The history of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. An Asiatic tale. : The two volumes complete in one. Volume the first[-second]. : [Five lines from La Rochfoucauld]

THE HISTORY OF RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABISSINIA.

CHAP. 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 po|verty, 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 child|ren to to be constant and equal; but this kind|ness seldom continues beyond the years of in|fancy: in a short time the children become rivals to their parents. Benefits are allayed by reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy.

"Parents and children seldom act in con••••••••: each child endeavours to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the par|ents, 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 despon|dence, of expectation and experience, without crime or folly on either side. The colours of life in youth and age appear different, as the face of nature in spring and winter. And how can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false?

"Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives. The old man trusts wholly to slow contrivance and gradual progression: the youth expects to force his way by genius, vig|our, and precipitance. The old man pays regard to riches, and the youth reverences vir|tue. 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 〈◊〉〈◊〉,

having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impel|led to suspect, and too often allured to prac|tice it. Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scru|pulosity 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 uni|ted 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 acquain|tance: I am unwilling to believe, that the most tender of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural necessity."

"Domestick discord answered she, is not inevitably and fatally necessary; but yet is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole family is virtuous: the good and evil cannot well agree; and the evil can yet less agree with one another: even the virtuous fall some|times 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 to the caprice of rich re|lations, whom they cannot please, and dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious, and some wives perverse: and, as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one may often make many miserable."

"If such be the general effect of marriage, said the prince, I shall for the future, think it dangerous to connect my interest with that of another, lest I should be unhappy by my partner's fault."

"I have met, said the princess, with many who live single for that reason; but I never found that their prudence ought to raise envy. They dream away their time without friendship, without fondness, and are driven to rid them|selves of the day, for which they have no use, by childish amusements, or vicious delights. They act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with rancour, and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home, and ma|levolent abroad; and, as the out-laws of hu|man 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 re|treat but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no plea|sures."

"What then is to be done? said Rasselas; the more we enquire, the less we can resolve. Surely he is most likely to please himself that has no other inclination to regard."

CHAP. XXVII. Disquisition upon greatness.

THE conversation had a short pause. The prince, having considered his sister's ob|servations, 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 fa|vours can be conferred but upon few, the greater number will be always discontented."

"The discontents 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 or vigilant administration of public affairs. None, however attentive, can always discover that merit which indigence or faction may happen to obscure; and none however power|ful, can always reward it. Yet, he that sees inferior desert advanced above him, will natu|rally 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 dis|tribution: he will sometimes indulge his own affections, and sometimes those of his favour|rites; 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 endea|vour 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 has much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong must suffer the con|sequences; and, if it were possible that he should always act rightly, yet when such num|bers are to judge of his conduct, the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence, and the good sometimes by mistake.

"The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid obscurity. For what can hinder the satisfacti|on, 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 know|ledge all whom he trusts, and whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear? Surely he has nothing to do but to love and to be loved, to be virtuous and to be happy."

"Whether perfect happiness would be pro|cured

by perfect goodness, said Nekayah, this world will never afford an opportunity of de|ciding. But this, at least, may be maintained, that we do not always find visible happiness in proportion to visible virtue. All natural and al|most all political evils are incident alike to the bad and good: they are confounded in the misery of a famine, and not much distinguished in the fury of a faction; they sink together in a tempest, and are driven together from their country by invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience, a steady pro|spect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience; but remember that patience must suppose pain."

CHAP. XXVIII. Rasselas and Nekayah continue their Conversation.

"DEAR princess, said Rasselas, you fall into the common errors of exaggera|tory 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 locusts, and suspends pestilence on the wings 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 en|dured. But it is evident, that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt: thousands and ten thousands, flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domestick 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 embassadors are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil, and the husbandman drives his plow forward; the necessaries of life are required and obtained, and the successive busi|ness of the seasons 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 na|ture; men and women were made to be com|panions 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 innumera|ble modes of human misery. When I see and reckon the various forms of connubial infeli|city, the unexpected cause 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 contests of disagreeing virtues, where both are supported by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes disposed to think with the severer casuist of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted than approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a pas|sion too much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compacts."

"You seem to forget, replied Rasselas, that you have, even now, represen••ed celibacy as less happy than marriage. Both conditions may be bad, but they cannot both be worst. Thus

it happens when wrong opinions are entertain|ed, 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 ex|actness objects vast in their extent, and various in their parts. Where we see or conceive the whole at once we readily note the discriminati|ons and decide the preference: but of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any human being in its full compass of magni|tude and multiplicity of complication, where is the wonder, that judging of the whole by parts, I am affected by one or 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 politicks and morality: but when we perceive the whole at once, as in numerical computations, all agree in one judgement, and none ever varles 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 subtil|ties of arguments. We are employed in a search, of which both are equally to enjoy the

success, or suffer by the miscarriage. It is there|fore fit that we assist each other. You surely conclude too hastily from the infelicity of mar|riage against its institution. Will not the misery of life prove equally that life cannot be the gift of heaven? The world must be peo|pled by marriage, or peopled without it."

