THE HISTORY OF RASSELAS

                     Prince of Abyssinia

                              by

                    Samuel Johnson, LL.D.


                          CHAPTER I

             DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and
pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that
age will perform the promises of youth, and that the
deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the
morrow: attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of
Abyssinia.
  Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty Emperor, in whose
dominions the father of waters begins his course; whose bounty
pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over 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 with the other sons and daughters of
Abyssinian royalty, till the order of succession should call
him to the throne.
  The palace which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had
destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a
spacious valley in the Kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every
side by mountains, of which the summits overhang the middle
part. The only passage by which it could be entered was a
cavern that passed under a rock, of which it has long been
disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human
industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick
wood, and the mouth, which opened into the valley, was closed
with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days,
so massive that no man, without the help of engines, could
open or shut them.
  From the mountains on every side rivulets descended that
filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a
lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and
frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the
wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a
stream which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the
northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to
precipice, till it was heard no more.
  The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the
banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast
shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits
upon the ground. All animals that bite the grass or browse the
shrubs, whether wild or tame, wandered in this extensive
circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the mountains which
confined them. On one part were flocks and herds feeding in
the pastures, on another all the beasts of chase frisking in
the lawns, the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the
subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn elephant
reposing in the shade. All the diversities of the world were
brought together, the blessings of nature were collected, and
its evils extracted and excluded.
  The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with
all the necessaries of life, and all delights and
superfluities were added at the annual visit which the Emperor
paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound
of music, and during eight days every one that resided in the
valley was required to propose whatever might contribute to
make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of
attention, and lessen the tediousness of time. Every desire
was immediately granted. All the artificers of pleasure were
called to gladden the festivity; the musicians exerted the
power of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity before
the princes, in hopes that they should pass their lives in
blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose
performance was thought able to add novelty to luxury. Such
was the appearance of security and delight which this
retirement afforded, that they to whom it was new always
desired that it might be perpetual; and as those on whom the
iron gate had once closed were never suffered to return, the
effect of longer experience could not be known. Thus every
year produced new scenes of delight, and new competitors for
imprisonment.
  The palace stood on an eminence, raised about thirty paces
above the surface of the lake. It was divided into many
squares or courts, built with greater or less magnificence
according to the rank of those for whom they were designed.
The roofs were turned into arches of massive stone, joined by
a cement that grew harder by time, and the building stood from
century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and
equinoctial hurricanes, without need of reparation.
  This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none
but some ancient officers, who successively inherited the
secrets of the place, was built as if Suspicion herself had
dictated the plan. To every room there was an open and secret
passage; every square had a communication with the rest,
either from the upper storeys by private galleries, or by
subterraneous passages from the lower apartments. Many of the
columns had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of
monarchs had deposited their treasures. They then closed up
the opening with marble, which was never to be removed but in
the utmost exigences of the kingdom, and recorded their
accumulations in a book, which was itself concealed in a
tower, not entered but by the Emperor, attended by the prince
who stood next in succession.


                          CHAPTER II

        THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY

Here the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to know
the soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all
that were skilful to delight, and gratified with whatever the
senses can enjoy. They wandered in gardens of fragrance, and
slept in the fortresses of security. Every art was practised
to make them pleased with their own condition. The sages who
instructed them told them of nothing but the miseries of
public life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions
of calamity, where discord was always 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. Their appetites were excited by
frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and revelry and
merriment were the business of every hour, from the dawn of
morning to the close of the evening.
  These methods were generally successful; few of the princes
had ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their
lives in full conviction that they had all within their reach
that art or nature could bestow, and pitied those whom nature
had excluded from this seat of tranquillity as the sport of
chance and the slaves of misery.
  Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased
with each other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in
the twenty-sixth year of his age, began to withdraw himself
from the pastimes and assemblies, and to delight in solitary
walks and silent meditation. He often sat before tables
covered with luxury, and forgot to taste the dainties that
were placed before him; he rose abruptly in the midst of the
song, and hastily retired beyond the sound of music. His
attendants observed the change, and endeavoured to renew his
love of pleasure. He neglected their officiousness, repulsed
their invitations, and spent day after day on the banks of
rivulets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes listened to
the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the fish playing
in the streams, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures and
mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the
herbage, and some sleeping among the bushes. The singularity
of his humour made him much observed. One of the sages, in
whose conversation he had formerly delighted, followed him
secretly in hope of discovering the cause of his disquiet.
Rasselas, who knew not that any one was near him, having for
some time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were browsing
among the rocks, began to compare their condition with his
own.
  "What," said he, "makes the difference between man and all
the rest of the animal creation? Every beast that strays
beside me has the same corporal necessities with myself: he is
hungry, and crops the grass; he is thirsty, and drinks the
stream; his thirst and hunger are appeased; he is satisfied,
and sleeps; he rises again, and is hungry; he is again fed,
and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty, like him, but when
thirst and hunger cease, I am not at rest. I am, like him,
pained with want, but I am not, like him, satisfied with
fulness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long
again to be hungry that I may again quicken the attention. The
birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the
groves, where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches,
and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds.
I likewise can call the lutist and the singer; but the sounds
that pleased me yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet
more wearisome to-morrow. I can discover in me no power of
perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet
I do not feel myself delighted. Man surely has some latent
sense for which this place affords no gratification; or he has
some desire distinct from sense, which must be satisfied
before he can be happy."
  After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon
rising, walked towards the palace. As he passed through the
fields, and saw the animals around him, "Ye," said he, "are
happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among you, burdened
with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity;
for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses from
which you are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I
sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at
evils anticipated: surely the equity of Providence has
balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments."
  With observations like these the Prince amused himself as he
returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a
look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own
perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of
life from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt and
the eloquence with which he bewailed them. He mingled
cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced
to find that his heart was lightened.


                         CHAPTER III

             THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHING

On the next day, his old instructor, imagining that he had now
made himself acquainted with his disease of mind, was in hope
of curing it by counsel, and officiously sought an opportunity
of conference, which the Prince, having long considered him as
one whose intellects were exhausted, was not very willing to
afford. "Why," said he, "does this man thus intrude upon me?
Shall I never be suffered to forget these lectures, which
pleased me only while they were new, and to become new again
must be forgotten?" He then walked into the wood, and composed
himself to his usual meditations; when, before his thoughts
had taken any settled form, he perceived his pursuer at his
side, and was at first prompted by his impatience to go
hastily away; but being unwilling to offend a man whom he had
once reverenced and still loved, he invited him to sit down
with him on the bank.
  The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the change
which had been lately observed in the Prince, and to inquire
why he so often retired from the pleasures of the palace to
loneliness and silence. "I fly from pleasure," said the
Prince, "because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud
with my presence the happiness of others." "You, sir," said
the sage, "are the first who has complained of misery in the
Happy Valley. I hope to convince you that your complaints have
no real cause. You are here in full possession of all the
Emperor of Abyssinia can bestow; here is neither labour to be
endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that labour
or danger can procure or purchase. Look round and tell me
which of your wants is without supply: if you want nothing,
how are you unhappy?"
  "That I want nothing," said the Prince, "or that I know not
what I want, is the cause of my complaint: if I had any known
want, I should have a certain wish; that wish would excite
endeavour, and I should not then repine to see the sun move so
slowly towards the western mountains, or to lament when the
day breaks, and sleep will no longer hide me from myself. When
I see the kids and the lambs chasing one another, I fancy that
I should be happy if I had something to pursue. But,
possessing all that I can want, I find one day and one hour
exactly like another, except that the latter is still more
tedious than the former. Let your experience inform me how the
day may now seem as short as in my childhood, while nature was
yet fresh, and every moment showed me what I never had
observed before. I have already enjoyed too much: give me
something to desire." The old man was surprised at this new
species of affliction, and knew not what to reply, yet was
unwilling to be silent. "Sir," said he, "if you had seen the
miseries of the world, you would know how to value your
present state." "Now," said the Prince, "you have given me
something to desire. I shall long to see the miseries of the
world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness."


                          CHAPTER IV

           THE PRINCE CONTINUES TO GRIEVE AND MUSE

At this time the sound of music proclaimed the hour of repast,
and the conversation was concluded. The old man went away
sufficiently discontented to find that his reasonings had
produced the only conclusion which they were intended to
prevent. But in the decline of life, shame and grief are of
short duration: whether it be that we bear easily what we have
borne long; or that, finding ourselves in age less regarded,
we less regard others; or that we look with slight regard upon
afflictions to which we know that the hand of death is about
to put an end.
  The Prince, whose views were extended to a wider space,
could not speedily quiet his emotions. He had been before
terrified at the length of life which nature promised him,
because he considered that in a long time much must be
endured: he now rejoiced in his youth, because in many years
much might be done. The first beam of hope that had been ever
darted into his mind rekindled youth in his cheeks, and
doubled the lustre of his eyes. He was fired with the desire
of doing something, though he knew not yet, with distinctness,
either ends or means. He was now no longer gloomy and
unsocial; but considering himself as master of a secret stock
of happiness which he could only enjoy by concealing it, he
affected to be busy in all the schemes of diversion, and
endeavoured to make others pleased with the state of which he
himself was weary. But pleasures can never be so multiplied or
continued as not to leave much of life unemployed; there were
many hours, both of the night and day, which he could spend
without suspicion in solitary thought. The load of life was
much lightened; he went eagerly into the assemblies, because
he supposed the frequency of his presence necessary to the
success of his purposes; he retired gladly to privacy, because
he had now a subject of thought. His chief amusement was to
picture to himself that world which he had never seen, to
place himself in various conditions, to be entangled in
imaginary difficulties, and to be engaged in wild adventures;
but his benevolence always terminated his projects in the
relief of distress, the detection of fraud, the defeat of
opposition, and the diffusion of happiness.
  Thus passed twenty months of the life of Rasselas. He busied
himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his
real solitude; and amidst hourly preparations for the various
incidents of human affairs, neglected to consider by what
means he should mingle with mankind.
  One day, as he was sitting on a bank, he feigned to himself
an orphan virgin robbed of her little portion by a treacherous
lover, and crying after him for restitution. So strongly was
the image impressed upon his mind that he started up in the
maid's defence, and ran forward to seize the plunderer with
all the eagerness of real pursuit. Fear naturally quickens the
flight of guilt. Rasselas could not catch the fugitive with
his utmost efforts; but, resolving to weary by perseverance
him whom he could not surpass in speed, he pressed on till the
foot of the mountain stopped his course.
  Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own useless
impetuosity. Then, raising his eyes to the mountain, "This,"
said he, "is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the
enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise of virtue. How long is
it that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of
my life, which yet I never have attempted to surmount?"
  Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse, and
remembered that since he first resolved to escape from his
confinement, the sun had passed twice over him in its annual
course. He now felt a degree of regret with which he had never
been before acquainted. He considered how much might have been
done in the time which had passed, and left nothing real
behind it. He compared twenty months with the life of man. "In
life," said he, "is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy
or imbecility of age. We are long before we are able to think,
and we soon cease from the power of acting. The true period of
human existence may be reasonably estimated at forty years, of
which I have mused away the four-and-twentieth part. What I
have lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed it; but
of twenty months to come, who can assure me?"
  The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and
he was long before he could be reconciled to himself. "The
rest of my time," said he, "has been lost by the crime or
folly of my ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my
country; I remember it with disgust, yet without remorse: but
the months that have passed since new light darted into my
soul, since I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have
been squandered by my own fault. I have lost that which can
never be restored; I have seen the sun rise and set for twenty
months, an idle gazer on the light of heaven; in this time the
birds have left the nest of their mother, and committed
themselves to the woods and to the skies; the kid has forsaken
the teat, and learned by degrees to climb the rocks in quest
of independent sustenance. I only have made no advances, but
am still helpless and ignorant. The moon, by more than twenty
changes, admonished me of the flux of life; the stream that
rolled before my feet upbraided my inactivity. I sat feasting
on intellectual luxury, regardless alike of the examples of
the earth and the instructions of the planets. Twenty months
are passed: who shall restore them?"
  These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he
passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle
resolves, and was awakened to more vigorous exertion by
hearing a maid, who had broken a porcelain cup, remark that
what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.
  This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself that he
had not discovered it - having not known, or not considered,
how many useful hints are obtained by chance, and how often
the mind, hurried by her own ardour to distant views, neglects
the truths that lie open before her. He for a few hours
regretted his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind
upon the means of escaping from the Valley of Happiness.


                          CHAPTER V

               THE PRINCE MEDITATES HIS ESCAPE

He now found that it would be very difficult to effect that
which it was very easy to suppose effected. When he looked
round about him, he saw himself confined by the bars of
nature, which had never yet been broken, and by the gate
through which none that had once passed it were ever able to
return. He was now impatient as an eagle in a grate. He passed
week after week in clambering the mountains to see if there
was any aperture which the bushes might conceal, but found all
the summits inaccessible by their prominence. The iron gate he
despaired to open; for it was not only secured with all the
power of art, but was always watched by successive sentinels,
and was, by its position, exposed to the perpetual observation
of all the inhabitants.
  He then examined the cavern through which the waters of the
lake were discharged; and, looking down at a time when the sun
shone strongly upon its mouth, he discovered it to be full of
broken rocks, which, though they permitted the stream to flow
through many narrow passages, would stop any body of solid
bulk. He returned discouraged and dejected; but having now
known the blessing of hope, resolved never to despair.
  In these fruitless researches he spent ten months. The time,
however, passed cheerfully away - in the morning he rose with
new hope; in the evening applauded his own diligence; and in
the night slept soundly after his fatigue. He met a thousand
amusements, which beguiled his labour and diversified his
thoughts. He discerned the various instincts of animals and
properties of plants, and found the place replete with
wonders, of which he proposed to solace himself with the
contemplation if he should never be able to accomplish his
flight - rejoicing that his endeavours, though yet
unsuccessful, had supplied him with a source of inexhaustible
inquiry. But his original curiosity was not yet abated; he
resolved to obtain some knowledge of the ways of men. His wish
still continued, but his hope grew less. He ceased to survey
any longer the walls of his prison, and spared to search by
new toils for interstices which he knew could not be found,
yet determined to keep his design always in view, and lay hold
on any expedient that time should offer.


                          CHAPTER VI

             A DISSERTATION ON THE ART OF FLYING

Among the artists that had been allured into the Happy Valley,
to labour for the accommodation and pleasure of the
inhabitants, was a man eminent for his knowledge of the
mechanic powers, who had contrived many engines both of use
and recreation. By a wheel which the stream turned he forced
the water into a tower, whence it was distributed to all the
apartments of the palace. He erected a pavilion in the garden,
around which he kept the air always cool by artificial
showers. One of the groves, appropriated to the ladies, was
ventilated by fans, to which the rivulets that ran through it
gave a constant motion; and instruments of soft music were
played at proper distances, of which some played by the
impulse of the wind, and some by the power of the streams.
  This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas who was
pleased with every kind of knowledge, imagining that the time
would come when all his acquisitions should be of use to him
in the open world. He came one day to amuse himself in his
usual manner, and found the master busy building a sailing
chariot. He saw that the design was practicable upon a level
surface, and with expressions of great esteem solicited its
completion. The workman was pleased to find himself so much
regarded by the Prince, and resolved to gain yet higher
honours. "Sir," said he, "you have seen but a small part of
what the mechanic sciences can perform. I have been long of
opinion that, instead of the tardy conveyance of ships and
chariots, man might use the swifter migration of wings, that
the fields of air are open to knowledge, and that only
ignorance and idleness need crawl upon the ground."
  This hint rekindled the Prince's desire of passing the
mountains. Having seen what the mechanist had already
performed, he was willing to fancy that he could do more, yet
resolved to inquire further before he suffered hope to afflict
him with disappointment. "I am afraid," said he to the artist,
"that your imagination prevails over your skill, and that you
now tell me rather what you wish than what you know. Every
animal has his element assigned him; the birds have the air,
and man and beasts the earth." "So," replied the mechanist,
"fishes have the water, in which yet beasts can swim by nature
and man by art. He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to
swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a
subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to
the different density of matter through which we are to pass.
You will be necessarily 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 swimming," said the Prince, "is very
laborious; the strongest limbs are soon wearied. I am afraid
the act of flying will be yet more violent; and wings will be
of no great use unless we can fly further than we can swim."
  "The labour of rising from the ground," said the artist,
"will be great, as we see it in the heavier domestic fowls;
but as we mount higher the earth's attraction and the body's
gravity will be gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at
a region where the man shall float in the air without any
tendency to fall; no care will then be necessary but to move
forward, which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir,
whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with
what pleasure a philosopher, furnished with wings and hovering
in the sky, would see the earth, and all its inhabitants
rolling beneath him, and presenting to him successively, by
its diurnal motion, all the countries within the same
parallel. How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the
moving scene of land and ocean, cities and deserts; to survey
with equal security the marts of trade and the fields of
battle; mountains infested by barbarians, and fruitful regions
gladdened by plenty and lulled by peace. How easily shall we
then trace the Nile through all his passages, pass over to
distant regions, and examine the face of nature from one
extremity of the earth to the other."
  "All this," said the Prince, "is much to be desired, but I
am afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these regions
of speculation and tranquillity. I have been told that
respiration is difficult upon lofty mountains, yet from these
precipices, though so high as to produce great tenuity of air,
it is very easy to fall; therefore I suspect that from any
height where life can be supported, there may be danger of too
quick descent."
  "Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be attempted if
all possible objections must be first overcome. If you will
favour my project, I will try the first flight at my own
hazard. I have considered the structure of all volant animals,
and find the folding continuity of the bat's wings most easily
accommodated to the human form. Upon this model I shall begin
my task to-morrow, and in a year expect to tower into the air
beyond the malice and pursuit of man. But I will work only on
this condition, that the art shall not be divulged, and that
you shall not require me to make wings for any but ourselves."
  "Why," said Rasselas, "should you envy others so great an
advantage? All skill ought to be exerted for universal good;
every man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the
kindness that he has received."
  "If men were all virtuous," returned the artist, "I should
with great alacrity teach them to fly. But what would be the
security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them
from the sky? Against an army sailing through the coulds
neither walls, mountains, nor seas could afford security. A
flight of northern savages might hover in the wind and light
with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful
region. Even this valley, the retreat of the princes, the
abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent of
some of the naked nations that swarm on the coast of the
southern sea!"
  The Prince promised secrecy, and waited for the performance,
not wholly hopeless of success. He visited the work from time
to time, observed its progress, and remarked many ingenious
contrivances to facilitate motion and unite levity with
strength. The artist was every day more certain that he should
leave vultures and eagles behind him, and the contagion of his
confidence seized upon the Prince. In a year the wings were
finished; and on a morning appointed the maker appeared,
furnished for flight, on a little promontory; he waved his
pinions awhile to gather air, then leaped from his stand, and
in an instant dropped into the lake. His wings, which were of
no use in the air, sustained him in the water; and the Prince
drew him to land half dead with terror and vexation.


