles of a woman 
 who saw no other man, nor was much obliged by that 
 regard, of which he could never know the sincerity, 
 and which he might often perceive to be exerted, not 
 so much to delight him as to pain a rival. That which 
 he gave, and they received , as love, was only a careless 
 distribution of superfluous time, such love as man can 
 bestow upon that which he despises, such as has 
 neither hope nor fear, neither Joy nor sorrow." 
 
 " You have reason, lady, to think yourself happy," 
 said Imlac, " that you have been thus easily dismissed. 
 How could a mind, hungry for knowledge, be willing, 
 in an intellectual famine, to lose such a banquet as 
 Pekuah's conversation! " 
 
 "I am inclined to believe," answered Pekuah, 
 ''that he was for some time in suspense; for, not- 
 withstanding his promise, whenever I proposed to dis- 
 patch a messenger to Cairo, he found some excuse for 
 
74 RASSELAS. 
 
 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 liad 
 his i)lunder been equal to his wishes. He retiu-ned 
 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 profes- 
 sions of honor and sincerit}^ : 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 mucK 
 afitiicted 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 fre- 
 quently talked with my maids. That he should fall in 
 love with them, or with me, might have been equally 
 fatal, and I was not much pleased with the growing 
 friendship. My anxiety was not long; for as I re- 
 covered some degree of cheerfulness, he returned to 
 me, and I could not forbear to despise my former un- 
 easiness. 
 
 " He still delayed to send for my ransom, and would, 
 perhaps, never have determined, had not your agent 
 found his way to him. The gold, which he would not 
 fetch, he could not reject when it was offered. He 
 hastened to prepare for our Journey thither, like a man 
 delivered from the pain of an intestine conflict. 1 
 took leave of my companions in the house, who dis- 
 missed me with cold indifference." 
 
 Nekay ail, 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A MAN OF LEARNING. 
 
 They returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased 
 at finding themselves together that none of them went 
 omch abroad. The prince began to love learning, and 
 one day declared to Inilac that he intended to devote 
 himself to science, and pass the rest of his days in liter- 
 ary solitude. 
 
 "Before you make your final choice," answered 
 Imlac, " you ought to examine its hazards, and con- 
 verse with some of those who are grown old in the 
 company of themselves. I have just left the observ* 
 
RASSELAS. 75 
 
 atory of one of tlie most learned astronomers in the 
 world, who has spent forty years in unwearied atten- 
 tion to the motions and api)earances of tiie 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 noticje. 
 Men of various ideas and fluent conversation are com- 
 monly welcome to those whose thoughts have been 
 long flxed upon a single point, and who find the 
 images of other things stealing away. I delighted him 
 with my remarks; he smiled at the narrative of my 
 travels, and was glad to forget the constellations and 
 descend for a moment into the lower world. 
 
 "On the next day of vacation I renewed my visit, 
 and was so fortunate as to please him again. He re- 
 laxed from that time the severity of his rule, and per- 
 mitted me to enter at my own choice. I found him 
 always busy and always glad to be relieved. As each 
 knew much which tlie other was desirous of learning, 
 we exchanged our notions with great delight. I per- 
 ceived that I had every day more of his confidence, 
 and always found new cause of admiration in the pro- 
 fundity Qf 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 willingly interrupted for any opportunity of 
 doing good by his counsel or his riches. To his closest 
 i-etreat, at his most busy moments, all are admitted 
 that want his assistance. 'For, though 1 exclude 
 idleness and pleasure, 1 will never,' says he ' bar my 
 doors against charity. To man is permitted the con- 
 templation of tho skies, but the practice of virtue is 
 commanded. ' " 
 
 " Surely," said the princess, "this man is happy." 
 
 " I visited him," said Imlac, " with more and more 
 frequency, and was every time more enamoured of his 
 conversation; he was sublime without haugirtiness, 
 courteous without formality, and communicative with- 
 out 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 en- 
 joyed. He seemed to hear nothing with indifference 
 but the praises of his condition, to which he always re- 
 turned a general answer, and diverted the conversation 
 to some other topic. 
 
 " Amid 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 earnestly toward the sun, and let his yoice 
 
76 RASSELAS. 
 
 fall in the midst of his discourse. He would some- 
 times, 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 exti-aordinary to sa3\ 
 And sometimes, when I wasleaving hhii, he would 
 call me hack, pause a few moments, and then dismiss 
 me." 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 THE ASTRONOMER DISCOVERS THE CAUSE OP 
 HIS UNEASINESS. 
 
 " At last the time came when the secret burst its 
 reserve. We were sitthig together last night in the 
 turret of his house, watching the emersion of a satellite 
 of Jupiter. A sudden tempest clouded the sky and 
 disappointed our observation. We sat awhile silent in 
 the dark, and then he addressed himself to me in these 
 words : * Imlac, 1 have long considered thy friendship 
 as the greatest blessing of my life. Integrity withou: 
 knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge wiiii- 
 out integrity is dangerous and dreadful. 1 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 de- 
 volve it upon thee. 
 
