Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson
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Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia




CHAPTER I - DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY.



YE who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue 
with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will 
perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the 
present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history 
of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty Emperor in whose 
dominions the father of waters begins his course - whose bounty 
pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over the world the 
harvests of Egypt.

According to the custom which has descended from age to age among 
the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private 
palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty, 
till the order of succession should call him to the throne.

The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for 
the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley in 
the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of 
which the summits overhang the middle part.  The only passage by 
which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of 
which it had long been disputed whether it was the work of nature 
or of human industry.  The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a 
thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed 
with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so 
massive that no man, without the help of engines, could open or 
shut them.

From the mountains on every side rivulets descended that filled all 
the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the 
middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every 
fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water.  This lake 
discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark 
cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell with dreadful 
noise from precipice to precipice till it was heard no more.

The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the banks of 
the brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast shook spices 
from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground.  
All animals that bite the grass or browse the shrubs, whether wild 
or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of 
prey by the mountains which confined them.  On one part were flocks 
and herds feeding in the pastures, on another all the beasts of 
chase frisking in the lawns, the sprightly kid was bounding on the 
rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn 
elephant reposing in the shade.  All the diversities of the world 
were brought together, the blessings of nature were collected, and 
its evils extracted and excluded.

The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with all 
the necessaries of life, and all delights and superfluities were 
added at the annual visit which the Emperor paid his children, when 
the iron gate was opened to the sound of music, and during eight 
days every one that resided in the valley was required to propose 
whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up 
the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of time.  
Every desire was immediately granted.  All the artificers of 
pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians 
exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity 
before the princes, in hopes that they should pass their lives in 
blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose 
performance was thought able to add novelty to luxury.  Such was 
the appearance of security and delight which this retirement 
afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might 
be perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed 
were never suffered to return, the effect of longer experience 
could not be known.  Thus every year produced new scenes of 
delight, and new competitors for imprisonment.

The palace stood on an eminence, raised about thirty paces above 
the surface of the lake.  It was divided into many squares or 
courts, built with greater or less magnificence according to the 
rank of those for whom they were designed.  The roofs were turned 
into arches of massive stone, joined by a cement that grew harder 
by time, and the building stood from century to century, deriding 
the solstitial rains and equinoctial hurricanes, without need of 
reparation.

This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none but 
some ancient officers, who successively inherited the secrets of 
the place, was built as if Suspicion herself had dictated the plan.  
To every room there was an open and secret passage; every square 
had a communication with the rest, either from the upper storeys by 
private galleries, or by subterraneous passages from the lower 
apartments.  Many of the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which 
a long race of monarchs had deposited their treasures.  They then 
closed up the opening with marble, which was never to be removed 
but in the utmost exigences of the kingdom, and recorded their 
accumulations in a book, which was itself concealed in a tower, not 
entered but by the Emperor, attended by the prince who stood next 
in succession.



CHAPTER II - THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.



HERE the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to know the 
soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were 
skilful to delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can 
enjoy.  They wandered in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the 
fortresses of security.  Every art was practised to make them 
pleased with their own condition.  The sages who instructed them 
told them of nothing but the miseries of public life, and described 
all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where discord was 
always racing, and where man preyed upon man.  To heighten their 
opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained with 
songs, the subject of which was the Happy Valley.  Their appetites 
were excited by frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and 
revelry and merriment were the business of every hour, from the 
dawn of morning to the close of the evening.

These methods were generally successful; few of the princes had 
ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full 
conviction that they had all within their reach that art or nature 
could bestow, and pitied those whom nature had excluded from this 
seat of tranquillity as the sport of chance and the slaves of 
misery.

Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with 
each other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in the 
twenty-sixth year of his age, began to withdraw himself from the 
pastimes and assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and 
silent meditation.  He often sat before tables covered with luxury, 
and forgot to taste the dainties that were placed before him; he 
rose abruptly in the midst of the song, and hastily retired beyond 
the sound of music.  His attendants observed the change, and 
endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure.  He neglected their 
officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent day after day 
on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes 
listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the fish 
playing in the streams, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures 
and mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the 
herbage, and some sleeping among the bushes.  The singularity of 
his humour made him much observed.  One of the sages, in whose 
conversation he had formerly delighted, followed him secretly, in 
hope of discovering the cause of his disquiet.  Rasselas, who knew 
not that any one was near him, having for some time fixed his eyes 
upon the goats that were browsing among the rocks, began to compare 
their condition with his own.

"What," said he, "makes the difference between man and all the rest 
of the animal creation?  Every beast that strays beside me has the 
same corporal necessities with myself:  he is hungry, and crops the 
grass; he is thirsty, and drinks the stream; his thirst and hunger 
are appeased; he is satisfied, and sleeps; he rises again, and is 
hungry; he is again fed, and is at rest.  I am hungry and thirsty, 
like him, but when thirst and hunger cease, I am not at rest.  I 
am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, satisfied 
with fulness.  The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I 
long again to be hungry that I may again quicken the attention.  
The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves, 
where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste 
their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds.  I likewise 
can call the lutist and the singer; but the sounds that pleased me 
yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-
morrow.  I can discover in me no power of perception which is not 
glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself 
delighted.  Man surely has some latent sense for which this place 
affords no gratification; or he has some desire distinct from 
sense, which must be satisfied before he can be happy."

After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon rising, 
walked towards the palace.  As he passed through the fields, and 
saw the animals around him, "Ye," said he, "are happy, and need not 
envy me that walk thus among you, burdened with myself; nor do I, 
ye gentle beings, envy your felicity; for it is not the felicity of 
man.  I have many distresses from which you are free; I fear pain 
when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and 
sometimes start at evils anticipated:  surely the equity of 
Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar 
enjoyments."

With observations like these the Prince amused himself as he 
returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look 
that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own 
perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life 
from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt and the 
eloquence with which he bewailed them.  He mingled cheerfully in 
the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find that his 
heart was lightened.



CHAPTER III - THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHING.



ON the next day, his old instructor, imagining that he had now made 
himself acquainted with his disease of mind, was in hope of curing 
it by counsel, and officiously sought an opportunity of conference, 
which the Prince, having long considered him as one whose 
intellects were exhausted, was not very willing to afford.  "Why," 
said he, "does this man thus intrude upon me?  Shall I never be 
suffered to forget these lectures, which pleased only while they 
were new, and to become new again must be forgotten?"  He then 
walked into the wood, and composed himself to his usual 
meditations; when, before his thoughts had taken any settled form, 
he perceived his pursuer at his side, and was at first prompted by 
his impatience to go hastily away; but being unwilling to offend a 
man whom he had once reverenced and still loved, he invited him to 
sit down with him on the bank.

The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the change which had 
been lately observed in the Prince, and to inquire why he so often 
retired from the pleasures of the palace to loneliness and silence.  
"I fly from pleasure," said the Prince, "because pleasure has 
ceased to please:  I am lonely because I am miserable, and am 
unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."  
"You, sir," said the sage, "are the first who has complained of 
misery in the Happy Valley.  I hope to convince you that your 
complaints have no real cause.  You are here in full possession of 
all the Emperor of Abyssinia can bestow; here is neither labour to 
be endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that labour or 
danger can procure or purchase.  Look round and tell me which of 
your wants is without supply:  if you want nothing, how are you 
unhappy?"

"That I want nothing," said the Prince, "or that I know not what I 
want, is the cause of my complaint:  if I had any known want, I 
should have a certain wish; that wish would excite endeavour, and I 
should not then repine to see the sun move so slowly towards the 
western mountains, or to lament when the day breaks, and sleep will 
no longer hide me from myself.  When I see the kids and the lambs 
chasing one another, I fancy that I should be happy if I had 
something to pursue.  But, possessing all that I can want, I find 
one day and one hour exactly like another, except that the latter 
is still more tedious than the former.  Let your experience inform 
me how the day may now seem as short as in my childhood, while 
nature was yet fresh, and every moment showed me what I never had 
observed before.  I have already enjoyed too much:  give me 
something to desire."  The old man was surprised at this new 
species of affliction, and knew not what to reply, yet was 
unwilling to be silent.  "Sir," said he, "if you had seen the 
miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present 
state."  "Now," said the Prince, "you have given me something to 
desire.  I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the 
sight of them is necessary to happiness."



CHAPTER IV - THE PRINCE CONTINUES TO GRIEVE AND MUSE



AT this time the sound of music proclaimed the hour of repast, and 
the conversation was concluded.  The old man went away sufficiently 
discontented to find that his reasonings had produced the only 
conclusion which they were intended to prevent.  But in the decline 
of life, shame and grief are of short duration:  whether it be that 
we bear easily what we have borne long; or that, finding ourselves 
in age less regarded, we less regard others; or that we look with 
slight regard upon afflictions to which we know that the hand of 
death is about to put an end.

The Prince, whose views were extended to a wider space, could not 
speedily quiet his emotions.  He had been before terrified at the 
length of life which nature promised him, because he considered 
that in a long time much must be endured:  he now rejoiced in his 
youth, because in many years much might be done.  The first beam of 
hope that had been ever darted into his mind rekindled youth in his 
cheeks, and doubled the lustre of his eyes.  He was fired with the 
desire of doing something, though he knew not yet, with 
distinctness, either end or means.  He was now no longer gloomy and 
unsocial; but considering himself as master of a secret stock of 
happiness, which he could only enjoy by concealing it, he affected 
to be busy in all the schemes of diversion, and endeavoured to make 
others pleased with the state of which he himself was weary.  But 
pleasures can never be so multiplied or continued as not to leave 
much of life unemployed; there were many hours, both of the night 
and day, which he could spend without suspicion in solitary 
thought.  The load of life was much lightened; he went eagerly into 
the assemblies, because he supposed the frequency of his presence 
necessary to the success of his purposes; he retired gladly to 
privacy, because he had now a subject of thought.  His chief 
amusement was to picture to himself that world which he had never 
seen, to place himself in various conditions, to be entangled in 
imaginary difficulties, and to be engaged in wild adventures; but, 
his benevolence always terminated his projects in the relief of 
distress, the detection of fraud, the defeat of oppression, and the 
diffusion of happiness.

Thus passed twenty months of the life of Rasselas.  He busied 
himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his real 
solitude; and amidst hourly preparations for the various incidents 
of human affairs, neglected to consider by what means he should 
mingle with mankind.

One day, as he was sitting on a bank, he feigned to himself an 
orphan virgin robbed of her little portion by a treacherous lover, 
and crying after him for restitution.  So strongly was the image 
impressed upon his mind that he started up in the maid's defence, 
and ran forward to seize the plunderer with all the eagerness of 
real pursuit.  Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.  
Rasselas could not catch the fugitive with his utmost efforts; but, 
resolving to weary by perseverance him whom he could not surpass in 
speed, he pressed on till the foot of the mountain stopped his 
course.

Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own useless 
impetuosity.  Then raising his eyes to the mountain, "This," said 
he, "is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of 
pleasure and the exercise of virtue.  How long is it that my hopes 
and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of my life, which yet I 
never have attempted to surmount?"

Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse, and remembered 
that since he first resolved to escape from his confinement, the 
sun had passed twice over him in his annual course.  He now felt a 
degree of regret with which he had never been before acquainted.  
He considered how much might have been done in the time which had 
passed, and left nothing real behind it.  He compared twenty months 
with the life of man.  "In life," said he, "is not to be counted 
the ignorance of infancy or imbecility of age.  We are long before 
we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power of acting.  
The true period of human existence may be reasonably estimated at 
forty years, of which I have mused away the four-and-twentieth 
part.  What I have lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed 
it; but of twenty months to come, who can assure me?"

The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was 
long before he could be reconciled to himself.  "The rest of my 
time," said he, "has been lost by the crime or folly of my 
ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my country; I remember it 
with disgust, yet without remorse:  but the months that have passed 
since new light darted into my soul, since I formed a scheme of 
reasonable felicity, have been squandered by my own fault.  I have 
lost that which can never be restored; I have seen the sun rise and 
set for twenty months, an idle gazer on the light of heaven; in 
this time the birds have left the nest of their mother, and 
committed themselves to the woods and to the skies; the kid has 
forsaken the teat, and learned by degrees to climb the rocks in 
quest of independent sustenance.  I only have made no advances, but 
am still helpless and ignorant.  The moon, by more than twenty 
changes, admonished me of the flux of life; the stream that rolled 
before my feet upbraided my inactivity.  I sat feasting on 
intellectual luxury, regardless alike of the examples of the earth 
and the instructions of the planets.  Twenty months are passed:  
who shall restore them?"

These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he passed four 
months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, and was 
awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid, who had 
broken a porcelain cup, remark that what cannot be repaired is not 
to be regretted.

This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself that he had not 
discovered it - having not known, or not considered, how many 
useful hints are obtained by chance, and how often the mind, 
hurried by her own ardour to distant views, neglects the truths 
that lie open before her.  He for a few hours regretted his regret, 
and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means of escaping 
from the Valley of Happiness.



CHAPTER V - THE PRINCE MEDITATES HIS ESCAPE.



HE now found that it would be very difficult to effect that which 
it was very easy to suppose effected.  When he looked round about 
him, he saw himself confined by the bars of nature, which had never 
yet been broken, and by the gate through which none that had once 
passed it were ever able to return.  He was now impatient as an 
eagle in a grate.  He passed week after week in clambering the 
mountains to see if there was any aperture which the bushes might 
conceal, but found all the summits inaccessible by their 
prominence.  The iron gate he despaired to open for it was not only 
secured with all the power of art, but was always watched by 
successive sentinels, and was, by its position, exposed to the 
perpetual observation of all the inhabitants.

He then examined the cavern through which the waters of the lake 
were discharged; and, looking down at a time when the sun shone 
strongly upon its mouth, he discovered it to be full of broken 
rocks, which, though they permitted the stream to flow through many 
narrow passages, would stop any body of solid bulk.  He returned 
discouraged and dejected; but having now known the blessing of 
hope, resolved never to despair.

In these fruitless researches he spent ten months.  The time, 
however, passed cheerfully away - in the morning he rose with new 
hope; in the evening applauded his own diligence; and in the night 
slept soundly after his fatigue.  He met a thousand amusements, 
which beguiled his labour and diversified his thoughts.  He 
discerned the various instincts of animals and properties of 
plants, and found the place replete with wonders, of which he 
proposed to solace himself with the contemplation if he should 
never be able to accomplish his flight - rejoicing that his 
endeavours, though yet unsuccessful, had supplied him with a source 
of inexhaustible inquiry.  But his original curiosity was not yet 
abated; he resolved to obtain some knowledge of the ways of men.  
His wish still continued, but his hope grew less.  He ceased to 
survey any longer the walls of his prison, and spared to search by 
new toils for interstices which he knew could not be found, yet 
determined to keep his design always in view, and lay hold on any 
expedient that time should offer.



CHAPTER VI - A DISSERTATION ON THE ART OF FLYING.



AMONG the artists that had been allured into the Happy Valley, to 
labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a 
man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanic powers, who had 
contrived many engines both of use and recreation.  By a wheel 
which the stream turned he forced the water into a tower, whence it 
was distributed to all the apartments of the palace.  He erected a 
pavilion in the garden, around which he kept the air always cool by 
artificial showers.  One of the groves, appropriated to the ladies, 
was ventilated by fans, to which the rivulets that ran through it 
gave a constant motion; and instruments of soft music were played 
at proper distances, of which some played by the impulse of the 
wind, and some by the power of the stream.