                         CHAPTER VII

              THE PRINCE FINDS A MAN OF LEARNING

The Prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, having
suffered himself to hope for a happier event only because he
had no other means of escape in view. He still persisted in
his design to leave the Happy Valley by the first opportunity.
  His imagination was now at a stand; he had no prospect of
entering into the world, and, notwithstanding all his
endeavours to support himself, discontent by degrees preyed
upon him, and he began again to lose his thoughts in sadness
when the rainy season, which in these countries is periodical,
made it inconvenient to wander in the woods.
  The rain continued longer and with more violence than had
ever been known; the clouds broke on the surrounding
mountains, and the torrents streamed into the plain on every
side, till the cavern was too narrow to discharge the water.
The lake overflowed its banks, and all the level of the valley
was covered with the inundation. The eminence on which the
palace was built, and some other spots of rising ground, were
all that the eye could now discover. The herds and flocks left
the pasture, and both the wild beasts and the tame retreated
to the mountains.
  This inundation confined all the princes to domestic
amusements, and the attention of Rasselas was particularly
seized by a poem (which Imlac rehearsed) upon the various
conditions of humanity. He commanded the poet to attend him in
his apartment, and recite his verses a second time; then
entering into familiar talk, he thought himself happy in
having found a man who knew the world so well, and could so
skilfully paint the scenes of life. He asked a thousand
questions about things to which, though common to all other
mortals, his confinement from childhood had kept him a
stranger. The poet pitied his ignorance, and loved his
curiosity, and entertained him from day to day with novelty
and instruction, so that the Prince regretted the necessity of
sleep, and longed till the morning should renew his pleasure.
  As they were sitting together, the Prince commanded Imlac to
relate his history, and to tell by what accident he was
forced, or by what motive induced, to close his life in the
Happy Valley. As he was going to begin his narrative, Rasselas
was called to a concert, and obliged to restrain his curiosity
till the evening.


                         CHAPTER VIII

                     THE HISTORY OF IMLAC

The close of the day is, in the regions of the torrid zone,
the only season of diversion and entertainment, and it was
therefore midnight before the music ceased and the princesses
retired. Rasselas then called for his companion, and required
him to begin the story of his life.
  "Sir," said Imlac, "my history will not be long: the life
that is devoted to knowledge passes silently away, and is very
little diversified by events. To talk in public, to think in
solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer
inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about the
world without pomp or terror, and is neither known nor valued
but by men like himself.
  "I was born in the kingdom of Goiama, at no great distance
from the fountain of the Nile. My father was a wealthy
merchant, who traded between the inland countries of Africa
and the ports of the Red Sea. He was honest, frugal, and
diligent, but of mean sentiments and narrow comprehension; he
desired only to be rich, and to conceal his riches, lest he
should be spoiled by the governors of the province."
  "Surely," said the Prince, "my father must be negligent of
his charge if any man in his dominions dares take that which
belongs to another. Does he not know that kings are
accountable for injustice permitted as well as done? If I were
Emperor, not the meanest of my subjects should be oppressed
with impunity. My blood boils when I am told that a merchant
durst not enjoy his honest gains for fear of losing them by
the rapacity of power. Name the governor who robbed the people
that I may declare his crimes to the Emperor!"
  "Sir," said Imlac, "your ardour is the natural effect of
virtue animated by youth. The time will come when you will
acquit your father, and perhaps hear with less impatience of
the governor. Oppression is, in the Abyssinian dominions,
neither frequent nor tolerated; but no form of government has
been yet discovered by which cruelty can be wholly prevented.
Subordination supposes power on one part and subjection on the
other; and if power be in the hands of men it will sometimes
be abused. The vigilance of the supreme magistrate may do
much, but much will still remain undone. He can never know all
the crimes that are committed, and can seldom punish all that
he knows."
  "This," said the Prince, "I do not understand; but I had
rather hear thee than dispute. Continue thy narration."
  "My father," proceeded Imlac, "originally intended that I
should have no other education than such as might qualify me
for commerce; and discovering in me great strength of memory
and quickness of apprehension, often declared his hope that I
should be some time the richest man in Abyssinia."
  "Why," said the Prince, "did thy father desire the increase
of his wealth when it was already greater than he durst
discover or enjoy? I am unwilling to doubt thy veracity, yet
inconsistencies cannot both be true."
  "Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right;
but, imputed to man, they may both be true. Yet diversity is
not inconsistency. My father might expect a time of greater
security. However, some desire is necessary to keep life in
motion; and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those
of fancy."
  "This," said the Prince, "I can in some measure conceive. I
repent that I interrupted thee."
  "With this hope," proceeded Imlac, "he sent me to school.
But when I had once found the delight of knowledge, and felt
the pleasure of intelligence and the pride of invention, I
began silently to despise riches, and determined to disappoint
the purposes of my father, whose grossness of conception
raised my pity. I was twenty years old before his tenderness
would expose me to the fatigue of travel; in which time I had
been instructed, by successive masters, in all the literature
of my native country. As every hour taught me something new, I
lived in a continual course of gratification; but as I
advanced towards manhood, I lost much of the reverence with
which I had been used to look on my instructors; because when
the lessons were ended I did not find them wiser or better
than common men.
  "At length my father resolved to initiate me in commerce;
and, opening one of his subterranean treasuries, counted out
ten thousand pieces of gold. `This, young man,' said he, `is
the stock with which you must negotiate. I began with less
than a fifth part, and you see how diligence and parsimony
have increased it. This is your own, to waste or improve. If
you squander it by negligence or caprice, you must wait for my
death before you will be rich; if in four years you double
your stock, we will thenceforward let subordination cease, and
live together as friends and partners, for he shall be always
equal with me who is equally skilled in the art of growing
rich.'
  "We laid out our money upon camels, concealed in bales of
cheap goods, and travelled to the shore of the Red Sea. When I
cast my eye on the expanse of waters, my heart bounded like
that of a prisoner escaped. I felt an inextinguishable
curiosity kindle in my mind, and resolved to snatch this
opportunity of seeing the manners of other nations, and of
learning sciences unknown in Abyssinia.
  "I remembered that my father had obliged me to the
improvement of my stock, not by a promise, which I ought not
to violate, but by a penalty, which I was at liberty to incur;
and therefore determined to gratify my predominant desire,
and, by drinking at the fountain of knowledge, to quench the
thirst of curiosity.
  "As I was supposed to trade without connection with my
father, it was easy for me to become acquainted with the
master of a ship, and procure a passage to some other country.
I had no motives of choice to regulate my voyage. It was
sufficient for me that, wherever I wandered, I should see a
country which I had not seen before. I therefore entered a
ship bound for Surat, having left a letter for my father
declaring my intention."


                          CHAPTER IX

               THE HISTORY OF IMLAC (continued)

"When I first entered upon the world of waters, and lost sight
of land, I looked round about me in pleasing terror, and
thinking my soul enlarged by the boundless prospect, imagined
that I could gaze around me for ever without satiety; but in a
short time I grew weary of looking on barren uniformity, where
I could only see again what I had already seen. I then
descended into the ship, and doubted for awhile whether all my
future pleasures would not end, like this, in disgust and
disappointment. `Yet surely,' said I, `the ocean and the land
are very different. The only variety of water is rest and
motion. But the earth has mountains and valleys, deserts and
cities; it is inhabited by men of different customs and
contrary opinions; and I may hope to find variety in life,
though I should miss it in nature.'
  "With this thought I quieted my mind, and amused myself
during the voyage, sometimes by learning from the sailors the
art of navigation, which I have never practised, and sometimes
by forming schemes for my conduct in different situations, in
not one of which I have ever been placed.
  "I was almost weary of my naval amusements when we safely
landed at Surat. I secured my money and, purchasing some
commodities for show, joined myself to a caravan that was
passing into the inland country. My companions, for some
reason or other, conjecturing that I was rich, and, by my
inquiries and admiration, finding that I was ignorant,
considered me as a novice whom they had a right to cheat, and
who was to learn, at the usual expense, the art of fraud. They
exposed me to the theft of servants and the exaction of
officers, and saw me plundered upon false pretences, without
any advantage to themselves but that of rejoicing in the
superiority of their own knowledge."
  "Stop a moment," said the Prince; "is there such depravity
in man as that he should injure another without benefit to
himself? I can easily conceive that all are pleased with
superiority; but your ignorance was merely accidental, which,
being neither your crime nor your folly, could afford them no
reason to applaud themselves; and the knowledge which they
had, and which you wanted, they might as effectually have
shown by warning as betraying you."
  "Pride," said Imlac, "is seldom delicate; it will please
itself with very mean advantages, and envy feels not its own
happiness but when it may be compared with the misery of
others. They were my enemies because they grieved to think me
rich, and my oppressors because they delighted to find me
weak."
  "Proceed," said the Prince; "I doubt not of the facts which
you relate, but imagine that you impute them to mistaken
motives."
  "In this company," said Imlac, "I arrived at Agra, the
capital of Hindostan, the city in which the Great Mogul
community resides. I applied myself to the language of the
country, and in a few months was able to converse with the
learned men; some of whom I found morose and reserved, and
others easy and communicative; some were unwilling to teach
another what they had with difficulty learned themselves; and
some showed that the end of their studies was to gain the
dignity of instructing.
  "To the tutor of the young princes I recommended myself so
much that I was presented to the Emperor as a man of uncommon
knowledge. The Emperor asked me many questions concerning my
country and my travels, and though I cannot now recollect
anything that he uttered above the power of a common man, he
dismissed me, astonished at his wisdom and enamoured of his
goodness.
  "My credit was now so high that the merchants with whom I
had travelled applied to me for recommendations to the ladies
of the Court. I was surprised at their confidence of
solicitation and greatly reproached them with their practices
on the road. They heard me with cold indifference, and showed
me no tokens of shame or sorrow.
  "They then urged their request with the offer of a bribe,
but what I would not do for kindness I would not do for money,
and refused them, not because they had injured me, but because
I would not enable them to injure others; for I knew they
would have made use of my credit to cheat those who should buy
their wares.
  "Having resided at Agra till there was no more to be
learned, I travelled into Persia, where I saw many remains of
ancient magnificence and observed many new accommodations of
life. The Persians are a nation eminently social, and their
assemblies afforded me daily opportunities of remarking
characters and manners, and of tracing human nature through
all its variations.
  "From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation
pastoral and warlike, who lived without any settled
habitation, whose wealth is their flocks and herds, and who
have carried on through ages an hereditary war with mankind,
though they neither covet nor envy their possessions."


                          CHAPTER X

          IMLAC'S STORY (continued) - A DISSERTATION
                         UPON POETRY

"Wherever I went I found that poetry was considered as the
highest learning, and regarded with a veneration somewhat
approaching to that which man would pay to angelic nature. And
yet it fills me with wonder that in almost all countries the
most ancient poets are considered as the best; whether it be
that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition greatly
attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the
first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and
retained the credit by consent which it received by accident
at first; or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe
nature and passion, which are always the same, the first
writers took possession of the most striking objects for
description and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and
left nothing to those that followed them but transcription of
the same events and new combinations of the same images.
Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early
writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of
art; that the first excel in strength and invention, and the
latter in elegance and refinement.
  "I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious
fraternity. I read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, and was
able to repeat by memory the volumes that are suspended in the
mosque of Mecca. But I soon found that no man was ever great
by imitation. My desire of excellence impelled me to transfer
my attention to nature and to life. Nature was to be my
subject, and men to be my auditors. I could never describe
what I had not seen. I could not hope to move those with
delight or terror whose interests and opinions I did not
understand.
  "Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw everything with a
new purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified; no
kind of knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and
deserts for images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind
every tree of the forest and flower of the valley. I observed
with equal care the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the
palace. Sometimes I wandered along the mazes of the rivulet,
and sometimes watched the changes of the summer clouds. To a
poet nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful and
whatever is dreadful must be familiar to his imagination; he
must be concerned with all that is awfully vast or elegantly
little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the
minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must all concur
to store his mind with inexhaustible variety; for every idea
is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or
religious truth, and he who knows most will have most power of
diversifying his scenes and of gratifying his reader with
remote allusions and unexpected instruction.
  "All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to
study, and every country which I have surveyed has contributed
something to my poetical powers."
  "In so wide a survey," said the Prince, "you must surely
have left much unobserved. I have lived till now within the
circuit of the mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without
the sight of something which I had never beheld before, or
never heeded."
  "This business of a poet," said Imlac, "is to examine, not
the individual, but the species; to remark general properties
and large appearances. He does not number the streaks of the
tulip, or describe the different shades of the verdure of the
forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such
prominent and striking features as recall the original to
every mind, and must neglect the minuter discriminations,
which one may have remarked and another have neglected, for
those characteristics which are alike obvious to vigilance and
carelessness.
  "But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a
poet; he must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of
life. His character requires that he estimate the happiness
and misery of every condition, observe the power of all the
passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of
the human mind, as they are modified by various institutions
and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the
sprightliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude. He
must divest himself of the prejudices of his age and country;
he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and
invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions,
and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will
always be the same. He must, therefore, content himself with
the slow progress of his name, contemn the praise of his own
time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity. He
must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of
mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts
and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time
and place.
  "His labour is not yet at an end. He must know many
languages and many sciences, and, that his style may be worthy
of his thoughts, must by incessant practice familiarise to
himself every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony."


                          CHAPTER XI

          IMLAC'S NARRATIVE (continued) - A HINT ON
                          PILGRIMAGE

Imlac now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to
aggrandise his own profession, when the Prince cried out:
"Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever
be a poet. Proceed with thy narration."
  "To be a poet," said Imlac, "is indeed very difficult."
  "So difficult," returned the Prince, "that I will at present
hear no more of his labours. Tell me whither you went when you
had seen Persia."
  "From Persia," said the poet, "I travelled through Syria,
and for three years resided in Palestine, where I conversed
with great numbers of the northern and western nations of
Europe, the nations which are now in possession of all power
and all knowledge, whose armies are irresistible, and whose
fleets command the remotest parts of the globe. When I
compared these men with the natives of our own kingdom and
those that surround us, they appeared almost another order of
beings. In their countries it is difficult to wish for
anything that may not be obtained; a thousand arts, of which
we never heard, are continually labouring for their
convenience and pleasure, and whatever their own climate has
denied them is supplied by their commerce."
  "By what means," said the Prince, "are the Europeans thus
powerful? or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and
Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the Asiatics and Africans
invade their coast, plant colonies in their ports, and give
laws to their natural princes? The same wind that carries them
back would bring us thither."
  "They are more powerful, sir, than we," answered Imlac,
"because they are wiser; knowledge will always predominate
over ignorance, as man governs the other animals. But why
their knowledge is more than ours I know not what reason can
be given but the unsearchable will of the Supreme Being."
  "When," said the Prince with a sigh, "shall I be able to
visit Palestine, and mingle with this mighty confluence of
nations? Till that happy moment shall arrive, let me fill up
the time with such representations as thou canst give me. I am
not ignorant of the motive that assembles such numbers in that
place, and cannot but consider it as the centre of wisdom and
piety, to which the best and wisest men of every land must be
continually resorting."
  "There are some nations," said Imlac, "that send few
visitants to Palestine; for many numerous and learned sects in
Europe concur to censure pilgrimage as superstitious, or
deride it as ridiculous."
  "You know," said the Prince, "how little my life has made me
acquainted with diversity of opinions; it will be too long to
hear the arguments on both sides; you, that have considered
them, tell me the result."
  "Pilgrimage," said Imlac, "like many other acts of piety,
may be reasonable or superstitious, according to the
principles upon which it is performed. Long journeys in search
of truth are not commanded. Truth, such as is necessary to the
regulation of life, is always found where it is honestly
sought. Change of place is no natural cause of the increase of
piety, for it inevitably produces dissipation of mind. Yet,
since men go every day to view the fields where great actions
have been performed, and return with stronger impressions of
the event, curiosity of the same kind may naturally dispose us
to view that country whence our religion had its beginning,
and I believe no man surveys those awful scenes without some
confirmation of holy resolutions. That the Supreme Being may
be more easily propitiated in one place than in another is the
dream of idle superstition, but that some places may operate
upon our own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which
hourly experience will justify. He who supposes that his vices
may be more successfully combated in Palestine, will perhaps
find himself mistaken; yet he may go thither without folly; he
who thinks they will be more freely pardoned, dishonours at
once his reason and religion."
  "These," said the Prince, "are European distinctions. I will
consider them another time. What have you found to be the
effect of knowledge? Are those nations happier than we?"
  There is so much infelicity," said the poet, "in the world,
that scarce any man has leisure from his own distresses to
estimate the comparative happiness of others. Knowledge is
certainly one of the means of pleasure, as is confessed by the
natural desire which every mind feels of increasing its ideas.
Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced;
it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid
for want of attraction, and, without knowing why, we always
rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget. I am
therefore inclined to conclude that if nothing counteracts the
natural consequence of learning, we grow more happy as our
minds take in a wider range.
  "In enumerating the particular comforts of life, we shall
find many advantages on the side of the Europeans. They cure
wounds and diseases with which we languish and perish. We
suffer inclemencies of weather which they can obviate. They
have engines for the despatch of many laborious works, which
we must perform by manual industry. There is such
communication between distant palaces that one friend can
hardly be said to be absent from another. Their policy removes
all public inconveniences; they have roads cut through the
mountains, and bridges laid over their rivers. And, if we
descend to the privacies of life, their habitations are more
commodious and their possessions are more secure."
  "They are surely happy," said the Prince, "who have all
these conveniences of which I envy none so much as the
facility with which separated friends interchange their
thoughts."
  "The Europeans," answered Imlac, "are less unhappy than we,
but they are not happy. Human life is everywhere a state in
which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed."