 "I thought m3^self honored hy this testimony, and 
 protested that whatever would conduce to his happi- 
 ness would add likewise to mine. 
 
 " * Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty 
 credit. I have possessed for five years the regulation 
 of the weather and the distribution of the seasons; 
 the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from 
 tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call, 
 have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed 
 at my command; I have restrained the rage of the 
 dog-star and mitigated the fervors of the crab. The 
 winds alone, of alftlie elemental powers, have hitherto 
 refused my authority, and multitudes have perished 
 by equinoctial tempest, which I found myself unable 
 to prohibit or restrain. I have administered this great 
 office with exact justice, and made to the different 
 nations of the earth an impartial dividend of rain and 
 sunshine. What must have been the miseiy of half 
 the globe if I had limited the clouds to particular 
 regions, or confined the sun to either side of the 
 equator V " 
 
RASSELAS. 77 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 THE OPINION OF THE ASTRONOMER IS EXPLAINED 
 AND JUSTIFIED. 
 
 •' I SUPPOSE lie discovered in me, through the ob- 
 scurity 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 
 behigs to whom this trust has been hnparted. Nor 
 do I know whether to deem the distinction a reward 
 or punishment; since I have possessed it I have been 
 far less happy than before, and nothing but the con- 
 sciousness of good intention could have enabled me to 
 support the weariness of unremitted vigilance.' 
 
 " ' How long, sir,' " said I,' has this great office been 
 in your hands ?' 
 
 " 'About ten years ago,' said he, ' my daily obser- 
 vations 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 upon my mind, and I sat 
 days and nights in imaginary dominion, pouring upon 
 this country and that the sliowers of fertility, and sec- 
 onding every fall of rain with a due proportion of sun- 
 shine. I had 3'et only the will to do good, and did not 
 imagine that 1 should ever have the power. 
 
 " ' One day, as I was looking on the fields withering 
 with heat. I felt in my mind a sudden wish that I 
 could send rain on the southern mountains and raise 
 the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagi- 
 nation I commanded rain to fall; and, by comparing 
 the time of my command with that of the inundation, 
 I found that the clouds had listened to my lips.' 
 
 '"Might not some other cause,' said I, 'produce 
 this concurrence ? the Nile does not always rise on the 
 same day.' 
 
 " 'Do not believe,' said he with impatience, 'that 
 such objections could escape me; I reasoned long 
 against my own conviction, and labored against truth 
 with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected 
 myself of madness, and should not have dared to im- 
 part this secret but to a man like you, capable of dis- 
 tinguishing 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 ex- 
 ternal evidence; and I know too well the laws of 
 demonstration to think that my conviction ought to 
 influence another, who cannot, like me, be conscious 
 
78 RASSELAS. 
 
 of its force. I therefore shall not attempt to gain 
 credit by disputation. It is sufficient that I feel this 
 power, tliat I have long possessed and every day ex- 
 erted it. But the life of man is sliort, the infirmities 
 of age increase upon me, and tlie time will soon come 
 when the regulator of the year must mingle with the 
 dust. The care of appointing a successor has long dis- 
 turbed me; the night and the day have been spent in 
 comparisons of all the characters which have come to 
 my knowledge, and I have yet found none so worthy 
 as thyself.' " 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 THE ASTRONOMER LEAVES IMLAC HIS DIRECTIONS. 
 
 " ' Hear, therefore, what I shall impart with atten- 
 tion, such as the welfare of the world requires. If the 
 task of a king be considered as difficult, who has the 
 care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do 
 much good or harm, what must be the anxiety of him 
 on whom depends the action of the elements, and the 
 great gifts of light and heat ? Hear me therefore with 
 attention. 
 
 "'[ have diligently considered the position of the 
 earth and sun, and formed innumerable schemes in 
 which I changed their situation. I have sometimes 
 turned aside the axis of the earth, and sometimes varied 
 the ecliptic of the sun; but I have found it impossible 
 to make a disposition by which the world may be 
 advantaged; what one region gains another loses by 
 an imaginable alteration, even without considering the 
 distant parts of the solar system with which we are un- 
 acquainted. Do not, therefore, in thy administration 
 of the year, indulge thy pride by innovation; do not 
 please thyself with thinking that thou canst make thy- 
 self renowned to all future ages by disordering the 
 seasons. The memory of mischief is no desirable 
 fame. Much less will it become thee to let kindness 
 or interest prevail. Never rob other countries of rain, 
 to pour it on thine own. For us the Nile is sufficient.' 
 