This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas who was pleased with 
every kind of knowledge, imagining that the time would come when 
all his acquisitions should be of use to him in the open world.  He 
came one day to amuse himself in his usual manner, and found the 
master busy in building a sailing chariot.  He saw that the design 
was practicable upon a level surface, and with expressions of great 
esteem solicited its completion.  The workman was pleased to find 
himself so much regarded by the Prince, and resolved to gain yet 
higher honours.  "Sir," said he, "you have seen but a small part of 
what the mechanic sciences can perform.  I have been long of 
opinion that, instead of the tardy conveyance of ships and 
chariots, man might use the swifter migration of wings, that the 
fields of air are open to knowledge, and that only ignorance and 
idleness need crawl upon the ground."

This hint rekindled the Prince's desire of passing the mountains.  
Having seen what the mechanist had already performed, he was 
willing to fancy that he could do more, yet resolved to inquire 
further before he suffered hope to afflict him by disappointment.  
"I am afraid," said he to the artist, "that your imagination 
prevails over your skill, and that you now tell me rather what you 
wish than what you know.  Every animal has his element assigned 
him; the birds have the air, and man and beasts the earth."  "So," 
replied the mechanist, "fishes have the water, in which yet beasts 
can swim by nature and man by art.  He that can swim needs not 
despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is 
to swim in a subtler.  We are only to proportion our power of 
resistance to the different density of matter through which we are 
to pass.  You will be necessarily up-borne by the air if you can 
renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the 
pressure."

"But the exercise of swimming," said the Prince, "is very 
laborious; the strongest limbs are soon wearied.  I am afraid the 
act of flying will be yet more violent; and wings will be of no 
great use unless we can fly further than we can swim."

"The labour of rising from the ground," said the artist, "will be 
great, as we see it in the heavier domestic fowls; but as we mount 
higher the earth's attraction and the body's gravity will be 
gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at a region where the 
man shall float in the air without any tendency to fall; no care 
will then be necessary but to move forward, which the gentlest 
impulse will effect.  You, sir, whose curiosity is so extensive, 
will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished 
with wings and hovering in the sky, would see the earth and all its 
inhabitants rolling beneath him, and presenting to him 
successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the 
same parallel.  How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the 
moving scene of land and ocean, cities and deserts; to survey with 
equal security the marts of trade and the fields of battle; 
mountains infested by barbarians, and fruitful regions gladdened by 
plenty and lulled by peace.  How easily shall we then trace the 
Nile through all his passages, pass over to distant regions, and 
examine the face of nature from one extremity of the earth to the 
other."

"All this," said the Prince, "is much to be desired, but I am 
afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these regions of 
speculation and tranquillity.  I have been told that respiration is 
difficult upon lofty mountains, yet from these precipices, though 
so high as to produce great tenuity of air, it is very easy to 
fall; therefore I suspect that from any height where life can be 
supported, there may be danger of too quick descent."

"Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be attempted if all 
possible objections must be first overcome.  If you will favour my 
project, I will try the first flight at my own hazard.  I have 
considered the structure of all volant animals, and find the 
folding continuity of the bat's wings most easily accommodated to 
the human form.  Upon this model I shall begin my task to-morrow, 
and in a year expect to tower into the air beyond the malice and 
pursuit of man.  But I will work only on this condition, that the 
art shall not be divulged, and that you shall not require me to 
make wings for any but ourselves."

"Why," said Rasselas, "should you envy others so great an 
advantage?  All skill ought to be exerted for universal good; every 
man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the kindness that 
he has received."

"If men were all virtuous," returned the artist, "I should with 
great alacrity teach them to fly.  But what would be the security 
of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky?  
Against an army sailing through the clouds neither walls, 
mountains, nor seas could afford security.  A flight of northern 
savages might hover in the wind and light with irresistible 
violence upon the capital of a fruitful reason.  Even this valley, 
the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated 
by the sudden descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on 
the coast of the southern sea!"

The Prince promised secrecy, and waited for the performance, not 
wholly hopeless of success.  He visited the work from time to time, 
observed its progress, and remarked many ingenious contrivances to 
facilitate motion and unite levity with strength.  The artist was 
every day more certain that he should leave vultures and eagles 
behind him, and the contagion of his confidence seized upon the 
Prince.  In a year the wings were finished; and on a morning 
appointed the maker appeared, furnished for flight, on a little 
promontory; he waved his pinions awhile to gather air, then leaped 
from his stand, and in an instant dropped into the lake.  His 
wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained him in the water; 
and the Prince drew him to land half dead with terror and vexation.



CHAPTER VII -  THE PRINCE FINDS A MAN OF LEARNING.



THE Prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, having suffered 
himself to hope for a happier event only because he had no other 
means of escape in view.  He still persisted in his design to leave 
the Happy Valley by the first opportunity.

His imagination was now at a stand; he had no prospect of entering 
into the world, and, notwithstanding all his endeavours to support 
himself, discontent by degrees preyed upon him, and he began again 
to lose his thoughts in sadness when the rainy season, which in 
these countries is periodical, made it inconvenient to wander in 
the woods.

The rain continued longer and with more violence than had ever been 
known; the clouds broke on the surrounding mountains, and the 
torrents streamed into the plain on every side, till the cavern was 
too narrow to discharge the water.  The lake overflowed its banks, 
and all the level of the valley was covered with the inundation.  
The eminence on which the palace was built, and some other spots of 
rising ground, were all that the eye could now discover.  The herds 
and flocks left the pasture, and both the wild beasts and the tame 
retreated to the mountains.

This inundation confined all the princes to domestic amusements, 
and the attention of Rasselas was particularly seized by a poem 
(which Imlac rehearsed) upon the various conditions of humanity.  
He commanded the poet to attend him in his apartment, and recite 
his verses a second time; then entering into familiar talk, he 
thought himself happy in having found a man who knew the world so 
well, and could so skilfully paint the scenes of life.  He asked a 
thousand questions about things to which, though common to all 
other mortals, his confinement from childhood had kept him a 
stranger.  The poet pitied his ignorance, and loved his curiosity, 
and entertained him from day to day with novelty and instruction so 
that the Prince regretted the necessity of sleep, and longed till 
the morning should renew his pleasure.

As they were sitting together, the Prince commanded Imlac to relate 
his history, and to tell by what accident he was forced, or by what 
motive induced, to close his life in the Happy Valley.  As he was 
going to begin his narrative, Rasselas was called to a concert, and 
obliged to restrain his curiosity till the evening.



CHAPTER VIII - THE HISTORY OF IMLAC.



THE close of the day is, in the regions of the torrid zone, the 
only season of diversion and entertainment, and it was therefore 
midnight before the music ceased and the princesses retired.  
Rasselas then called for his companion, and required him to begin 
the story of his life.

"Sir," said Imlac, "my history will not be long:  the life that is 
devoted to knowledge passes silently away, and is very little 
diversified by events.  To talk in public, to think in solitude, to 
read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business 
of a scholar.  He wanders about the world without pomp or terror, 
and is neither known nor valued but by men like himself.

"I was born in the kingdom of Goiama, at no great distance from the 
fountain of the Nile.  My father was a wealthy merchant, who traded 
between the inland countries of Africa and the ports of the Red 
Sea.  He was honest, frugal, and diligent, but of mean sentiments 
and narrow comprehension; he desired only to be rich, and to 
conceal his riches, lest he should be spoiled by the governors of 
the province."

"Surely," said the Prince, "my father must be negligent of his 
charge if any man in his dominions dares take that which belongs to 
another.  Does he not know that kings are accountable for injustice 
permitted as well as done?  If I were Emperor, not the meanest of 
my subjects should he oppressed with impunity.  My blood boils when 
I am told that a merchant durst not enjoy his honest gains for fear 
of losing them by the rapacity of power.  Name the governor who 
robbed the people that I may declare his crimes to the Emperor!"

"Sir," said Imlac, "your ardour is the natural effect of virtue 
animated by youth.  The time will come when you will acquit your 
father, and perhaps hear with less impatience of the governor.  
Oppression is, in the Abyssinian dominions, neither frequent nor 
tolerated; but no form of government has been yet discovered by 
which cruelty can be wholly prevented.  Subordination supposes 
power on one part and subjection on the other; and if power be in 
the hands of men it will sometimes be abused.  The vigilance of the 
supreme magistrate may do much, but much will still remain undone.  
He can never know all the crimes that are committed, and can seldom 
punish all that he knows."

"This," said the Prince, "I do not understand; but I had rather 
hear thee than dispute.  Continue thy narration."

"My father," proceeded Imlac, "originally intended that I should 
have no other education than such as might qualify me for commerce; 
and discovering in me great strength of memory and quickness of 
apprehension, often declared his hope that I should be some time 
the richest man in Abyssinia."

"Why," said the Prince, "did thy father desire the increase of his 
wealth when it was already greater than he durst discover or enjoy?  
I am unwilling to doubt thy veracity, yet inconsistencies cannot 
both be true."

"Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right; but, 
imputed to man, they may both be true.  Yet diversity is not 
inconsistency.  My father might expect a time of greater security.  
However, some desire is necessary to keep life in motion; and he 
whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy."

"This," said the Prince, "I can in some measure conceive.  I repent 
that I interrupted thee."

"With this hope," proceeded Imlac, "he sent me to school.  But when 
I had once found the delight of knowledge, and felt the pleasure of 
intelligence and the pride of invention, I began silently to 
despise riches, and determined to disappoint the purposes of my 
father, whose grossness of conception raised my pity.  I was twenty 
years old before his tenderness would expose me to the fatigue of 
travel; in which time I had been instructed, by successive masters, 
in all the literature of my native country.  As every hour taught 
me something new, I lived in a continual course of gratification; 
but as I advanced towards manhood, I lost much of the reverence 
with which I had been used to look on my instructors; because when 
the lessons were ended I did not find them wiser or better than 
common men.

"At length my father resolved to initiate me in commerce; and, 
opening one of his subterranean treasuries, counted out ten 
thousand pieces of gold.  'This, young man,' said he, 'is the stock 
with which you must negotiate.  I began with less than a fifth 
part, and you see how diligence and parsimony have increased it.  
This is your own, to waste or improve.  If you squander it by 
negligence or caprice, you must wait for my death before you will 
be rich; if in four years you double your stock, we will 
thenceforward let subordination cease, and live together as friends 
and partners, for he shall be always equal with me who is equally 
skilled in the art of growing rich.'

"We laid out our money upon camels, concealed in bales of cheap 
goods, and travelled to the shore of the Red Sea.  When I cast my 
eye on the expanse of waters, my heart bounded like that of a 
prisoner escaped.  I felt an inextinguishable curiosity kindle in 
my mind, and resolved to snatch this opportunity of seeing the 
manners of other nations, and of learning sciences unknown in 
Abyssinia.

"I remembered that my father had obliged me to the improvement of 
my stock, not by a promise, which I ought not to violate, but by a 
penalty, which I was at liberty to incur; and therefore determined 
to gratify my predominant desire, and, by drinking at the fountain 
of knowledge, to quench the thirst of curiosity.

"As I was supposed to trade without connection with my father, it 
was easy for me to become acquainted with the master of a ship, and 
procure a passage to some other country.  I had no motives of 
choice to regulate my voyage.  It was sufficient for me that, 
wherever I wandered, I should see a country which I had not seen 
before.  I therefore entered a ship bound for Surat, having left a 
letter for my father declaring my intention."



CHAPTER IX - THE HISTORY OF IMLAC (CONTINUED).



"WHEN I first entered upon the world of waters, and lost sight of 
land, I looked round about me in pleasing terror, and thinking my 
soul enlarged by the boundless prospect, imagined that I could gaze 
around me for ever without satiety; but in a short time I grew 
weary of looking on barren uniformity, where I could only see again 
what I had already seen.  I then descended into the ship, and 
doubted for awhile whether all my future pleasures would not end, 
like this, in disgust and disappointment.  'Yet surely,' said I, 
'the ocean and the land are very different.  The only variety of 
water is rest and motion.  But the earth has mountains and valleys, 
deserts and cities; it is inhabited by men of different customs and 
contrary opinions; and I may hope to find variety in life, though I 
should miss it in nature.'

"With this thought I quieted my mind, and amused myself during the 
voyage, sometimes by learning from the sailors the art of 
navigation, which I have never practised, and sometimes by forming 
schemes for my conduct in different situations, in not one of which 
I have been ever placed.

"I was almost weary of my naval amusements when we safely landed at 
Surat.  I secured my money and, purchasing some commodities for 
show, joined myself to a caravan that was passing into the inland 
country.  My companions, for some reason or other, conjecturing 
that I was rich, and, by my inquiries and admiration, finding that 
I was ignorant, considered me as a novice whom they had a right to 
cheat, and who was to learn, at the usual expense, the art of 
fraud.  They exposed me to the theft of servants and the exaction 
of officers, and saw me plundered upon false pretences, without any 
advantage to themselves but that of rejoicing in the superiority of 
their own knowledge."

"Stop a moment," said the Prince; "is there such depravity in man 
as that he should injure another without benefit to himself?  I can 
easily conceive that all are pleased with superiority; but your 
ignorance was merely accidental, which, being neither your crime 
nor your folly, could afford them no reason to applaud themselves; 
and the knowledge which they had, and which you wanted, they might 
as effectually have shown by warning as betraying you."

"Pride," said Imlac, "is seldom delicate; it will please itself 
with very mean advantages, and envy feels not its own happiness but 
when it may be compared with the misery of others.  They were my 
enemies because they grieved to think me rich, and my oppressors 
because they delighted to find me weak."

"Proceed," said the Prince; "I doubt not of the facts which you 
relate, but imagine that you impute them to mistaken motives."

"In this company," said Imlac, "I arrived at Agra, the capital of 
Hindostan, the city in which the Great Mogul commonly resides.  I 
applied myself to the language of the country, and in a few months 
was able to converse with the learned men; some of whom I found 
morose and reserved, and others easy and communicative; some were 
unwilling to teach another what they had with difficulty learned 
themselves; and some showed that the end of their studies was to 
gain the dignity of instructing.

"To the tutor of the young princes I recommended myself so much 
that I was presented to the Emperor as a man of uncommon knowledge.  
The Emperor asked me many questions concerning my country and my 
travels, and though I cannot now recollect anything that he uttered 
above the power of a common man, he dismissed me astonished at his 
wisdom and enamoured of his goodness.

"My credit was now so high that the merchants with whom I had 
travelled applied to me for recommendations to the ladies of the 
Court.  I was surprised at their confidence of solicitation and 
greatly reproached them with their practices on the road.  They 
heard me with cold indifference, and showed no tokens of shame or 
sorrow.

"They then urged their request with the offer of a bribe, but what 
I would not do for kindness I would not do for money, and refused 
them, not because they had injured me, but because I would not 
enable them to injure others; for I knew they would have made use 
of my credit to cheat those who should buy their wares.

"Having resided at Agra till there was no more to be learned, I 
travelled into Persia, where I saw many remains of ancient 
magnificence and observed many new accommodations of life.  The 
Persians are a nation eminently social, and their assemblies 
afforded me daily opportunities of remarking characters and 
manners, and of tracing human nature through all its variations.

"From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation pastoral 
and warlike, who lived without any settled habitation, whose wealth 
is their flocks and herds, and who have carried on through ages an 
hereditary war with mankind, though they neither covet nor envy 
their possessions."



CHAPTER X - IMLAC'S HISTORY (CONTINUED) - A DISSERTATION UPON 
POETRY.



"WHEREVER I went I found that poetry was considered as the highest 
learning, and regarded with a veneration somewhat approaching to 
that which man would pay to angelic nature.  And yet it fills me 
with wonder that in almost all countries the most ancient poets are 
considered as the best; whether it be that every other kind of 
knowledge is an acquisition greatly attained, and poetry is a gift 
conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation 
surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent 
which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province 
of poetry is to describe nature and passion, which are always the 
same, the first writers took possession of the most striking 
objects for description and the most probable occurrences for 
fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them but 
transcription of the same events and new combinations of the same 
images.  Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the 
early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of 
art; that the first excel in strength and invention, and the latter 
in elegance and refinement.