                         CHAPTER XII

                THE STORY OF IMLAC (continued)

"I am not willing," said the Prince, "to suppose that
happiness is so parsimoniously distributed to mortals, nor can
I believe but that, if I had the choice of life, I should be
able to fill every day with pleasure. I would injure no man,
and should provoke no resentments; I would relieve every
distress, and should enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I
would choose my friends among the wise and my wife among the
virtuous, and therefore should be in no danger from treachery
or unkindness. My children should by my care be learned and
pious, and would repay to my age what their childhood had
received. What would dare to molest him who might call on
every side to thousands enriched by his bounty or assisted by
his power? And why should not life glide away in the soft
reciprocation of protection and reverence? All this may be
done without the help of European finements, which appear by
their effects to be rather specious than useful. Let us leave
them and pursue our journey."
  "From Palestine," said Imlac, "I passed through many regions
of Asia; in the more civilised kingdoms as a trader, and among
the barbarians of the mountains as a pilgrim. At last I began
to long for my native country, that I might repose after my
travels and fatigues in the places where I had spent my
earliest years, and gladden my old companions with the recital
of my adventures. Often did I figure to myself those with whom
I had sported away the gay hours of dawning life, sitting
round me in its evening, wondering at my tales and listening
to my counsels.
  "When this thought had taken possession of my mind, I
considered every moment as wasted which did not bring me
nearer to Abyssinia. I hastened into Egypt, and,
notwithstanding my impatience, was detained ten months in the
contemplation of its ancient magnificence and in inquiries
after the remains of its ancient learning. I found Cairo a
mixture of all nations: some brought thither by the love of
knowledge; some by the hope of gain; many by the desire of
living after their own manner without observation, and of
lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a city
populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time
the gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.
  "From Cairo I travelled to Suez, and embarked on the Red
Sea, passing along the coast till I arrived at the port from
which I had departed twenty years before. Here I joined myself
to a caravan, and re-entered my native country.
  "I now expected the caresses of my kinsmen and the
congratulations of my friends, and was not without hope that
my father, whatever value he had set upon riches, would own
with gladness and pride a son who was able to add to the
felicity and honour of the nation. But I was soon convinced
that my thoughts were vain. My father had been dead fourteen
years, having divided his wealth among my brothers, who were
removed to some other provinces. Of my companions, the greater
part was in the grave; of the rest, some could with difficulty
remember me, and some considered me as one corrupted by
foreign manners.
  "A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected. I
forgot, after a time, my disappointment, and endeavoured to
recommend myself to the nobles of the kingdom; they admitted
me to their tables, heard my story, and dismissed me. I opened
a school, and was prohibited to teach. I then resolved to sit
down in the quiet of domestic life, and addressed a lady that
was fond of my conversation, but rejected my suit because my
father was a merchant.
  "Wearied at last with solicitation and repulses, I resolved
to hide myself for ever from the world, and depend no longer
on the opinion or caprice of others. I waited for the time
when the gate of the Happy Valley should open, that I might
bid farewell to hope and fear; the day came, my performance
was distinguished with favour, and I resigned myself with joy
to perpetual confinement."
  "Hast thou here found happiness at last?" said Rasselas.
"Tell me, without reserve, art thou content with thy
condition, or dost thou wish to be again wandering and
inquiring? All the inhabitants of this valley celebrate their
lot, and at the annual visit of the Emperor invite others to
partake of their felicity."
  "Great Prince," said Imlac, "I shall speak the truth. I know
not one of all your attendants who does not lament the hour
when he entered this retreat. I am less unhappy than the rest,
because I have a mind replete with images, which I can vary
and combine at pleasure. I can amuse my solitude by the
renovation of the knowledge which begins to fade from my
memory, and by recollection of the accidents of my past life.
Yet all this ends in the sorrowful consideration that my
acquirements are now useless, and that none of my pleasures
can be again enjoyed. The rest, whose minds have no impression
but of the present moment, are either corroded by malignant
passions or sit stupid in the gloom of perpetual vacancy."
  "What passions can infest those," said the Prince, "who have
no rivals? We are in a place where impotence precludes malice,
and where all envy is repressed by community of enjoyments."
  "There may be community," said Imlac, "of material
possessions, but there can never be community of love or of
esteem. It must happen that one will please more than another;
he that knows himself despised will always be envious, and
still more envious and malevolent if he is condemned to live
in the presence of those who despise him. The invitations by
which they allure others to a state which they feel to be
wretched, proceed from the natural malignity of hopeless
misery. They are weary of themselves and of each other, and
expect to find relief in new companions. They envy the liberty
which their folly has forfeited, and would gladly see all
mankind imprisoned like themselves.
  "From this crime, however, I am wholly free. No man can say
that he is wretched by my persuasion. I look with pity on the
crowds who are annually soliciting admission to captivity, and
wish that it were lawful for me to warn them of their danger."
  "My dear Imlac," said the Prince, "I will open to thee my
whole heart. I have long meditated an escape from the Happy
Valley. I have examined the mountain on every side, but find
myself insuperably barred - teach me the way to break my
prison; thou shalt be the companion of my flight, the guide of
my rambles, the partner of my fortune, and my sole director in
the CHOICE OF LIFE."
  "Sir," answered the poet, "your escape will be difficult,
and perhaps you may soon repent your curiosity. The world,
which you figure to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake in
the valley, you will find a sea foaming with tempests and
boiling with whirlpools; you will be sometimes overwhelmed by
the waves of violence, and be sometimes dashed against the
rocks of treachery. Amidst wrongs and frauds, competitions and
anxieties, you will wish a thousand times for these seats of
quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from fear."
  "Do not seek to deter me from my purpose," said the Prince.
"I am resolved to judge with mine own eyes of the various
conditions of men, and then to make deliberately my CHOICE OF
LIFE."
  "I am afraid," said Imlac, "you are hindered by stronger
restraints than my persuasions; yet, if your determination is
fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are
impossible to diligence and skill."


                         CHAPTER XIII

            RASSELAS DISCOVERS THE MEANS OF ESCAPE

The Prince now dismissed his favourite to rest; but the
narrative of wonders and novelties filled his mind with
perturbation. He revolved all that he had heard, and prepared
innumerable questions for the morning.
  Much of his uneasiness was now removed. He had a friend to
whom he could impart his thoughts, and whose experience could
assist him in his designs. His heart was no longer condemned
to swell with silent vexation. He thought that even the Happy
Valley might be endured with such a companion, and that if
they could range the world together he should have nothing
further to desire.
  In a few days the water was discharged, and the ground
dried. The Prince and Imlac then walked out together, to
converse without the notice of the rest. The Prince, whose
thoughts were always on the wing, as he passed by the gate
said, with a countenance of sorrow, "Why art thou so strong,
and why is man so weak?"
  "Man is not weak," answered his companion; "knowledge is
more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs
at strength. I can burst the gate, but cannot do it secretly.
Some other expedient must be tried."
  As they were walking on the side of the mountain they
observed that the coneys, which the rain had driven from their
burrows, had taken shelter among the bushes, and formed holes
behind them tending upwards in an oblique line. "It has been
the opinion of antiquity," said Imlac, "that human reason
borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals; let us,
therefore, not think ourselves degraded by learning from the
coney. We may escape by piercing the mountain in the same
direction. We will begin where the summit hangs over the
middle part, and labour upward till we shall issue out beyond
the prominence."
  The eyes of the Prince, when he heard this proposal,
sparkled with joy. The execution was easy and the success
certain.
  No time was now lost. They hastened early in the morning to
choose a place proper for their mine. They clambered with
great fatigue among crags and brambles, and returned without
having discovered any part that favoured their design. The
second and the third day were spent in the same manner, and
with the same frustration; but on the fourth day they found a
small cavern concealed by a thicket, where they resolved to
make their experiment.
  Imlac procured instruments proper to hew stone and remove
earth, and they fell to their work on the next day with more
eagerness than vigour. They were presently exhausted by their
efforts, and sat down to pant upon the grass. The Prince for a
moment appeared to be discouraged. "Sir," said his companion,
"practice will enable us to continue our labour for a longer
time. Mark, however, how far we have advanced, and ye will
find that our toil will some time have an end. Great works are
performed not by strength, but by perseverance; yonder palace
was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and
spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigour three hours a
day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the
circumference of the globe."
  They returned to their work day after day, and in a short
time found a fissure in the rock, which enabled them to pass
far with very little obstruction. This Rasselas considered as
a good omen. "Do not disturb your mind," said Imlac, "with
other hopes or fears than reason may suggest; if you are
pleased with the prognostics of good, you will be terrified
likewise with tokens of evil, and your whole life will be a
prey to superstition. Whatever facilitates our work is more
than an omen; it is a cause of success. This is one of those
pleasing surprises which often happen to active resolution.
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance."


                         CHAPTER XIV

           RASSELAS AND IMLAC RECEIVE AN UNEXPECTED
                            VISIT

They had now wrought their way to the middle, and solaced
their toil with the approach of liberty, when the Prince,
coming down to refresh himself with air, found his sister
Nekayah standing at the mouth of the cavity. He started, and
stood confused, afraid to tell his design, and yet hopeless to
conceal it. A few moments determined him to repose on her
fidelity, and secure her secrecy by a declaration without
reserve.
  "Do not imagine," said the Princess, "that I came hither as
a spy. I had long observed from my window that you and Imlac
directed your walk every day towards the same point, but I did
not suppose you had any better reason for the preference than
a cooler shade or more fragrant bank, nor followed you with
any other design than to partake of your conversation. Since,
then, not suspicion, but fondness, has detected you, let me
not lose the advantage of my discovery. I am equally weary of
confinement with yourself, and not less desirous of knowing
what is done or suffered in the world. Permit me to fly with
you from this tasteless tranquillity, which will yet grow more
loathsome when you have left me. You may deny me to accompany
you, but cannot hinder me from following."
  The Prince, who loved Nekayah above his other sisters, had
no inclination to refuse her request, and grieved that he had
lost an opportunity of showing his confidence by a voluntary
communication. It was, therefore, agreed that she should leave
the valley with them; and that in the meantime she should
watch, lest any other stranger should, by chance or curiosity,
follow them to the mountain.
  At length their labour was at an end. They saw light beyond
the prominence, and, issuing to the top of the mountain,
beheld the Nile, yet a narrow current, wandering beneath them.
  The Prince looked round with rapture, anticipated all the
pleasures of travel, and in thought was already transported
beyond his father's dominions. Imlac, though very joyful at
his escape, had less expectation of pleasure in the world,
which he has before tried and of which he had been weary.
  Rasselas was so much delighted with a wider horizon, that he
could not soon be persuaded to return into the valley. He
informed his sister that the way was now open, and that
nothing now remained but to prepare for their departure.


                          CHAPTER XV

          THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS LEAVE THE VALLEY,
                     AND SEE MANY WONDERS

The Prince and Princess had jewels sufficient to make them
rich whenever they came into a place of commerce, which, by
Imlac's direction, they hid in their clothes, and on the night
of the next full moon all left the valley. The Princess was
followed only by a single favourite, who did not know whither
she was going.
  They clambered through the cavity, and began to go down on
the other side. The Princess and her maid turned their eyes
toward every part, and seeing nothing to bound their prospect,
considered themselves in danger of being lost in a dreary
vacuity. They stopped and trembled. "I am almost afraid," said
the Princess, "to begin a journey of which I cannot perceive
an end, and to venture into this immense plain, where I may be
approached on every side by men whom I never saw." The Prince
felt nearly the same emotions, though he thought it more manly
to conceal them.
  Imlac smiled at their terrors, and encouraged them to
proceed. But the Princess continued irresolute till she had
been drawn forward too far to return.
  In the morning they found some shepherds in the field, who
set some milk and fruits before them. The Princess wondered
that she did not see a palace ready for her reception and a
table spread with delicacies, but being faint and hungry, she
drank the milk and ate the fruits, and thought them of a
higher flavour than the products of the valley.
  They travelled forward by easy journeys, being all
unaccustomed to toil and difficulty, and knowing that, though
they might be missed, they could not be pursued. In a few days
they came into a more populous region, where Imlac was
diverted with the admiration which his companions expressed at
the diversity of manners, stations, and employments. Their
dress was such as might not bring upon them the suspicion of
having anything to conceal; yet the Prince, wherever he came,
expected to be obeyed, and the Princess was frightened because
those who came into her presence did not prostrate themselves.
Imlac was forced to observe them with great vigilance, lest
they should betray their rank by their unusual behaviour, and
detained them several weeks in the first village to accustom
them to the sight of common mortals.
  By degrees the royal wanderers were taught to understand
that they had for a time laid aside their dignity, and were to
expect only such regard as liberality and courtesy could
procure. And Imlac having by many admonitions prepared them to
endure the tumults of a port and the ruggedness of the
commercial race, brought them down to the sea-coast.
  The Prince and his sister, to whom everything was new, were
gratified equally at all places, and therefore remained for
some months at the port without any inclination to pass
further. Imlac was content with their stay, because he did not
think it safe to expose them, unpractised in the world, to the
hazards of a foreign country.
  At last he began to fear lest they should be discovered, and
proposed to fix a day for their departure. They had no
pretensions to judge for themselves, and referred the whole
scheme to his direction. He therefore took passage in a ship
to Suez, and, when the time came, with great difficulty
prevailed on the Princess to enter the vessel. They had a
quick and prosperous voyage, and from Suez travelled by land
to Cairo.


                         CHAPTER XVI

          THEY ENTER CAIRO, AND FIND EVERY MAN HAPPY

As they approached the city, which filled the strangers with
astonishment, "This", said Imlac to the Prince, "is the place
where travellers and merchants assemble from all corners of
the earth. You will here find men of every character and every
occupation. Commerce is here honourable. I will act as a
merchant, and you shall live as strangers who have no other
end of travel than curiosity; it will soon be observed that we
are rich. Our reputation will procure us access to all whom we
shall desire to know; you shall see all the conditions of
humanity, and enable yourselves at leisure to make your CHOICE
OF LIFE."
  They now entered the town, stunned by the noise and offended
by the crowds. Instruction had not yet so prevailed over habit
but that they wondered to see themselves pass undistinguished
along the streets, and met by the lowest of the people without
reverence or notice. The Princess could not at first bear the
thought of being levelled with the vulgar, and for some time
continued in her chamber, where she was served by her
favourite Pekuah, as in the palace of the valley.
  Imlac, who understood traffic, sold part of the jewels the
next day, and hired a house, which he adorned with such
magnificence that he was immediately considered as a merchant
of great wealth. His politeness attracted many acquaintances,
and his generosity made him courted by many dependents. His
companions, not being able to mix in the conversation, could
make no discovery of their ignorance or surprise, and were
gradually initiated in the world as they gained knowledge of
the language.
  The Prince had by frequent lectures been taught the use and
nature of money; but the ladies could not for a long time
comprehend what the merchants did with small pieces of gold
and silver, or why things of so little use should be received
as an equivalent to the necessaries of life.
  They studied the language two years, while Imlac was
preparing to set before them the various ranks and conditions
of mankind. He grew acquainted with all who had anything
uncommon in their fortune or conduct. He frequented the
voluptuous and the frugal, the idle and the busy, the
merchants and the men of learning.
  The Prince now being able to converse with fluency, and
having learned the caution necessary to be observed in his
intercourse with strangers, began to accompany Imlac to places
of resort, and to enter into all assemblies, that he might
make his CHOICE OF LIFE.
  For some time he thought choice needless, because all
appeared to him really happy. Wherever he went he met gaiety
and kindness, and heard the song of joy or the laugh of
carelessness. He began to believe that the world was withheld
either from want or merit; that every hand showered liberality
and every heart melted with benevolence: "And who then," says
he, "will be suffered to be wretched?"
  Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was unwilling to
crush the hope of inexperience: till one day, having sat
awhile silent, "I know not," said the Prince, "what can be the
reason that I am more unhappy than any of our friends. I see
them perpetually and unalterably cheerful, but feel my own
mind restless and uneasy. I am unsatisfied with those
pleasures which I seem most to court. I live in the crowds of
jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself, and
am only loud and merry to conceal my sadness."
  "Every man," said Imlac, "may by examining his own mind
guess what passes in the minds of others. When you feel that
your own gaiety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to
suspect that of your companions not to be sincere. Envy is
commonly reciprocal. We are long before we are convinced that
happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed
by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
In the assembly where you passed the last night there appeared
such sprightliness of air and volatility of fancy as might
have suited beings of a higher order, formed to inhabit
serener regions, inaccessible to care or sorrow; yet, believe
me, Prince, was there not one who did not dread the moment
when solitude should deliver him to the tyranny of
reflection."
  "This, said the Prince, "may be true of others since it is
true of me; yet, whatever be the general infelicity of man,
one condition is more happy than another, and wisdom surely
directs us to take the least evil in the CHOICE OF LIFE."
  "The causes of good and evil," answered Imlac, "are so
various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so
diversified by various relations, and so much subject to
accidents which cannot be foreseen, that he who would fix his
condition upon incontestable reasons of preference must live
and die inquiring and deliberating."
  "But, surely," said Rasselas, "the wise men, to whom we
listen with reverence and wonder, chose that mode of life for
themselves which they thought most likely to make them happy."
  "Very few," said the poet, "live by choice. Every man is
placed in the present condition by causes which acted without
his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly
co-operate, and therefore you will rarely meet one who does
not think the lot of his neighbour better than his own."
  "I am pleased to think," said the Prince, "that my birth has
given me at least one advantage over others by enabling me to
determine for myself. I have here the world before me. I will
review it at leisure; surely happiness is somewhere to be
found."


                         CHAPTER XVII

           THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUNG MEN OF
                      SPIRIT AND GAIETY

Rasselas rose next day, and resolved to begin his experiments
upon life. "Youth," cried he, "is the time of gladness: I will
join myself to the young men whose only business is to gratify
their desires, and whose time is all spent in a succession of
enjoyments."
  To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few days
brought him back weary and disgusted. Their mirth was without
images, their laughter without motive; their pleasures were
gross and sensual, in which the mind had no part; their
conduct was at once wild and mean - they laughed at order and
at law, but the frown of power dejected and the eye of wisdom
abashed them.
  The Prince soon concluded that he should never be happy in a
course of life of which he was ashamed. He thought it
unsuitable to a reasonable being to act without a plan, and to
be sad or cheerful only by chance. "Happiness," said he, "must
be something solid and permanent, without fear and without
uncertainty."
  But his young companions had gained so much of his regard by
their frankness and courtesy that he could not leave them
without warning and remonstrance. "My friends," said he, "I
have seriously considered our manners and our prospects, and
find that we have mistaken our own interest. The first years
of man must make provision for the last. He that never thinks,
never can be wise. Perpetual levity must end in ignorance; and
intemperance, though it may fire the spirits for an hour, will
make life short or miserable. Let us consider that youth is of
no long duration, and that in mature age, when the
enchantments of fancy shall cease, and phantoms of delight
dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts but the
esteem of wise men and the means of doing good. Let us
therefore stop while to stop is in our power: let us live as
men who are some time to grow old, and to whom it will be the
most dreadful of all evils to count their past years by
follies, and to be reminded of their former luxuriance of
health only by the maladies which riot has produced."
  They stared awhile in silence one upon another, and at last
drove him away by a general chorus of continued laughter.
  The consciousness that his sentiments were just and his
intention kind was scarcely sufficient to support him against
the horror of derision. But he recovered his tranquillity and
pursued his search.


                        CHAPTER XVIII

            THE PRINCE FINDS A WISE AND HAPPY MAN

As he was one day walking in the street he saw a spacious
building which all were by the open doors invited to enter. He
followed the stream of people, and found it a hall or school
of declamation, in which professors read lectures to their
auditory. He fixed his eye upon a sage raised above the rest,
who discoursed with great energy on the government of the
passions. His look was venerable, his action graceful, his
pronunciation clear, and his diction elegant. He showed with
great strength of sentiment and variety of illustration that
human nature is degraded and debased when the lower faculties
predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the parent of
passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues but
the natural effect of unlawful government, perturbation, and
confusion; that she betrays the fortresses of the intellect to
rebels, and excites her children to sedition against their
lawful sovereign. He compared reason to the sun, of which the
light is constant, uniform, and lasting; and fancy to a
meteor, of bright but transitory lustre, irregular in its
motion and delusive in its direction.
  He then communicated the various precepts given from time to
time for the conquest of passion, and displayed the happiness
of those who had obtained the important victory, after which
man is no longer the slave of fear nor the fool of hope; is no
more emaciated by envy, inflamed by anger, emasculated by
tenderness, or depressed by grief; but walks on calmly through
the tumults or privacies of life, as the sun pursues alike his
course through the calm or the stormy sky.
  He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable by pain or
pleasure, who looked with indifference on those modes or
accidents to which the vulgar give the names of good and evil.
He exhorted his hearers to lay aside their prejudices, and arm
themselves against the shafts of malice or misfortune, by
invulnerable patience: concluding that this state only was
happiness, and that this happiness was in every one's power.
  Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to the
instructions of a superior being, and waiting for him at the
door, humbly implored the liberty of visiting so great a
master of true wisdom. The lecturer hesitated a moment, when
Rasselas put a purse of gold into his hand, which he received
with a mixture of joy and wonder.
  "I have found," said the Prince at his return to Imlac, "a
man who can teach all that is necessary to be known; who, from
the unshaken throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the
scenes of life changing beneath him. He speaks, and attention
watches his lips. He reasons, and conviction closes his
periods. This man shall be my future guide: I will learn his
doctrines and imitate his life."
  "Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the
teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they
live like men."
  Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man could reason so
forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own arguments,
paid him a visit in a few days, and was denied admission. He
had now learned the power of money, and made his way by a
piece of gold to the inner apartment, where he found the
philosopher in a room half darkened, with his eyes misty and
his face pale. "Sir," said he, "you are come at a time when
all human friendship is useless; what I suffer cannot be
remedied: what I have lost cannot be supplied. My daughter, my
only daughter, from whose tenderness I expected all the
comforts of my age, died last night of a fever. My views, my
purposes, my hopes are at an end: I am now a lonely being,
disunited from society."
  "Sir," said the Prince, "mortality is an event by which a
wise man can never be surprised: we know that death is always
near, and it should therefore always be expected." "Young
man," answered the philosopher, "you speak like one that has
never felt the pangs of separation." "Have you then forgotten
the precepts," said Rasselas, "which you so powerfully
enforced? Has wisdom no strength to arm the heart against
calamity? Consider that external things are naturally
variable, but truth and reason are always the same." "What
comfort," said the mourner, "can truth and reason afford me?
Of what effect are they now, but to tell me that my daughter
will not be restored?"
  The Prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult
misery with reproof, went away, convinced of the emptiness of
rhetorical sounds, and the inefficiency of polished periods
and studied sentences.