 "I promised that when I possessed the power I 
 would use it with inflexible integrity; and he dismissed 
 me, pressing my hand. ' My heart,' said he, " will be 
 at rest, and my benevolence will no more destroy my 
 quiet; I have found a man of wisdom and virtue, to 
 whom I can cheerfully bequeath the inheritance of the 
 sun.' " 
 
 The prince heard this narration with very serious 
 regard; but the princess smiled, and Pekuah convulsed 
 herself with laughter. *< Ladies," said Imlae, "to 
 
RASSELAS. 79 
 
 mock the heaviest of human afiflictions is neither char- 
 itable nor wise. Few can attain this man's knowledge, 
 and few practice his virtues; but all may suffer his 
 (calamity. Of the uncertainties of our present state, 
 the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain con- 
 tinuance of reason." 
 
 The princess was recollected, and the favorite was 
 abashed, llasselas, more deeply affected, inquhed of 
 Imlac whether he thought such maladies of the mind 
 frequent, and how they were contracted ? 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 THE DANGEROUS PREVALENCE OF IMAGINATION. 
 
 " Disorders of intellect," answered Imlac, " hap- 
 pen nuich more often than superficial observers will 
 believe. Perhaps, if we speak with rigorous exactness, 
 no human mind is in its right state. There is no man 
 whose imagination does not sometimes predominate 
 over his reason, who can regulate his attention wholly 
 by his will, and whose ideas will come and go at his 
 command. No man will be found in whose mind 
 airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force 
 him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober prob- 
 ability. All power of fancy over reason is a degree of 
 insanity; but while this power is such as we can con- 
 trol and repress, it is not visible to othei'S, nor con- 
 sidered as any deprivation of the mental faculties; it 
 is not pronounced madness but when it becomes un- 
 governable, and apparently influences speech or ac- 
 tion. 
 
 *' To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagina- 
 tion out upon the wing, is often the sport of those 
 who delight too much in silent speculation. When we 
 are alone we are not always busy; the labor of excogi- 
 tation is too violent to last long; the ardor of inquiry 
 will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He 
 who has nothing external that can divert him must 
 find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive 
 himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what 
 he is ? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and 
 culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the 
 present moment he should most desire, amuses his de- 
 sires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon 
 pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from 
 scene to scene, unites all pleasures In all combina- 
 tions, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, 
 with all their bounty, can bestow. 
 
80 RASSELAS. 
 
 "In time some pavticnlar train of ideas fixes the 
 attention; all other intellectual gratifications are re- 
 jected; the mind in weariness or leism-e recurs con- 
 stantly to the favorite conception, and feasts on the 
 luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the 
 bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is 
 confirmed; she grows first imperious and in time des- 
 potic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false 
 opinions 'fasten upon the mind, and life passes in 
 dreams of rapture or of anguish. 
 
 "This, sir, is one of the dangers of solitude which 
 the hermit has confessed, not always to promote good- 
 ness, and the astronomer's misery has proved to be 
 not always propitious to wisdom." 
 
 "I will no more," said the favorite, "imagine my- 
 self the queen of Abyssinia. I have often spent the hours 
 which the princess gave to my own disposal, in adjusting 
 ceremonies and regulating the court; I have repressed 
 the pride of the powerful and granted the petitions 
 of the poor; I have built new palaces in more happy 
 situations, planted groves upon Ihe tops of mountains, 
 and have exulted in the beneficence of royalty, till, 
 when the princess entered, I had almost forgotten to 
 bow down before her." 
 
 "And I," said the princess, " will not allow myself 
 any more to play the shepherdess in my waking dreams. 
 I have often soothed my thoughts with the quiet and 
 innocence of pastoral employments, till I liave in my 
 chamber heard the winds whistle, and the sheep bleat; 
 sometimes freed the lamb entangled in the thicket, 
 and sometimes with my crook encountered the wolf. I 
 have a dress like that of the yillage maids, which I put 
 on to help my imagination, and a pipe, on which I 
 play softly, and suppose myself followed by my flocks." 
 
 "1 will confess," said the prince, " an indulgence of 
 fantastic delight more dangerous than yours. I have 
 frequently endeavored to image the possibility of a 
 perfect government, by which all wrong should be 
 restrained, all vice reformed, and all the subjects pre- 
 served in tranquility and innocence. This tliought 
 produced innumerable schemes of reformation, 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 I once supposed the death of my father and 
 my brothers." 
 
 "Such," said Imlac, "are the effects of visionary 
 schemes. When we first form them we know them to 
 be absurd, but familiarize them by degrees, and iu 
 time lose sight of their folly." 
 
RASSELAS. 81 
 
 CHAPTER XLV, 
 
 THEY DISCOURSE WITH AN OLD MAN. 
 