"I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fraternity.  I 
read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, and was able to repeat by 
memory the volumes that are suspended in the mosque of Mecca.  But 
I soon found that no man was ever great by imitations.  My desire 
of excellence impelled me to transfer my attention to nature and to 
life.  Nature was to be my subject, and men to be my auditors.  I 
could never describe what I had not seen.  I could not hope to move 
those with delight or terror whose interests and opinions I did not 
understand.

Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw everything with a new 
purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified; no kind of 
knowledge was to be overlooked.  I ranged mountains and deserts for 
images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of 
the forest and flower of the valley.  I observed with equal care 
the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace.  Sometimes I 
wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the 
changes of the summer clouds.  To a poet nothing can be useless.  
Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be familiar to 
his imagination; he must be conversant with all that is awfully 
vast or elegantly little.  The plants of the garden, the animals of 
the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must 
all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety; for every 
idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or 
religious truth, and he who knows most will have most power of 
diversifying his scenes and of gratifying his reader with remote 
allusions and unexpected instruction.

"All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to study, 
and every country which I have surveyed has contributed something 
to my poetical powers."

"In so wide a survey," said the Prince, "you must surely have left 
much unobserved.  I have lived till now within the circuit of the 
mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of 
something which I had never beheld before, or never heeded."

"This business of a poet," said Imlac, "is to examine, not the 
individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large 
appearances.  He does not number the streaks of the tulip, or 
describe the different shades of the verdure of the forest.  He is 
to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking 
features as recall the original to every mind, and must neglect the 
minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked and another 
have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike obvious 
to vigilance and carelessness.

"But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he 
must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life.  His 
character requires that he estimate the happiness and misery of 
every condition, observe the power of all the passions in all their 
combinations, and trace the changes of the human mind, as they are 
modified by various institutions and accidental influences of 
climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the 
despondence of decrepitude.  He must divest himself of the 
prejudices of his age and country; he must consider right and wrong 
in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present 
laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, 
which will always be the same.  He must, therefore, content himself 
with the slow progress of his name, contemn the praise of his own 
time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity.  He must 
write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, 
and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of 
future generations, as a being superior to time and place.

"His labour is not yet at an end.  He must know many languages and 
many sciences, and, that his style may be worthy of his thoughts, 
must by incessant practice familiarise to himself every delicacy of 
speech and grace of harmony."



CHAPTER XI - IMLAC'S NARRATIVE (CONTINUED) - A HINT OF PILGRIMAGE.



IMLAC now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to 
aggrandise his own profession, when then Prince cried out:  
"Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a 
poet.  Proceed with thy narration."

"To be a poet," said Imlac, "is indeed very difficult."

"So difficult," returned the Prince, "that I will at present hear 
no more of his labours.  Tell me whither you went when you had seen 
Persia."

"From Persia," said the poet, "I travelled through Syria, and for 
three years resided in Palestine, where I conversed with great 
numbers of the northern and western nations of Europe, the nations 
which are now in possession of all power and all knowledge, whose 
armies are irresistible, and whose fleets command the remotest 
parts of the globe.  When I compared these men with the natives of 
our own kingdom and those that surround us, they appeared almost 
another order of beings.  In their countries it is difficult to 
wish for anything that may not be obtained; a thousand arts, of 
which we never heard, are continually labouring for their 
convenience and pleasure, and whatever their own climate has denied 
them is supplied by their commerce."

"By what means," said the Prince, "are the Europeans thus powerful? 
or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or 
conquest, cannot the Asiatics and Africans invade their coast, 
plant colonies in their ports, and give laws to their natural 
princes?  The same wind that carries them back would bring us 
thither."

"They are more powerful, sir, than we," answered Imlac, "because 
they are wiser; knowledge will always predominate over ignorance, 
as man governs the other animals.  But why their knowledge is more 
than ours I know not what reason can be given but the unsearchable 
will of the Supreme Being."

"When," said the Prince with a sigh, "shall I be able to visit 
Palestine, and mingle with this mighty confluence of nations?  Till 
that happy moment shall arrive, let me fill up the time with such 
representations as thou canst give me.  I am not ignorant of the 
motive that assembles such numbers in that place, and cannot but 
consider it as the centre of wisdom and piety, to which the best 
and wisest men of every land must be continually resorting."

"There are some nations," said Imlac, "that send few visitants to 
Palestine; for many numerous and learned sects in Europe concur to 
censure pilgrimage as superstitious, or deride it as ridiculous."

"You know," said the Prince, "how little my life has made me 
acquainted with diversity of opinions; it will be too long to hear 
the arguments on both sides; you, that have considered them, tell 
me the result."

"Pilgrimage," said Imlac, "like many other acts of piety, may be 
reasonable or superstitious, according to the principles upon which 
it is performed.  Long journeys in search of truth are not 
commanded.  Truth, such as is necessary to the regulation of life, 
is always found where it is honestly sought.  Change of place is no 
natural cause of the increase of piety, for it inevitably produces 
dissipation of mind.  Yet, since men go every day to view the 
fields where great actions have been performed, and return with 
stronger impressions of the event, curiosity of the same kind may 
naturally dispose us to view that country whence our religion had 
its beginning, and I believe no man surveys those awful scenes 
without some confirmation of holy resolutions.  That the Supreme 
Being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another 
is the dream of idle superstition, but that some places may operate 
upon our own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which hourly 
experience will justify.  He who supposes that his vices may be 
more successfully combated in Palestine, will perhaps find himself 
mistaken; yet he may go thither without folly; he who thinks they 
will be more freely pardoned, dishonours at once his reason and 
religion."

"These," said the Prince, "are European distinctions.  I will 
consider them another time.  What have you found to be the effect 
of knowledge?  Are those nations happier than we?"

"There is so much infelicity," said the poet, "in the world, that 
scarce any man has leisure from his own distresses to estimate the 
comparative happiness of others.  Knowledge is certainly one of the 
means of pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which 
every mind feels of increasing its ideas.  Ignorance is mere 
privation, by which nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity in 
which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction, 
and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and 
grieve when we forget.  I am therefore inclined to conclude that if 
nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we grow 
more happy as out minds take a wider range.

"In enumerating the particular comforts of life, we shall find many 
advantages on the side of the Europeans.  They cure wounds and 
diseases with which we languish and perish.  We suffer inclemencies 
of weather which they can obviate.  They have engines for the 
despatch of many laborious works, which we must perform by manual 
industry.  There is such communication between distant places that 
one friend can hardly be said to be absent from another.  Their 
policy removes all public inconveniences; they have roads cut 
through the mountains, and bridges laid over their rivers.  And, if 
we descend to the privacies of life, their habitations are more 
commodious and their possessions are more secure."

"They are surely happy," said the Prince, "who have all these 
conveniences, of which I envy none so much as the facility with 
which separated friends interchange their thoughts."

"The Europeans," answered Imlac, "are less unhappy than we, but 
they are not happy.  Human life is everywhere a state in which much 
is to be endured and little to be enjoyed."



CHAPTER XII - THE STORY OF IMLAC (CONTINUED).



"I AM not willing," said the Prince, "to suppose that happiness is 
so parsimoniously distributed to mortals, nor can I believe but 
that, if I had the choice of life, I should be able to fill every 
day with pleasure.  I would injure no man, and should provoke no 
resentments; I would relieve every distress, and should enjoy the 
benedictions of gratitude.  I would choose my friends among the 
wise and my wife among the virtuous, and therefore should be in no 
danger from treachery or unkindness.  My children should by my care 
be learned and pious, and would repay to my age what their 
childhood had received.  What would dare to molest him who might 
call on every side to thousands enriched by his bounty or assisted 
by his power?  And why should not life glide away in the soft 
reciprocation of protection and reverence?  All this may be done 
without the help of European refinements, which appear by their 
effects to be rather specious than useful.  Let us leave them and 
pursue our journey."

"From Palestine," said Imlac, "I passed through many regions of 
Asia; in the more civilised kingdoms as a trader, and among the 
barbarians of the mountains as a pilgrim.  At last I began to long 
for my native country, that I might repose after my travels and 
fatigues in the places where I had spent my earliest years, and 
gladden my old companions with the recital of my adventures.  Often 
did I figure to myself those with whom I had sported away the gay 
hours of dawning life, sitting round me in its evening, wondering 
at my tales and listening to my counsels.

"When this thought had taken possession of my mind, I considered 
every moment as wasted which did not bring me nearer to Abyssinia.  
I hastened into Egypt, and, notwithstanding my impatience, was 
detained ten months in the contemplation of its ancient 
magnificence and in inquiries after the remains of its ancient 
learning.  I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations:  some brought 
thither by the love of knowledge, some by the hope of gain; many by 
the desire of living after their own manner without observation, 
and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a city 
populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time the 
gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.

"From Cairo I travelled to Suez, and embarked on the Red Sea, 
passing along the coast till I arrived at the port from which I had 
departed twenty years before.  Here I joined myself to a caravan, 
and re-entered my native country.

"I now expected the caresses of my kinsmen and the congratulations 
of my friends, and was not without hope that my father, whatever 
value he had set upon riches, would own with gladness and pride a 
son who was able to add to the felicity and honour of the nation.  
But I was soon convinced that my thoughts were vain.  My father had 
been dead fourteen years, having divided his wealth among my 
brothers, who were removed to some other provinces.  Of my 
companions, the greater part was in the grave; of the rest, some 
could with difficulty remember me, and some considered me as one 
corrupted by foreign manners.

"A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.  I forgot, 
after a time, my disappointment, and endeavoured to recommend 
myself to the nobles of the kingdom; they admitted me to their 
tables, heard my story, and dismissed me.  I opened a school, and 
was prohibited to teach.  I then resolved to sit down in the quiet 
of domestic life, and addressed a lady that was fond of my 
conversation, but rejected my suit because my father was a 
merchant.

"Wearied at last with solicitation and repulses, I resolved to hide 
myself for ever from the world, and depend no longer on the opinion 
or caprice of others.  I waited for the time when the gate of the 
Happy Valley should open, that I might bid farewell to hope and 
fear; the day came, my performance was distinguished with favour, 
and I resigned myself with joy to perpetual confinement."

"Hast thou here found happiness at last?" said Rasselas.  "Tell me, 
without reserve, art thou content with thy condition, or dost thou 
wish to be again wandering and inquiring?  All the inhabitants of 
this valley celebrate their lot, and at the annual visit of the 
Emperor invite others to partake of their felicity."

"Great Prince," said Imlac, "I shall speak the truth.  I know not 
one of all your attendants who does not lament the hour when he 
entered this retreat.  I am less unhappy than the rest, because I 
have a mind replete with images, which I can vary and combine at 
pleasure.  I can amuse my solitude by the renovation of the 
knowledge which begins to fade from my memory, and by recollection 
of the accidents of my past life.  Yet all this ends in the 
sorrowful consideration that my acquirements are now useless, and 
that none of my pleasures can be again enjoyed.  The rest, whose 
minds have no impression but of the present moment, are either 
corroded by malignant passions or sit stupid in the gloom of 
perpetual vacancy."

"What passions can infest those," said the Prince, "who have no 
rivals?  We are in a place where impotence precludes malice, and 
where all envy is repressed by community of enjoyments."

"There may be community," said Imlac, "of material possessions, but 
there can never be community of love or of esteem.  It must happen 
that one will please more than another; he that knows himself 
despised will always be envious, and still more envious and 
malevolent if he is condemned to live in the presence of those who 
despise him.  The invitations by which they allure others to a 
state which they feel to be wretched, proceed from the natural 
malignity of hopeless misery.  They are weary of themselves and of 
each other, and expect to find relief in new companions.  They envy 
the liberty which their folly has forfeited, and would gladly see 
all mankind imprisoned like themselves.

"From this crime, however, I am wholly free.  No man can say that 
he is wretched by my persuasion.  I look with pity on the crowds 
who are annually soliciting admission to captivity, and wish that 
it were lawful for me to warn them of their danger."

"My dear Imlac," said the Prince, "I will open to thee my whole 
heart.  I have long meditated an escape from the Happy Valley.  I 
have examined the mountain on every side, but find myself 
insuperably barred - teach me the way to break my prison; thou 
shalt be the companion of my flight, the guide of my rambles, the 
partner of my fortune, and my sole director in the CHOICE OF LIFE.

"Sir," answered the poet, "your escape will be difficult, and 
perhaps you may soon repent your curiosity.  The world, which you 
figure to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake in the valley, you 
will find a sea foaming with tempests and boiling with whirlpools; 
you will be sometimes overwhelmed by the waves of violence, and 
sometimes dashed against the rocks of treachery.  Amidst wrongs and 
frauds, competitions and anxieties, you will wish a thousand times 
for these seats of quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from 
fear."

"Do not seek to deter me from my purpose," said the Prince.  "I am 
impatient to see what thou hast seen; and since thou art thyself 
weary of the valley, it is evident that thy former state was better 
than this.  Whatever be the consequence of my experiment, I am 
resolved to judge with mine own eyes of the various conditions of 
men, and then to make deliberately my CHOICE OF LIFE."

"I am afraid," said Imlac, "you are hindered by stronger restraints 
than my persuasions; yet, if your determination is fixed, I do not 
counsel you to despair.  Few things are impossible to diligence and 
skill."



CHAPTER XIII - RASSELAS DISCOVERS THE MEANS OF ESCAPE.



THE Prince now dismissed his favourite to rest; but the narrative 
of wonders and novelties filled his mind with perturbation.  He 
revolved all that he had heard, and prepared innumerable questions 
for the morning.

Much of his uneasiness was now removed.  He had a friend to whom he 
could impart his thoughts, and whose experience could assist him in 
his designs.  His heart was no longer condemned to swell with 
silent vexation.  He thought that even the Happy Valley might be 
endured with such a companion, and that if they could range the 
world together he should have nothing further to desire.

In a few days the water was discharged, and the ground dried.  The 
Prince and Imlac then walked out together, to converse without the 
notice of the rest.  The Prince, whose thoughts were always on the 
wing, as he passed by the gate said, with a countenance of sorrow, 
"Why art thou so strong, and why is man so weak?"

"Man is not weak," answered his companion; "knowledge is more than 
equivalent to force.  The master of mechanics laughs at strength.  
I can burst the gate, but cannot do it secretly.  Some other 
expedient must be tried."

 As they were walking on the side of the mountain they observed 
that the coneys, which the rain had driven from their burrows, had 
taken shelter among the bushes, and formed holes behind them 
tending upwards in an oblique line.   "It has been the opinion of 
antiquity," said Imlac, "that human reason borrowed many arts from 
the instinct of animals; let us, therefore, not think ourselves 
degraded by learning from the coney.  We may escape by piercing the 
mountain in the same direction.  We will begin where the summit 
hangs over the middle part, and labour upward till we shall issue 
out beyond the prominence."

The eyes of the Prince, when he heard this proposal, sparkled with 
joy.  The execution was easy and the success certain.

No time was now lost.  They hastened early in the morning to choose 
a place proper for their mine.  They clambered with great fatigue 
among crags and brambles, and returned without having discovered 
any part that favoured their design.  The second and the third day 
were spent in the same manner, and with the same frustration; but 
on the fourth day they found a small cavern concealed by a thicket, 
where they resolved to make their experiment.

Imlac procured instruments proper to hew stone and remove earth, 
and they fell to their work on the next day with more eagerness 
than vigour.  They were presently exhausted by their efforts, and 
sat down to pant upon the grass.  The Prince for a moment appeared 
to be discouraged.  "Sir," said his companion, "practice will 
enable us to continue our labour for a longer time.  Mark, however, 
how far we have advanced, and ye will find that our toil will some 
time have an end.  Great works are performed not by strength, but 
perseverance; yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you 
see its height and spaciousness.  He that shall walk with vigour 
three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the 
circumference of the globe."