"How the world is to be peopled, returned Nekayah, is not my care, and needs not be yours. I see no danger that the present gene|ration should omit to leave successors behind them: we are not now enquiring for the world, but for ourselves."

CHAP. 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 ap|pears that the incommodities of a single life are, in a great measure, necessary and, certain, but those of the conjugal state accidental and avoidable.

"I cannot forbear to flatter myself that prudence and benevolence will make marriage happy. The general folly of mankind is the cause of general complaint. What can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgment, without foresight, without enquiry after con|formity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgment, or purity of sentiment.

"Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversity of thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore con|clude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before 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 daughters 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 encrease experience, and wider views will allow better opportunities of enquiry 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 emi|nently happy. This is a question too impor|tant to be neglected, and I have often pro|posed 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 obsti|nacy delighting to contend. And even though mutual esteem produces mutual desires 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 will|ing to be led by reason."

"Thus it is, said Nekayah, that philoso|phers are deceived. There are a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can de|cide; questions that elude investigation, and make logick ridiculous; cases where something must be done, and where little can be said.

Consider the state of mankind, and enquire how few can be supposed to act upon any occasion whether small or great, with all the reasons of action present to their minds. Wretched would be the pair above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason every morning all the minute detail of a domestick day.

"Those who marry at an advanced age, will probably escape the encroachments of their children; but, in diminution of this advantage, they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helpless, to a guardian's mercy: or, if that should not happen, they must at least go out of the world before they see those whom they love best either wise or great.

"From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less also to hope, and they lose, without equivalent, the joys of early love, and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant, and minds susceptible of new impressions, which might wear away their dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as soft bodies, by continual attrition, conform their surfaces to each other.

"I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children, and those who marry early with their partners."

"The union of these two affections, said Rasselas, would produce all that could be wished. Perhaps there is a time when marriage might unite them, a time neither too early for the father, nor too late for the husband."

"Every hour, answered the princess, con|firms my prejudice in favour of the position so often uttered by the mouth of Imlac, 'That nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on the left." Those conditions, which flatter hope and attract desire, are so constituted, that, as we approach one, we recede from another. There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either. This is often the fate of long consideration; he does nothing who endea|vours to do more than is allowed to humanity. Flatter not yourself with contrarieties of plea|sure. Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delight|ing his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source, and from the mouth of the Nile."

CHAP. XXX. Imlac enters, and changes the conversation.

HERE Imlac entered, and interrupted them. His look was clouded with thought. "Imlac, said Rasselas, I have been hearing 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 ne|glect 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 domestick 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 won|ders 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 choaked aqueducts, but to look upon the various scenes of the present world."

"The things that are now before us, said the princess, necessarily require attention, and sufficiently deserve it. What have I to do with the heroes or the monuments of ancient times? with times wich ••••ver can return, and her 〈◊〉〈◊〉 whose form of life was different from all 〈◊〉〈◊〉 the present condition of mankind requires, 〈◊〉〈◊〉 allows."

"To know any thing, returned the poet, we must know its effects; to see men we must see their works, that we may learn what reason has dictated, or passion has incited, and find what are the most powerful motives of action. To judge rightly of the present we must oppose it to the past; for all judgement is compara|tive, 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 conse|quence of the former, and it is natural to in|quire what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or of the evil that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the study of history, is not prudent: if we are entrusted with the cares of others, it is not just. Igno|rance, 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 the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of rea|son, the successive advances of science, the vi|cissitudes of learning and ignorance, which are the light and darkness of thinking beings, the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and all the revolutions of the intellectual world. If ac|counts 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 pr••c••ept. A soldier is formed in war, and a painter must copy pictures. In this, contem|plative

life has the advantage: great actions are seldom seen, but the labours of art are al|ways 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 compre|hension by new ideas, and perhaps recover some art lost to mankind, or learn what is less perfectly known in our own country. At least we compare our own with former times, and either rejoce 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 Egyp|tian greatness, and one of the most bulky works of manual industry, said Imlac, are the pyramids; fabricks 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 Ne|kayah. I have often heard of the Pyramids, and shall not rest till I have seen them within and without with my own eyes."

CHAP. 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 every thing 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 pyramidi|cal form was chosen for a fabrick 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 at|tacks of the elements, and could scarcely 〈◊〉〈◊〉 overthrown by earthquakes themselves, the east resistible of natural violence. A concussion

that should shatter the Pyramid, would threaten the dissolution of the continent.