 The evening was now far passed, and they rose 
 to return home. As they walked along the bank of 
 the Nile, delighted with the beams of the moon quiver- 
 ing on the w^ater, tliey saw at a small distance an old 
 man, wliom the prince had often heard in the assem- 
 bly of the sages. " Yonder," said he, " is one whose 
 years have calmed his passions but not clouded his 
 reason : let us close the disquisitions of the night by 
 inquiring what are his sentiments of his own state, 
 that we may know whether youth alone is to struggle 
 with vexation, and whether any better hope remains for 
 the latter part of life." 
 
 Here the sage approached and saluted them„ They 
 invited him to join their walk, and prattled awhile, as 
 acquaintance that had unexpectedly met one another. 
 The old man was cheerful and talkative, and the way 
 seemed short in his company. He was pleased to find 
 himself not disregarded, accompanied them to their 
 house, and, at the prince's request, entered with them. 
 They placed him in the seat of 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 which 
 ignorance and youth can hardly conceive. You know 
 the qualities and the causes of all that you behold, the 
 laws by which the river fiows, the periods in which 
 the planets perform their revolutions. Everything 
 must supply you with contemplation, and renew the 
 consciousness of your own dignity." 
 
 "Lady," answered he, " let the gay and the vigorous 
 expect pleasure in then' excursions; it is enough that 
 age can obtain ease. To me the world has lost its 
 novelty: I look round and see what I remember to 
 have seen in happier days. 1 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 upward, fix 
 them on the changing moon, and think with pain on 
 the vicissitudes of life. I have ceased to take much 
 delight in physical truth; for what have I to do with 
 those things which I am soon to leave ? " 
 
 " You may at least recreate yourself," said Imlac, 
 " with the recollection of an honorable and useful hfe, 
 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, "l have neither mother to be de- 
 lighted with the reputation of her son nor wife to par- 
 take the honors of her liusband. I have outlived my 
 
83 RASSELAS. 
 
 friends and my rivals. Nothing is now of much im- 
 portance; for I cannot extend my interest beyond 
 myself. Youth is delighted with applause, because it 
 is considered as the earnest of some future good, and 
 because the prospect of life is far extended; but to me, 
 who am now declining to decrepitude, there is little to 
 be feared from the malevolence of men, and yet less to 
 be hoped from their affection or esteem. Something 
 they may yet take away, but they can give me nothing. 
 Riches would now be useless, and high emplojanent 
 would be pain. My retrospect of life recalls to my 
 view many opportunities of good neglected, much time 
 squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and 
 vacancy. I leave many great designs unattempted, 
 and many great attempts unfinished. My mind is bur- 
 dened with no heavy crime, and therefore I compose 
 myself to tranquility; endeavor to abstract my thoughts 
 from hopes and cares, which, though reason knows 
 them to be vain, still try to keep their" old possession of 
 the heart; expect, with serene humility, that hour which 
 nature cannot long delay; and hope to possess, in a 
 better state, that happiness which here I could not find, 
 and that virtue which here I have not attained." 
 
 He rose and went away, leaving his audience not 
 much elated with the hope of long life. The prince 
 consoled himself with remarking that^ it was not rea- 
 sonable to be disappointed by this account; for age 
 had never been considered as the season of felicity; 
 and if it was possible to be easy in decline and weak- 
 ness, it was likely that the days of vigor and alacrity 
 miglit be happy; that the noon of life could be bright 
 if the evening could be cahii. 
 
 The princess suspected that age was querulous and 
 malignant, and delighted to repress the expectations of 
 those who had newly entered the world. She had 
 seen the possessors of estates look with envy on their 
 heirs, and known many who enjoyed pleasure no 
 longer than they could confine it to themselves. 
 
 Pekuah conjectured that the man was older than he 
 appeared, and was willing to impute his complaints to 
 delirious dejection; or else supposed that he had been 
 unfortunate and was therefore discontented; " For 
 nothing," said she, " is more common than to call our 
 own condition the condition of life." 
 
 Imlae, who had no desire to see them depressed, 
 smiled at the comforts which they could so readily 
 procure to themselves, and remembered that at .the 
 same age he was equally confident of unmingled pros- 
 perity, and equally fertile of consolatory expedients. 
 He forbore to force upon them unwelcome knowledge, 
 which time itself would too soon impress. The prin- 
 cess and her lady retired; the madness of the astron- 
 
RASSELAS. 83 
 
 omer hung upon their minds, and they desired Imlac 
 to enter upon ills office and delay next morning the 
 rising of the sun. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 THE PRINCESS AND PEKUAH VISIT THE 
 ASTRONOMER. 
 