They returned to their work day after day, and in a short time 
found a fissure in the rock, which enabled them to pass far with 
very little obstruction.  This Rasselas considered as a good omen.  
"Do not disturb your mind," said Imlac, "with other hopes or fears 
than reason may suggest; if you are pleased with the prognostics of 
good, you will be terrified likewise with tokens of evil, and your 
whole life will be a prey to superstition.  Whatever facilitates 
our work is more than an omen; it is a cause of success.  This is 
one of those pleasing surprises which often happen to active 
resolution.  Many things difficult to design prove easy to 
performance."



CHAPTER XIV - RASSELAS AND IMLAC RECEIVE AN UNEXPECTED VISIT.



THEY had now wrought their way to the middle, and solaced their 
toil with the approach of liberty, when the Prince, coming down to 
refresh himself with air, found his sister Nekayah standing at the 
mouth of the cavity.  He started, and stood confused, afraid to 
tell his design, and yet hopeless to conceal it.  A few moments 
determined him to repose on her fidelity, and secure her secrecy by 
a declaration without reserve.

"Do not imagine," said the Princess, "that I came hither as a spy.  
I had long observed from my window that you and Imlac directed your 
walk every day towards the same point, but I did not suppose you 
had any better reason for the preference than a cooler shade or 
more fragrant bank, nor followed you with any other design than to 
partake of your conversation.  Since, then, not suspicion, but 
fondness, has detected you, let me not lose the advantage of my 
discovery.  I am equally weary of confinement with yourself, and 
not less desirous of knowing what is done or suffered in the world.  
Permit me to fly with you from this tasteless tranquillity, which 
will yet grow more loathsome when you have left me.  You may deny 
me to accompany you, but cannot hinder me from following."

The Prince, who loved Nekayah above his other sisters, had no 
inclination to refuse her request, and grieved that he had lost an 
opportunity of showing his confidence by a voluntary communication.  
It was, therefore, agreed that she should leave the valley with 
them; and that in the meantime she should watch, lest any other 
straggler should, by chance or curiosity, follow them to the 
mountain.

At length their labour was at an end.  They saw light beyond the 
prominence, and, issuing to the top of the mountain, beheld the 
Nile, yet a narrow current, wandering beneath them.

The Prince looked round with rapture, anticipated all the pleasures 
of travel, and in thought was already transported beyond his 
father's dominions.  Imlac, though very joyful at his escape, had 
less expectation of pleasure in the world, which he had before 
tried and of which he had been weary.

Rasselas was so much delighted with a wider horizon, that he could 
not soon be persuaded to return into the valley.  He informed his 
sister that the way was now open, and that nothing now remained but 
to prepare for their departure.



CHAPTER XV - THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS LEAVE THE VALLEY, AND SEE MANY 
WONDERS.



THE Prince and Princess had jewels sufficient to make them rich 
whenever they came into a place of commerce, which, by Imlac's 
direction, they hid in their clothes, and on the night of the next 
full moon all left the valley.  The Princess was followed only by a 
single favourite, who did not know whither she was going.

They clambered through the cavity, and began to go down on the 
other side.  The Princess and her maid turned their eyes toward 
every part, and seeing nothing to bound their prospect, considered 
themselves in danger of being lost in a dreary vacuity.  They 
stopped and trembled.  "I am almost afraid," said the Princess, "to 
begin a journey of which I cannot perceive an end, and to venture 
into this immense plain where I may be approached on every side by 
men whom I never saw."  The Prince felt nearly the same emotions, 
though he thought it more manly to conceal them.

Imlac smiled at their terrors, and encouraged them to proceed.  But 
the Princess continued irresolute till she had been imperceptibly 
drawn forward too far to return.

In the morning they found some shepherds in the field, who set some 
milk and fruits before them.  The Princess wondered that she did 
not see a palace ready for her reception and a table spread with 
delicacies; but being faint and hungry, she drank the milk and ate 
the fruits, and thought them of a higher flavour than the products 
of the valley.

They travelled forward by easy journeys, being all unaccustomed to 
toil and difficulty, and knowing that, though they might be missed, 
they could not be pursued.  In a few days they came into a more 
populous region, where Imlac was diverted with the admiration which 
his companions expressed at the diversity of manners, stations, and 
employments.  Their dress was such as might not bring upon them the 
suspicion of having anything to conceal; yet the Prince, wherever 
he came, expected to be obeyed, and the Princess was frighted 
because those who came into her presence did not prostrate 
themselves.  Imlac was forced to observe them with great vigilance, 
lest they should betray their rank by their unusual behaviour, and 
detained them several weeks in the first village to accustom them 
to the sight of common mortals.

By degrees the royal wanderers were taught to understand that they 
had for a time laid aside their dignity, and were to expect only 
such regard as liberality and courtesy could procure.  And Imlac 
having by many admonitions prepared them to endure the tumults of a 
port and the ruggedness of the commercial race, brought them down 
to the sea-coast.

The Prince and his sister, to whom everything was new, were 
gratified equally at all places, and therefore remained for some 
months at the port without any inclination to pass further.  Imlac 
was content with their stay, because he did not think it safe to 
expose them, unpractised in the world, to the hazards of a foreign 
country.

At last he began to fear lest they should be discovered, and 
proposed to fix a day for their departure.  They had no pretensions 
to judge for themselves, and referred the whole scheme to his 
direction.  He therefore took passage in a ship to Suez, and, when 
the time came, with great difficulty prevailed on the Princess to 
enter the vessel.

They had a quick and prosperous voyage, and from Suez travelled by 
land to Cairo.



CHAPTER XVI - THEY ENTER CAIRO, AND FIND EVERY MAN HAPPY.



AS they approached the city, which filled the strangers with 
astonishment, "This," said Imlac to the Prince, "is the place where 
travellers and merchants assemble from all corners of the earth.  
You will here find men of every character and every occupation.  
Commerce is here honourable.  I will act as a merchant, and you 
shall live as strangers who have no other end of travel than 
curiosity; it will soon be observed that we are rich.  Our 
reputation will procure us access to all whom we shall desire to 
know; you shall see all the conditions of humanity, and enable 
yourselves at leisure to make your CHOICE OF LIFE."

They now entered the town, stunned by the noise and offended by the 
crowds.  Instruction had not yet so prevailed over habit but that 
they wondered to see themselves pass undistinguished along the 
streets, and met by the lowest of the people without reverence or 
notice.  The Princess could not at first bear the thought of being 
levelled with the vulgar, and for some time continued in her 
chamber, where she was served by her favourite Pekuah, as in the 
palace of the valley.

Imlac, who understood traffic, sold part of the jewels the next 
day, and hired a house, which he adorned with such magnificence 
that he was immediately considered as a merchant of great wealth.  
His politeness attracted many acquaintances, and his generosity 
made him courted by many dependants.  His companions, not being 
able to mix in the conversation, could make no discovery of their 
ignorance or surprise, and were gradually initiated in the world as 
they gained knowledge of the language.

The Prince had by frequent lectures been taught the use and nature 
of money; but the ladies could not for a long time comprehend what 
the merchants did with small pieces of gold and silver, or why 
things of so little use should be received as an equivalent to the 
necessaries of life.

They studied the language two years, while Imlac was preparing to 
set before them the various ranks and conditions of mankind.  He 
grew acquainted with all who had anything uncommon in their fortune 
or conduct.  He frequented the voluptuous and the frugal, the idle 
and the busy, the merchants and the men of learning.

The Prince now being able to converse with fluency, and having 
learned the caution necessary to be observed in his intercourse 
with strangers, began to accompany Imlac to places of resort, and 
to enter into all assemblies, that he might make his CHOICE OF 
LIFE.

For some time he thought choice needless, because all appeared to 
him really happy.  Wherever he went he met gaiety and kindness, and 
heard the song of joy or the laugh of carelessness.  He began to 
believe that the world overflowed with universal plenty, and that 
nothing was withheld either from want or merit; that every hand 
showered liberality and every heart melted with benevolence:  "And 
who then," says he, "will be suffered to be wretched?"

Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was unwilling to crush 
the hope of inexperience:  till one day, having sat awhile silent, 
"I know not," said the Prince, "what can be the reason that I am 
more unhappy than any of our friends.  I see them perpetually and 
unalterably cheerful, but feel my own mind restless and uneasy.  I 
am unsatisfied with those pleasures which I seem most to court.  I 
live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to 
shun myself, and am only loud and merry to conceal my sadness."

"Every man," said Imlac, "may by examining his own mind guess what 
passes in the minds of others.  When you feel that your own gaiety 
is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to suspect that of your 
companions not to be sincere.  Envy is commonly reciprocal.  We are 
long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, 
and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of 
obtaining it for himself.  In the assembly where you passed the 
last night there appeared such sprightliness of air and volatility 
of fancy as might have suited beings of a higher order, formed to 
inhabit serener regions, inaccessible to care or sorrow; yet, 
believe me, Prince, was there not one who did not dread the moment 
when solitude should deliver him to the tyranny of reflection."

"This," said the Prince, "may be true of others since it is true of 
me; yet, whatever be the general infelicity of man, one condition 
is more happy than another, and wisdom surely directs us to take 
the least evil in the CHOICE OF LIFE."

"The causes of good and evil," answered Imlac, "are so various and 
uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by 
various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be 
foreseen, that he who would fix his condition upon incontestable 
reasons of preference must live and die inquiring and 
deliberating."

"But, surely," said Rasselas, "the wise men, to whom we listen with 
reverence and wonder, chose that mode of life for themselves which 
they thought most likely to make them happy."

"Very few," said the poet, "live by choice.  Every man is placed in 
the present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, 
and with which he did not always willingly co-operate, and 
therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of 
his neighbour better than his own."

"I am pleased to think," said the Prince, "that my birth has given 
me at least one advantage over others by enabling me to determine 
for myself.  I have here the world before me.  I will review it at 
leisure:  surely happiness is somewhere to be found."



CHAPTER XVII - THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUNG MEN OF SPIRIT AND 
GAIETY.



RASSELAS rose next day, and resolved to begin his experiments upon 
life.  "Youth," cried he, "is the time of gladness:  I will join 
myself to the young men whose only business is to gratify their 
desires, and whose time is all spent in a succession of 
enjoyments."

To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few days brought 
him back weary and disgusted.  Their mirth was without images, 
their laughter without motive; their pleasures were gross and 
sensual, in which the mind had no part; their conduct was at once 
wild and mean - they laughed at order and at law, but the frown of 
power dejected and the eye of wisdom abashed them.

The Prince soon concluded that he should never be happy in a course 
of life of which he was ashamed.  He thought it unsuitable to a 
reasonable being to act without a plan, and to be sad or cheerful 
only by chance.  "Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and 
permanent, without fear and without uncertainty."

But his young companions had gained so much of his regard by their 
frankness and courtesy that he could not leave them without warning 
and remonstrance.  "My friends," said he, "I have seriously 
considered our manners and our prospects, and find that we have 
mistaken our own interest.  The first years of man must make 
provision for the last.  He that never thinks, never can be wise.  
Perpetual levity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it 
may fire the spirits for an hour, will make life short or 
miserable.  Let us consider that youth is of no long duration, and 
that in mature age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and 
phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no 
comforts but the esteem of wise men and the means of doing good.  
Let us therefore stop while to stop is in our power:  let us live 
as men who are some time to grow old, and to whom it will be the 
most dreadful of all evils to count their past years by follies, 
and to be reminded of their former luxuriance of health only by the 
maladies which riot has produced."

They stared awhile in silence one upon another, and at last drove 
him away by a general chorus of continued laughter.

The consciousness that his sentiments were just and his intention 
kind was scarcely sufficient to support him against the horror of 
derision.  But he recovered his tranquillity and pursued his 
search.



CHAPTER XVIII - THE PRINCE FINDS A WISE AND HAPPY MAN.



AS he was one day walking in the street he saw a spacious building 
which all were by the open doors invited to enter.  He followed the 
stream of people, and found it a hall or school of declamation, in 
which professors read lectures to their auditory.  He fixed his eye 
upon a sage raised above the rest, who discoursed with great energy 
on the government of the passions.  His look was venerable, his 
action graceful, his pronunciation clear, and his diction elegant.  
He showed with great strength of sentiment and variety of 
illustration that human nature is degraded and debased when the 
lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the 
parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues 
but the natural effect of unlawful government, perturbation, and 
confusion; that she betrays the fortresses of the intellect to 
rebels, and excites her children to sedition against their lawful 
sovereign.  He compared reason to the sun, of which the light is 
constant, uniform, and lasting; and fancy to a meteor, of bright 
but transitory lustre, irregular in its motion and delusive in its 
direction.

He then communicated the various precepts given from time to time 
for the conquest of passion, and displayed the happiness of those 
who had obtained the important victory, after which man is no 
longer the slave of fear nor the fool of hope; is no more emaciated 
by envy, inflamed by anger, emasculated by tenderness, or depressed 
by grief; but walks on calmly through the tumults or privacies of 
life, as the sun pursues alike his course through the calm or the 
stormy sky.

He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable by pain or 
pleasure, who looked with indifference on those modes or accidents 
to which the vulgar give the names of good and evil.  He exhorted 
his hearers to lay aside their prejudices, and arm themselves 
against the shafts of malice or misfortune, by invulnerable 
patience:  concluding that this state only was happiness, and that 
this happiness was in every one's power.

Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to the 
instructions of a superior being, and waiting for him at the door, 
humbly implored the liberty of visiting so great a master of true 
wisdom.  The lecturer hesitated a moment, when Rasselas put a purse 
of gold into his hand, which he received with a mixture of joy and 
wonder.

"I have found," said the Prince at his return to Imlac, "a man who 
can teach all that is necessary to be known; who, from the unshaken 
throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the scenes of life 
changing beneath him.  He speaks, and attention watches his lips.  
He reasons, and conviction closes his periods.  This man shall be 
my future guide:  I will learn his doctrines and imitate his life."

"Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the teachers 
of morality:  they discourse like angels, but they live like men."

Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man could reason so 
forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own arguments, paid his 
visit in a few days, and was denied admission.  He had now learned 
the power of money, and made his way by a piece of gold to the 
inner apartment, where he found the philosopher in a room half 
darkened, with his eyes misty and his face pale.  "Sir," said he, 
"you are come at a time when all human friendship is useless; what 
I suffer cannot be remedied:  what I have lost cannot be supplied.  
My daughter, my only daughter, from whose tenderness I expected all 
the comforts of my age, died last night of a fever.  My views, my 
purposes, my hopes, are at an end:  I am now a lonely being, 
disunited from society."

"Sir," said the Prince, "mortality is an event by which a wise man 
can never be surprised:  we know that death is always near, and it 
should therefore always be expected."  "Young man," answered the 
philosopher, "you speak like one that has never felt the pangs of 
separation."  "Have you then forgot the precepts," said Rasselas, 
"which you so powerfully enforced?  Has wisdom no strength to arm 
the heart against calamity?  Consider that external things are 
naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the same."  
"What comfort," said the mourner, "can truth and reason afford me?  
Of what effect are they now, but to tell me that my daughter will 
not be restored?"

The Prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult misery 
with reproof, went away, convinced of the emptiness of rhetorical 
sounds, and the inefficacy of polished periods and studied 
sentences.



CHAPTER XIX - A GLIMPSE OF PASTORAL LIFE.



HE was still eager upon the same inquiry; and having heard of a 
hermit that lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile, and filled 
the whole country with the fame of his sanctity, resolved to visit 
his retreat, and inquire whether that felicity which public life 
could not afford was to be found in solitude, and whether a man 
whose age and virtue made him venerable could teach any peculiar 
art of shunning evils or enduring them.