They measured all its dimensions, and pitch|ed their tents at its foot. Next day they pre|pared 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 dread|ful gloom. I dare not enter a place which must surely be inhabited by unquiet souls. The original possessors of these dreadful vaults will start up before us, and, perhaps, shut us up 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 nations. There is no people, rude 〈◊〉〈◊〉, learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion•• which perhaps, prevails as far as hu|man

nature is diffussed, could become universal only by its truth: those, that never heard of one another, would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credi|ble. 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 no|thing from them, how then can we offend them."

"My dear Pekuah, said the princess, I will always go before you, and Imlac shall follow you. Remember that you are the companion of the princess of Abissinia."

"If the princess is pleased that her servant should die, returned the lady, let her com|mand 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 em|bracing her, told her that she should stay in the tent till their return. Pekuah was yet not satisfied, but entreated the princess not to pur|sue so dreadful a purpose as that of entering the recesses of the pyramid. "Though I cannot teach courage, said, Nekayah, I must not learn cowardice; nor leave at last undone what I came hither only to do."

CHAP. 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 reposited. They then sat down in one of the most spacious chambers to rest a while 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 mo••••••••. It secured a wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of Barbarians, whose un|skilfulness

in 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 habitations of peaceful commerce, as vul|tures descend upon domestic fowl. Their ce|lerity 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 ene|mies, and treasures might have been reposited at far less expence, 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 ap|peased 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 mo|nument of the insufficiency of human enjoy|ments. A king whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and 〈◊〉〈◊〉 wants, is compelled to solace, 〈◊〉〈◊〉 the erection of a pyramid, the satiety of dominion

and tastelesness 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 con|dition, imaginest happiness in royal magnifi|cence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with successive gratifications, survey the pyramids, and confess thy folly!"

CHAP. XXXIII. The princess meets with an unexpected misfortune.

THEY rose up, and returned through the cavity at which they had entered, and the princess prepared for her 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 the tents.

What had happened they did not try to conjecture, but immediately enquired. "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 ap|proach of some Turkish horsemen put them to flight; but they seized the lady Pekuah with her two maids, and carried them away: the Turks are now pursuing them by our insti|gation, but I fear they will not be able to overtake them."

"The princess was overpowered with sur|prise and grief. Rasselas in the first heat of his resentment, ordered his servants to follow him and prepared to pursue the robbers with his sa|bre 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 burthen. By leaving our present station we may lose the princess, but cannot hope to regain Pekuah."

In a short time the Turks returned, having not been able to reach the enemy. The princess burst out into new lamentations, and Rasselas could scarcely forbear to reproach them with cowardice; but Imlac was of opinion, that the escape of the Arabs was no addition to their misfortune, for perhaps, they would have killed their captives rather than have re|signed them.

CHAP. XXXIV. They return to Cairo without Pekuah.

THERE was nothing to be hoped from longer stay. They returned to Cairo repenting of their curiosity, censuring the negligence of the government, lamenting their own rashness which had neglected to procure a guard, imagining many expedients, by which the loss of Pekuah might have been prevented, and resolving to do something for her recovery, though none could find any thing proper to be done.

Nekayah retired to her chamber where her women 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 befal 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 condolance, 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 to given by which he might di|rect the pursuit.

It soon appeared that nothing would be done by authority. Governors, being ac|customed to hear of more crimes than they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at ease by indiscrimi|nate negligence, and presently forget the request where they lose sight of the petitioner.

Imlac then endeavoured to gain some in|telligence by private agents. He found many who pretended to an exact knowledge of all the haunts of the Arabs, and to regular corres|pondence 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 some|thing she kept her hope alive as one expedi|ent failed, another was suggested; when one messenger returned unsuccessful, another was dispatched to a different quarter.

Two months had now passed, and of Pe|kuah 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 com|pliance 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 pre|vail upon me? Why did I not speak and refuse to hear?"

"Great princess, said Imlac, do not re|proach yourself for your virtue, or consider that as blameable by which evil has acciden|tally been caused. Your tenderness for the timidity of Pekuah was generous and kind. When we act according to our duty, we com|mit the event to him by whose laws our actions are governed, and who will suffer none to be finally punished for obedience. When, in prospect of some good, whether natural or 〈◊〉〈◊〉 we break the rules prescribed us, we 〈…〉〈…〉 from the direction of superior wis|dom, and take all consequences upon our|selves.

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 recompence. When we consult only our own policy, and attempt to find a nearer way to good, by overleaping the settled boun|daries of right and wrong, we cannot be hap|py even by success, because we cannot escape the consciousness of our fault; but if we mis|carry, the disappointment is irremediably em|bittered. 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 in|treated to accompany you, and being compel|led 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 remem|brance of such cruelty, or must have 〈◊〉〈◊〉 away in abhorence of myself."

"This at least, said Imlac, is the present reward of virtuous conduct, that no unlucky consequence can oblige us to repent it."

CHAP. XXXV. The princess continues to lament Pekuah.