 The princess and Pekuah, having talked in private 
 of Imlac's astronomer, thought his diaracter 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 di^fticult; the philosopher had 
 never received any visits from women, though he lived 
 in a city that had in it many Europeans, who followed 
 the manners of their own countries, and many from 
 other parts of the world, that lived there with Euro- 
 pean liberty. The ladies would not be refused, and 
 several schemes were proposed for the accomphsh- 
 ment of their design. It was proposed to introduce 
 them as strangers in distress, to whom the sage was 
 always accessible; but, after some deliberation, it 
 appeared that by this artifice no acquaintance could be 
 formed, for their conversation would be short, and 
 they could not decently importune him often. " This,'* 
 said Rasselas, " is true; but I have yet a stronger ob- 
 jection against the misrepresentation of your state. I 
 have always considered it as treason against the great 
 republic of human nature to make any man's virtues 
 the means of deceiving him, whether on great or little 
 occasions. All imposture weakens confidence and 
 chills benevolence. When the sage finds that you are 
 not what you seemed, he will feel the resentment 
 natural to a man who, conscious of great abilities, dis- 
 covers that he has been tricked by understandings 
 meaner than his own; and perliaps the distrust, which 
 he can never afterward 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 benefac- 
 tions to mankind or his peace to himself?" 
 
 To this no reply was attempted, and Imlac began to 
 hope that their curiosity would subside; but, next day, 
 Pekuah told him she had now found an honest pre- 
 tense for a visit to the astronomer, for she would solicit 
 permission to continue under him the studies in which 
 she had been initiated by the Arab, and the princess 
 might go with her either as a fellow-student, or be- 
 cause a woman could not decently come alone. "I 
 am afraid," said Imlac, " that he will be soon weary 
 
84 RASSELAS. 
 
 of your company; men advaiice(] far in knowledge do 
 not love to repeat the elements of their art, and I am 
 not certain that even of tlie elements, as he will de- 
 liver them connected with hiferences and mingled 
 with reflections, you are a very capable auditress," 
 
 "That," said Pekuah, " must be my care; I ask of 
 you only to take me thither. My knowledge is, per- 
 haps, more than you imagine it; and by concurring 
 always with his opinions i shall make him think it 
 greater than it is." 
 
 The astronomer, in pursuance of this resolution, was 
 told that a foreign lady, traveling in search of knowl- 
 edge, had heard of his reputation, and was desirous to 
 become his scholar. The uncommonness of the pro- 
 posal raised at once his surprise and curiosity; and 
 when, after a short deliberation, he consented to ad- 
 mit 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 per- 
 sons of so splendid an appearance. In the exchange 
 of the first civilities he was timorous and bashful; but 
 when the talk became regular, he recollected his pow- 
 ers, and justified the character which Imlac had given. 
 Inquiring of Pekuah, what could have turned her in- 
 clination toward astronomj^ ? he received from her a 
 history of her adventure at the pyramid, and of the 
 time passed in the Arab's island. She told her tale 
 with ease and elegance, and her conversation took 
 possession of his heart. The discourse was then turned 
 to astronomy; Pekuah displayed what she knew; he 
 looked upon her as a prodigy of genius, and entreated 
 her not to desist from a study which she had so hap- 
 pily 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 vanish.ed 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 con- 
 tinued, or not, in the opinion of his preternatural com- 
 mission. They often contrived to bring him to an 
 open declaration; but he easily eluded all tlieir attacks, 
 and on which side soever they pressed him escaped 
 from them to some otlier topic. 
 
RASSELAS. 85 
 
 As their familiarity increased, they invited liim 
 often to the lionse of Imlac, where they distinguished 
 hnn by extraonUnary respect. He began gradually to 
 delight in sublunary pleasures. He came early, and 
 departed late 3 labored to recommend himself by as- 
 siduity and compliance^ excited their curiosity after 
 new arts, that they might still want his assistance; and 
 when tliey made any excursion of pleasm-e or inquiry, 
 entreated to attend them. 
 
 By long experience of his integrity and wisdom, the 
 ))rince and his sister were convinced that he might be 
 trusted without danger; and, lest he should draw any 
 false hopes from the civilities which he received, dis- 
 covered to him their condition, with the motives of 
 their jouiney; 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 with- 
 out experience; in the attainment of sciences which 
 can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to man- 
 kind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of 
 all the common comforts of life; I have missed the en- 
 dearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy 
 commerce of domestic tenderness. If I have obtained 
 any prerogatives above other students, they have been 
 accompanied with fear, disquiet, and scrupulosity, but 
 even of these prerogatives, whatever they were, I have, 
 since my thoughts have been diversified by more in- 
 tercourse with the world, begun to question the reality. 
 When I have been for a few days lost in pleasing dissi- 
 pation, I am always tempted to think that my inquiries 
 have ended in error, and that I have suffered much, 
 and suffered it in vain." 
 