                         CHAPTER XIX

                  A GLIMPSE OF PASTORAL LIFE

He was still eager upon the same inquiry; and having heard of
a hermit that lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile, and
filled the whole country with the fame of his sanctity,
resolved to visit his retreat, and inquire whether that
felicity which public life could not afford was to be found in
solitude, and whether a man whose age and virtue made him
venerable could teach any peculiar art of shunning evils or
enduring them.
  Imlac and the Princess agreed to accompany him, and after
the necessary preparations, they began their journey. Their
way lay through the fields, where shepherds tended their
flocks and the lambs were playing upon the pasture. "This,"
said the poet, "is the life which has been often celebrated
for its innocence and quiet; let us pass the heat of the day
among the shepherds' tents, and know whether all our searches
are not to terminate in pastoral simplicity."
  The proposal pleased them; and they induced the shepherds,
by small presents and familiar questions, to tell the opinion
of their own state. They were so rude and ignorant, so little
able to compare the good with the evil of the occupation, and
so indistinct in their narratives and descriptions, that very
little could be learned from them. But it was evident that
their hearts were cankered with discontent; that they
considered themselves as condemned to labour for the luxury of
the rich, and looked up with stupid malevolence towards those
that were placed above them.
  The Princess pronounced with vehemence that she would never
suffer these envious savages to be her companions, and that
she should not soon be desirous of seeing any more specimens
of rustic happiness; but could not believe that all the
accounts of primeval pleasures were fabulous, and was in doubt
whether life had anything that could be justly preferred to
the placid gratification of fields and woods. She hoped that
the time would come when, with a few virtuous and elegant
companions, she should gather flowers planted by her own
hands, fondle the lambs of her own ewe, and listen without
care, among brooks and breezes, to one of her maidens reading
in the shade.


                          CHAPTER XX

                   THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY

On the next day they continued their journey till the heat
compelled them to look round for shelter. At a small distance
they saw a thick wood, which they no sooner entered than they
perceived that they were approaching the habitations of men.
The shrubs were diligently cut away to open walks where the
shades were darkest; the boughs of opposite trees were
artificially interwoven; seats of flowery turf were raised in
vacant spaces; and a rivulet that wantoned along the side of a
winding path had its banks sometimes obstructed by little
mounds of stone heaped together to increase its murmurs.
  They passed slowly through the wood, delighted with such
unexpected accommodations, and entertained each other with
conjecturing what or who he could be that in those rude and
unfrequented regions had leisure and art for such harmless
luxury.
  As they advanced they heard the sound of music, and saw
youths and virgins dancing in the grove; and going farther
beheld a stately palace built upon a hill surrounded by woods.
The laws of Eastern hospitality allowed them to enter, and the
master welcomed them like a man liberal and wealthy.
  He was skilful enough in appearances soon to discern that
they were no common guests, and spread his table with
magnificence. The eloquence of Imlac caught his attention, and
the lofty courtesy of the Princess excited his respect. When
they offered to depart, he entreated them to stay, and was the
next day more unwilling to dismiss them than before. They were
easily persuaded to stop, and civility grew up in time to
freedom and confidence.
  The Prince now saw all the domestics cheerful and all the
face of nature smiling round the place, and could not forbear
to hope that he should find here what he was seeking; but when
he was congratulating the master upon his possessions he
answered with a sigh, "My condition has indeed the appearance
of happiness, but appearances are delusive. My prosperity puts
my life in danger; the Bassa of Egypt is my enemy, incensed
only by my wealth and popularity. I have been hitherto
protected against him by the princes of the country; but as
the favour of the great is uncertain, I know not how soon my
defenders may be persuaded to share the plunder with the
Bassa. I have sent my treasures into a distant country, and
upon the first alarm am prepared to follow them. Then will my
enemies riot in my mansion, and enjoy the gardens which I have
planted."
  They all joined in lamenting his danger and deprecating his
exile; and the Princess was so much disturbed with the tumult
of grief and indignation that she retired to her apartment.
They continued with their kind inviter a few days longer, and
then went to find the hermit.


                         CHAPTER XXI

           THE HAPPINESS OF SOLITUDE - THE HERMIT'S
                           HISTORY

They came on the third day, by the direction of the peasants,
to the hermit's cell. It was a cavern in the side of a
mountain, overshadowed with palm trees, at such a distance
from the cataract that nothing more was heard than a gentle
uniform murmur, such as composes the mind to pensive
meditation, especially when it was assisted by the wind
whistling among the branches. The first rude essay of Nature
had been so much improved by human labour that the cave
contained several apartments appropriated to different uses,
and often afforded lodging to travellers whom darkness or
tempests happened to overtake.
  The hermit sat on a bench at the door, to enjoy the coolness
of the evening. On one side lay a book with pens and paper; on
the other mechanical instruments of various kinds. As they
approached him unregarded, the Princess observed that he had
not the countenance of a man that had found or could teach the
way to happiness.
  They saluted him with great respect, which he repaid like a
man not accustomed to the forms of Courts. "My children," said
he, "if you have lost your way, you shall be willingly
supplied with such conveniences for the night as this cavern
will afford. I have all that Nature requires, and you will not
expect delicacies in a hermit's cell."
  They thanked him; and, entering, were pleased with the
neatness and regularity of the place. The hermit set flesh and
wine before them, though he fed only upon fruits and water.
His discourse was cheerful without levity, and pious without
enthusiasm. He soon gained the esteem of his guests, and the
Princess repented her hasty censure.
  At last Imlac began thus: "I do not now wonder that your
reputation is so far extended: we have heard at Cairo of your
wisdom, and came hither to implore your direction for this
young man and maiden in the CHOICE OF LIFE."
  "To him that lives well," answered the hermit, "every form
of life is good; nor can I give any other rule than to remove
all apparent evil."
  "He will most certainly remove from evil," said the Prince,
"who shall devote himself to that solitude which you have
recommended by your example."
  "I have indeed lived fifteen years in solitude," said the
hermit, "but have no desire that my example should gain any
imitators. In my youth I professed arms, and was raised by
degrees to the highest military rank. I have traversed wide
countries at the head of my troops, and seen many battles and
sieges. At last, being disgusted by the preferments of a
younger officer, and feeling that my vigour was beginning to
decay, I resolved to close my life in peace, having found the
world full of snares, discord, and misery. I had once escaped
from the pursuit of the enemy by the shelter of this cavern,
and therefore chose it for my final residence. I employed
artificers to form it into chambers, and stored it with all
that I was likely to want.
  "For some time after my retreat I rejoiced like a
tempest-beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbour, being
delighted with the sudden change of the noise and hurry of war
to stillness and repose. When the pleasure of novelty went
away, I employed my hours in examining the plants which grow
in the valley, and the minerals which I collected from the
rocks. But that inquiry is now grown tasteless and irksome. I
have been for some time unsettled and distracted: my mind is
disturbed with a thousand perplexities of doubt and vanities
of imagination, which hourly prevail upon me, because I have
no opportunities of relaxation or diversion. I am sometimes
ashamed to think that I could not secure myself from vice but
by retiring from the exercise of virtue, and begin to suspect
that I was rather impelled by resentment than led by devotion
into solitude. My fancy riots in scenes of folly, and I lament
that I have lost so much, and have gained so little. In
solitude, if I escape the example of bad men, I want likewise
the counsel and conversation of the good, I have been long
comparing the evils with the advantages of society, and
resolve to return into the world to-morrow. The life of a
solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly
devout."
  They heard his resolution with surprise, but after a short
pause offered to conduct him to Cairo. He dug up a
considerable treasure which he had hid among the rocks, and
accompanied them to the city, on which, as he approached it,
he gazed with rapture.


                         CHAPTER XXII

           THE HAPPINESS OF A LIFE LED ACCORDING TO
                            NATURE

Rasselas went often to an assembly of learned men, who met at
stated times to unbend their minds and compare their opinions.
Their manners were somewhat coarse, but their conversation was
instructive, and their disputations acute, though sometimes
too violent, and often continued till neither controvertist
remembered upon what question he began. Some faults were
almost general among them: every one was pleased to hear the
genius or knowledge of another depreciated.
  In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview with
the hermit, and the wonder with which he heard him censure a
course of life which he had so deliberately chosen and so
laudably followed. The sentiments of the hearers were various.
Some were of opinion that the folly of his choice had been
justly punished by condemnation to perpetual perseverance. One
of the youngest among them, with great vehemence, pronounced
him a hypocrite. Some talked of the right of society to the
labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a
desertion of duty. Others readily allowed that there was a
time when the claims of the public were satisfied, and when a
man might properly sequester himself, to review his life and
purify his heart.
  One who appeared more affected with the narrative than the
rest thought it likely that the hermit would in a few years go
back to his retreat, and perhaps, if shame did not restrain or
death intercept him, return once more from his retreat into
the world. "For the hope of happiness," said he, "is so
strongly impressed that the longest experience is not able to
efface it. Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and
are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is
again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable. But
the time will surely come when desire will no longer be our
torment, and no man shall be wretched but by his own fault."
  "This," said a philosopher who had heard him with tokens of
great impatience, "is the present condition of a wise man. The
time is already come when none are wretched but by their own
fault. Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness
which Nature has kindly placed within our reach. The way to be
happy is to live according to Nature, in obedience to that
universal and unalterable law with which every heart is
originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept,
but engraven by destiny; not instilled by education, but
infused at our nativity. He that lives according to Nature
will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope or
importunities of desire; he will receive and reject with
equability of temper; and act or suffer as the reason of
things shall alternately prescribe. Other men may amuse
themselves with subtle definitions or intricate ratiocination.
Let them learn to be wise by easier means: let them observe
the hind of the forest and the linnet of the grove: let them
consider the life of animals, whose motions are regulated by
instinct; they obey their guide, and are happy. Let us
therefore at length cease to dispute, and learn to live: throw
away the encumbrance of precepts, which they who utter them
with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with
us this simple and intelligible maxim: that deviation from
Nature is deviation from happiness."
  When he had spoken he looked round him with a placid air,
and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.
  "Sir," said the Prince with great modesty, "as I, like all
the rest of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest
attention has been fixed upon your discourse: I doubt not the
truth of a position which a man so learned has so confidently
advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to
Nature."
  "When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the
philosopher, "I can deny them no information which my studies
have enabled me to afford. To live according to Nature is to
act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the
relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with
the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to
co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the
present system of things."
  The Prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he
should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore
bowed and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him
satisfied and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with
the air of a man that had co-operated with the present system.


                        CHAPTER XXIII

           THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN
                 THEM THE WORK OF OBSERVATION

Rasselas returned home full of reflections, doubting how to
direct his future steps. Of the way to happiness he found the
learned and simple equally ignorant; but as he was yet young,
he flattered himself that he had time remaining for more
experiments and further inquiries. He communicated to Imlac
his observations and his doubts, but was answered by him with
new doubts and remarks that gave him no comfort. He therefore
discoursed more frequently and freely with his sister, who had
yet the same hope with himself, and always assisted him to
give some reason why, though he had been hitherto frustrated,
he might succeed at last.
  "We have hitherto," said she, "known but little of the
world; we have never yet been either great or mean. In our
country, though we had royalty, we had no power; and in this
we have not yet seen the private recesses of domestic peace.
Imlac favours not our search, lest we should in time find him
mistaken. We will divide the task between us; you shall try
what is to be found in the splendour of Courts, and I will
range the shades of humbler life. Perhaps command and
authority may be the supreme blessings, as they afford the
most opportunities of doing good; or perhaps what this world
can give may be found in the modest habitations of middle
fortune - too low for great designs, and too high for penury
and distress."


                         CHAPTER XXIV

          THE PRINCE EXAMINES THE HAPPINESS OF HIGH
                           STATIONS

Rasselas applauded the design, and appeared next day with a
splendid retinue at the Court of the Bassa. He was soon
distinguished for his magnificence, and admitted, as a Prince
whose curiosity had brought him from distant countries, to an
intimacy with the great officers and frequent conversation
with the Bassa himself.
  He was at first inclined to believe that the man must be
pleased with his own condition whom all approached with
reverence and heard with obedience, and who had the power to
extend his edicts to a whole kingdom. "There can be no
pleasure," said he, "equal to that of feeling at once the joy
of thousands all made happy by wise administration. Yet, since
by the law of subordination this sublime delight can be in one
nation but the lot of one, it is surely reasonable to think
that there is some satisfaction more popular and accessible,
and that millions can hardly be subjected to the will of a
single man only to fill his particular breast with
incommunicable content."
  These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found no
solution of the difficulty. But as presents and civilities
gained him more familiarity, he found that almost every man
who stood high in his employment hated all the rest and was
hated by them, and that their lives were a continual
succession of plots and detections, stratagems and escapes,
faction and treachery. Many of those who surrounded the Bassa
were sent only to watch and report his conduct: every tongue
was muttering censure, and every eye was searching for a
fault.
  At last the letters of revocation arrived: the Bassa was
carried in chains to Constantinople, and his name was
mentioned no more.
  "What are we now to think of the prerogatives of power?"
said Rasselas to his sister: "it is without efficacy to good,
or is the subordinate degree only dangerous, and the supreme
safe and glorious? Is the Sultan the only happy man in his
dominions, or is the Sultan himself subject to the torments of
suspicion and the dread of enemies?"
  In a short time the second Bassa was deposed. The Sultan
that had advanced him was murdered by the Janissaries, and his
successor had other views or different favourites.


                         CHAPTER XXV

          THE PRINCESS PURSUES HER INQUIRY WITH MORE
                    DILIGENCE THAN SUCCESS

The Princess in the meantime insinuated herself into many
families; for there are few doors through which liberality,
joined with good humour, cannot find its way. The daughters of
many houses were airy and cheerful; but Nekayah had been too
long accustomed to the conversation of Imlac and her brother
to be much pleased with childish levity and prattle which had
no meaning. She found their thoughts narrow, their wishes low,
and their merriment often artificial. Their pleasures, poor as
they were, could not be preserved pure, but were embittered by
petty competitions and worthless emulation. They were always
jealous of the beauty of each other, of a quality to which
solicitude can add nothing, and from which detraction can take
nothing away. Many were in love with triflers like themselves,
and many fancied that they were in love when in truth they
were only idle. Their affection was not fixed on sense or
virtue, and therefore seldom ended but in vexation. Their
grief, however, like their joy, was transient; everything
floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so
that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone,
cast into the water, effaces and confounds the circles of the
first.
  With these girls she played as with inoffensive animals, and
found them proud of her countenance and weary of her company.
  But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and her
affability easily persuaded the hearts that were swelling with
sorrow to discharge their secrets in her ear, and those whom
hope flattered or prosperity delighted often courted her to
partake their pleasure.
  The Princess and her brother commonly met in the evening in
a private summer-house on the banks of the Nile, and related
to each other the occurrences of the day. As they were sitting
together the Princess cast her eyes upon the river that flowed
before her. "Answer," said she, "great father of waters, thou
that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the
invocations of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me if
thou waterest through all thy course a single habitation from
which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint."
  "You are then," said Rasselas, "not more successful in
private houses than I have been in Courts." "I have, since the
last partition of our provinces," said the Princess, "enabled
myself to enter familiarly into many families, where there was
the fairest show of prosperity and peace, and know not one
house that is not haunted by some fury that destroys their
quiet.
  "I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded
that there it could not be found. But I saw many poor whom I
had supposed to live in affluence. Poverty has in large cities
very different appearances. It is often concealed in splendour
and often in extravagance. It is the care of a very great part
of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They
support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is
lost in contriving for the morrow.
  "This, however, was an evil which, though frequent, I saw
with less pain, because I could relieve it. Yet some have
refused my bounties; more offended with my quickness to detect
their wants than pleased with my readiness to succour them;
and others, whose exigencies compelled them to admit my
kindness, have never been able to forgive their benefactress.
Many, however, have been sincerely grateful without the
ostentation of gratitude or the hope of other favours."


                         CHAPTER XXVI

           THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON
                         PRIVATE LIFE

Nekayah, perceiving her brother's attention fixed, proceeded
in her narrative.
  "In families where there is or is not poverty there is
commonly discord. If a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great
family, a family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with
factions and exposed to revolutions. An unpractised observer
expects the love of parents and children to be constant and
equal. But this kindness seldom continues beyond the years of
infancy; in a short time the children become rivals to their
parents. Benefits are allowed by reproaches, and gratitude
debased by envy.
  "Parents and children seldom act in concert; each child
endeavours to appropriate the esteem of the fondness of the
parents; and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray
each other to their children. Thus, some place their
confidence in the father and some in the mother, and by
degrees the house is filled with artifices and feuds.
  "The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the
old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope
and despondency, of expectation and experience, without crime
or folly on either side. The colours of life in youth and age
appear different, as the face of Nature in spring and winter.
And how can children credit the assertions of parents which
with their own eyes show them to be false?
  "Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their
maxims by the credit of their lives. The old man trusts wholly
to slow contrivance and gradual progression; the youth expects
to force his way by genius, vigour, and precipitance. The old
man pays regard to riches, and the youth reverences virtue.
The old man deifies prudence; the youth commits himself to
magnanimity and chance. The young man, who intends no ill,
believes that none is intended, and therefore acts with
openness and candour; but his father, having suffered the
injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect and too often
allured to practise it. Age looks with anger in the temerity
of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
Thus parents and children for the greatest part live on to
love less and less; and if those whom Nature has thus closely
united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for
tenderness and consolation?"
  "Surely," said the Prince, "you must have been unfortunate
in your choice of acquaintance. I am unwilling to believe that
the most tender of all relations is thus impeded in its
effects by natural necessity."  "Domestic discord," answered
she, "is not inevitably and fatally necessary, but yet it is
not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole family is
virtuous; the good and the evil cannot well agree, and the
evil can yet less agree with one another. Even the virtuous
fall sometimes to variance, when their virtues are of
different kinds and tending to extremes. In general, those
parents have most reverence who most deserve it, for he that
lives well cannot be despised.
  "Many other evils infest private life. Some are the slaves
of servants whom they have trusted with their affairs. Some
are kept in continual anxiety by the caprice of rich
relations, whom they cannot please and dare not offend. Some
husbands are imperious and some wives perverse, and, as it is
always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom or
virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or
vice of one makes many miserable."
  "If such be the general effect of marriage," said the
Prince, "I shall for the future think it dangerous to connect
my interest with that of another, lest I should be unhappy by
my partner's fault."
  "I have met," said the Princess, "with many who live single
for that reason, but I never found that their prudence ought
to raise envy. They dream away their time without friendship,
without fondness, and are driven to rid themselves of the day,
for which they have no use, by childish amusements of vicious
delights. They act as beings under the constant sense of some
known inferiority that fills their minds with rancour and
their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home and
malevolent abroad, and, as the outlaws of human nature, make
it their business and their pleasure to disturb that society
which debars them from its privileges. To live without feeling
or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the
felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of
pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not a
retreat but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains,
but celibacy has no pleasures."
  "What then is to be done?" said Rasselas. "The more we
inquire the less we can resolve. Surely he is most likely to
please himself that has no other inclination to regard."