NEKAYAH, being thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil is insup|portable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. She was, from that time, delivered from the violence of tempes|tuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy tranquillity. She sat from morn|ing 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 re|call to mind any little incident or careless conversation. The sentiments of her, whom she now expected to see no more, were treasured up 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 there|•••••••• she could not talk to them but with cauti|on and reserve. She began to remit her curiosity,

having no great care 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 ob|served 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 all 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 con|tinue or increase when the loss of Pekuah is forgotten. That you have been deprived of one pleasure is no very good reason for re|jection 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 per|haps, 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. Goodness affords the only comfort which can be en|joyed 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 sud|den 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 the day never would return. When the clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can imagine how they will be dispelled: yet a new day succeeded to the night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of ease. But they who

restrain themselves from receiving comfort, do as the savages would have done, had they put out their eyes when it was dark. Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something ac|quired. To lose much at once is inconvenient to either, but while the vital powers remain uninjured, nature will find the means of re|paration. Distance has the same effect o•• the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave be|hind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude. Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow mud|dy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world; The remem|brance of Pekuah will vanish by degrees; you will meet in your way some other favourite, or learn to diffuse yourself in general conver|sation."

"At least, said the prince, do not despair before all remedies have been tried: the enquiry after the unfortunate lady is still con|tinued, and shall be carried on with yet greater diligence, on condition that you will promise to wait a year for the event, without any un|alterable resolution."

Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the promise to her brother, who had been advised by Imlac, to require 〈◊〉〈◊〉

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.

CHAP. XXXVI. Pekuah is still remembered by the princess.

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 impercepti|bly to return to common cares and common pleasures. She rejoiced without her own con|sent 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 con|stantly at the time fixed, and returned with her eyes swollen and her countenance clouded. By degrees she grew less scrupulous, and suf|fered any important and pressing avocation to delay the tribute of daily tears. She then yielded to less occasions; sometimes forgot what she was indeed afraid to remember, and

at last, wholly released herself from the duty of periodical affliction.

Her real love of Pekuah was yet not di|minished. 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 de|sist from inquiry, and to leave no art of in|telligence untried, that at least, she might have the comfort of knowing, that she did not suf|fer 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 at|tain that, of which the possession cannot be secured? I shall hence forward 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.

CHAP. XXXVII. The princess hears news of Pekuah.

IN seven months, one of the messengers, who had been sent away upon the day when the promise was drawn from the princess, returned, after many unsuccessful rambles, from the

borders of Nubia, with an account that Pekuah was in the hands of an Arab chief, who pos|sessed a castle or fortress on the extremity of Egypt. The Arab, whose revenue was plun|der, 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 extasies 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 relator, 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 Arab would so much expose himself as to come into the lower coun|try, 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. Antony, which is situated in the deserts of Upper-Egypt, where she should be met by the same number, and her ransome 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 their place appointed, where he received the stipulated price, and, with great respect, restored her 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 〈◊〉〈◊〉 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.

CHAP. XXXVIII. The adventures of the lady Pekuah.

"AT what time, and in what manner, I was forced away said Pekuah, your servants have told you. The suddenness of the event struck me with surprise, and I was at first rather stupified than agitated with any passion of either fear or sorrow. My confu|sion 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 shew of menacing.

"When the Arabs saw themselves out of danger they slackened their course, and, as I was less harrassed by external violence, I be|gan 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 ••••t upon the ground, and offered such re|freshments 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 up to me for succour. I knew not to what condition

we were doomed, nor could conjecture where would be the place of our captivity, or whence to draw any hope of deliverance. I was in the hands of robbers and savages, and had no reason to suppose that their pity was more than their justice, or that they would for|bear 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 de|cency, and that, since we were now carried be|yond pursuit, there was no danger of violence to our lives.

"When we were to be set again on horse|back, 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 dependants.

"We were received into a large tent, where we found women who had attended their hus|bands in the expedition. They set before us the supper which they had provided, and I eat it rather to encourage my maids, than to com|ply

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 there|fore to be undressed, I observed that the wo|men looked very earnestly upon me, not ex|pecting, I supposed, to see me so submissively attended. When my upper vest was taken off, they were apparently struck with the splendor of my cloaths, 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 carp••ts, 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 lest 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, shew your rank to be high, and your wealth to be great. Why should you, who can so easily procure your ransome, think yourself in danger of perpetual captivity? The purpose of my incursions is to encrease 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 yester|day it should have fallen upon me."

"Misfortunes, answered the Arab, should always be expected. If the eye of hostility could have learned to spare, excellence like yours had been exempt from injury. But 〈◊〉〈◊〉 angels of affliction spread their tolls 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 ransome, give a passport to your mes|senger, and perform my stipulation with nice punctuality.