Imlac and the Princess agreed to accompany him, and after the 
necessary preparations, they began their journey.  Their way lay 
through the fields, where shepherds tended their flocks and the 
lambs were playing upon the pasture.  "This," said the poet, "is 
the life which has been often celebrated for its innocence and 
quiet; let us pass the heat of the day among the shepherds' tents, 
and know whether all our searches are not to terminate in pastoral 
simplicity."

The proposal pleased them; and they induced the shepherds, by small 
presents and familiar questions, to tell the opinion of their own 
state.  They were so rude and ignorant, so little able to compare 
the good with the evil of the occupation, and so indistinct in 
their narratives and descriptions, that very little could be 
learned from them.  But it was evident that their hearts were 
cankered with discontent; that they considered themselves as 
condemned to labour for the luxury of the rich, and looked up with 
stupid malevolence towards those that were placed above them.

The Princess pronounced with vehemence that she would never suffer 
these envious savages to be her companions, and that she should not 
soon be desirous of seeing any more specimens of rustic happiness; 
but could not believe that all the accounts of primeval pleasures 
were fabulous, and was in doubt whether life had anything that 
could be justly preferred to the placid gratification of fields and 
woods.  She hoped that the time would come when, with a few 
virtuous and elegant companions, she should gather flowers planted 
by her own hands, fondle the lambs of her own ewe, and listen 
without care, among brooks and breezes, to one of her maidens 
reading in the shade.



CHAPTER XX - THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY.



ON the next day they continued their journey till the heat 
compelled them to look round for shelter.  At a small distance they 
saw a thick wood, which they no sooner entered than they perceived 
that they were approaching the habitations of men.  The shrubs were 
diligently cut away to open walks where the shades ware darkest; 
the boughs of opposite trees were artificially interwoven; seats of 
flowery turf were raised in vacant spaces; and a rivulet that 
wantoned along the side of a winding path had its banks sometimes 
opened into small basins, and its stream sometimes obstructed by 
little mounds of stone heaped together to increase its murmurs.

They passed slowly through the wood, delighted with such unexpected 
accommodations, and entertained each other with conjecturing what 
or who he could be that in those rude and unfrequented regions had 
leisure and art for such harmless luxury.

As they advanced they heard the sound of music, and saw youths and 
virgins dancing in the grove; and going still farther beheld a 
stately palace built upon a hill surrounded by woods.  The laws of 
Eastern hospitality allowed them to enter, and the master welcomed 
them like a man liberal and wealthy.

He was skilful enough in appearances soon to discern that they were 
no common guests, and spread his table with magnificence.  The 
eloquence of Imlac caught his attention, and the lofty courtesy of 
the Princess excited his respect.  When they offered to depart, he 
entreated their stay, and was the next day more unwilling to 
dismiss them than before.  They were easily persuaded to stop, and 
civility grew up in time to freedom and confidence.

The Prince now saw all the domestics cheerful and all the face of 
nature smiling round the place, and could not forbear to hope that 
he should find here what he was seeking; but when he was 
congratulating the master upon his possessions he answered with a 
sigh, "My condition has indeed the appearance of happiness, but 
appearances are delusive.  My prosperity puts my life in danger; 
the Bassa of Egypt is my enemy, incensed only by my wealth and 
popularity.  I have been hitherto protected against him by the 
princes of the country; but as the favour of the great is uncertain 
I know not how soon my defenders may be persuaded to share the 
plunder with the Bassa.  I have sent my treasures into a distant 
country, and upon the first alarm am prepared to follow them.  Then 
will my enemies riot in my mansion, and enjoy the gardens which I 
have planted."

They all joined in lamenting his danger and deprecating his exile; 
and the Princess was so much disturbed with the tumult of grief and 
indignation that she retired to her apartment.  They continued with 
their kind inviter a few days longer, and then went to find the 
hermit.



CHAPTER XXI - THE HAPPINESS OF SOLITUDE - THE HERMIT'S HISTORY.



THEY came on the third day, by the direction of the peasants, to 
the hermit's cell.  It was a cavern in the side of a mountain, 
overshadowed with palm trees, at such a distance from the cataract 
that nothing more was heard than a gentle uniform murmur, such as 
composes the mind to pensive meditation, especially when it was 
assisted by the wind whistling among the branches.  The first rude 
essay of Nature had been so much improved by human labour that the 
cave contained several apartments appropriated to different uses, 
and often afforded lodging to travellers whom darkness or tempests 
happened to overtake.

The hermit sat on a bench at the door, to enjoy the coolness of the 
evening.  On one side lay a book with pens and paper; on the other 
mechanical instruments of various kinds.  As they approached him 
unregarded, the Princess observed that he had not the countenance 
of a man that had found or could teach the way to happiness.

They saluted him with great respect, which he repaid like a man not 
unaccustomed to the forms of Courts.  "My children," said he, "if 
you have lost your way, you shall be willingly supplied with such 
conveniences for the night as this cavern will afford.  I have all 
that Nature requires, and you will not expect delicacies in a 
hermit's cell."

They thanked him; and, entering, were pleased with the neatness and 
regularity of the place.  The hermit set flesh and wine before 
them, though he fed only upon fruits and water.  His discourse was 
cheerful without levity, and pious without enthusiasm.  He soon 
gained the esteem of his guests, and the Princess repented her 
hasty censure.

At last Imlac began thus:  "I do not now wonder that your 
reputation is so far extended:  we have heard at Cairo of your 
wisdom, and came hither to implore your direction for this young 
man and maiden in the CHOICE OF LIFE."

"To him that lives well," answered the hermit, "every form of life 
is good; nor can I give any other rule for choice than to remove 
all apparent evil."

"He will most certainly remove from evil," said the Prince, "who 
shall devote himself to that solitude which you have recommended by 
your example."

"I have indeed lived fifteen years in solitude," said the hermit, 
"but have no desire that my example should gain any imitators.  In 
my youth I professed arms, and was raised by degrees to the highest 
military rank.  I have traversed wide countries at the head of my 
troops, and seen many battles and sieges.  At last, being disgusted 
by the preferments of a younger officer, and feeling that my vigour 
was beginning to decay, I resolved to close my life in peace, 
having found the world full of snares, discord, and misery.  I had 
once escaped from the pursuit of the enemy by the shelter of this 
cavern, and therefore chose it for my final residence.  I employed 
artificers to form it into chambers, and stored it with all that I 
was likely to want.

"For some time after my retreat I rejoiced like a tempest-beaten 
sailor at his entrance into the harbour, being delighted with the 
sudden change of the noise and hurry of war to stillness and 
repose.  When the pleasure of novelty went away, I employed my 
hours in examining the plants which grow in the valley, and the 
minerals which I collected from the rocks.  But that inquiry is now 
grown tasteless and irksome.  I have been for some time unsettled 
and distracted:  my mind is disturbed with a thousand perplexities 
of doubt and vanities of imagination, which hourly prevail upon me, 
because I have no opportunities of relaxation or diversion.  I am 
sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure myself from vice 
but by retiring from the exercise of virtue, and begin to suspect 
that I was rather impelled by resentment than led by devotion into 
solitude.  My fancy riots in scenes of folly, and I lament that I 
have lost so much, and have gained so little.  In solitude, if I 
escape the example of bad men, I want likewise the counsel and 
conversation of the good.  I have been long comparing the evils 
with the advantages of society, and resolve to return into the 
world to-morrow.  The life of a solitary man will be certainly 
miserable, but not certainly devout."

They heard his resolution with surprise, but after a short pause 
offered to conduct him to Cairo.  He dug up a considerable treasure 
which he had hid among the rocks, and accompanied them to the city, 
on which, as he approached it, he gazed with rapture.



CHAPTER XXII - THE HAPPINESS OF A LIFE LED ACCORDING TO NATURE.



RASSELAS went often to an assembly of learned men, who met at 
stated times to unbend their minds and compare their opinions.  
Their manners were somewhat coarse, but their conversation was 
instructive, and their disputations acute, though sometimes too 
violent, and often continued till neither controvertist remembered 
upon what question he began.  Some faults were almost general among 
them:  every one was pleased to hear the genius or knowledge of 
another depreciated.

In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview with the 
hermit, and the wonder with which he heard him censure a course of 
life which he had so deliberately chosen and so laudably followed.  
The sentiments of the hearers were various.  Some were of opinion 
that the folly of his choice had been justly punished by 
condemnation to perpetual perseverance.  One of the youngest among 
them, with great vehemence, pronounced him a hypocrite.  Some 
talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals, and 
considered retirement as a desertion of duty.  Others readily 
allowed that there was a time when the claims of the public were 
satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself, to 
review his life and purify his heart.

One who appeared more affected with the narrative than the rest 
thought it likely that the hermit would in a few years go back to 
his retreat, and perhaps, if shame did not restrain or death 
intercept him, return once more from his retreat into the world.  
"For the hope of happiness," said he, "is so strongly impressed 
that the longest experience is not able to efface it.  Of the 
present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess 
the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance, 
imagination paints it as desirable.  But the time will surely come 
when desire will no longer be our torment and no man shall be 
wretched but by his own fault.

"This," said a philosopher who had heard him with tokens of great 
impatience, "is the present condition of a wise man.  The time is 
already come when none are wretched but by their own fault.  
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness which Nature 
has kindly placed within our reach.  The way to be happy is to live 
according to Nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable 
law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not 
written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny; not instilled by 
education, but infused at our nativity.  He that lives according to 
Nature will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope or 
importunities of desire; he will receive and reject with equability 
of temper; and act or suffer as the reason of things shall 
alternately prescribe.  Other men may amuse themselves with subtle 
definitions or intricate ratiocination.  Let them learn to be wise 
by easier means:  let them observe the hind of the forest and the 
linnet of the grove:  let them consider the life of animals, whose 
motions are regulated by instinct; they obey their guide, and are 
happy.  Let us therefore at length cease to dispute, and learn to 
live:  throw away the encumbrance of precepts, which they who utter 
them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with 
us this simple and intelligible maxim:  that deviation from Nature 
is deviation from happiness.

When he had spoken he looked round him with a placid air, and 
enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.

"Sir," said the Prince with great modesty, "as I, like all the rest 
of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been 
fixed upon your discourse:  I doubt not the truth of a position 
which a man so learned has so confidently advanced.  Let me only 
know what it is to live according to Nature."

"When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the 
philosopher, "I can deny them no information which my studies have 
enabled me to afford.  To live according to Nature is to act always 
with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and 
qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and 
unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate with the 
general disposition and tendency of the present system of things."

The Prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should 
understand less as he heard him longer.  He therefore bowed and was 
silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied and the rest 
vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-
operated with the present system.



CHAPTER XXIII - THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN THEM THE 
WORK OF OBSERVATION.



RASSELAS returned home full of reflections, doubting how to direct 
his future steps.  Of the way to happiness he found the learned and 
simple equally ignorant; but as he was yet young, he flattered 
himself that he had time remaining for more experiments and further 
inquiries.  He communicated to Imlac his observations and his 
doubts, but was answered by him with new doubts and remarks that 
gave him no comfort.  He therefore discoursed more frequently and 
freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself, and 
always assisted him to give some reason why, though he had been 
hitherto frustrated, he might succeed at last.

"We have hitherto," said she, "known but little of the world; we 
have never yet been either great or mean.  In our own country, 
though we had royalty, we had no power; and in this we have not yet 
seen the private recesses of domestic peace.  Imlac favours not our 
search, lest we should in time find him mistaken.  We will divide 
the task between us; you shall try what is to be found in the 
splendour of Courts, and I will range the shades of humbler life.  
Perhaps command and authority may be the supreme blessings, as they 
afford the most opportunities of doing good; or perhaps what this 
world can give may be found in the modest habitations of middle 
fortune - too low for great designs, and too high for penury and 
distress."



CHAPTER XXIV - THE PRINCE EXAMINES THE HAPPINESS OF HIGH STATIONS.



RASSELAS applauded the design, and appeared next day with a 
splendid retinue at the Court of the Bassa.  He was soon 
distinguished for his magnificence, and admitted, as a Prince whose 
curiosity had brought him from distant countries, to an intimacy 
with the great officers and frequent conversation with the Bassa 
himself.

He was at first inclined to believe that the man must be pleased 
with his own condition whom all approached with reverence and heard 
with obedience, and who had the power to extend his edicts to a 
whole kingdom.  "There can be no pleasure," said he, "equal to that 
of feeling at once the joy of thousands all made happy by wise 
administration.  Yet, since by the law of subordination this 
sublime delight can be in one nation but the lot of one, it is 
surely reasonable to think that there is some satisfaction more 
popular and accessible, and that millions can hardly be subjected 
to the will of a single man, only to fill his particular breast 
with incommunicable content."

These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found no solution of 
the difficulty.  But as presents and civilities gained him more 
familiarity, he found that almost every man who stood high in his 
employment hated all the rest and was hated by them, and that their 
lives were a continual succession of plots and detections, 
stratagems and escapes, faction and treachery.  Many of those who 
surrounded the Bassa were sent only to watch and report his 
conduct:  every tongue was muttering censure, and every eye was 
searching for a fault.

At last the letters of revocation arrived:  the Bassa was carried 
in chains to Constantinople, and his name was mentioned no more.

"What are we now to think of the prerogatives of power?" said 
Rasselas to his sister:  "is it without efficacy to good, or is the 
subordinate degree only dangerous, and the supreme safe and 
glorious?  Is the Sultan the only happy man in his dominions, or is 
the Sultan himself subject to the torments of suspicion and the 
dread of enemies?"

In a short time the second Bassa was deposed.  The Sultan that had 
advanced him was murdered by the Janissaries, and his successor had 
other views or different favourites.



CHAPTER XXV - THE PRINCESS PURSUES HER INQUIRY WITH MORE DILIGENCE 
THAN SUCCESS.



THE Princess in the meantime insinuated herself into many families; 
for there are few doors through which liberality, joined with good 
humour, cannot find its way.  The daughters of many houses were 
airy and cheerful; but Nekayah had been too long accustomed to the 
conversation of Imlac and her brother to be much pleased with 
childish levity and prattle which had no meaning.  She found their 
thoughts narrow, their wishes low, and their merriment often 
artificial.  Their pleasures, poor as they were, could not be 
preserved pure, but were embittered by petty competitions and 
worthless emulation.  They were always jealous of the beauty of 
each other, of a quality to which solicitude can add nothing, and 
from which detraction can take nothing away.  Many were in love 
with triflers like themselves, and many fancied that they were in 
love when in truth they were only idle.  Their affection was not 
fixed on sense or virtue, and therefore seldom ended but in 
vexation.  Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; 
everything floated in their mind unconnected with the past or 
future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second 
stone, cast into the water, effaces and confounds the circles of 
the first.

With these girls she played as with inoffensive animals, and found 
them proud of her countenance and weary of her company.

But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and her affability 
easily persuaded the hearts that were swelling with sorrow to 
discharge their secrets in her ear, and those whom hope flattered 
or prosperity delighted often courted her to partake their 
pleasure.

The Princess and her brother commonly met in the evening in a 
private summerhouse on the banks of the Nile, and related to each 
other the occurrences of the day.  As they were sitting together 
the Princess cast her eyes upon the river that flowed before her.  
"Answer," said she, "great father of waters, thou that rollest thy 
goods through eighty nations, to the invocations of the daughter of 
thy native king.  Tell me if thou waterest through all thy course a 
single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of 
complaint."

"You are then," said Rasselas, "not more successful in private 
houses than I have been in Courts."  "I have, since the last 
partition of our provinces," said the Princess, "enabled myself to 
enter familiarly into many families, where there was the fairest 
show of prosperity and peace, and know not one house that is not 
haunted by some fury that destroys their quiet.