                        CHAPTER XXVII

                 DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS

The conversation had a short pause. The Prince, having
considered his sister's observation, told her that she had
surveyed life with prejudice and supposed misery where she did
not find it. "Your narrative," says he, "throws yet a darker
gloom upon the prospects of futurity. The predictions of Imlac
were but faint sketches of the evils painted by Nekayah. I
have been lately convinced that quiet is not the daughter of
grandeur or of power; that her presence is not to be bought by
wealth nor enforced by conquest. It is evident that as any man
acts in a wider compass he must be more exposed to opposition
from enmity or miscarriage from chance. Whoever has many to
please or to govern must use the ministry of many agents, some
of whom will be wicked and some ignorant, by some he will be
misled and by others betrayed. If he gratifies one he will
offend another; those that are not favoured will think
themselves injured, and since favours can be conferred but
upon few the greater number will always be discontented."
  "The discontent," said the Princess, "which is thus
unreasonable, I hope that I shall always have spirit to
despise and you power to repress."
  "Discontent," answered Rasselas, "will not always be without
reason under the most just and vigilant administration of
public affairs. None, however attentive, can always discover
that merit which indigence or faction may happen to obscure,
and none, however powerful, can always reward it. Yet he that
sees inferior desert advanced above him will naturally impute
that preference to partiality or caprice, and indeed it can
scarcely be hoped that any man, however magnanimous by Nature
or exalted by condition, will be able to persist for ever in
fixed and inexorable justice of distribution: he will
sometimes indulge his own affection and sometimes those of his
favourites; he will permit some to please him who can never
serve him; he will discover in those whom he loves qualities
which in reality they do not possess, and to those from whom
he receives pleasure he will in his turn endeavour to give it.
Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail which were
purchased by money or by the more destructive bribery of
flattery and servility.
  "He that hath much to do will do something wrong, and of
that wrong must suffer the consequences, and yet, when such
numbers are to judge of his conduct, the bad will censure and
obstruct him by malevolence and the good sometimes by mistake.
  "The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes
of happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled
from thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid
obscurity. For what can hinder the satisfaction or intercept
the expectations of him whose abilities are adequate to his
employments, who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of
his influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he
trusts, and whom none are tempted to deceive by hope of fear?
Surely he has nothing to do but love and to be loved; to be
virtuous and to be happy."
  "Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect
goodness," said Nekayah, "this world will never afford an
opportunity of deciding. But this, at least, may be
maintained, that we do not always find visible happiness in
proportion to visible virtue. All natural and almost all
political evils are incident alike to the bad and good; they
are confounded in the misery of a famine; they sink together
in a tempest and are driven together from their country by
invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of
conscience and a steady prospect of a happier state; this may
enable us to endure calamity with patience, but remember that
patience must oppose pain."


                        CHAPTER XXVIII

             RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR
                         CONVERSATION

"Dear Princess," said Rasselas, "you fall into the common
errors of exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a familiar
disquisition examples of national calamities and scenes of
extensive misery which are found in books rather than in the
world, and which, as they are horrid, are ordained to be rare.
Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life
by misrepresentations. I cannot bear that querulous eloquence
which threatens every city with a siege like that of
Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on every flight of locust,
and suspends pestilence on the wing of every blast that issues
from the south.
  "On necessary and inevitable evils which overwhelm kingdoms
at once all disputation is vain; when they happen they must be
endured. But it is evident that these bursts of universal
distress are more dreaded than felt; thousands and tens of
thousands flourish in youth and wither in age, without the
knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and share the same
pleasures and vexations, whether their kings are mild or
cruel, whether the armies of their country pursue their
enemies or retreat before them. While Courts are disturbed
with intestine competitions and ambassadors are negotiating in
foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil and the
husbandman drives his plough forward; the necessaries of life
are required and obtained, and the successive business of the
season continues to make its wonted revolutions.
  "Let us cease to consider what perhaps may never happen, and
what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation.
We will not endeavour to modify the motions of the elements or
to fix the destiny of kingdoms. It is our business to consider
what beings like us may perform, each labouring for his own
happiness by promoting within his circle, however narrow, the
happiness of others.
  "Marriage is evidently the dictate of Nature; men and women
were made to be the companions of each other, and therefore I
cannot be persuaded but that marriage is one of the means of
happiness."
  "I know not," said the Princess, "whether marriage be more
than one of the innumerable modes of human misery. When I see
and reckon the various forms of connubial infelicity, the
unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversities of
temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of
contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses, the
obstinate contest of disagreeing virtues where both are
supported by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes
disposed to think, with the severer casuists of most nations,
that marriage is rather permitted than approved, and that
none, but by the instigation of a passion too much indulged,
entangle themselves with indissoluble compact."
  "You seem to forget," replied Rasselas, "that you have, even
now, represented celibacy as less happy than marriage. Both
conditions may be bad, but they cannot both be worse. Thus it
happens, when wrong opinions are entertained, that they
mutually destroy each other and leave the mind open to truth."
  "I did not expect," answered the Princess, "to hear that
imputed to falsehood which is the consequence only of frailty.
To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with
exactness objects vast in their extent and various in their
parts. When we see or conceive the whole at once, we readily
note the discriminations and decide the preference, but of two
systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any human being
in its full compass of magnitude and multiplicity of
complication, where is the wonder that, judging of the whole
by parts, I am alternately affected by one and the other as
either presses on my memory or fancy? We differ from ourselves
just as we differ from each other when we see only part of the
question, as in the multifarious relations of politics and
morality, but when we perceive the whole at once, as in
numerical computations, all agree in one judgement, and none
ever varies in his opinion."
  "Let us not add," said the Prince, "to the other evils of
life the bitterness of controversy, nor endeavour to vie with
each other in subtilties of argument. We are employed in a
search of which both are equally to enjoy the success or
suffer by the miscarriage; it is therefore fit that we assist
each other. You surely conclude too hastily from the
infelicity of marriage against its institution; will not the
misery of life prove equally that life cannot be the gift of
Heaven? The world must be peopled by marriage or peopled
without it."
  "How the world is to be peopled," returned Nekayah, "is not
my care and need not be yours. I see no danger that the
present generation should omit to leave successors behind
them; we are not now inquiring for the world, but for
ourselves."


                         CHAPTER XXIX

              THE DEBATE ON MARRIAGE (continued)

"The good of the whole," says Rasselas, "is the same with the
good of all its parts. If marriage be best for mankind, it
must be evidently best for individuals; or a permanent and
necessary duty must be the cause of evil, and some must be
inevitably sacrificed to the convenience of others. In the
estimate which you have made of the two states, it appears
that the incommodities of a single life are in a great measure
necessary and certain, but those of the conjugal state
accidental and avoidable. I cannot forbear to flatter myself
that prudence and benevolence will make marriage happy. The
general folly of mankind is cause of general complaint. What
can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a
choice made in the immaturity of youth, without foresight,
without inquiry after conformity of opinions, similarity of
manners, rectitude of judgement, or purity of sentiment?
  "Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden,
meeting by chance or brought together by artifice, exchange
glances, reciprocate civilities, go home and dream of one
another. Having little to divert attention or diversify
thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and
therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They
marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness
before had concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and
charge Nature with cruelty.
  "From those early marriages proceeds likewise the rivalry of
parents and children; the son is eager to enjoy the world
before the father is willing to forsake it, and there is
hardly room at once for two generations. The daughter begins
to bloom before the mother can be content to fade, and neither
can forbear to wish for the absence of the other.
  "Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation
and delay which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice. In
the variety and jollity of youthful pleasures, life may be
well enough supported without the help of a partner. Longer
time will increase experience, and wider views will allow
better opportunities of inquiry and selection; one advantage
at least will be certain, the parents will be visibly older
than their children."
  "What reason cannot collect," 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 happy. This is a question too important to be
neglected; and I have often proposed it to those whose
accuracy of remark and comprehensiveness of knowledge made
their suffrages worthy of regard. They have generally
determined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to suspend
their fate upon each other at a time when opinions are fixed
and habits are established, when friendships have been
contracted on both sides, when life has been planned into
method, and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its
own prospects.
  "It is scarcely possible that two travelling through the
world under the conduct of chance should have been both
directed to the same path, and it will not often happen that
either will quit the track which custom has made pleasing.
When the desultory levity of youth has settled into
regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride ashamed to yield, or
obstinacy delighting to contend. And even though mutual esteem
produces mutual desire to please, time itself, as it modifies
unchangeably the external mien, determines likewise the
direction of the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to
the manners. Long customs are not easily broken; he that
attempts to change the course of his own life very often
labours in vain, and how shall we do that for others which we
are seldom able to do for ourselves?"
  "But surely," interposed the Prince, "you suppose the chief
motive of choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I shall seek
a wife, it shall be my first question whether she be willing
to be led by reason."
  "Thus it is," said Nekayah, "that philosophers are deceived.
There are a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can
decide; questions that elude investigation, and make logic
ridiculous; cases where something must be done, and where
little can be said. Consider the state of mankind, and inquire
how few can be supposed to act with all the reasons of action
present to their minds. Wretched would be the pair, above all
names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by
reason every morning all the minute details of a domestic day.
  "Those who marry at an advanced age will probably escape the
encroachments of their children, but in the diminution of this
advantage they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and
helpless, to a guardian's mercy; or if that should not happen,
they must at least go out of the world before they see those
whom they love best either wise or great.
  "From their children, if they have less to fear, they have
less also to hope; and they lose without equivalent the joys
of early love, and the convenience of uniting manners pliant
and minds susceptible of new impressions, which might wear
away their dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as soft bodies
by continual attrition conform their surfaces to each other,
  "I believe it will be found that those who marry late are
best pleased with their children, and those who marry early
with their partners."
  "The union of two affections," said Rasselas, "would produce
all that could be wished. Perhaps there is a time when
marriage might unite them - a time neither too early for the
father nor too late for the husband."
  "Every hour," answered the Princess, "confirms my prejudice
in favour of the position so often uttered by the mouth of
Imlac, that `Nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on
the left.' Those conditions which flatter hope and attract
desire are so constituted that as we approach one we recede
from another. There are good so opposed that we cannot seize
both, but by too much prudence may pass between them at too
great a distance to reach either. This is often the fate of
long consideration; he does nothing who endeavours to do more
than is allowed to humanity. Flatter not yourself with
contrarieties of pleasure. Of the blessings set before you
make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits
of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of
the spring; no man can at the same time fill his cup from the
source and from the mouth of the Nile."


                         CHAPTER XXX

          IMLAC ENTERS, AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION

Here Imlac entered, and interrupted them. "Imlac," said
Rasselas, "I have been taking from the Princess the dismal
history of private life, and am almost discouraged from
further search."
  "It seems to me," said Imlac, "that while you are making the
choice of life you neglect to live. You wander about a single
city, which, however large and diversified, can now afford few
novelties, and forget that you are in a country famous among
the earliest monarchies for the power and wisdom of its
inhabitants - a country where the sciences first dawned that
illuminate the world, and beyond which the arts cannot be
traced of civil society or domestic life.
  "The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of
industry and power before which all European magnificence is
confessed to fade away. The ruins of their architecture are
the schools of modern builders; and from the wonders which
time has spared we may conjecture, though uncertainly, what it
has destroyed."
  "My curiosity," said Rasselas, "does not very strongly lead
me to survey piles of stone or mounds of earth. My business is
with man. I came hither, not to measure fragments of temples
or trace choked aqueducts, but to look upon the various scenes
of the present world."
  "The things that are now before us," said the Princess,
"require attention, and deserve it. What have I to do with the
heroes or the monuments of ancient times - with times which
can never return, and heroes whose form of life was different
from all that the present condition of mankind requires or
allows?"
  "To know anything," returned the poet, "we must know its
effects; to see men, we must see their works, that we may
learn what reason has dictated or passion has excited, and
find what are the most powerful motives of action. To judge
rightly of the present, we must oppose it to the past; for all
judgement is comparative, and of the future nothing can be
known. The truth is that no mind is much employed upon the
present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our
moments. Our passions are joy and grief, love and hatred, hope
and fear. Of joy and grief the past is the object, and the
future of hope and fear; even love and hatred respect the
past, for the cause must have been before the effect.
  "The present state of things is the consequence of the
former; and it is natural to inquire what were the sources of
the good that we enjoy, or the evils that we suffer. If we act
only for ourselves, to neglect the study of history is not
prudent. If we are entrusted with the care of others, it is
not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he
may properly be charged with evil who refused to learn how he
might prevent it.
  "There is no part of history so generally useful as that
which relates to the progress of the human mind, the gradual
improvement of reason, the successive advances of science, the
vicissitudes of learning and ignorance (which are the light
and darkness of thinking beings), the extinction and
resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual
world. If accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly the
business of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not to be
neglected; those who have kingdoms to govern have
understandings to cultivate.
  "Example is always more efficacious than precept. A soldier
is formed in war, and a painter must copy pictures. In this,
contemplative life has the advantage. Great actions are seldom
seen, but the labours of art are always at hand for those who
desire to know what art has been able to perform.
  "When the eye or the imagination is struck with any uncommon
work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by
which it was performed. Here begins the true use of such
contemplation. We enlarge our comprehension by new ideas, and
perhaps recover some art lost to mankind, or learn what is
less perfectly known in our country. At least we compare our
own with former times, and either rejoice at our improvements,
or, what is the first motion towards good, discover our
defects."
  "I am willing," said the Prince, "to see all that can
deserve my search."
  "And I," said the Princess, "shall rejoice to learn
something of the manners of antiquity."
  "The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and one of
the most bulky works of manual industry," said Imlac, "are the
Pyramids: fabrics raised before the time of history, and of
which the earliest narratives afford us only uncertain
traditions. Of these the greatest is still standing, very
little injured by time."
  "Let us visit them to-morrow," said Nekayah. "I have often
heard of the Pyramids, and shall not rest till I have seen
them, within and without, with my own eyes."


                         CHAPTER XXXI

                   THEY VISIT THE PYRAMIDS

The resolution being thus taken, they set out the next day.
They laid tents upon their camels, being resolved to stay
among the Pyramids till their curiosity was fully satisfied.
They travelled gently, turned aside to everything remarkable,
stopped from time to time and conversed with the inhabitants,
and observed the various appearances of towns ruined and
inhabited, of wild and cultivated nature.
  When they came to the Great Pyramid they were astonished at
the extent of the base and the height of the top. Imlac
explained to them the principles upon which the pyramidal form
was chosen for a fabric intended to co-extend its duration
with that of the world: he showed that its gradual diminution
gave it such stability as defeated all the common attacks of
the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by earthquakes
themselves, the least resistible of natural violence. A
concussion that should shatter the pyramid would threaten the
dissolution of the continent.
  They measured all its dimensions, and pitched their tents at
its foot. Next day they prepared to enter its interior
apartments, and having hired the common guides, climbed up to
the first passage; when the favourite of the Princess, looking
into the cavity, stepped back and trembled. "Pekuah," said the
Princess, "of what art thou afraid?"
  "Of the narrow entrance," answered the lady, "and of the
dreadful gloom. I dare not enter a place which must surely be
inhabited by unquiet souls. The original possessors of those
dreadful vaults will start up before us, and perhaps shut us
in for ever." She spoke, and threw her arms round the neck of
her mistress.
  "If all your fear be of apparitions," said the Prince, "I
will promise you safety. There is no danger from the dead: he
that is once buried will be seen no more."
  "That the dead are seen no more," said Imlac, "I will not
undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried
testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people,
rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not
related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as
far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only
by its truth: those that have never heard of one another would
not have agreed on a tale which nothing but experience can
make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very
little weaken the general evidence, and some who deny it with
their tongues confess it by their fears.
  "Yet I do not mean to add new terrors to those which have
already seized upon Pekuah. There can be no reason why
spectres should haunt the Pyramid more than other places, or
why they should have power or will to hurt innocence and
purity. Our entrance is no violation of their privileges; we
can take nothing from them; how, then, can we offend them?"
  "My dear Pekuah," said the Princess, "I will always go
before you, and Imlac shall follow you. Remember that you are
the companion of the Princess of Abyssinia."
  "If the Princess is pleased that her servant should die,"
returned the lady, "let her command some death less dreadful
than enclosure in this horrid cavern. You know I dare not
disobey you - I must go if you command me; but if I once
enter, I never shall come back."
  The Princess saw that her fear was too strong for
expostulation or reproof, and, embracing her, told her that
she should stay in the tent till their return. Pekuah was not
yet satisfied, but entreated the Princess not to pursue so
dreadful a purpose as that of entering the recesses of the
Pyramids. "Though I cannot teach courage," said Nekayah, "I
must not learn cowardice, nor leave at last undone what I came
hither only to do."


                        CHAPTER XXXII

                    THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID

Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered the
Pyramid. They passed through the galleries, surveyed the
vaults of marble, and examined the chest in which the body of
the founder is supposed to have been deposited. They then sat
down in one of the most spacious chambers to rest awhile
before they attempted to return.
  "We have now," said Imlac, "gratified our minds with an
exact view of the greatest work of man, except the wall of
China.
  "Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive. It
secured a wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of
barbarians, whose unskilfulness in the arts made it easier for
them to supply their wants by rapine than by industry, and who
from time to time poured in upon the inhabitants of peaceful
commerce as vultures descend upon domestic fowl. Their
celerity and fierceness made the wall necessary, and their
ignorance made it efficacious.
  "But for the Pyramids, no reason has ever been given
adequate to the cost and labour of the work. The narrowness of
the chambers proves that it could afford no retreat from
enemies, and treasures might have been reposited at far less
expense with equal security. It seems to have been erected
only in compliance with that hunger of imagination which preys
incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some
employment. Those who have already all that they can enjoy
must enlarge their desires. He that has built for use till use
is supplied must begin to build for vanity, and extend his
plan to the utmost power of human performance that he may not
be soon reduced to form another wish,
  "I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the
insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king whose power is
unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary
wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyramid,
the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to
amuse the tediousness of declining life by seeing thousands
labouring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid
upon another. Whoever thou art that, not content with a
moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence,
and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of
novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids,
and confess thy folly!"


                        CHAPTER XXXIII

            THE PRINCESS MEETS WITH AN UNEXPECTED
                          MISFORTUNE

They rose up, and returned through the cavity at which they
had entered; and the Princess prepared for her favourite a
long narrative of dark labyrinths and costly rooms, and of the
different impressions which the varieties of the way had made
upon her. But when they came to their train, they found every
one silent and dejected: the men discovered shame and fear in
their countenances, and the women were weeping in their tents.
  What had happened they did not try to conjecture, but
immediately inquired. "You had scarcely entered into the
Pyramid," said one of the attendants, "when a troop of Arabs
rushed upon us: we were too few to resist them, and too slow
to escape. They were about to search the tents, set us on our
camels, and drive us along before them, when the approach of
some Turkish horsemen put them to flight: but they seized the
Lady Pekuah with her two maids, and carried them away: the
Turks are now pursuing them by our instigation, but I fear
they will not be able to overtake them."
  The Princess was overpowered with surprise and grief.
Rasselas, in the first heat of his resentment, ordered his
servants to follow him, and prepared to pursue the robbers
with his sabre in his hand. "Sir," said Imlac, "what can you
hope from violence or valour? The Arabs are mounted on horses
trained to battle and retreat; we have only beasts of burden.
By leaving our present station we may lose the Princess, but
cannot hope to regain Pekuah."
  In a short time the Turks returned, having not been able to
reach the enemy. The Princess burst out into new lamentations,
and Rasselas could scarcely forbear to reproach them with
cowardice; but Imlac was of opinion that the escape of the
Arabs was no addition to their misfortunes, for perhaps they
would have killed their captives rather than have resigned
them.