"You will easily believe that I was pleased with his courtesy; and finding that his predo|minant passion was desire of money, I began now to think my danger less, for I knew that no sum would be thought too great for the release of Pekuah. I told him that he should have no reason to charge me with ingratitude, if I was used with kindness, and that any ran|some, which could be expected for a maid of common rank, would be paid, but that he must not persist to rate me as a princess. He said, he would consider what he should de|mand, and then, smiling, bowed and retired.

"Soon after the women came about me, each contending to be more officious than the other, and my maids themselves were served with reverence. We travelled onward by short journeys. On the fourth day the chief told me, that my ransome 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 conveniencies for travel, my own women

were always at my side, and I amused myself with observing the manners of the vagrant nati|ons, and with viewing remains of ancient edi|fices with which these deserted countries ap|pear 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 erratick 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 ac|cess: for when once a country declines from its primitive splendor, the more inhabitants are left, the quicker ruin will be made. Walls supply stones more easily than quarries, and palaces and temples will be demolished to make stables of granate, and cottages of porphyry.

CHAP. XXXIX. The adventures of Pekuah continued.

WE wandered about in this manner for some weeks, whether, as our chief pretended, for my gratification, or, as I ra|ther 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 trou|bles of the night much over-balanced 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 them|selves 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 an uniform and tractable vice: other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind; that which sooths the pride of one will offend the pride of another; but to the favour of the covetuous 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 tropick. "La••y, said the Arab, you shall rest a few weeks after your journey in thi•• 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 in the place of honour bowed to the ground. His women, who considered me as a rival, looked on me with malignity; but be|ing soon informed that I was a great lady de|tained only for my ransome, they began to vie with each other in obsequiousness and re|verence.

"Being again comforted with new assurances, of speedy liberty, I was for some days diverted from impatience by the novelty of the place. The turrets overlooked the country to a great distance, and afforded a view of many windings of the stream. In the day I wandered from one place to another, as the course of the sun varied the splendor of the prospect, and saw many things which I had never seen before. The crocodiles and river-horses were common in this unpeopled region, and I often looked upon them with terror, though I knew that they could not hurt me. For some time I expected to see merma••ds 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 en|quired 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 in|clination to this study, but an appearance of attention was necessary to please my instructor, who valued himself for his skill, and in a little while, I found some employment requisite to beguile the tediousness of time, which was to be passed always amidst the same objects. I was weary of looking in the morning on things from which I had turned away weary in the evening: I therefore was at last willing to ob|serve 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 ex|pedition, and then my only pleasure was to talk with my maids about the accident by which▪ we were carried away, and the happiness that we should all enjoy at the end of our captivity.

"There were women in your Arab's fortress, said the princess, why did you not make them your companions, enjoy their conversation, and partake their diversions? In a place where they found business or amusement, why should you alone sit co••ro••ed with idle melancholy? or why could not you bear for a few months,

that condition to which they were condemned for life?"

"The diversions of the women, answered Pekuah, were only childish play, by which the mind accustomed to stronger operations could not be kept busy. I could do all which they delighted in doing by powers merely sen|sitive, 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 n••••••••e-work, 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 the captivity and absence from 〈◊〉〈◊〉 could be much solaced by 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 ideas but of the few things that were within their view, and had hardly names for any thing but their cloaths 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 long without intercepting the tale."

"How, said Rasselas, can the Arab, whom you represented as a man of more than com|mon 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 spriteliness or sublimity, with|out 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 play|ing

about him he looked on them with inat|tentive 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 re|gard, of which he could never know the sin|cerity, 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 distribu|tion of superfluous time, such love as man can bestow upon that which he despises, such as has neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow."

"You have reason lady, to think yourself happy, said Imlac, that you have been thus easily dismissed. How could a mind, hungry for knowledge, be willing, in an intellectual famine, to lose such a banquet as Pekuah's conversation?

"I am inclined to believe, answered Pekuah, that he was for some time in suspense; for,

notwithstanding his promise whenever I pro|posed to dispatch 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 adven|tures, delighted to hear my observations, and endeavoured to advance my accquaintance with the stars. When I importuned him to send away my letters, he soothed me with profes|sions of honour and sincerity; and when I could be no longer decently denied, put his troop again in motion, and left me to govern in his absence. I was much afflicted by this studied procrastination, and was sometimes afraid that I should be forgotten; that you would leave Cairo, and I must end my days in an island of the Nile.

"I grew at last hopeless and dejected, and cared so little to entertain him, that he for a while more frequently talked with my maids. That he should fall in love with them, or with me, might have been equally fatal, and I was not much pleased with the growing friendship. My anxiety was not long; for, as I recovered some degree of chearfulness, he returned to me, and I could not forbear to despise my former uneasiness.

"He still delayed to send for my ransome, 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 rela|tion, rose and embraced her, and Rasselas gave her an hundred ounces of gold, which she presented to the Arab for the fifty that were promised.

CHAP. XL. The history of a man of learning.