"I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded that there 
it could not be found.  But I saw many poor whom I had supposed to 
live in affluence.  Poverty has in large cities very different 
appearances.  It is often concealed in splendour and often in 
extravagance.  It is the care of a very great part of mankind to 
conceal their indigence from the rest.  They support themselves by 
temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for the 
morrow.

"This, however, was an evil which, though frequent, I saw with less 
pain, because I could relieve it.  Yet some have refused my 
bounties; more offended with my quickness to detect their wants 
than pleased with my readiness to succour them; and others, whose 
exigencies compelled them to admit my kindness, have never been 
able to forgive their benefactress.  Many, however, have been 
sincerely grateful without the ostentation of gratitude or the hope 
of other favours."



CHAPTER XXVI - THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON PRIVATE 
LIFE.



NEKAYAH, perceiving her brother's attention fixed, proceeded in her 
narrative.

"In families where there is or is not poverty there is commonly 
discord.  If a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great family, a 
family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed 
to revolutions.  An unpractised observer expects the love of 
parents and children to be constant and equal.  But this kindness 
seldom continues beyond the years of infancy; in a short time the 
children become rivals to their parents.  Benefits are allowed by 
reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy.

"Parents and children seldom act in concert; each child endeavours 
to appropriate the esteem or the fondness of the parents; and the 
parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their 
children.  Thus, some place their confidence in the father and some 
in the mother, and by degrees the house is filled with artifices 
and feuds.

"The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, 
are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and 
despondency, of expectation and experience, without crime or folly 
on either side.  The colours of life in youth and age appear 
different, as the face of Nature in spring and winter.  And how can 
children credit the assertions of parents which their own eyes show 
them to be false?

"Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims 
by the credit of their lives.  The old man trusts wholly to slow 
contrivance and gradual progression; the youth expects to force his 
way by genius, vigour, and precipitance.  The old man pays regard 
to riches, and the youth reverences virtue.  The old man deifies 
prudence; the youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance.  The 
young man, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and 
therefore acts with openness and candour; but his father; having 
suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect and too 
often allured to practise it.  Age looks with anger on the temerity 
of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.  Thus 
parents and children for the greatest part live on to love less and 
less; and if those whom Nature has thus closely united are the 
torments of each other, where shall we look for tenderness and 
consolations?"

"Surely," said the Prince, "you must have been unfortunate in your 
choice of acquaintance.  I am unwilling to believe that the most 
tender of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural 
necessity."

"Domestic discord," answered she, "is not inevitably and fatally 
necessary, but yet it is not easily avoided.  We seldom see that a 
whole family is virtuous; the good and the evil cannot well agree, 
and the evil can yet less agree with one another.  Even the 
virtuous fall sometimes to variance, when their virtues are of 
different kinds and tending to extremes.  In general, those parents 
have most reverence who most deserve it, for he that lives well 
cannot be despised.

"Many other evils infest private life.  Some are the slaves of 
servants whom they have trusted with their affairs.  Some are kept 
in continual anxiety by the caprice of rich relations, whom they 
cannot please and dare not offend.  Some husbands are imperious and 
some wives perverse, and, as it is always more easy to do evil than 
good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many 
happy, the folly or vice of one makes many miserable."

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

"I have met," said the Princess, "with many who live single for 
that reason, but I never found that their prudence ought to raise 
envy.  They dream away their time without friendship, without 
fondness, and are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which 
they have no use, by childish amusements or vicious delights.  They 
act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority 
that fills their minds with rancour and their tongues with censure.  
They are peevish at home and malevolent abroad, and, as the outlaws 
of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to 
disturb that society which debars them from its privileges.  To 
live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without 
adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the 
balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not 
retreat but exclusion from mankind.  Marriage has many pains, but 
celibacy has no pleasures."

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



CHAPTER XXVII - DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS.



THE conversation had a short pause.  The Prince, having considered 
his sister's observation, told her that she had surveyed life with 
prejudice and supposed misery where she did not find it.  "Your 
narrative," says he, "throws yet a darker gloom upon the prospects 
of futurity.  The predictions of Imlac were but faint sketches of 
the evils painted by Nekayah.  I have been lately convinced that 
quiet is not the daughter of grandeur or of power; that her 
presence is not to be bought by wealth nor enforced by conquest.  
It is evident that as any man acts in a wider compass he must be 
more exposed to opposition from enmity or miscarriage from chance.  
Whoever has many to please or to govern must use the ministry of 
many agents, some of whom will be wicked and some ignorant, by some 
he will be misled and by others betrayed.  If he gratifies one he 
will offend another; those that are not favoured will think 
themselves injured, and since favours can be conferred but upon few 
the greater number will be always discontented."

"The discontent," said the Princess, "which is thus unreasonable, I 
hope that I shall always have spirit to despise and you power to 
repress."

"Discontent," answered Rasselas, "will not always be without reason 
under the most just and vigilant administration of public affairs.  
None, however attentive, can always discover that merit which 
indigence or faction may happen to obscure, and none, however 
powerful, can always reward it.  Yet he that sees inferior desert 
advanced above him will naturally impute that preference to 
partiality or caprice, and indeed it can scarcely be hoped that any 
man, however magnanimous by Nature or exalted by condition, will be 
able to persist for ever in fixed and inexorable justice of 
distribution; he will sometimes indulge his own affections and 
sometimes those of his favourites; he will permit some to please 
him who can never serve him; he will discover in those whom he 
loves qualities which in reality they do not possess, and to those 
from whom he receives pleasure he will in his turn endeavour to 
give it.  Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail which were 
purchased by money or by the more destructive bribery of flattery 
and servility.

"He that hath much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong 
must suffer the consequences, and if it were possible that he 
should always act rightly, yet, when such numbers are to judge of 
his conduct, the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence 
and the good sometimes by mistake.

"The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of 
happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from 
thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid 
obscurity.  For what can hinder the satisfaction or intercept the 
expectations of him whose abilities are adequate to his 
employments, who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of his 
influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he trusts, and 
whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear?  Surely he has 
nothing to do but to love and to be loved; to be virtuous and to be 
happy."

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



CHAPTER XXVIII - RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION.



"DEAR Princess," said Rasselas, "you fall into the common errors of 
exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a familiar disquisition 
examples of national calamities and scenes of extensive misery 
which are found in books rather than in the world, and which, as 
they are horrid, are ordained to be rare.  Let us not imagine evils 
which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations.  I 
cannot bear that querulous eloquence which threatens every city 
with a siege like that of Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on 
every flight of locust, and suspends pestilence on the wing of 
every blast that issues from the south.

"On necessary and inevitable evils which overwhelm kingdoms at once 
all disputation is vain; when they happen they must be endured.  
But it is evident that these bursts of universal distress are more 
dreaded than felt; thousands and tens of thousands flourish in 
youth and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than 
domestic evils, and share the same pleasures and vexations, whether 
their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country 
pursue their enemies or retreat before them.  While Courts are 
disturbed with intestine competitions and ambassadors are 
negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil 
and the husbandman drives his plough forward; the necessaries of 
life are required and obtained, and the successive business of the 
season continues to make its wonted revolutions.

"Let us cease to consider what perhaps may never happen, and what, 
when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation.  We will not 
endeavour to modify the motions of the elements or to fix the 
destiny of kingdoms.  It is our business to consider what beings 
like us may perform, each labouring for his own happiness by 
promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of 
others.

"Marriage is evidently the dictate of Nature; men and women were 
made to be the companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be 
persuaded but that marriage is one of the means of happiness."

"I know not," said the Princess, "whether marriage be more than one 
of the innumerable modes of human misery.  When I see and reckon 
the various forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of 
lasting discord, the diversities of temper, the oppositions of 
opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where both are 
urged by violent impulses, the obstinate contest of disagreeing 
virtues where both are supported by consciousness of good 
intention, I am sometimes disposed to think, with the severer 
casuists of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted than 
approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too 
much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compact."

"You seem to forget," replied Rasselas, "that you have, even now 
represented celibacy as less happy than marriage.  Both conditions 
may be bad, but they cannot both be worse.  Thus it happens, when 
wrong opinions are entertained, that they mutually destroy each 
other and leave the mind open to truth."

"I did not expect," answered, the Princess, "to hear that imputed 
to falsehood which is the consequence only of frailty.  To the 
mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness 
objects vast in their extent and various in their parts.  When we 
see or conceive the whole at once, we readily note the 
discriminations and decide the preference, but of two systems, of 
which neither can be surveyed by any human being in its full 
compass of magnitude and multiplicity of complication, where is the 
wonder that, judging of the whole by parts, I am alternately 
affected by one and the other as either presses on my memory or 
fancy?  We differ from ourselves just as we differ from each other 
when we see only part of the question, as in the multifarious 
relations of politics and morality, but when we perceive the whole 
at once, as in numerical computations, all agree in one judgment, 
and none ever varies in his opinion."

"Let us not add," said the Prince, "to the other evils of life the 
bitterness of controversy, nor endeavour to vie with each other in 
subtilties of argument.  We are employed in a search of which both 
are equally to enjoy the success or suffer by the miscarriage; it 
is therefore fit that we assist each other.  You surely conclude 
too hastily from the infelicity of marriage against its 
institution; will not the misery of life prove equally that life 
cannot be the gift of Heaven?  The world must be peopled by 
marriage or peopled without it."

"How the world is to be peopled," returned Nekayah, "is not my care 
and need not be yours.  I see no danger that the present generation 
should omit to leave successors behind them; we are not now 
inquiring for the world, but for ourselves."



CHAPTER XXIX - THE DEBATE ON MARRIAGE (CONTINUED).



"THE good of the whole," says Rasselas, "is the same with the good 
of all its parts.  If marriage be best for mankind, it must be 
evidently best for individuals; or a permanent and necessary duty 
must be the cause of evil, and some must be inevitably sacrificed 
to the convenience of others.  In the estimate which you have made 
of the two states, it appears that the incommodities of a single 
life are in a great measure necessary and certain, but those of the 
conjugal state accidental and avoidable.  I cannot forbear to 
flatter myself that prudence and benevolence will make marriage 
happy.  The general folly of mankind is the cause of general 
complaint.  What can be expected but disappointment and repentance 
from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of 
desire, without judgment, without foresight, without inquiry after 
conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of 
judgment, or purity of sentiment?

"Such is the common process of marriage.  A youth and maiden, 
meeting by chance or brought together by artifice, exchange 
glances, reciprocate civilities, go home and dream of one another.  
Having little to divert attention or diversify thought, they find 
themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that 
they shall be happy together.  They marry, and discover what 
nothing but voluntary blindness before had concealed; they wear out 
life in altercations, and charge Nature with cruelty.

"From those early marriages proceeds likewise the rivalry of 
parents and children:  the son is eager to enjoy the world before 
the father is willing to forsake it, and there is hardly room at 
once for two generations.  The daughter begins to bloom before the 
mother can be content to fade, and neither can forbear to wish for 
the absence of the other.

"Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation and 
delay which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice.  In the 
variety and jollity of youthful pleasures, life may be well enough 
supported without the help of a partner.  Longer time will increase 
experience, and wider views will allow better opportunities of 
inquiry and selection; one advantage at least will be certain, the 
parents will be visibly older than their children."

"What reason cannot collect," and Nekayah, "and what experiment has 
not yet taught, can be known only from the report of others.  I 
have been told that late marriages are not eminently happy.  This 
is a question too important to be neglected; and I have often 
proposed it to those whose accuracy of remark and comprehensiveness 
of knowledge made their suffrages worthy of regard.  They have 
generally determined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to 
suspend their fate upon each other at a time when opinions are 
fixed and habits are established, when friendships have been 
contracted on both sides, when life has been planned into method, 
and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its own 
prospects.

"It is scarcely possible that two travelling through the world 
under the conduct of chance should have been both directed to the 
same path, and it will not often happen that either will quit the 
track which custom has made pleasing.  When the desultory levity of 
youth has settled into regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride 
ashamed to yield, or obstinacy delighting to contend.  And even 
though mutual esteem produces mutual desire to please, time itself, 
as it modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines likewise 
the direction of the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to 
the manners.  Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts 
to change the course of his own life very often labours in vain, 
and how shall we do that for others which we are seldom able to do 
for ourselves?"

"But surely," interposed the Prince, "you suppose the chief motive 
of choice forgotten or neglected.  Whenever I shall seek a wife, it 
shall be my first question whether she be willing to be led by 
reason."

"Thus it is," said Nekayah, "that philosophers are deceived.  There 
are a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can decide; 
questions that elude investigation, and make logic ridiculous; 
cases where something must be done, and where little can be said.  
Consider the state of mankind, and inquire how few can be supposed 
to act upon any occasions, whether small or great, with all the 
reasons of action present to their minds.  Wretched would be the 
pair, above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to 
adjust by reason every morning all the minute details of a domestic 
day.

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XXX - IMLAC ENTERS, AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION.



HERE Imlac entered, and interrupted them.  "Imlac," said Rasselas, 
"I have been taking from the Princess the dismal history of private 
life, and am almost discouraged from further search."

"It seems to me," said Imlac, "that while you are making the choice 
of life you neglect to live.  You wander about a single city, 
which, however large and diversified, can now afford few novelties, 
and forget that you are in a country famous among the earliest 
monarchies for the power and wisdom of its inhabitants - a country 
where the sciences first dawned that illuminate the world, and 
beyond which the arts cannot be traced of civil society or domestic 
life.

"The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of industry and 
power before which all European magnificence is confessed to fade 
away.  The ruins of their architecture are the schools of modern 
builders; and from the wonders which time has spared we may 
conjecture, though uncertainly, what it has destroyed."

"My curiosity," said Rasselas, "does not very strongly lead me to 
survey piles of stone or mounds of earth.  My business is with man.  
I came hither not to measure fragments of temples or trace choked 
aqueducts, but to look upon the various scenes of the present 
world."

"The things that are now before us," said the Princess, "require 
attention, and deserve it.  What have I to do with the heroes or 
the monuments of ancient times - with times which can never return, 
and heroes whose form of life was different from all that the 
present condition of mankind requires or allows?"

"To know anything," returned the poet, "we must know its effects; 
to see men, we must see their works, that we may learn what reason 
has dictated or passion has excited, and find what are the most 
powerful motives of action.  To judge rightly of the present, we 
must oppose it to the past; for all judgment is comparative, and of 
the future nothing can be known.  The truth is that no mind is much 
employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up 
almost all our moments.  Our passions are joy and grief, love and 
hatred, hope and fear.  Of joy and grief, the past is the object, 
and the future of hope and fear; even love and hatred respect the 
past, for the cause must have been before the effect.

"The present state of things is the consequence of the former; and 
it is natural to inquire what were the sources of the good that we 
enjoy, or the evils that we suffer.  If we act only for ourselves, 
to neglect the study of history is not prudent.  If we are 
entrusted with the care of others, it is not just.  Ignorance, when 
it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with 
evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.

"There is no part of history so generally useful as that which 
relates to the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement 
of reason, the successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of 
learning and ignorance (which are the light and darkness of 
thinking beings), the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the 
revolutions of the intellectual world.  If accounts of battles and 
invasions are peculiarly the business of princes, the useful or 
elegant arts are not to be neglected; those who have kingdoms to 
govern have understandings to cultivate.

"Example is always more efficacious than precept.  A soldier is 
formed in war, and a painter must copy pictures.  In this, 
contemplative life has the advantage.  Great actions are seldom 
seen, but the labours of art are always at hand for those who 
desire to know what art has been able to perform.