 Imlac was deliglited to find that the sage's under- 
 standing was breaking through its mists, and re- 
 solved to detain him from the planets till he should 
 forget his task of ruling them, and reason should re- 
 cover 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 Kasselas 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 min- 
 gled in the gay tumults of life, and divided his hours 
 by a succession of amusements, he found the convic- 
 tion of his authority over the skies fade gradually from 
 
86 RASSELAS. 
 
 his mind, and began to trust less to an opinion which 
 he never could prove to others, and which he now 
 found subject to variation from causes in which reason 
 had no part. " If I am accidentally left alone for a 
 few hours," said he, '•' my inveterate persuasion rushes 
 upon my soul and my thoughts are chained down by 
 some irresistible violence; but they are soon disen- 
 tangled by the prince's conversation, and instantane- 
 ously 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 tlie 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 volun- 
 tarily forget the great charge with which I am in- 
 trusted. 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 tha illusions of one are not distinguished 
 from the dictates of the other. If fancy presents im- 
 ages not moral or religious, the mind drives them away 
 when they give it pain, hut when melancholic notions 
 take the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties 
 without opposition, because we are afraid to exclude 
 or banish them. For this reason the superstitious are 
 often melancholy, and the melanclioly almost always 
 superstitious. 
 
 "But do not let the suggestions of timidity over- 
 power your better reason; the danger of neglect can 
 he but as the probability of the obligation, which, 
 when you consider it with freedom, you find very 
 little, and that little growing every day less. Open 
 your heart ro the influence of the light which, fi-om 
 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 busi- 
 ness or to Pekuah, and keep this thought always prev- 
 valent that you are only one atom of the mass of hu- 
 manity^ and have neither such virtue nor vice as that 
 you should be singled out for supernatural favors or 
 afflictions." 
 
RASSELAS. 87 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 THE PRINCE ENTERS, AND BRINGS A NEW TOPIC. 
 
 "All this," said the astronomer, " I have often 
 thought, but \ny reason has been so long subjugated 
 by aii uncontrollable and oven-whelmhig idea that it 
 durst not contide in its own decisions. 1 now see liow 
 fatallj^ I betraj'ed my quiet b}^ suffering chimeras to 
 prey upon me in secret, but melancholy shrinks from 
 communication, and I never found a man before to 
 whom I could impart my troubles, though I liad been 
 certain of relief. I rejoice to find my own sentiment.-, 
 confirmed by yours, who are not easily deceived, and 
 can have no motive or purpose to deceive. I liope 
 that time and variety will dissipate the gloom that has 
 so long surroundecl me , and the latter part of my 
 days will be spent in peace." 
 
 •' Your learning and virtue," said Imlac, " may 
 justly give you hopes." 
 
 Rasselas then entered with the princess and Pekuah, 
 and inquired whether the)^ had contrived any new 
 diversion for the next day ? "Such," said Nekayah, 
 "is the state of life, that none are happy but by the 
 anticipation of change; the change itself is nothing; 
 when we have made it, the next wish is to cliange 
 again. The world is not yet exliausted; let me see 
 something to-morrow which I never saw before." 
 
 " Variety/' said Rasselas, " is so necessary to con- 
 tent, that even the happy valley disgusted me by the 
 recm-rence of its luxuries; yet I could not forbear to 
 reproach myself with impatience when I saw the 
 monks of St. Anthony support, without complaint, a 
 life, not of uniform delight but uniform hardship." 
 
 " Those men," answered Imlac, " are less wretched 
 in their silent convent than the Abyssinian princes in 
 their prison of pleasure. Whatever is done by the 
 monks is incited by an adequate and reasonable mo- 
 tive. Their labor supi^lies them with necessaries; it 
 therefore cannot be omitted, and is certainly rewarded. 
 Their devotion prepares them for another state, and 
 reminds them of its approach while it fits them for it. 
 Their time is regularly distributed: one duty succeeds 
 another, so that they are not left open to the distrac- 
 tion of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of list- 
 less inactivity. There is a certain task to be performed 
 at an appropriated hour; and their toils are cheerful 
 because they consider them as acts of piety, by which 
 they are always advancing toward endless felicity." 
 
 " Do you think," said Nekayah, " that the monastic 
 rule is a more holy and less imperfect state than any 
 other ? May not he equally hope for future happiness 
 
88 RASSELAS. 
 
 who converses openly with mankind, who succors the 
 distressed by his charity, instructs the ignorant by his 
 learning, and contributes by hisindustry 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 condi- 
 tion may place within his reach ? " 
 
 *' This," said Imlac, " is a question which has long 
 divided the wise and perplexed the good. J am afraid 
 to decide on either part. He that lives well in the 
 world is better thajx he that lives well in a monastery. 
 But perhaps every one is not able to stem the tempta- 
 tions of public life; and if he cannot conquer he may 
 properly retreat. Some have little power to do good, 
 and likewise lirtle 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 mou' 
 asteries the weak and timorous may be happily shel- 
 tered, the weary may repose, and the penitent may 
 meditate. Those retreats of praye" and contemplation 
 have something so congenial to the mind of man that, 
 perhaps, there is scarcely one that do^s not purpose to 
 close his life in pious abstraction with a few associates 
 as serious as himself." 
 