THEY returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased at finding themselves together, that none of them went much abroad. The prince began to love learning, and one day de|clared to Imlac, that he intended to devote him|self to science, and pass the rest of his days in literary solitude.

"Before you make your final choice, an|swered Imlac, you ought to examine its ha|zards, 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 motions and the 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 steal|ing away. I delighted him with my remarks, he smiled at the narrative of my travels, and was glad to forget the constellations, and de|scend 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 de|sirous 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 pro|fundity 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 tho' 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 sub|lime without haughtiness, courteous without formality, and communicative without osten|tation. I was at first, Madam, of your opi|ion, 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 con|dition, to which he always returned a general answer, and diverted the conversation to some other topick.

"Amidst this willingness to be pleased, and labour to please, I had always reason to imagine that some painful sentiments 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 sometimes send for me with vehement injunctions of haste, though, when I came to him, he had no|thing extraordinary to say. And sometimes, when I was leaving him would call me back, pause a few moments and then dismiss me.

CHAP. XLI. The astronomer discovers the cause of his uneasiness.

AT last the time came when the secret burst his reserve. We were sitting together last night in the turret of his house, watching the emersion of a satellite of Jupiter. A sud|den tempest clouded the sky, and disappointed our observation. We sat a while silent in the dark, and then he addressed himself to me in these words: "Imlac, I have long considered thy friendship as the greatest blessing of my life. Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and 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 dis|charged an office which I must soon quit at the call of nature, and shall rejoice in the hour of imbecillity and pain to devolve it upon thee."

"I thought myself honoured by this tes|timony, 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 weather, and the dis|tribution of the seasons: the sun has listened to my dictates and passed from tropick to tropick 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 wihch I found myself unable to prohibit or restrain. I have ad|ministered 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?"

CHAP. XLII. The astronomer justifies his account of himself.

"I Suppose he discovered in me, through the obsurity 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 punish|ment; 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 wear••ness of unre|mitted 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 pro|portion 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 sud|den wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundati|on. In the hurry of my imagination I com|manded rain to fall, and, by comparing the time of my command, with that of the inun|dation, I found that the clouds had listened to my lips."

"Might not some other cause, said I, pro|duce this concurrence? the Nile does not al|ways 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 incre|dible, 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 con|viction ought to influence another, who can|not, like me, be conscious of its force. I, therefore, shall not attempt to gain credit by disputation. It is sufficient that I feel this power, that I have long possessed, and every day exerted it. But the life of man is short, the infirmities of age increase upon me, and the time will soon come when the regulator of the year must mingle with the dust. The care of appointing a successor has long disturbed me; the night and the day have been spent in comparisons of all the characters which have come to my knowledge, and I have yet found none so worthy as thyself.

CHAP. XLIII. The astronomer leaves Imlac his directions.

"HEAR therefore, what I shall impart, with attention, such as the welfare of a world requires. If the task of a king be considered as difficult, who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do much

good or harm, what must be the anxiety of him, on whom depend the action of the ele|ments, and the great gifts of light and heat!—Hear me therefore with attention.

"I have diligently considered the position of the earth and sun, and formed innumerable schemes in which I changed their situation. I have sometimes turned aside the axis of the earth, and sometimes varied the ecliptick of the sun: but I have found it impossible to make a disposition by which the world may be ad|vantaged: what one region gains, another loses by any imaginable alteration, even with|out considering the distant parts of the solar sy|stem with which we are unacquainted. 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 mis|chief 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 be|nevolence will no more destroy my quiet: I

have found a man of wisdom and virtue to whom I can chearfully 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 prac|tise his virtues, but all may suffer his calamity. Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and and alarming is the uncer|tain continuance of reason."

The princess was recollected, and the fa|vourite was abashed. Rasselas, more deeply affected, enquired of Imlac, whether he thought such maladies of the mind frequent, and how they were contracted.

CHAP. XLIV. The dangerous prevalence of imagination.

"DISORDERS of intellect, answered Imlac, happen much more often than superficial observers will easily believe. Per|haps, if we speak with rigorous exactness, no human mind is in its right state. There is no man whose imagination does not some|times 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 no|tions do not sometimes tyrannise, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of so|ber probability. All power of fancy over rea|son 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 depra|vation of the mental faculties: it is not pro|nounced madness but when it becomes ungo|vernable, 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 enquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible en|joyments, and confers upon his pride unattain|able dominion. The mind dances from scene

to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinati|ons, 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 gra|tifications 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 con|firmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotick. 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 soli|tude, 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, ima|gine myself the queen of Abissinia. 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 pas|toral employments, till I have in my cham|ber heard the wind whistle, and the sheep bleat; sometimes freed the lamb entangled in the thicket, and sometimes with my crook encoun|tered 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 indul|gence of fantastick delight more dangerous than yours. I have frequently endeavoured to image the possibility of a perfect govern|ment, 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 salu|tary edicts. 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 visio|nary schemes: when we first form them, we know them to be absurd, bu•• familiarise them by degrees, and in time lose sight of their folly."