"When the eye or the imagination is struck with any uncommon work, 
the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it 
was performed.  Here begins the true use of such contemplation.  We 
enlarge our comprehension by new ideas, and perhaps recover some 
art lost to mankind, or learn what is less perfectly known in our 
own country.  At least we compare our own with former times, and 
either rejoice at our improvements, or, what is the first motion 
towards good, discover our defects."

"I am willing," said the Prince, "to see all that can deserve my 
search."

"And I," said the Princess, "shall rejoice to learn something of 
the manners of antiquity."

"The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and one of the 
most bulky works of manual industry," said Imlac, "are the 
Pyramids:  fabrics raised before the time of history, and of which 
the earliest narratives afford us only uncertain traditions.  Of 
these the greatest is still standing, very little injured by time."

"Let us visit them to-morrow," said Nekayah.  "I have often heard 
of the Pyramids, and shall not rest till I have seen them, within 
and without, with my own eyes."



CHAPTER XXXI - THEY VISIT THE PYRAMIDS.



THE resolution being thus taken, they set out the next day.  They 
laid tents upon their camels, being resolved to stay among the 
Pyramids till their curiosity was fully satisfied.  They travelled 
gently, turned aside to everything remarkable, stopped from time to 
time and conversed with the inhabitants, and observed the various 
appearances of towns ruined and inhabited, of wild and cultivated 
nature.

When they came to the Great Pyramid they were astonished at the 
extent of the base and the height of the top.  Imlac explained to 
them the principles upon which the pyramidal form was chosen for a 
fabric intended to co-extend its duration with that of the world:  
he showed that its gradual diminution gave it such stability as 
defeated all the common attacks of the elements, and could scarcely 
be overthrown by earthquakes themselves, the least resistible of 
natural violence.  A concussion that should shatter the pyramid 
would threaten the dissolution of the continent.

They measured all its dimensions, and pitched their tents at its 
foot.  Next day they prepared to enter its interior apartments, and 
having hired the common guides, climbed up to the first passage; 
when the favourite of the Princess, looking into the cavity, 
stepped back and trembled.  "Pekuah," said the Princess, "of what 
art thou afraid?"

"Of the narrow entrance," answered the lady, "and of the dreadful 
gloom.  I dare not enter a place which must surely be inhabited by 
unquiet souls.  The original possessors of these dreadful vaults 
will start up before us, and perhaps shut us in for ever."  She 
spoke, and threw her arms round the neck of her mistress.

"If all your fear be of apparitions," said the Prince, "I will 
promise you safety.  There is no danger from the dead:  he that is 
once buried will be seen no more."

"That the dead are seen no more," said Imlac, "I will not undertake 
to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all 
ages and of all nations.  There is no people, rude or learned, 
among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed.  
This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is 
diffused, could become universal only by its truth:  those that 
never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which 
nothing but experience can make credible.  That it is doubted by 
single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence, and 
some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears.

"Yet I do not mean to add new terrors to those which have already 
seized upon Pekuah.  There can be no reason why spectres should 
haunt the Pyramid more than other places, or why they should have 
power or will to hurt innocence and purity.  Our entrance is no 
violation of their privileges:  we can take nothing from them; how, 
then, can we offend them?"

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

"If the Princess is pleased that her servant should die," returned 
the lady, "let her command some death less dreadful than enclosure 
in this horrid cavern.  You know I dare not disobey you - I must go 
if you command me; but if I once enter, I never shall come back."

The Princess saw that her fear was too strong for expostulation or 
reproof, and, embracing her, told her that she should stay in the 
tent till their return.  Pekuah was not yet satisfied, but 
entreated the Princess not to pursue so dreadful a purpose as that 
of entering the recesses of the Pyramids.  "Though I cannot teach 
courage," said Nekayah, "I must not learn cowardice, nor leave at 
last undone what I came hither only to do."



CHAPTER XXXII - THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID.



PEKUAH descended to the tents, and the rest entered the Pyramid.  
They passed through the galleries, surveyed the vaults of marble, 
and examined the chest in which the body of the founder is supposed 
to have been deposited.  They then sat down in one of the most 
spacious chambers to rest awhile before they attempted to return.

"We have now," said Imlac, "gratified our minds with an exact view 
of the greatest work of man, except the wall of China.

"Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive.  It secured a 
wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of barbarians, 
whose unskilfulness in the arts made it easier for them to supply 
their wants by rapine than by industry, and who from time to time 
poured in upon the inhabitants of peaceful commerce as vultures 
descend upon domestic fowl.  Their celerity and fierceness made the 
wall necessary, and their ignorance made it efficacious.

"But for the Pyramids, no reason has ever been given adequate to 
the cost and labour of the work.  The narrowness of the chambers 
proves that it could afford no retreat from enemies, and treasures 
might have been reposited at far less expense with equal security.  
It seems to have been erected only in compliance with that hunger 
of imagination which preys incessantly upon life, and must be 
always appeased by some employment.  Those who have already all 
that they can enjoy must enlarge their desires.  He that has built 
for use till use is supplied must begin to build for vanity, and 
extend his plan to the utmost power of human performance that he 
may not be soon reduced to form another wish.

"I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the 
insufficiency of human enjoyments.  A king whose power is 
unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary 
wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyramid, the 
satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse 
the tediousness of declining life by seeing thousands labouring 
without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another.  
Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, 
imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that 
command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual 
gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!"



CHAPTER XXXIII - THE PRINCESS MEETS WITH AN UNEXPECTED MISFORTUNE.



THEY rose up, and returned through the cavity at which they had 
entered; and the Princess prepared for her favourite a long 
narrative of dark labyrinths and costly rooms, and of the different 
impressions which the varieties of the way had made upon her.  But 
when they came to their train, they found every one silent and 
dejected:  the men discovered shame and fear in their countenances, 
and the women were weeping in their tents.

What had happened they did not try to conjecture, but immediately 
inquired.  "You had scarcely entered into the Pyramid," said one of 
the attendants, "when a troop of Arabs rushed upon us:  we were too 
few to resist them, and too slow to escape.  They were about to 
search the tents, set us on our camels, and drive us along before 
them, when the approach of some Turkish horsemen put them to 
flight:  but they seized the Lady Pekuah with her two maids, and 
carried them away:  the Turks are now pursuing them by our 
instigation, but I fear they will not be able to overtake them."

The Princess was overpowered with surprise and grief.  Rasselas, in 
the first heat of his resentment, ordered his servants to follow 
him, and prepared to pursue the robbers with his sabre in his hand.  
"Sir," said Imlac, "what can you hope from violence or valour?  The 
Arabs are mounted on horses trained to battle and retreat; we have 
only beasts of burden.  By leaving our present station we may lose 
the Princess, but cannot hope to regain Pekuah."

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



CHAPTER XXXIV - THEY RETURN TO CAIRO WITHOUT PEKUAH.



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

Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women attempted to 
comfort her by telling her that all had their troubles, and that 
Lady Pekuah had enjoyed much happiness in the world for a long 
time, and might reasonably expect a change of fortune.  They hoped 
that some good would befall her wheresoever she was, and that their 
mistress would find another friend who might supply her place.

The Princess made them no answer; and they continued the form of 
condolence, not much grieved in their hearts that the favourite was 
lost.

Next day the Prince presented to the Bassa a memorial of the wrong 
which he had suffered, and a petition for redress.  The Bassa 
threatened to punish the robbers, but did not attempt to catch 
them; nor indeed could any account or description be given by which 
he might direct the pursuit.

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

Imlac then endeavoured to gain some intelligence by private agents.  
He found many who pretended to an exact knowledge of all the haunts 
of the Arabs, and to regular correspondence with their chiefs, and 
who readily undertook the recovery of Pekuah.  Of these, some were 
furnished with money for their journey, and came back no more; some 
were liberally paid for accounts which a few days discovered to be 
false.  But the Princess would not suffer any means, however 
improbable, to be left untried.  While she was doing something, she 
kept her hope alive.  As one expedient failed, another was 
suggested; when one messenger returned unsuccessful, another was 
despatched to a different quarter.

Two months had now passed, and of Pekuah nothing had been heard; 
the hopes which they had endeavoured to raise in each other grew 
more languid; and the Princess, when she saw nothing more to be 
tried, sunk down inconsolable in hopeless dejection.  A thousand 
times she reproached herself with the easy compliance by which she 
permitted her favourite to stay behind her.  "Had not my fondness," 
said she, "lessened my authority, Pekuah had not dared to talk of 
her terrors.  She ought to have feared me more than spectres.  A 
severe look would have overpowered her; a peremptory command would 
have compelled obedience.  Why did foolish indulgence prevail upon 
me?  Why did I not speak, and refuse to hear?"

"Great Princess," said Imlac, "do not reproach yourself for your 
virtue, or consider that as blameable by which evil has 
accidentally been caused.  Your tenderness for the timidity of 
Pekuah was generous and kind.  When we act according to our duty, 
we commit the events to Him by whose laws our actions are governed, 
and who will suffer none to be finally punished for obedience.  
When, in prospect of some good, whether natural or moral, we break 
the rules prescribed us, we withdraw from the direction of superior 
wisdom, and take all consequences upon ourselves.  Man cannot so 
far know the connection of causes and events as that he may venture 
to do wrong in order to do right.  When we pursue our end by lawful 
means, we may always console our miscarriage by the hope of future 
recompense.  When we consult only our own policy, and attempt to 
find a nearer way to good by over-leaping the settled boundaries of 
right and wrong, we cannot be happy even by success, because we 
cannot escape the consciousness of our fault; but if we miscarry, 
the disappointment is irremediably embittered.  How comfortless is 
the sorrow of him who feels at once the pangs of guilt and the 
vexation of calamity which guilt has brought upon him!

"Consider, Princess, what would have been your condition if the 
Lady Pekuah had entreated to accompany you, and, being compelled to 
stay in the tents, had been carried away; or how would you have 
borne the thought if you had forced her into the Pyramid, and she 
had died before you in agonies of terror?"

"Had either happened," said Nekayah, "I could not have endured life 
till now; I should have been tortured to madness by the remembrance 
of such cruelty, or must have pined away in abhorrence of myself."

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



CHAPTER XXXV - THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF PEKUAH.



NEKAYAH, being thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil is 
insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of 
wrong.  She was from that time delivered from the violence of 
tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy 
tranquillity.  She sat from morning to evening recollecting all 
that had been done or said by her Pekuah, treasured up with care 
every trifle on which Pekuah had set an accidental value, and which 
might recall to mind any little incident or careless conversation.  
The sentiments of her whom she now expected to see no more were 
treasured in her memory as rules of life, and she deliberated to no 
other end than to conjecture on any occasion what would have been 
the opinion and counsel of Pekuah.

The women by whom she was attended knew nothing of her real 
condition, and therefore she could not talk to them but with 
caution and reserve.  She began to remit her curiosity, having no 
great desire to collect notions which she had no convenience of 
uttering.  Rasselas endeavoured first to comfort and afterwards to 
divert her; he hired musicians, to whom she seemed to listen, but 
did not hear them; and procured masters to instruct her in various 
arts, whose lectures, when they visited her again, were again to be 
repeated.  She had lost her taste of pleasure and her ambition of 
excellence; and her mind, though forced into short excursions, 
always recurred to the image of her friend.

Imlac was every morning earnestly enjoined to renew his inquiries, 
and was asked every night whether he had yet heard of Pekuah; till, 
not being able to return the Princess the answer that she desired, 
he was less and less willing to come into her presence.  She 
observed his backwardness, and commanded him to attend her.   "You 
are not," said she, "to confound impatience with resentment, or to 
suppose that I charge you with negligence because I repine at your 
unsuccessfulness.  I do not much wonder at your absence.  I know 
that the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all naturally avoid 
the contagion of misery.  To hear complaints is wearisome alike to 
the wretched and the happy; for who would cloud by adventitious 
grief the short gleams of gaiety which life allows us, or who that 
is struggling under his own evils will add to them the miseries of 
another?

"The time is at hand when none shall be disturbed any longer by the 
sighs of Nekayah:  my search after happiness is now at an end.  I 
am resolved to retire from the world, with all its flatteries and 
deceits, and will hide myself in solitude, without any other care 
than to compose my thoughts and regulate my hours by a constant 
succession of innocent occupations, till, with a mind purified from 
earthly desires, I shall enter into that state to which all are 
hastening, and in which I hope again to enjoy the friendship of 
Pekuah."

"Do not entangle your mind," said Imlac, "by irrevocable 
determinations, nor increase the burden of life by a voluntary 
accumulation of misery.  The weariness of retirement will continue 
to increase when the loss of Pekuah is forgot.  That you have been 
deprived of one pleasure is no very good reason for rejection of 
the rest."

"Since Pekuah was taken from me," said the Princess, "I have no 
pleasure to reject or to retain.  She that has no one to love or 
trust has little to hope.  She wants the radical principle of 
happiness.  We may perhaps allow that what satisfaction this world 
can afford must arise from the conjunction of wealth, knowledge, 
and goodness.  Wealth is nothing but as it is bestowed, and 
knowledge nothing but as it is communicated.  They must therefore 
be imparted to others, and to whom could I now delight to impart 
them?  Goodness affords the only comfort which can be enjoyed 
without a partner, and goodness may be practised in retirement."

"How far solitude may admit goodness or advance it, I shall not," 
replied Imlac, "dispute at present.  Remember the confession of the 
pious hermit.  You will wish to return into the world when the 
image of your companion has left your thoughts."

"That time," said Nekayah, "will never come.  The generous 
frankness, the modest obsequiousness, and the faithful secrecy of 
my dear Pekuah will always be more missed as I shall live longer to 
see vice and folly."

"The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity," said Imlac, 
"is like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the new-created earth, 
who, when the first night came upon them, supposed that day would 
never return.  When the clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see 
nothing beyond them, nor can imagine how they will be dispelled; 
yet a new day succeeded to the night, and sorrow is never long 
without a dawn of ease.  But they who restrain themselves from 
receiving comfort do as the savages would have done had they put 
out their eyes when it was dark.  Our minds, like our bodies, are 
in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something 
acquired.  To lose much at once is inconvenient to either, but 
while the vital power remains uninjured, nature will find the means 
of reparation.  Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the 
eye; and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave 
behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach 
increasing in magnitude.  Do not suffer life to stagnate:  it will 
grow muddy for want of motion; commit yourself again to the current 
of the world; Pekuah will vanish by degrees; you will meet in your 
way some other favourite, or learn to diffuse yourself in general 
conversation."

"At least," said the Prince, "do not despair before all remedies 
have been tried.  The inquiry after the unfortunate lady is still 
continued, and shall be carried on with yet greater diligence, on 
condition that you will promise to wait a year for the event, 
without any unalterable resolution."

Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the promise to 
her brother, who had been obliged by Imlac to require it.  Imlac 
had, indeed, no great hope of regaining Pekuah; but he supposed 
that if he could secure the interval of a year, the Princess would 
be then in no danger of a cloister.



CHAPTER XXXVI - PEKUAH IS STILL REMEMBERED.  THE PROGRESS OF 
SORROW.



NEKAYAH, seeing that nothing was omitted for the recovery of her 
favourite, and having by her promise set her intention of 
retirement at a distance, began imperceptibly to return to common 
cares and common pleasures.  She rejoiced without her own consent 
at the suspension of her sorrows, and sometimes caught herself with 
indignation in the act of turning away her mind from the 
remembrance of her whom yet she resolved never to forget.

She then appointed a certain hour of the day for meditation on the 
merits and fondness of Pekuah, and for some weeks retired 
constantly at the time fixed, and returned with her eyes swollen 
and her countenance clouded.  By degrees she grew less scrupulous, 
and suffered any important and pressing avocation to delay the 
tribute of daily tears.  She then yielded to less occasions, and 
sometimes forgot what she was indeed afraid to remember, and at 
last wholly released herself from the duty of periodical 
affliction.