                        CHAPTER XXXIV

             THEY RETURN TO CAIRO WITHOUT PEKUAH

There was nothing to be hoped from longer stay. They returned
to Cairo, repenting of their curiosity, censuring the
negligence of the government, lamenting their own rashness,
which had neglected to procure a guard, imagining many
expedients by which the loss of Pekuah might have been
prevented, and resolving to do something for her recovery,
though none could find anything proper to be done.
  Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women attempted to
comfort her by telling her that all had their troubles, and
that Lady Pekuah had enjoyed much happiness in the world for a
long time, and might reasonably expect a change of fortune.
They hoped that some good would befall her wheresoever she
was, and that their mistress would find another friend who
might supply her place.
  The Princess made them no answer; and they continued the
form of condolence, not much grieved in their hearts that the
favourite was lost.
  Next day the Prince presented to the Bassa a memorial of the
wrong which he had suffered, and a petition for redress. The
Bassa threatened to punish the robbers, but did not attempt to
catch them; nor indeed could any account or description be
given by which he might direct the pursuit.
  It soon appeared that nothing would be done by authority.
Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they
can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set
themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently
forget the request when they lose sight of the petitioner.
  Imlac then endeavoured to gain some intelligence by private
agents. He found many who pretended an exact knowledge of all
the haunts of the Arabs, and to regular correspondence with
their chiefs, and who readily undertook the recovery of
Pekuah. Of these, some were furnished with money for their
journey, and came back no more; some were liberally paid for
accounts which a few days discovered to be false. But the
Princess would not suffer any means, however improbable, to be
left untried. While she was doing something, she kept her hope
alive. As one expedient failed, another was suggested; when
one messenger returned unsuccessful, another was despatched to
a different quarter.
  Two months had now passed, and of Pekuah nothing had been
heard; the hopes which they had endeavoured to raise in each
other grew more languid; and the Princess, when she saw
nothing more to be tried, sunk down inconsolable in hopeless
dejection. A thousand times she reproached herself with the
easy compliance by which she permitted her favourite to stay
behind her. "Had not my fondness," said she, "lessened my
authority, Pekuah had not dared to talk of her terrors. She
ought to have feared me more than spectres. A severe look
would have overpowered her; a peremptory command would have
compelled obedience. Why did foolish indulgence prevail upon
me? Why did I not speak, and refuse to hear?"
  "Great Princess," said Imlac, "do not reproach yourself for
your virtue, or consider that as blameable by which evil has
accidentally been caused. Your tenderness for the timidity of
Pekuah was generous and kind. When we act according to our
duty, we commit the offense to Him by whose laws our actions
are governed, and who will suffer none to be finally punished
for obedience. When, in prospect of some good, whether natural
or moral, we break the rules prescribed us, we withdraw from
the direction of superior wisdom, and take all consequences
upon ourselves. Man cannot so far know the connection of
causes and events as that he may venture to do wrong in order
to do right. When we pursue our end by lawful means, we may
always console our miscarriage by the hope of future
recompense. When we consult only our own policy, and attempt
to find a nearer way to good by overleaping the settled
boundaries of right and wrong, we cannot be happy even by
success, because we cannot escape the consciousness of our
fault; but if we miscarry, the disappointment is irremediably
embittered. How comfortless is the sorrow of him who feels at
once the pangs of guilt and the vexation of calamity which
guilt has brought upon him!
  "Consider, Princess, what would have been your condition if
the lady Pekuah had entreated to accompany you, and, being
compelled to stay in the tents, had been carried away; or how
would you have borne the thought if you had forced her into
the Pyramid, and she had died before you in agonies of
terror?"
  "Had either happened," said Nekayah, "I could not have
endured life till now; I should have been tortured to madness
by the remembrance of such cruelty, or must have pined away in
abhorrence of myself."
  "This, at least," said Imlac, "is the present reward of
virtuous conduct, that no unlucky consequence can oblige us to
repent it."


                         CHAPTER XXXV

          THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF PEKUAH

Nekayah, being thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil
is insupportable but that which is accompanied with
consciousness of wrong. She was from that time delivered from
the violence of tempestuous sorrow, and sank into silent
pensiveness and gloomy tranquillity. She sat from morning to
evening recollecting all that had been done or said by her
Pekuah, treasured up with care every trifle on which Pekuah
had set an accidental value, and which might recall to mind
any little incident or careless conversation. The sentiments
of her whom she now expected to see no more were treasured in
her memory as rules of life, and she deliberated to no other
end than to conjecture on any occasion what would have been
the opinion and counsel of Pekuah.
  The women by whom she was attended knew nothing of her real
condition, and therefore she could not talk to them but with
caution and reserve. She began to remit her curiosity, having
no great desire to collect notions which she had no
convenience of uttering. Rasselas endeavoured first to comfort
and afterwards to divert her; he hired musicians, to whom she
seemed to listen, but did not hear them; and procured masters
to instruct her in various arts, whose lectures, when they
visited her again, were again to be repeated. She had lost her
taste of pleasure and her ambition of excellence; and her
mind, though forced into short excursions, always recurred to
the image of her friend.
  Imlac was every morning earnestly enjoined to renew his
enquiries, and was asked every night whether he had yet heard
of Pekuah; till, not being able to return the Princess the
answer that she desired, he was less and less willing to come
into her presence. She observed his backwardness, and
commanded him to attend her. "You are not," said she, "to
confound impatience with resentment, or to suppose that I
charge you with negligence because I repine at your
unsuccessfulness. I do not much wonder at your absence. I know
that the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all naturally
avoid the contagion of misery. To hear complaints is wearisome
alike to the wretched and the happy; for who would cloud by
adventitious grief the short gleams of gaiety which life
allows us, or who that is struggling under his own evils will
add to them the miseries of another?
  "The time is at hand when none shall be disturbed any longer
by the sighs of Nekayah: my search after happiness is now at
an end. I am resolved to retire from the world, with all its
flatteries and deceits, and will hide myself in solitude,
without any other care than to compose my thoughts and
regulate my hours by a constant succession of innocent
occupations, till, with a mind purified from earthly desires,
I shall enter into that state to which all are hastening, and
in which I hope again to enjoy the friendship of Pekuah."
  "Do not entangle your mind," said Imlac, "by irrevocable
determinations, nor increase the burden of life by a voluntary
accumulation of misery. The weariness of retirement will
continue to increase when the loss of Pekuah is forgot. That
you have been deprived of one pleasure is no very good reason
for rejection of the rest."
  "Since Pekuah was taken from me," said the Princess, "I have
no pleasure to reject or to retain. She that has no one to
love or trust has little to hope. She wants the radical
principle of happiness. We may perhaps allow that what
satisfaction this world can afford must arise from the
conjunction of wealth, knowledge, and goodness. Wealth is
nothing but as it is bestowed, and knowledge nothing but as it
is communicated. They must therefore be imparted to others,
and to whom could I now delight to impart them? Goodness
affords the only comfort which can be enjoyed without a
partner, and goodness may be practised in retirement."
  "How far solitude may admit goodness or advance it, I shall
not," replied Imlac, "dispute at present. Remember the
confession of the pious hermit. You will wish to return into
the world when the image of your companion has left your
thoughts."
  "That time," said Nekayah, "will never come. The generous
frankness, the modest obsequiousness and the faithful secrecy
of my dear Pekuah will always be more missed as I shall live
longer to see vice and folly."
  "The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity," said
Imlac, "is like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the
new-created earth, who, when the first night came upon them,
supposed that day would never return. When the clouds of
sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can
imagine how they will be dispelled; yet a new day succeeded to
the night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of ease.
But they who restrained themselves from receiving comfort do
as the savages would have done had they put out their eyes
when it was dark. Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual
flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired. To
lose much at once is inconvenient to either, but while the
vital power remains uninjured, nature will find the means of
reparation. Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the
eye; and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we
leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we
approach increasing in magnitude. Do not suffer life to
stagnate: it will grow muddy for want of motion; commit
yourself again to the current of the world; Pekuah will vanish
by degrees; you will meet in your way some other favourite, or
learn to diffuse yourself in general conversation."
  "At least," said the Prince, "do not despair before all
remedies have been tried. The enquiry after the unfortunate
lady is still continued, and shall be carried on with yet
greater diligence, on condition that you will promise to wait
a year for the event, without any unalterable resolution."
  Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the
promise to her brother, who had been obliged by Imlac to
require it. Imlac had, indeed, no great hope of regaining
Pekuah; but he supposed that if he could secure the interval
of a year, the Princess would be then in no danger of a
cloister.


                        CHAPTER XXXVI

           PEKUAH IS STILL REMEMBERED. THE PROGRESS
                          OF SORROW

Nekayah, seeing that nothing was omitted for the recovery of
her favourite, and having by her promise set her intention of
retirement at a distance, began imperceptibly to return to
common cares and common pleasures. She rejoiced without her
own consent at the suspension of her sorrows, and sometimes
caught herself with indignation in the act of turning away her
mind from the remembrance of her whom yet she resolved never
to forget.
  She then appointed a certain hour of the day for meditation
on the merits and fondness of Pekuah, and for some weeks
retired constantly at the time fixed, and returned with her
eyes swollen and her countenance clouded. By degrees she grew
less scrupulous, and suffered any important and pressing
avocation to delay the tribute of daily tears. She then
yielded to less occasions, and sometimes forgot what she was
indeed afraid to remember, and at last wholly released herself
from the duty of periodical affliction.
  Her real love of Pekuah was not yet diminished. A thousand
occurrences brought her back to memory and a thousand wants,
which nothing but the confidence of friendship can supply,
made her frequently regretted. She therefore solicited Imlac
never to desist from inquiry, and to leave no art of
intelligence untried, that at least she might have the comfort
of knowing that she did not suffer by negligence or
sluggishness. "Yet what," said she, "is to be expected from
our pursuit of happiness, when we find the state of life to be
such that happiness itself is the cause of misery? Why should
we endeavour to attain that of which the possession cannot be
secured? I shall henceforth fear to yield my heart to
excellence, however bright, or to fondness, however tender,
lest I should lose again what I have lost in Pekuah."


                        CHAPTER XXXVII

              THE PRINCESS HEARS NEWS OF PEKUAH

In seven months one of the messengers who had been sent away
upon the day when the promise was drawn from the Princess,
returned, after many unsuccessful rambles, from the borders of
Nubia, with an account that Pekuah was in the hands of an Arab
chief, who possessed a castle or fortress on the extremity of
Egypt. The Arab, whose revenue was plunder, was willing to
restore her with her two attendants, for two hundred ounces of
gold.
  The price was no subject of debate. The Princess was in
ecstasies when she heard that her favourite was alive, and
might so cheaply be ransomed. She could not think of delaying
for a moment Pekuah's happiness or her own, but entreated her
brother to send back the messenger with the sum required.
Imlac, being consulted, was not very confident of the veracity
of the relater, and was still more doubtful of the Arab's
faith, who might, if he were too liberally trusted, detain at
once the money and the captives. He thought it dangerous to
put themselves in the power of the Arab by going into his
district; and could not expect that the rover would so much
expose himself as to come into the lower country, where he
might be seized by the forces of the Bassa.
  It is difficult to negotiate where neither will trust. But
Imlac, after some deliberation, directed the messenger to
propose that Pekuah should be conducted by ten horsemen to the
monastery of St Anthony, which is situated in the deserts of
Upper Egypt, where she should be met by the same number, and
her ransom should be paid.
  That no time might be lost, as they expected that the
proposal would not be refused, they immediately began their
journey to the monastery; and when they arrived, Imlac went
forward with the former messenger to the Arab's fortress.
Rasselas was desirous to go with them; but neither his sister
nor Imlac would consent. The Arab, according to the custom of
his nation, observed the laws of hospitality with great
exactness to those who put themselves into his power, and in a
few days brought Pekuah with her maids, by easy journeys, to
the place appointed, where, receiving the stipulated price, he
restored her, with great respect, to liberty and her friends,
and undertook to conduct them back towards Cairo beyond all
danger of robbery or violence.
  The Princess and her favourite embraced each other with
transport too violent to be expressed, and went out together
to pour the tears of tenderness in secret, and exchange
professions of kindness and gratitude. After a few hours they
returned into the refectory of the convent, where, in the
presence of the prior and his brethren, the Prince required of
Pekuah the history of her adventures.


                       CHAPTER XXXVIII

              THE ADVENTURES OF THE LADY PEKUAH

"At what time and in what manner I was forced away," said
Pekuah, "your servants have told you. The suddenness of the
event struck me with surprise, and I was at first rather
stupefied than agitated with any passion of either fear or
sorrow. My confusion was increased by the speed and tumult of
our flight, while we were followed by the Turks, who, as it
seemed, soon despaired to overtake us, or were afraid of those
whom they made a show of menacing.
  "When the Arabs saw themselves out of danger, they slackened
their course; and as I was less harassed by external violence,
I began to feel more uneasiness in my mind. After some time we
stopped near a spring shaded with trees, in a pleasant meadow,
where we were set upon the ground, and offered such
refreshments as our masters were partaking. I was suffered to
sit with my maids apart from the rest, and none attempted to
comfort or insult us. Here I first began to feel the full
weight of my misery. The girls sat weeping in silence, and
from time to time looked on me for succour. I knew not to what
condition we were doomed, nor could conjecture where would be
the place of our captivity, or whence to draw my hope of
deliverance. I was in the hands of robbers and savages, and
had no reason to suppose that their pity was more than their
justice, or that they would forbear the gratification of any
ardour of desire or caprice of cruelty. I, however, kissed my
maids, and endeavoured to pacify them by remarking that we
were yet treated with decency, and that since we were now
carried beyond pursuit, there was no danger of violence to our
lives.
  "When we were to be set again on horseback, my maids clung
round me, and refused to be parted; but I commanded them not
to irritate those who had us in their power. We travelled the
remaining part of the day through an unfrequented and pathless
country, and came by moonlight to the side of a hill, where
the rest of the troop was stationed. Their tents were pitched
and their fires kindled, and our chief was welcomed as a man
much beloved by his dependents.
  "We were received into a large tent, where we found women
who had attended their husbands in the expedition. They set
before us the supper which they had provided, and I ate it
rather to encourage my maids than to comply with any appetite
of my own. When the meat was taken away, they spread the
carpets for repose. I was weary, and hoped to find in sleep
that remission of distress which nature seldom denies.
Ordering myself, therefore, to be undressed, I observed that
the women looked very earnestly upon me, not expecting, I
suppose, to see me so submissively attended. When my upper
vest was taken off, they were apparently struck with the
splendour of my clothes, and one of them timorously laid her
hand upon the embroidery. She then went out, and in a short
time came back with another woman, who seemed to be of higher
rank and greater authority. She did, at her entrance, the
usual act of reverence, and, taking me by the hand, placed me
in a smaller tent, spread with finer carpets, where I spent
the night quietly with my maids.
  "In the morning, as I was sitting on the grass, the chief of
the troop came towards me. I rose up to receive him, and he
bowed with great respect. `Illustrious lady,' said he, `my
fortune is better than I had presumed to hope: I am told by my
women that I have a princess in my camp.' `Sir,' answered I,
`your women have deceived themselves and you; I am not a
princess, but an unhappy stranger who intended soon to have
left this country, in which I am now to be imprisoned for
ever.' `Whoever or whencesoever you are,' returned the Arab,
`your dress and that of your servants show your rank to be
high and your wealth to be great. Why should you, who can so
easily procure your ransom, think yourself in danger of
perpetual captivity? The purpose of my incursions is to
increase my riches, or, more properly, to gather tribute. The
sons of Ishmael are the natural and hereditary lords of this
part of the continent, which is usurped by late invaders and
low-born tyrants, from whom we are compelled to take by the
sword what is denied to justice. The violence of war admits no
distinction: the lance that is lifted at guilt and power will
sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.'
  "`How little,' said I, `did I expect that yesterday it
should have fallen upon me!'
  "`Misfortune,' answered the Arab, `should always be
expected. If the eye of hostility could learn reverence or
pity, excellence like yours had been exempt from injury. But
the angels of affliction spread their toils alike for the
virtuous and the wicked, for the mighty and the mean. Do not
be disconsolate; I am not one of the lawless and cruel rovers
of the desert; I know the rules of civil life; I will fix your
ransom, give a passport to your messenger, and perform my
stipulation with nice punctuality.'
  "You will easily believe that I was pleased with his
courtesy, and finding that his predominant passion was desire
for money, I began now to think my danger less, for I knew
that no sum would be thought too great for the release of
Pekuah. I told him that he should have no reason to charge me
with ingratitude if I was used with kindness, and that any
ransom which could be expected for a maid of common rank would
be paid, but that he must not persist to rate me as a
princess. He said he would consider what he should demand, and
then, smiling, bowed and retired.
  "Soon after the women came about me, each contending to be
more officious than the other, and my maids themselves were
served with reverence. We travelled onward by short journeys.
On the fourth day the chief told me that my ransom must be two
hundred ounces of gold, which I not only promised him, but
told him that I would add fifty more if I and my maids were
honourably treated.
  "I never knew the power of gold before. From that time I was
the leader of the troop. The march of every day was longer or
shorter as I commanded, and the tents were pitched where I
chose to rest. We now had camels and other conveniences for
travel; my own women were always at my side, and I amused
myself with observing the manners of the vagrant nations, and
with viewing remains of ancient edifices, with which these
deserted countries appear to have been in some distant age
lavishly embellished.
  "The chief of the band was a man far from illiterate: he was
able to travel by the stars or the compass, and had marked in
his erratic expeditions such places as are most worthy the
notice of a passenger. He observed to me that `buildings are
always best preserved in places little frequented and
difficult of access; for when once a country declines from its
primitive splendour, the more inhabitants are left, the
quicker ruin will be made. Walls supply stones more easily
than quarries; and palaces and temples will be demolished to
make stables of granite and cottages of porphyry.'"