CHAP. XLV. They discourse with an old man.

THE evening was now far past, and they rose to return home. As they walked along the bank 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 enquiring 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 lat|ter part of life."

Here the sage approached and saluted them. They invited him to join their walk, and prat|tled a while as acquaintance that had unexpec|tedly me another. The old man was chear|ful and talkative, and the way seemed short in his company. He was pleased to find him|self

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, plea|sures 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. Every thing 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 obtain 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 mo|ther 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 my|self. 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. Some|thing 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 op|portunities of good neglected, much time squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idle|ness and vacancy. I leave many great designs unattempted, and many great attempts un|finished. My mind is burthened with no hea|vy 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 can|not long delay; and hope to possess in a bet|ter state that happiness which here I could not find, and that virtue which here I have not attained."

He rose and went away, leaving his au|dience not much elated with the hope of long life. The prince consoled himself with re|marking, that it was not reasonable to be dis|appointed by this account; for age had never been considered as the season of felicity, and, if it was possible to be easy in decline and weakness, it was likely that the days of vigour and alacrity might be happy; that the noon of life might be bright, if the evening could be calm.

The princess suspected that age was que|rulous and maligant, and delighted to repress the expectations of those who had newly entered the world. She had seen the pos|sessors of estates look with envy on their heirs, and known many who enjoy pleasure no longer than they can confine it to them|selves.

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 no|thing, 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 a••e, he was equally confident of unmingled prosperity, and equally fertile of consolatory expedients. He forbore to force upon them unwelcome know|ledge, which time itself would too soon im|press. 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.

CHAP. 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 their 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 republick of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him, whether on great or little oc|casions. 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 sub|side; but, next day, Pekuah told him, she had now found an honest pretence for a visit to the astronomer, for she would solicite 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 de|cently come alone. "I am afraid, said Imlac, that he will be soon 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 al|ways with his opinions I shall make him think it greater than it is."

The astronomer, in pursuance of this reso|lution, was told, that a foreign lady travelling in search of knowledge, had heard of his repu|tation, 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 be|came regular, he recollected his powers, and justified the character which Imlac had given. Enquiring of Pekuah what could have turned her inclination towards astronomy, he received from her a history of her adventure at the py|ramid, 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 solicitude vanished by degrees, as he forced himself to entertain them, and he grieved

when he was left at their departure to his old employment of regulating the seasons.

The princess and her favourite had now watched his lips for several months, and could not catch a single word from which they could judge whether he continued, or not, in the opinion of his preternatural commission. They often contrived to bring him to an open decla|ration, but he easily eluded all their attacks, and on which side soever they pressed him escaped from them to some other topick.

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 af|ter new arts, that they might still want his assistance; and when they made any excursion of pleasure or enquiry, entreated to attend them.

By long experience of his integrity and wis|dom, 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

journ•••• 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 experi|ence; in the attainments of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expence of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestick tenderness. If I have obtained any prerogatives above other students, they have been accompanied with fear, disquiet, and scrupulosity; but even of these prerogatives, whatever they were, I have, since my thoughts have been diversified by more intercourse with the world begun to question the reality. When I have been for a few days lost in pleasing dissipation, I am always tempted to think that my enquiries have ended in error, and that I have suffered much, and suffered it in vain.

Imlac was delighted to find that the sage's understanding was breaking through its mists, and resolved to detain him from the planets till he should forget his task of ruling them, and reason should recover its original influence.

From this time the astronomer was received into familiar friendship, and partook of all their projects and pleasures: his respect kept him attentive and the activity of Rasselas did not leave much time unengaged. Something was always to be done; the day was spent in making observations which furnished talk for the evening, and the evening was closed with a scheme for the morrow.

The sage confessed to Imlac, that since he had mingled in the gay tumults of life, and divided his hours by a succession of amuse|ments, he found the conviction of his authority over the skies fade gradually from his mind, and began to trust less to an opinion which he never could prove to others, and which he now found subject to variation from causes in which reason had no part. "If I am acciden|tally left alone for a few hours, said he, my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence, but they are soon disen|tangled by the prince's conversation, and in|stantaneously released at the entrance of Pe|kuah. I am like a man habitually afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at the dread which harrassed him in the dark; yet, if his lamp be extinguished, feels again the terrors which he knows that when it is light he shall feel no more. But I

am sometimes afraid lest I indulge my quiet by criminal negligence, and voluntarily forget the great charge with which I am intrusted. If I 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 me|lancholick notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without oppositi|on, 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 scru|ples importune you, which you in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or to Pe|kuah, and keep this thought always prevalent, that you are only one atom of the mass of hu|manity, and have neither such virtue nor vice, as that you should be singled out for superna|tural favours or▪ afflictions."

CHAP. XLVII. The prince enters and brings a new topick.