 " Such," said Pekuah, "has often l>Qen my wish, 
 and I have heard the princess declare th^-t she should 
 not willingly die in a crowd." 
 
 " The liberty of using harmless pleasures," pro' 
 ceeded Imlac, " will not be disputed; but it is «till to be 
 examined what pleasures are harmless. The evil of 
 any pleasure that Nekayah can image is not in the 
 act itself, but in its consequences. Pleasure, in itseli" 
 harmless, may become mischievous by endearing us to 
 a state which we know to be ti-ansient and probatory, 
 and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which 
 every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of 
 which no length of time will bring us to the end. 
 Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other 
 use but that it disengages us from allurements of sense. 
 In the state of future perfection, to which we all as- 
 ])ire, there will be pleasure without danger, and secur- 
 ity without restraint." 
 
 The princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the 
 astronomer, asked him, " whether he could not delay 
 her retreat by showing her something which she had 
 not seen before ?" 
 
 *' Your curiosity," said the sage, '' has been so gen- 
 eral, 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 
 
RASSELAS. 89 
 
 be given by the dead. Among the wonders of this 
 country are the catacombs, or the ancient repositories 
 in which tlie bodies of the earhest generations were 
 lodged, and where, by the virtue of the gums which 
 embahned them, they yet remahi without corrup- 
 tion." 
 
 "I know not," said Rasselas, " what pleasure the 
 sight of tlie 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 something." 
 
 They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day 
 visited the catacombs. When they were about to de- 
 scend into the sepulchral caves, *' Pekuah," said the 
 princess, " we are now again invading the habitations 
 of the dead; I know that you will stay behind; let me 
 find you safe when I return." " No; I will not be 
 left," answered Pekuah, "I will go down between 
 you and the prince." 
 
 They then all descended, and roved with wonder 
 through the labyrinth of subterraneous passages, where 
 the bodies were laid in rows on either side. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 IMLAC DISCOURSES ON THE I^ATURE OF THE SOUIi. 
 
 "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 ? ' ' 
 
 " The original ancient custom," said Imlac, "is com- 
 monly unknown, for the practice often continues when 
 the cause has ceased; and concerning superstitious 
 ceremonies it is vahi so conjecture : for what reason 
 did not dictate reason cannot explain, I have long 
 believed that the i)ractice of emlDalming arose only 
 from tenderness to the remains of relations or friends, 
 and to this opinion I am more inclined because it seems 
 impossible that this care should have been general; 
 had all the dead been embalmed, their repositories 
 must in time have been more spacious than the dwell- 
 ings of the living. I suppose only the rich or hon- 
 orable wei^ secured from corruption, and the rest left 
 to the course of nature. 
 
 "But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians 
 believed the soul to live as long as the body continued 
 undissolved, and therefore tried this method of eluding 
 death," ^ 
 
90 EASSELAH. 
 
 '' Could the wise Egyptians," said Nekayah, " think 
 so grossly of the soul ? If the soul could once survive 
 its separation, what could it afterward receive or suffer 
 from the body ? " 
 
 *' Tlie Egyptians v^^ould doubtless think erroneously," 
 said tlie astronomer, " in tlie darkness of heathenism, 
 and the first dawn of j)hilosopl»y. The nature of the 
 soul is still disputed amid all our opportunities of 
 clearer knowledge: some yet say that it may be ma- 
 terial, who nevertheless believe it to be immortal." 
 
 " Some," answered Imlac, "have Indeed said that 
 the soul is material, but 1 can scarcely believe that any 
 man has thought it who knew how to think; for all 
 tlie conclusions of reason enforce the immateriality of 
 mind, and all the notices of sense and investigations of 
 science concur to prove the unconsciousness of matter. 
 
 " It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent 
 in matter, or that every particle is a thinking being. 
 Yet if any part of matter be devoid of thougiit, what 
 part can we suppose to think ? Matter can differ 
 from matter only in form, density, bulk, motion and 
 direction of motion; to which of these, however varied 
 or combined, can consciousness be annexed ? To be 
 round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great or 
 little, to be moved slowly or swiftly one way or 
 another, are modes of material existence, all equally 
 ahen 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 equall}'^ unconnected with cogitative powers." 
 
 *' But the materialists," said the astronomer, "urge 
 that matter may have qualities with which we are un- 
 acquainted." 
 
 " 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 x^os- 
 sibility against acknowledged certainty, is not to be 
 admitted among reasonable beings. All that we 
 know of matter is, that matter is inert, senseless, and 
 lifeless; and if this conviction cannot be opposed but 
 by referring us to something that we know not, we 
 liave all the evidence that human intellect can admit. 
 If that which is known may be overruled by that 
 which is unknown, no being not omniscient can arrive 
 at certainty." 
 