                        CHAPTER XXXIX

             THE ADVENTURES OF PEKUAH (continued)

"We wandered about in this manner for some weeks, either, as
our chief pretended, for my gratification, or, as I rather
suspected, for some convenience of his own. I endeavoured to
appear contented where sullenness and resentment would have
been of no use, and that endeavour conduced much to the
calmness of my mind; but my heart was always with Nekayah, and
the troubles of the night much overbalanced the amusements of
the day. My women, who threw all their cares upon their
mistress, set their minds at ease from the time when they saw
me treated with respect, and gave themselves up to the
incidental alleviations of our fatigue without solicitude or
sorrow. I was pleased with their pleasure, and animated with
their confidence. My condition had lost much of its terror,
since I found that the Arab ranged the country merely to get
riches. Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice: other
intellectual distempers are different in different
constitutions of mind; that which soothes the pride of one
will offend the pride of another; but to the favour of the
covetous there is a ready way - bring money, and nothing is
denied.
  "At last we came to the dwelling of our chief; a strong and
spacious house, built with stone in an island of the Nile,
which lies, as I was told, under the tropic. `Lady,' said the
Arab, `you shall rest after your journey a few weeks in this
place, where you are to consider yourself as Sovereign. My
occupation is war: I have therefore chosen this obscure
residence, from which I can issue unexpected, and to which I
can retire unpursued. You may now repose in security: here are
few pleasures, but here is no danger.' He then led me into the
inner apartments, and seating me on the richest couch, bowed
to the ground.
  "His women, who considered me as a rival, looked on me with
malignity; but being so soon informed that I was a great lady
detained only for my ransom, they began to vie with each other
in obsequiousness and reverence.
  "Being again comforted with new assurances of speedy
liberty, I was for some days diverted from impatience by the
novelty of the place. The turrets overlooked the country to a
great distance, and afforded a view of many windings of the
stream. In the day I wandered from one place to another, as
the course of the sun varies the splendour of the prospect,
and saw many things which I had never seen before. The
crocodiles and river-horses are common in this unpeopled
region; and I often looked upon them with terror, though I
knew they could not hurt me. For some time I expected to see
mermaids and tritons, which, as Imlac has told me, the
European travellers have stationed in the Nile; but no such
beings ever appeared, and the Arab, when I inquired after
them, laughed at my credulity.
  "At night the Arab always attended me to a tower set apart
for celestial observations, where he endeavoured to teach me
the names and courses of the stars. I had no great inclination
to this study; but an appearance of attention was necessary to
please my instructor, who valued himself for his skill, and in
a little while I found some employment requisite to beguile
the tediousness of time, which was to be passed always among
the same objects. I was weary of looking in the morning on
things from which I had turned away weary in the evening: I
therefore was at last willing to observe the stars rather than
do nothing, but could not always compose my thoughts, and was
very often thinking on Nekayah when others imagined me
contemplating the sky. Soon after, the Arab went upon another
expedition, and then my only pleasure was to talk with my
maids about the accident by which we were carried away, and
the happiness we should all enjoy at the end of our
captivity."
  "There were women in your Arab's fortress," said the
Princess; "why did you not make them your companions, enjoy
their conversation, and partake their diversions? In a place
where they found business or amusement, why should you alone
sit corroded with idle melancholy? or why could you not bear
for a few months that condition to which they were condemned
for life?"
  "The diversions of the women," answered Pekuah, "were only
childish play, by which the mind accustomed to stronger
operations could not be kept busy. I could do all which they
delighted in doing by powers merely sensitive, while my
intellectual faculties were flown to Cairo. They ran from room
to room, as a bird hops from wire to wire in his cage. They
danced for the sake of motion, as lambs frisk in a meadow. One
sometimes pretended to be hurt that the rest might be alarmed,
or hid herself that another might seek her. Part of their time
passed in watching the progress of light bodies that floated
on the river, and part in marking the various forms into which
clouds broke in the sky.
  "Their business was only needlework, in which I and my maids
sometimes helped them; but you know that the mind will easily
straggle from the fingers, nor will you suspect that captivity
and absence from Nekayah could receive solace from silken
flowers.
  "Nor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their
conversation: for of what could they be expected to talk? They
had seen nothing, for they had lived from early youth in that
narrow spot: of what they had not seen they could have no
knowledge, for they could not read. They had no idea but of
the few things that were within their view, and had hardly
names for anything but their clothes and their food. As I bore
a superior character, I was often called to terminate their
quarrels, which I decided as equitably as I could. If it could
have amused me to hear the complaints of each against the
rest, I might have been often detained by long stories; but
the motives of their animosity were so small that I could not
listen without interrupting the tale."
  "How," said Rasselas, "can the Arab, whom you represented as
a man of more than common accomplishments, take any pleasure
in his seraglio, when it is filled only with women like these?
Are they exquisitely beautiful?"
  "They do not," said Pekuah, "want that unaffecting and
ignoble beauty which may subsist without sprightliness or
sublimity, without energy of thought or dignity of virtue. But
to a man like the Arab such beauty was only a flower casually
plucked and carelessly thrown away. Whatever pleasures he
might find among them, they were not those of friendship or
society. When they were playing about him he looked on them
with inattentive superiority; when they vied for his regard he
sometimes turned away disgusted. As they had no knowledge,
their talk could take nothing from the tediousness of life; as
they had no choice, their fondness, or appearance of fondness,
excited in him neither pride nor gratitude. He was not exalted
in his own esteem by the smiles of a woman who saw no other
man, nor was much obliged by that regard of which he could
never know the sincerity, and which he might often perceive to
be exerted not so much to delight him as to pain a rival. That
which he gave, and they received, as love, was only a careless
distribution of superfluous time, such love as man can bestow
upon that which he despises, such as has neither hope nor
fear, neither joy nor sorrow."
  "You have reason, lady, to think yourself happy," said
Imlac, "that you have been thus easily dismissed. How could a
mind, hungry for knowledge, be willing, in an intellectual
famine, to lose such a banquet as Pekuah's conversation?"
  "I am inclined to believe," said Pekuah, "that he was for
some time in suspense; for, notwithstanding his promise,
whenever I proposed to despatch a messenger to Cairo he found
some excuse for delay. While I was detained in his house he
made many incursions into the neighbouring countries, and
perhaps he would have refused to discharge me had his plunder
been equal to his wishes. He returned always courteous,
related his adventures, delighted to hear my observations, and
endeavoured to advance my acquaintance with the stars. When I
importuned him to send away my letters, he soothed me with
professions of honour and sincerity; and when I could no
longer be decently denied, put his troop again in motion, and
left me to govern in his absence. I was much afflicted by this
studied procrastination, and was sometimes afraid that I
should be forgotten; that you would leave Cairo, and I must
end my days in an island of the Nile.
  "I grew at last hopeless and dejected, and cared so little
to entertain him, that he for a while more frequently talked
with my maids. That he should fall in love with them or with
me, might have been equally fatal, and I was not much pleased
with the growing friendship. My anxiety was not for long, for,
as I recovered some degree of cheerfulness, he returned to me,
and I could not forbear to despise my former uneasiness.
  "He still delayed to send for my ransom, and would perhaps
never have determined had not your agent found his way to him.
The gold, which he would not fetch, he could not reject when
it was offered. He hastened to prepare for our journey hither,
like a man delivered from the pain of an intestine conflict. I
took leave of my companions in the house, who dismissed me
with cold indifference."
  Nekayah, having heard her favourite's relation, rose and
embraced her, and Rasselas gave her a hundred ounces of gold,
which she presented to the Arab for the fifty that were
promised.


                          CHAPTER XL

               THE HISTORY OF A MAN OF LEARNING

They returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased at finding
themselves together that none of them went much abroad. The
Prince began to love learning, and one day declared to Imlac
that he intended to devote himself to science and pass the
rest of his days in literary solitude.
  "Before you make your final choice," answered Imlac, "you
ought to examine its hazards, and converse with some of those
who are grown old in the company of themselves. I have just
left the observatory of one of the most learned astronomers in
the world, who has spent forty years in unwearied attention to
the motion and appearances of the celestial bodies, and has
drawn out his soul in endless calculations. He admits a few
friends once a month to hear his deductions and enjoy his
discoveries. I was introduced as a man of knowledge worthy of
his notice. Men of various ideas and fluent conversation are
commonly welcome to those whose thoughts have been long fixed
upon a single point, and who find the images of other things
stealing away. I delighted him with my remarks. He smiled at
the narrative of my travels, and was glad to forget the
constellations and descend for a moment into the lower world.
  "On the next day of vacation I renewed my visit and was so
fortunate as to please him again. He relaxed from that time
the severity of his rule, and permitted me to enter at my own
choice. I found him always busy, and always glad to be
relieved. As each knew much which the other was desirous of
learning, we exchanged our notions with great delight. I
perceived that I had every day more of his confidence, and
always found new cause of admiration in the profundity of his
mind. His comprehension is vast, his memory capacious and
retentive, his discourse is methodical, and his expression
clear.
  "His integrity and benevolence are equal to his learning.
His deepest researches and most favourite studies are
willingly interrupted for any opportunity of doing good by his
counsel or his riches. To his closest retreat, at his most
busy moments, all are admitted that want his assistance; `For
though I exclude idleness and pleasure, I will never,' says
he, `bar my doors against charity. To man is permitted the
contemplation of the skies, but the practice of virtue is
commanded.'"
  "Surely," said the Princess, "this man is happy."
  "I visited him," said Imlac, "with more and more frequency,
and was every time more enamoured of his conversation; he was
sublime without haughtiness, courteous without formality, and
communicative without ostentation. I was at first, great
Princess, of your opinion, thought him the happiest of
mankind, and often congratulated him on the blessing that he
enjoyed. He seemed to hear nothing with indifference but the
praises of his condition, to which he always returned a
general answer, and diverted the conversation to some other
topic.
  "Amidst this willingness to be pleased and labour to please,
I had quickly reason to imagine that some painful sentiment
pressed upon his mind. He often looked up earnestly towards
the sun, and let his voice fall in the midst of his discourse.
He would sometimes, when we were alone, gaze upon me in
silence with the air of a man who longed to speak what he was
yet resolved to suppress. He would often send for me with
vehement injunction of haste, though when I came to him he had
nothing extraordinary to say; and sometimes, when I was
leaving him, would call me back, pause a few moments, and then
dismiss me."


                         CHAPTER XLI

          THE ASTRONOMER DISCOVERS THE CAUSE OF HIS
                          UNEASINESS

"At last the time came when the secret burst his reserve. We
were sitting together last night in the turret of his house
watching the immersion of a satellite of Jupiter. A sudden
tempest clouded the sky and disappointed our observation. We
sat awhile silent in the dark, and then he addressed himself
to me in these words: `Imlac, I have long considered thy
friendship as the greatest blessing of my life. Integrity
without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without
integrity is dangerous and dreadful. I have found in thee all
the qualities requisite for trust - benevolence, experience,
and fortitude. I have long discharged an office which I must
soon quit at the call of Nature, and shall rejoice in the hour
of imbecility and pain to devolve it upon thee.'
  "I thought myself honoured by this testimony, and protested
that whatever could conduce to his happiness would add
likewise to mine.
  "`Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit.
I have possessed for five years the regulation of the weather
and the distribution of the seasons. The sun has listened to
my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction;
the clouds at my call have poured their waters, and the Nile
has overflowed at my command. I have restrained the rage of
the dog-star, and mitigated the fervours of the crab. The
winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have hitherto
refused my authority, and multitudes have perished by
equinoctial tempests which I found myself unable to prohibit
or restrain. I have administered this great office with exact
justice, and made to the different nations of the earth an
impartial dividend of rain and sunshine. What must have been
the misery of half the globe if I had limited the clouds to
particular regions, or confined the sun to either side of the
equator?'"


                         CHAPTER XLII

          THE OPINION OF THE ASTRONOMER IS EXPLAINED
                        AND JUSTIFIED

"I suppose he discovered in me, through the obscurity of the
room, some tokens of amazement and doubt, for after a short
pause he proceeded thus: -
  "`Not to be easily credited will neither surprise nor offend
me, for I am probably the first of human beings to whom this
trust has been imparted. Nor do I know whether to deem this
distinction a reward or punishment. Since I have possessed it
I have been far less happy than before, and nothing but the
consciousness of good intention could have enabled me to
support the weariness of unremitted vigilance.'
  "`How long, sir,' said I, `has this great office been in
your hands?'
  "`About ten years ago,' said he, `my daily observations of
the changes of the sky led me to consider whether, if I had
the power of the seasons, I could confer greater plenty upon
the inhabitants of the earth. This contemplation fastened on
my mind, and I sat days and nights in imaginary dominion,
pouring upon this country and that the showers of fertility,
and seconding every fall of rain with a due proportion of
sunshine. I had yet only the will to do good, and did not
imagine that I should ever have the power.
  "`One day as I was looking on the fields withering with
heat, I felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain
on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an
inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I commanded rain to
fall; and by comparing the time of my command with that of the
inundation, I found that the clouds had listened to my lips.'
  "`Might not some other cause,' said I, `produce this
concurrence? The Nile does not always rise on the same day.'
  "`Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, `that such
objections could escape me. I reasoned long against my own
conviction, and laboured against truth with the utmost
obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of madness, and should
not have dared to impart this secret but to a man like you,
capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impossible,
and the incredible from the false.'
  "`Why, sir,' said I, `do you call that incredible which you
know, or think you know, to be true?'
  "`Because,' said he, `I cannot prove it by any external
evidence; and I know too well the laws of demonstration to
think that my conviction ought to influence another, who
cannot, like me, be conscious of its force. I therefore shall
not attempt to gain credit by disputation. It is sufficient
that I feel this power that I have long possessed, and every
day exerted it. But the life of man is short; the infirmities
of age increase upon me, and the time will soon come when the
regulator of the year must mingle with the dust. The care of
appointing a successor has long disturbed me; the night and
the day have long been spent in comparisons of all the
characters which have come to my knowledge, and I have yet
found none so worthy as thyself.'"


                        CHAPTER XLIII

          THE ASTRONOMER LEAVES IMLAC HIS DIRECTIONS

"`Hear, therefore, what I shall impart with attention, such as
the welfare of a world requires. If the task of a king be
considered as difficult, who has the care only of a few
millions, to whom he cannot do much good or harm, what must be
the anxiety of him on whom depends the action of the elements
and the great gifts of light and heat? Hear me, therefore,
with attention.
  "`I have diligently considered the position of the earth and
the sun, and formed innumerable schemes, in which I changed
their situation. I have sometimes turned aside the axis of the
earth, and sometime varied the ecliptic of the sun, but I have
found it impossible to make a disposition by which the world
may be advantaged; what one region gains another loses by an
imaginable alteration, even without considering the distant
parts of the solar system with which we are acquainted. Do
not, therefore, in thy administration of the year, indulge thy
pride by innovation; do not please thyself with thinking that
thou canst make thyself renowned to all future ages by
disordering the seasons. The memory of mischief is no
desirable fame. Much less will it become thee to let kindness
or interest prevail. Never rob other countries of rain to pour
it on thine own. For us the Nile is sufficient.'
  "I promised that when I possessed the power I would use it
with inflexible integrity; and he dismissed me, pressing my
hand. `My heart,' said he, `will be now at rest, and my
benevolence will no more destroy my quiet; I have found a man
of wisdom and virtue, to whom I can cheerfully bequeath the
inheritance of the sun.'"
  The Prince heard this narration with very serious regard;
but the Princess smiled, and Pekuah convulsed herself with
laughter. "Ladies," said Imlac, "to mock the heaviest of human
afflictions is neither charitable nor wise. Few can attain
this man's knowledge and few practise his virtues, but all may
suffer his calamity. Of the uncertainties of our present
state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain
continuance of reason."
  The Princess was recollected, and the favourite was abashed.
Rasselas, more deeply affected, inquired of Imlac whether he
thought such maladies of the mind frequent, and how they were
contracted.


                         CHAPTER XLIV

           THE DANGEROUS PREVALENCE OF IMAGINATION

"Disorders of intellect," answered Imlac, "happen much more
often than superficial observers will easily believe. Perhaps
if we speak with rigorous exactness, no human mind is in its
right state. There is no man whose imagination does not
sometimes predominate over his reason who can regulate his
attention wholly by his will, and whose ideas will come and go
at his command. No man will be found in whose mind airy
notions do not sometimes tyrannise, and force him to hope or
fear beyond the limits of sober probability. All the power of
fancy over reason is a degree of insanity, but while this
power is such as we can control and repress it is not visible
to others, nor considered as any deprivation of the mental
faculties; it is not pronounced madness but when it becomes
ungovernable, and apparently influences speech or action.
  "To indulge the power of fiction and send imagination out
upon the wing is often the sport of those who delight too much
in silent speculation. When we are alone we are not always
busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long;
the ardour of inquiry will sometimes give way to idleness of
satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him must
find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself
what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then
expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all
imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he
should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible
enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion.
The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in
all combinations, and riots in delights which Nature and
fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.
  "In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention;
all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind,
in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite
conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she
is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign
of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious and in time
despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false
opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of
rapture or of anguish.
  "This, sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the
hermit has confessed not always to promote goodness, and the
astronomer's misery has proved to be not always propitious to
wisdom."
  "I will no more," said the favourite, "imagine myself the
Queen of Abyssinia. I have often spent the hours which the
Princess gave to my own disposal in adjusting ceremonies and
regulating the Court; I have repressed the pride of the
powerful and granted the petitions of the poor; I have built
new palaces in more happy situations, planted groves upon the
tops of mountains, and have exulted in the beneficence of
royalty, till, when the Princess entered, I had almost
forgotten to bow down before her."
  "And I," said the Princess, "will not allow myself any more
to play the shepherdess in my waking dreams. I have often
soothed my thoughts with the quiet and innocence of pastoral
employments, till I have in my chamber heard the winds whistle
and the sheep bleat; sometimes freed the lamb entangled in the
thicket, and sometimes with my crook encountered the wolf. I
have a dress like that of the village maids, which I put on to
help my imagination, and a pipe on which I play softly, and
suppose myself followed by my flocks."
  "I will confess," said the Prince, "an indulgence of
fantastic delight more dangerous than yours. I have frequently
endeavoured to imagine the possibility of a perfect
government, by which all wrong should be restrained, all vice
reformed, and all the subjects preserved in tranquillity and
innocence. This thought produced innumerable schemes of
reformation, and dictated many useful regulations and salutary
effects. This has been the sport and sometimes the labour of
my solitude, and I start when I think with how little anguish
I once supposed the death of my father and my brothers."
  "Such," said Imlac, "are the effects of visionary schemes.
When we first form them, we know them to be absurd, but
familiarise them by degrees, and in time lose sight of their
folly."


                         CHAPTER XLV

                THEY DISCOURSE WITH AN OLD MAN

The evening was now far past, and they rose to return home. As
they walked along the banks of the Nile, delighted with the
beams of the moon quivering on the water, they saw at a small
distance an old man whom the Prince had often heard in the
assembly of the sages. "Yonder," said he, "is one whose years
have calmed his passions, but not clouded his reason. Let us
close the disquisitions of the night by inquiring what are his
sentiments of his own state, that we may know whether youth
alone is to struggle with vexation, and whether any better
hope remains for the latter part of life."
  Here the sage approached and saluted them. They invited him
to join their walk, and prattled awhile as acquaintance that
had unexpectedly met one another. The old man was cheerful and
talkative, and the way seemed short in his company. He was
pleased to find himself not disregarded, accompanied them to
their house, and, at the Prince's request, entered with them.
They placed him in the seat of honour, and set wine and
conserves before him.
  "Sir," said the Princess, "an evening walk must give to a
man of learning like you pleasure which ignorance and youth
can hardly conceive. You know the qualities and the causes of
all that you behold - the laws by which the river flows, the
periods in which the planets perform their revolutions.
Everything must supply you with contemplation, and renew the
consciousness of your own dignity."
  "Lady," answered he, "let the gay and the vigorous expect
pleasure in their excursions; it is enough that age can attain
ease. To me the world has lost its novelty. I look round, and
see what I remember to have seen in happier days. I rest
against a tree, and consider that in the same shade I once
disputed upon the annual overflow of the Nile with a friend
who is now silent in the grave. I cast my eyes upwards, fix
them on the changing moon, and think with pain on the
vicissitudes of life. I have ceased to take much delight in
physical truth; for what have I to do with those things which
I am soon to leave?"
  "You may at least recreate yourself," said Imlac, "with the
recollection of an honourable and useful life, and enjoy the
praise which all agree to give you."
  "Praise," said the sage with a sigh, "is to an old man an
empty sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with the
reputation of her son, nor wife to partake the honours of her
husband. I have outlived my friends and my rivals. Nothing is
now of much importance; for I cannot extend my interest beyond
myself. Youth is delighted with applause, because it is
considered as the earnest of some future good, and because the
prospect of life is far extended; but to me, who am now
declining to decrepitude, there is little to be feared from
the malevolence of men, and yet less to be hoped from their
affection or esteem. Something they may yet take away, but
they can give me nothing. Riches would now be useless, and
high employment would be pain. My retrospect of life recalls
to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time
squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and
vacancy. I leave many great designs unattempted, and many
great attempts unfinished. My mind is burdened with no heavy
crime, and therefore I compose myself to tranquillity;
endeavour to abstract my thoughts from hopes and cares which,
though reason knows them to be vain, still try to keep their
old possession of the heart; expect, with serene humility,
that hour which nature cannot long delay, and hope to possess
in a better state that happiness which here I could not find,
and that virtue which here I have not attained."
  He arose and went away, leaving his audience not much elated
with the hope of long life. The Prince consoled himself with
remarking that it was not reasonable to be disappointed by
this account; for age had never been considered as the season
of felicity, and if it was possible to be easy in decline and
weakness, it was likely that the days of vigour might be
bright, if the evening could be calm.
  The Princess suspected that age was querulous and malignant,
and delighted to repress the expectations of those who are
newly entered into the world. She had seen the possessors of
estates look with envy on their heirs, and known many who
enjoyed pleasures no longer than they could confine it to
themselves.
  Pekuah conjectured that the man was older than he appeared,
and was willing to impute his complaints to delirious
dejection; or else supposed that he had been unfortunate, and
was therefore discontented. "For nothing," said she, "is more
common than to call our own condition the condition of life."
  Imlac, who had no desire to see them depressed, smiled at
the comforts which they could so readily procure to
themselves; and remembered that at the same age he was equally
fertile of consolatory expedients. He forebore to force upon
them unwelcome knowledge, which time itself would too soon
impress. The Princess and her lady retired; the madness of the
astronomer hung upon their minds; and they desired Imlac to
enter upon his office, and delay next morning the rising of
the sun.