"ALL this said the astronomer, I have often thought, but my reason has been so long subjugated by an uncontroulable and overwhelming idea, that it durst not con|•••••••••• its own decisions. I now see how fa|tally I betrayed my quiet, by suffering chime|ras to prey upon me in secret; but melancholy skrinks 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 lat|ter 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 enquired whether they had con|trived 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 im|patience, when I saw the monks of St. An|thony support without complaint, a life, not of uniform delight, but uniform hardship."

"Those men, answered Imlac, are less wretched in their silent convent than 〈◊〉〈◊〉 Abis|sinian princes in their prison of pleasure. What|ever is done by the monks is incited by an adequate and reasonable motive. Their la|bour supplies them with necessaries; it there|fore cannot be omitted, and is certainly re|warded. Their devotion prepares them for another state, and reminds them of its ap|proach,

while it fits them for it. Their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeds ano|ther, so that they are not left open to the dis|traction 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 chearful, because they consi|der them•• as acts of piety, by which they are always advancing towards endless felicity."

"Do you think, said Nekayah, that the monastick 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 harm|less 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, every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick 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 their conflicts with adversity, and are willing to eject those passions which have long busied them in vain. And many are dismissed by age and diseases from the more laborious duties of society. In monasteries the weak and timor|ous 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 would not willingly die in a croud."

"The liberty of using harmless pleasures, proceeded Imlac, will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harm|less. The evil of any pleasure that Nekayah can image is not in the act itself, but in its consequences. Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and pro|batory, 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 vir|tuous

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 dan|ger, and security without restraint."

The princess was silent, and Rasselas, turn|ing to the astronomer, asked him, whether he could not delay her retreat, by shewing her something which she had not seen before.

"Your curiosity, said the sage, has been so general, and your pursuit of knowledge so vi|gorous, that novelties are not now very easily to be found: but what you can no longer pro|cure 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 many other things which I have done, because I would do something."

They hired a guard of horsemen, and the

next day visited the catacombs. When they were about to descend into the supulchral 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, an|swered 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.

CHAP. 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 carcasses which some nations consume with fire, others lay to mingle with the earth, and all agree to remove from their sight as soon as decent rites can be performed?

"The original of ancient customs, said Imlac, is commonly unknown; for the prac|tice 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 rela|tions or friends, and to th••s 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 corrup|tion, 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 there|fore tried this method of eluding death."

"Could the wise Egyptians, said Nekayah, think so grosly of the soul? If the soul could once survive its separation, what could it after|wards receive or suffer from the body?

"The Egyptians would doubtless think er••oneously, said the astronomer, in the dark|ness 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 the mind, and all the notices of sense and investigations of science concur to prove the unconsciousness of matter.

"It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in matter, or that every particle is a thinking being. Yet, if any part of matter be devoid of thought, what part can we sup|pose 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 annex|ed? to be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great o•• 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 wi••h cogitative p••wers."

"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 admit|ted among reasonable beings. All that we know of matter is, that matter is inert, sense|less 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 over-ruled by that which is unknown, no being, not omniscient, can ar|rive at certainty."

"Yet let us not, said the astronomer, too arrogantly limit the Creators power."

"It is no limitation of omnipotence, replied the poet; to suppose that one thing is not consistent with another, that the same propo|sition 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. Imma|teriality,

seems to imply a natural power of perpetual duration as a consequence of exempti|on from all causes of decay: whatever perishes, is destroyed by the solution of its contexture, and separation of its parts; nor can we con|ceive how that which has no parts, and there|fore admits no solution, can be naturally cor|rupted or impaired."

"I know not said Rasselas, how to conceive any thing without extension: what is extended must have parts, and you allow, that what|ever 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 the thought is, such is the power that thinks; a power impassive and indiscerpible.

"But the Being said Nekayah, whom I fear to name, the Being which made the soul, can destroy it."

"He, surely can destoy it, answered, Imlac, since, however unperishable in itself, it re|ceives from a higher nature its power of duration. That it will not perish by any in|herent cause or trouble or corruption, may be collected from philosophy; but philo|sophy 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 a while 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 re|member 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.

CHAP. XLIX. The conclusion, in which they agree to return to the land of Abissinia.

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 purposed to found a college of learned women, in which

she would preside, that, by conversing with the old, and educating the young, she might divide her time between the acquisition and communication of wisdom, and raise up for the next age models of prudence, and patterns of piety.

The prince desired a little kingdom, in which he might administer justice in his own person, and see all the parts of government with his own eyes; but he could never fix the limits of his dominion, and was always adding to the number of his subjects.

Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be driven along the stream of life, without directing their course to any particular port.

Of these wishes that they formed they well knew that none could be obtained. They deliberated a while what was to be done, and resolved, when the inundation should cease, to return to the land of in Abissinia.

END OF THE SECOND AND LAST VOLUME.