 "Yet let us not," said the astronomer, "too airo- 
 gantly limit the Creator's power." * 
 
 "It is no limitation of omnipotence," replied the 
 poet, " to suppose that one thing is not consistent 
 with another, that the same proposition cannot be at 
 once true and false, that the same number cannot be 
 
RASSELAS. 91 
 
 even and odd, that cogitation cannot be conferred on 
 that which is created incai)ablo of cogitation." 
 
 "I know not," said Nekayah, '-'an}^ great use of 
 this qnestion. Does that inniiateriahtj^, which, in my 
 opinion, you have sufficiently proved, necessarily in- 
 clude eternal durations." 
 
 *' Of immateriality," saidlmlac, " our ideas are nega- 
 tive, and therefore obscure. Immateriality seems to 
 imply a natural power of perpetual duration as a con- 
 sequence of exemption from all causes of decay: 
 whatever perishes is destroyed by the solution of its 
 contexture, and separation of its parts; nor can we 
 conceive how that which has no parts, and therefore 
 admits no solution, can be naturally corrupted or im- 
 paired." 
 
 *' I know not," said Easselas, ** how to conceive any- 
 thing without extension; what is extended must have 
 parts, and you allow that whatever has parts may be 
 destroj^ed." 
 
 " Consider your own conceptions," replied Imlac, 
 " and the difficulty will be less. You will find sub- 
 stance without extension. An idea form is no less 
 real than material bulk : yet an ideal form has no ex- 
 tension. It is no less certain, when you think on a 
 pyramid that your mind possesses the idea of a pyra- 
 mid than that the pyramid itself is standing. What 
 space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than 
 the idea of a grain of corn ? or hpAv can either idea 
 suffer laceration ! As is the effect, such is the cause : as 
 thought, such is the power that thinks, a power im- 
 passive and indiscerptible." 
 
 ** But the Being," said Nekayah, " whom I fear to 
 name, the Being which made the soul, can destroy it." 
 
 "He surelj^ can destroy it," answered Imlac, "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 cor- 
 ruption, may be shown by philosophy; but philosophy 
 can tell no more. That it v/ill not be annihilated by 
 him that made it, we must humbly learn from higher 
 authority." 
 
 The whole assembly stood awhile silent and col- 
 lected. 
 
 " Let us return," said Rasselas, "from this scene of 
 mortality. How gloomy would be these mansions of 
 the dead to him who did not know that he should 
 never die, that what now acts shall continue its agency, 
 and wliat now thinks shall think on forever I Those 
 that lie here stretched before us, the wise and the 
 powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the 
 shortness of our present state : they were, jierhaps. 
 
92 RASSELAS. 
 
 snatched away while they were busy like us in the 
 choice of life." 
 
 '*To me," said the princess, "the choice of life is 
 become less important ; I hope hereafter to think only 
 on the choice of eternity." 
 
 They then hastened out of the caverns, and under 
 the protection of their guard returned to Cairo. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 THE CONCLUSION, IN WHICH NOTHING IS CON- 
 CliUDED. 
 
 It was now the time of the inundation of the Nile: 
 a few days after their visit to the catacombs the river 
 began to rise. 
 
 They were confined to their house. The whole 
 region being under water gave them no invitation to 
 any excursions, and being well supplied with materials 
 for talk, they diverted themselves with comparisons of 
 the different forms of life which they had observed, 
 and with various schemes of happiness which each of 
 them had formed. 
 
 Pekuah was never so nmch charmed with any place 
 as the convent of St. Anthony, where the Arab restored 
 her to the princess, and wished only to fill it with pious 
 maidens, and to be made prioress of the order; she was 
 weary of expectation and disgust, and would gladly be 
 fixed in some unvariable state. 
 
 The princess thought, that of all sublunary things 
 knowledge was the best : she desired first to learn all 
 sciences, and then proposed to found a college of 
 learned women, in which she would preside, that, by 
 conversing with the old and educating the young, she 
 might divide her time between the acquisition and 
 communication of wisdom, and raise up, for the next 
 age, models of prudence and patterns of piety. 
 
 The prince desired a little kingdom, in whicli he 
 might administer Justice in his own person, and see all 
 the parts of government with his own eyes; but he 
 could never fix the limits of his dominion, and was 
 always adding to the number of his subjects. 
 
 Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be 
 driven along the stream of life, without directing their 
 course to any particular port. 
 
 Of these wishes that they had formed they well knew 
 that none could be obtained. They deliberated awhile 
 what was to be done, and resolved, when the inunda- 
 tion should cease, to return to Abyssinia. 
 
 THE END.