                         CHAPTER XLVI

              THE PRINCESS AND PEKUAH VISIT THE
                          ASTRONOMER

The Princess and Pekuah, having talked in private of Imlac's
astronomer, thought his character at once so amiable and so
strange that they could not be satisfied without a nearer
knowledge, and Imlac was requested to find the means of
bringing them together.
  This was somewhat difficult. The philosopher had never
received any visits from women, though he lived in a city that
had in it many Europeans, who followed the manners of their
own countries, and many from other parts of the world, that
lived there with European liberty. The ladies would not be
refused, and several schemes were proposed for the
accomplishment of their design. It was proposed to introduce
them as strangers in distress, to whom the sage was always
accessible; but after some deliberation it appeared that by
this artifice no acquaintance could be formed, for their
conversation would be short, and they could not decently
importune him often. "This," said Rasselas, "is true; but I
have yet a stronger objection against the misrepresentation of
your state. I have always considered it as treason against the
great republic of human nature to make any man's virtues the
means of deceiving him, whether on great or little occasions.
All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence. When
the sage finds that you are not what you seemed, he will feel
the resentment natural to a man who, conscious of great
abilities, discovers that he has been tricked by
understandings meaner than his own, and perhaps the distrust
which he can never afterwards wholly lay aside may stop the
voice of counsel and close the hand of charity; and where will
you find the power of restoring his benefactions to mankind,
or his peace to himself?"
  To this no reply was attempted, and Imlac began to hope that
their curiosity would subside; but next day Pekuah told him
she had now found an honest pretence for a visit to the
astronomer, for she would solicit permission to continue under
him the studies in which she had been initiated by the Arab,
and the Princess might go with her, either as a
fellow-student, or because a woman could not decently come
alone. "I am afraid," said Imlac, "that he will soon be weary
of your company. Men advanced far in knowledge do not love to
repeat the elements of their art, and I am not certain that
even of the elements, as he will deliver them, connected with
inferences and mingled with reflections, you are a very
capable auditress." "That," said Pekuah, "must be my care. I
ask of you only to take me thither. My knowledge is perhaps
more than you imagine it, and by concurring always with his
opinions I shall make him think it greater than it is."
  The astronomer, in pursuance of this resolution, was told
that a foreign lady, travelling in search of knowledge, had
heard of his reputation, and was desirous to become his
scholar. The uncommonness of the proposal raised at once his
surprise and curiosity, and when after a short deliberation he
consented to admit her, he could not stay without impatience
till the next day.
  The ladies dressed themselves magnificently, and were
attended by Imlac to the astronomer, who was pleased to see
himself approached with respect by persons of so splendid an
appearance. In the exchange of the first civilities he was
timorous and bashful; but when the talk became regular, he
recollected his powers, and justified the character which
Imlac had given. Inquiring of Pekuah what could have turned
her inclination towards astronomy, he received from her a
history of her adventure at the Pyramid, and of the time
passed in the Arab's island. She told her tale with ease and
elegance, and her conversation took possession of his heart.
The discourse was then turned to astronomy. Pekuah displayed
what she knew. He looked upon her as a prodigy of genius, and
entreated her not to desist from a study which she had so
happily begun.
  They came again and again, and were every time more welcome
than before. The sage endeavoured to amuse them, that they
might prolong their visits, for he found his thoughts grow
brighter in their company; the clouds of solitude vanished by
degrees as he forced himself to entertain them, and he grieved
when he was left, at their departure, to his old employment of
regulating the seasons.
  The Princess and her favourite had now watched his lips for
several months, and could not catch a single word from which
they could judge whether he continued in the opinion of his
preternatural commission. They often contrived to bring him to
an open declaration; but he easily eluded all their attacks,
and, on which side soever they pressed him, escaped from them
to some other topic.
  As their familiarity increased, they invited him often to
the house of Imlac, where they distinguished him by
extraordinary respect. He began gradually to delight in
sublunary pleasures. He came early and departed late; laboured
to recommend himself by assiduity and compliance; excited
their curiosity after new arts, that they might still want his
assistance; and when they made any excursion of pleasure or
inquiry, entreated to attend them.
  By long experience of his integrity and wisdom, the Prince
and his sister were convinced that he might be trusted without
danger; and lest he should draw any false hopes from the
civilities which he received, discovered to him their
condition, with the motives of their journey, and required his
opinion on the choice of life.
  "Of the various conditions which the world spreads before
you which you shall prefer," said the sage, "I am not able to
instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have
passed my time in study without experience - in the attainment
of sciences which can for the most part be but remotely useful
to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all
the common comforts of life; I have missed the endearing
elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of
domestic tenderness. If I have obtained any prerogatives above
other students, they have been accompanied by fear, disquiet,
and scrupulosity; but even of these prerogatives, whatever
they were, I have, since my thoughts have been diversified by
more intercourse with the world, begun to question the
reality. When I have been for a few days lost in pleasing
dissipation, I am always tempted to think that my inquiries
have ended in error, and that I have suffered much, and
suffered it in vain."
  Imlac was delighted to find that the sage's understanding
was breaking through its mists, and resolved to detain him
from the planets till he should forget his task of ruling
them, and reason should recover its original influence.
  From this time the astronomer was received into familiar
friendship, and partook of all their projects and pleasures;
his respect kept him attentive, and engaged. Something was
always to be done; the day was spent in making observations,
which furnished talk for the evening, and the evening was
closed with a scheme for the morrow.
  The sage confessed to Imlac that since he had mingled in the
gay tumults of life, and divided his hours by a succession of
amusements, he found the conviction of his authority over the
skies fade gradually from his mind, and began to trust less to
an opinion which he could never prove to others, and which he
now found subject to variation, from causes in which reason
had no part. "If I am accidentally left alone for a few
hours," said he, "my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my
soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible
violence; but they are soon disentangled by the Prince's
conversation, and instantaneously released at the entrance of
Pekuah. I am like a man habitually afraid of spectres, who is
set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at the dread which harassed
him in the dark; yet, if the lamp be extinguished, feels again
the terrors which he knows that when it is light he shall feel
no more. But I am sometimes afraid, lest I indulge my quiet by
criminal negligence, and voluntarily forget the great charge
with which I am entrusted. If I favour myself in a known
error, or am determined by my own ease in a doubtful question
of this importance, how dreadful is my crime!"
  "No disease of the imagination," answered Imlac, "is so
difficult of cure as that which is complicated with the dread
of guilt; fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon
us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one
are not distinguished from the dictates of the other. If fancy
presents images not moral or religious, the mind drives them
away when they give it pain; but when melancholy notions take
the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without
opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or banish them.
For this reason the superstitious are often melancholy, and
the melancholy almost always superstitious.
  "But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your
better reason; the danger of neglect can be but as the
probability of the obligation, which, when you consider it
with freedom, you find very little, and that little growing
every day less. Open your heart to the influence of the light,
which from time to time breaks in upon you; when scruples
importune you, which you in your lucid moments know to be
vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or to
Pekuah; and keep this thought always prevalent, that you are
only one atom of the mass of humanity, and have neither such
virtue nor vice as that you should be singled out for
supernatural favours or afflictions."


                        CHAPTER XLVII

          THE PRINCE ENTERS, AND BRINGS A NEW TOPIC

"All this," said the astronomer, "I have often thought; but my
reason has been so long subjugated by an uncontrollable and
overwhelming idea, that it durst not confide in its own
decisions. I now see how fatally I betrayed my quiet, by
suffering chimeras to prey upon me in secret; but melancholy
shrinks from communication, and I never found a man before to
whom I could impart my troubles, though I had been certain of
relief. I rejoice to find my own sentiments confirmed by
yours, who are not easily deceived, and can have no motive or
purpose to deceive. I hope that time and variety will
dissipate the gloom that has so long surrounded me, and the
latter part of my days will be spent in peace."
  "Your learning and virtue," said Imlac, "may justly give you
hopes."
  Rasselas then entered, with the Princess and Pekuah, and
inquired whether they had contrived any new diversion for the
next day. "Such," said Nekayah, "is the state of life, that
none are happy but by the anticipation of change; the change
itself is nothing; when we have made it the next wish is to
change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see
something to-morrow which I never saw before."
  "Variety," said Rasselas, "is so necessary to content, that
even the Happy Valley disgusted me by the recurrence of its
luxuries; yet I could not forbear to reproach myself with
impatience when I saw the monks of St Anthony support, without
complaint, a life, not of uniform delight, but uniform
hardship."
  "Those men," answered Imlac, "are less wretched in their
silent convent than the Abyssinian princes in their prison of
pleasure. Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an
adequate and reasonable motive. Their labour supplies them
with necessaries; it therefore cannot be omitted, and is
certainly rewarded. Their devotion prepares them for another
state, and reminds them of its approach while it fits them for
it. Their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds
another, so that they are not left open to the distraction of
unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless
inactivity. There is a certain task to be performed at an
appropriated hour, and their toils are cheerful, because they
are always advancing towards endless felicity."
  "Do you think," said Nekayah, "that the monastic rule is a
more holy and less imperfect state than any other? May not he
equally hope for future happiness who converses openly with
mankind, who succours the distressed by his charity, instructs
the ignorant by his learning, and contributes by his industry
to the general system of life, even though he should omit some
of the mortifications which are practised in the cloister, and
allow himself such harmless delights as his condition may
place within his reach?"
  "This," said Imlac, "is a question which has long divided
the wise and perplexed the good. I am afraid to decide on
either part. He that lives well in the world is better than he
that lives well in a monastery. But perhaps everyone is not
able to stem the temptations of public life, and if he cannot
conquer he may properly retreat. Some have little power to do
good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil. Many
are weary of the conflicts with adversity, and are willing to
eject those passions which have long busied them in vain. And
many are dismissed by age and diseases from the more laborious
duties of society. In monasteries the weak and timorous may be
happily sheltered, the weary may repose, and the penitent may
meditate. Those retreats of prayer and contemplation have
something so congenial to the mind of man, that perhaps there
is scarcely one that does not purpose to close his life in
pious abstraction, with a few associates serious as himself."
  "Such," said Pekuah, "has often been my wish, and I have
heard the Princess declare that she should not willingly die
in a crowd."
  "The liberty of using harmless pleasures," proceeded Imlac,
"will not be disputed, but it is still to be examined what
pleasures are harmless. The evil of any pleasure that Nekayah
can image is not in the act itself but in its consequences.
Pleasure in itself harmless may become mischievous by
endearing us to a state which we know to be transient and
probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which
every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no
length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not
virtuous in itself, nor has any other use but that it
disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of
future perfection to which we all aspire there will be
pleasure without danger and security without restraint."
  The Princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the
astronomer, asked him whether he could not delay her retreat
by showing her something which she had not seen before.
  "Your curiosity," said the sage, "has been so general, and
your pursuit of knowledge so vigorous, that novelties are not
now very easily to be found; but what you can no longer
procure from the living may be given by the dead. Among the
wonders of this country are the catacombs, or the ancient
repositories in which the bodies of the earliest generations
were lodged, and where, by the virtue of the gums which
embalmed them, they yet remain without corruption."
  "I know not," said Rasselas, "what pleasure the sight of the
catacombs can afford; but, since nothing else is offered, I am
resolved to view them, and shall place this with my other
things which I have done because I would do something."
  They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited the
catacombs. When they were about to descend into the sepulchral
caves, "Pekuah," said the Princess, "we are now again invading
the habitations of the dead; I know that you will stay behind.
Let me find you safe when I return." "No, I will not be left,"
answered Pekuah, "I will go down between you and the Prince."
  They then all descended, and roved with wonder through the
labyrinth of subterraneous passages, where the bodies were
laid in rows on either side.


                        CHAPTER XLVIII

          IMLAC DISCOURSES ON THE NATURE OF THE SOUL

"What reason," said the Prince, "can be given why the
Egyptians should thus expensively preserve those carcases
which some nations consume with fire, others lay to mingle
with the earth, and all agree to remove from their sight as
soon as decent rites can be performed?"
  "The original of ancient customs," said Imlac, "is commonly
unknown, for the practice often continues when the cause has
ceased; and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is vain to
conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot
explain. I have long believed that the practice of embalming
arose only from tenderness to the remains of relations or
friends; and to this opinion I am more inclined because it
seems impossible that this care should have been general; had
all the dead been embalmed, their repositories must in time
have been more spacious than the dwellings of the living. I
suppose only the rich or honourable were secured from
corruption, and the rest left to the course of nature.
  "But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed the
soul to live as long as the body continued undissolved, and
therefore tried this method of eluding death."
  "Could the wise Egyptians," said Nekayah, "think so grossly
of the soul? If the soul could once survive its separation,
what could it afterwards receive or suffer from the body?"
  "The Egyptians would doubtless think erroneously," said the
astronomer, "in the darkness of heathenism and the first dawn
of philosophy. The nature of the soul is still disputed amidst
all our opportunities of clearer knowledge; some yet say that
it may be material, who, nevertheless, believe it to be
immortal."
  "Some," answered Imlac, "have indeed said that the soul is
material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought
it who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of reason
enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the notices of
sense and investigations of science concur to prove the
unconsciousness of matter.
  "It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in
matter, or that every particle is a thinking being. Yet if any
part of matter be devoid of thought, what can we suppose to
think? Matter can differ from matter only in form, density,
bulk, motion, and direction of motion. To which of these,
however varied or combined, can consciousness be annexed? To
be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great or
little, to be moved slowly or swiftly, one way or another, are
modes of material existence all equally alien from the nature
of cogitation. If matter be once without thought, it can only
be made to think by some new modification; but all the
modifications which it can admit are equally unconnected with
cogitative powers."
  "But the materialists," said the astronomer, "urge that
matter may have qualities with which we are unacquainted."
  "He who will determine," returned Imlac, "against that which
he knows because there may be something which he knows not; he
that can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged
certainty, is not to be admitted amongst 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
have all the evidence that human intellect can admit. If that
which is known may be overruled by that which is unknown, no
being, not omniscient, can arrive at certainty."
  "Yet let us not," said the astronomer, "too arrogantly limit
the Creator's power."
  "It is no limitation of Omnipotence," replied the poet, "to
suppose that one thing is not consistent with another, that
the same proposition cannot be at once true and false, that
the same number cannot be even and odd, that cogitation cannot
be conferred on that which is created incapable of
cogitation."
  "I know not," said Nekayah, "any great use of this question.
Does that immateriality, which in my opinion you have
sufficiently proved, necessarily include eternal duration?"
  "Of immateriality," said Imlac, "our ideas are negative, and
therefore obscure. Immateriality seems to imply a natural
power of perpetual duration as a consequence of exemption from
all causes of decay: whatever perishes is destroyed by the
solution of its contexture and separation of its parts; nor
can we conceive how that which has no parts, and therefore
admits no solution, can be naturally corrupted or impaired."
  "I know not," said Rasselas, "how to conceive anything
without extension: what is extended must have parts, and you
allow that whatever has parts may be destroyed."
  "Consider your own conceptions," replied Imlac, "and the
difficulty will be less. You will find substance without
extension. An ideal form is no less real than material bulk;
yet an ideal form has no extension. It is no less certain,
when you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses the idea
of a pyramid, than that the pyramid itself is standing. What
space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the idea of
a grain of corn? or how can either idea suffer laceration? As
is the effect, such is the cause; as thought, such is the
power that thinks, a power impassive and indiscerptible."
  "But the Being," said Nekayah, "whom I fear to name, the
Being which made the soul, can destroy it."
  "He surely can destroy it," answered Imlac, "since, however
imperishable, it receives from a superior nature its power of
duration. That it will not perish by any inherent cause of
decay or principle of corruption, may be shown by philosophy;
but philosophy can tell no more. That it will not be
annihilated by Him that made it, we must humbly learn from
higher authority."
  The whole assembly stood awhile silent and collected. "Let
us return," said Rasselas, "from this scene of mortality. How
gloomy would be these mansions of the dead to him who did not
know that he should never die; that what now acts shall
continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on for
ever. Those that lie here stretched before us, the wise and
the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the
shortness of our present state; they were perhaps snatched
away while they were busy, like us, in the CHOICE OF LIFE."
  "To me," said the Princess, "the choice of life is become
less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice
of eternity."
  They then hastened out of the caverns, and under the
protection of their guard returned to Cairo.


                         CHAPTER XLIX

        THE CONCLUSION, IN WHICH NOTHING IS CONCLUDED

It was now the time of the inundation of the Nile. A few days
after their visit to the catacombs the river began to rise.
  They were confined to their house. The whole region being
under water, gave them no invitation to any excursions; and
being well supplied with materials for talk, they diverted
themselves with comparisons of the different forms of life
which they had observed, and with various schemes of happiness
which each of them had formed.
  Pekuah was never so much charmed with any place as the
Convent of St Anthony, where the Arab restored her to the
Princess, and wished only to fill it with pious maidens and to
be made prioress of the order. She was weary of expectation
and disgust, and would gladly be fixed in some unvariable
state.
  The Princess thought that, of all sublunary things,
knowledge was the best. She desired first to learn all
sciences, and then proposed to found a college of learned
women, in which she would preside, that, by conversing with
the old and educating the young, she might divide her time
between the acquisition and communication of wisdom, and raise
up for the next age models of prudence and patterns of piety.
  The Prince desired a little kingdom in which he might
administer justice in his own person and see all the parts of
government with his own eyes; but he could never fix the
limits of his dominion, and was always adding to the number of
his subjects.
  Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be driven along
the stream of life without directing their course to any
particular port.
  Of those wishes that they had formed they well knew that
none could be obtained. They deliberated awhile what was to be
done, and resolved, when the inundation should cease, to
return to Abyssinia.


                           THE END

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