Her real love of Pekuah was not yet diminished.  A thousand 
occurrences brought her back to memory, and a thousand wants, which 
nothing but the confidence of friendship can supply, made her 
frequently regretted.  She therefore solicited Imlac never to 
desist from inquiry, and to leave no art of intelligence untried, 
that at least she might have the comfort of knowing that she did 
not suffer by negligence or sluggishness.  "Yet what," said she, 
"is to be expected from our pursuit of happiness, when we find the 
state of life to be such that happiness itself is the cause of 
misery?  Why should we endeavour to attain that of which the 
possession cannot be secured?  I shall henceforward fear to yield 
my heart to excellence, however bright, or to fondness, however 
tender, lest I should lose again what I have lost in Pekuah."



CHAPTER XXXVII - THE PRINCESS HEARS NEWS OF PEKUAH.



IN seven mouths one of the messengers who had been sent away upon 
the day when the promise was drawn from the Princess, returned, 
after many unsuccessful rambles, from the borders of Nubia, with an 
account that Pekuah was in the hands of an Arab chief, who 
possessed a castle or fortress on the extremity of Egypt.  The 
Arab, whose revenue was plunder, was willing to restore her, with 
her two attendants, for two hundred ounces of gold.

The price was no subject of debate.  The Princess was in ecstasies 
when she heard that her favourite was alive, and might so cheaply 
be ransomed.  She could not think of delaying for a moment Pekuah's 
happiness or her own, but entreated her brother to send back the 
messenger with the sum required.  Imlac, being consulted, was not 
very confident of the veracity of the relater, and was still more 
doubtful of the Arab's faith, who might, if he were too liberally 
trusted, detain at once the money and the captives.  He thought it 
dangerous to put themselves in the power of the Arab by going into 
his district; and could not expect that the rover would so much 
expose himself as to come into the lower country, where he might be 
seized by the forces of the Bassa.

It is difficult to negotiate where neither will trust.  But Imlac, 
after some deliberation, directed the messenger to propose that 
Pekuah should be conducted by ten horsemen to the monastery of St. 
Anthony, which is situated in the deserts of Upper Egypt, where she 
should be met by the same number, and her ransom should be paid.

That no time might be lost, as they expected that the proposal 
would not be refused, they immediately began their journey to the 
monastery; and when they arrived, Imlac went forward with the 
former messenger to the Arab's fortress.  Rasselas was desirous to 
go with them; but neither his sister nor Imlac would consent.  The 
Arab, according to the custom of his nation, observed the laws of 
hospitality with great exactness to those who put themselves into 
his power, and in a few days brought Pekuah, with her maids, by 
easy journeys, to the place appointed, where, receiving the 
stipulated price, he restored her, with great respect, to liberty 
and her friends, and undertook to conduct them back towards Cairo 
beyond all danger of robbery or violence.

The Princess and her favourite embraced each other with transport 
too violent to be expressed, and went out together to pour the 
tears of tenderness in secret, and exchange professions of kindness 
and gratitude.  After a few hours they returned into the refectory 
of the convent, where, in the presence of the prior and his 
brethren, the Prince required of Pekuah the history of her 
adventures.



CHAPTER XXXVIII - THE ADVENTURES OF THE LADY PEKUAH.



"AT what time and in what manner I was forced away," said Pekuah, 
"your servants have told you.  The suddenness of the event struck 
me with surprise, and I was at first rather stupefied than agitated 
with any passion of either fear or sorrow.  My confusion was 
increased by the speed and tumult of our flight, while we were 
followed by the Turks, who, as it seemed, soon despaired to 
overtake us, or were afraid of those whom they made a show of 
menacing.

"When the Arabs saw themselves out of danger, they slackened their 
course; and as I was less harassed by external violence, I began to 
feel more uneasiness in my mind.  After some time we stopped near a 
spring shaded with trees, in a pleasant meadow, where we were set 
upon the ground, and offered such refreshments as our masters were 
partaking.  I was suffered to sit with my maids apart from the 
rest, and none attempted to comfort or insult us.  Here I first 
began to feel the full weight of my misery.  The girls sat weeping 
in silence, and from time to time looked on me for succour.  I knew 
not to what condition we were doomed, nor could conjecture where 
would be the place of our captivity, or whence to draw any hope of 
deliverance.  I was in the hands of robbers and savages, and had no 
reason to suppose that their pity was more than their justice, or 
that they would forbear the gratification of any ardour of desire 
or caprice of cruelty.  I, however, kissed my maids, and 
endeavoured to pacify them by remarking that we were yet treated 
with decency, and that since we were now carried beyond pursuit, 
there was no danger of violence to our lives.

"When we were to be set again on horseback, my maids clung round 
me, and refused to be parted; but I commanded them not to irritate 
those who had us in their power.  We travelled the remaining part 
of the day through an unfrequented and pathless country, and came 
by moonlight to the side of a hill, where the rest of the troop was 
stationed.  Their tents were pitched and their fires kindled, and 
our chief was welcomed as a man much beloved by his dependents.

"We were received into a large tent, where we found women who had 
attended their husbands in the expedition.  They set before us the 
supper which they had provided, and I ate it rather to encourage my 
maids than to comply with any appetite of my own.  When the meat 
was taken away, they spread the carpets for repose.  I was weary, 
and hoped to find in sleep that remission of distress which nature 
seldom denies.  Ordering myself, therefore, to be undressed, I 
observed that the women looked very earnestly upon me, not 
expecting, I suppose, to see me so submissively attended.  When my 
upper vest was taken off, they were apparently struck with the 
splendour of my clothes, and one of them timorously laid her hand 
upon the embroidery.  She then went out, and in a short time came 
back with another woman, who seemed to be of higher rank and 
greater authority.  She did, at her entrance, the usual act of 
reverence, and, taking me by the hand placed me in a smaller tent, 
spread with finer carpets, where I spent the night quietly with my 
maids.

"In the morning, as I was sitting on the grass, the chief of the 
troop came towards me.  I rose up to receive him, and he bowed with 
great respect.  'Illustrious lady,' said he, 'my fortune is better 
than I had presumed to hope:  I am told by my women that I have a 
princess in my camp.'  'Sir,' answered I, 'your women have deceived 
themselves and you; I am not a princess, but an unhappy stranger 
who intended soon to have left this country, in which I am now to 
be imprisoned for ever.'  'Whoever or whencesoever you are,' 
returned the Arab, 'your dress and that of your servants show your 
rank to be high and your wealth to be great.  Why should you, who 
can so easily procure your ransom, think yourself in danger of 
perpetual captivity?  The purpose of my incursions is to increase 
my riches, or, more property, to gather tribute.  The sons of 
Ishmael are the natural and hereditary lords of this part of the 
continent, which is usurped by late invaders and low-born tyrants, 
from whom we are compelled to take by the sword what is denied to 
justice.  The violence of war admits no distinction:  the lance 
that is lifted at guilt and power will sometimes fall on innocence 
and gentleness.'

"'How little,' said I, 'did I expect that yesterday it should have 
fallen upon me!'

"'Misfortunes,' answered the Arab, 'should always be expected.  If 
the eye of hostility could learn reverence or pity, excellence like 
yours had been exempt from injury.  But the angels of affliction 
spread their toils alike for the virtuous and the wicked, for the 
mighty and the mean.  Do not be disconsolate; I am not one of the 
lawless and cruel rovers of the desert; I know the rules of civil 
life; I will fix your ransom, give a passport to your messenger, 
and perform my stipulation with nice punctuality.'

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

"Soon after the women came about me, each contending to be more 
officious than the other, and my maids themselves were served with 
reverence.  We travelled onward by short journeys.  On the fourth 
day the chief told me that my ransom must be two hundred ounces of 
gold, which I not only promised him, but told him that I would add 
fifty more if I and my maids were honourably treated.

"I never knew the power of gold before.  From that time I was the 
leader of the troop.  The march of every day was longer or shorter 
as I commanded, and the tents were pitched where I chose to rest.  
We now had camels and other conveniences for travel; my own women 
were always at my side, and I amused myself with observing the 
manners of the vagrant nations, and with viewing remains of ancient 
edifices, with which these deserted countries appear to have been 
in some distant age lavishly embellished.

"The chief of the band was a man far from illiterate:  he was able 
to travel by the stars or the compass, and had marked in his 
erratic expeditions such places as are most worthy the notice of a 
passenger.  He observed to me that buildings are always best 
preserved in places little frequented and difficult of access; for 
when once a country declines from its primitive splendour, the more 
inhabitants are left, the quicker ruin will be made.  Walls supply 
stones more easily than quarries; and palaces and temples will be 
demolished to make stables of granite and cottages of porphyry.'"



CHAPTER XXXIX - THE ADVENTURES OF PEKUAH (CONTINUED).



"WE wandered about in this manner for some weeks, either, as our 
chief pretended, for my gratification, or, as I rather suspected, 
for some convenience of his own.  I endeavoured to appear contented 
where sullenness and resentment would have been of no use, and that 
endeavour conduced much to the calmness of my mind; but my heart 
was always with Nekayah, and the troubles of the night much 
overbalanced the amusements of the day.  My women, who threw all 
their cares upon their mistress, set their minds at ease from the 
time when they saw me treated with respect, and gave themselves up 
to the incidental alleviations of our fatigue without solicitude or 
sorrow.  I was pleased with their pleasure, and animated with their 
confidence.  My condition had lost much of its terror, since I 
found that the Arab ranged the country merely to get riches.  
Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice:  other intellectual 
distempers are different in different constitutions of mind; that 
which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another; 
but to the favour of the covetous there is a ready way - bring 
money, and nothing is denied.

"At last we came to the dwelling of our chief; a strong and 
spacious house, built with stone in an island of the Nile, which 
lies, as I was told, under the tropic.  'Lady,' said the Arab, 'you 
shall rest after your journey a few weeks in this place, where you 
are to consider yourself as Sovereign.  My occupation is war:  I 
have therefore chosen this obscure residence, from which I can 
issue unexpected, and to which I can retire unpursued.  You may now 
repose in security:  here are few pleasures, but here is no 
danger.'  He then led me into the inner apartments, and seating me 
on the richest couch, bowed to the ground.

"His women, who considered me as a rival, looked on me with 
malignity; but being soon informed that I was a great lady detained 
only for my ransom, they began to vie with each other in 
obsequiousness and reverence.

"Being again comforted with new assurances of speedy liberty, I was 
for some days diverted from impatience by the novelty of the place.  
The turrets overlooked the country to a great distance, and 
afforded a view of many windings of the stream.  In the day I 
wandered from one place to another, as the course of the sun varied 
the splendour of the prospect, and saw many things which I had 
never seen before.  The crocodiles and river-horses are common in 
this unpeopled region; and I often looked upon them with terror, 
though I knew they could not hurt me.  For some time I expected to 
see mermaids and tritons, which, as Imlac has told me, the European 
travellers have stationed in the Nile; but no such beings ever 
appeared, and the Arab, when I inquired after them, laughed at my 
credulity.

"At night the Arab always attended me to a tower set apart for 
celestial observations, where he endeavoured to teach me the names 
and courses of the stars.  I had no great inclination to this 
study; but an appearance of attention was necessary to please my 
instructor, who valued himself for his skill, and in a little while 
I found some employment requisite to beguile the tediousness of 
time, which was to be passed always amidst the same objects.  I was 
weary of looking in the morning on things from which I had turned 
away weary in the evening:  I therefore was at last willing to 
observe the stars rather than do nothing, but could not always 
compose my thoughts, and was very often thinking on Nekayah when 
others imagined me contemplating the sky.  Soon after, the Arab 
went upon another expedition, and then my only pleasure was to talk 
with my maids about the accident by which we were carried away, and 
the happiness we should all enjoy at the end of our captivity."

"There were women in your Arab's fortress," said the Princess; "why 
did you not make them your companions, enjoy their conversation, 
and partake their diversions?  In a place where they found business 
or amusement, why should you alone sit corroded with idle 
melancholy? or why could not you bear for a few months that 
condition to which they were condemned for life?"

"The diversions of the women," answered Pekuah, "were only childish 
play, by which the mind accustomed to stronger operations could not 
be kept busy.  I could do all which they delighted in doing by 
powers merely sensitive, while my intellectual faculties were flown 
to Cairo.  They ran from room to room, as a bird hops from wire to 
wire in his cage.  They danced for the sake of motion, as lambs 
frisk in a meadow.  One sometimes pretended to be hurt that the 
rest might be alarmed, or hid herself that another might seek her.  
Part of their time passed in watching the progress of light bodies 
that floated on the river, and part in marking the various forms 
into which clouds broke in the sky.

"Their business was only needlework, in which I and my maids 
sometimes helped them; but you know that the mind will easily 
straggle from the fingers, nor will you suspect that captivity and 
absence from Nekayah could receive solace from silken flowers.

"Nor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their conversation:  
for of what could they be expected to talk?  They had seen nothing, 
for they had lived from early youth in that narrow spot:  of what 
they had not seen they could have no knowledge, for they could not 
read.  They had no idea but of the few things that were within 
their view, and had hardly names for anything but their clothes and 
their food.  As I bore a superior character, I was often called to 
terminate their quarrels, which I decided as equitably as I could.  
If it could have amused me to hear the complaints of each against 
the rest, I might have been often detained by long stories; but the 
motives of their animosity were so small that I could not listen 
without interrupting the tale."

"How," said Rasselas, "can the Arab, whom you represented as a man 
of more than common accomplishments, take any pleasure in his 
seraglio, when it is filled only with women like these?  Are they 
exquisitely beautiful?"

"They do not," said Pekuah, "want that unaffecting and ignoble 
beauty which may subsist without sprightliness or sublimity, 
without energy of thought or dignity of virtue.  But to a man like 
the Arab such beauty was only a flower casually plucked and 
carelessly thrown away.  Whatever pleasures he might find among 
them, they were not those of friendship or society.  When they were 
playing about him he looked on them with inattentive superiority; 
when they vied for his regard he sometimes turned away disgusted.  
As they had no knowledge, their talk could take nothing from the 
tediousness of life; as they had no choice, their fondness, or 
appearance of fondness, excited in him neither pride nor gratitude.  
He was not exalted in his own esteem by the smiles of a woman who 
saw no other man, nor was much obliged by that regard of which he 
could never know the sincerity, and which he might often perceive 
to be exerted not so much to delight him as to pain a rival.  That 
which he gave, and they received, as love, was only a careless 
distribution of superfluous time, such love as man can bestow upon 
that which he despises, such as has neither hope nor fear, neither 
joy nor sorrow."

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

"I am inclined to believe," answered Pekuah, "that he was for some 
time in suspense; for, notwithstanding his promise, whenever I 
proposed to despatch a messenger to Cairo he found some excuse for 
delay.  While I was detained in his house he made many incursions 
into the neighbouring countries, and perhaps he would have refused 
to discharge me had his plunder been equal to his wishes.  He 
returned always courteous, related his adventures, delighted to 
hear my observations, and endeavoured to advance my acquaintance 
with the stars.  When I importuned him to send away my letters, he 
soothed me with professions of honour and sincerity; and when I 
could be no longer decently denied, put his troop again in motion, 
and left me to govern in his absence.  I was much afflicted by this 
studied procrastination, and was sometimes afraid that I should be 
forgotten; that you would leave Cairo, and I must end my days in an 
island of the Nile.

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

"He still delayed to send for my ransom, and would perhaps never 
have determined had not your agent found his way to him.  The gold, 
which he would not fetch, he could not reject when it was offered.  
He hastened to prepare for our journey hither, like a man delivered 
from the pain of an intestine conflict.  I took leave of my 
companions in the house, who dismissed me with cold indifference."

Nekayah having heard her favourite's relation, rose and embraced 
her, and Rasselas gave her a hundred ounces of gold, which she 
presented to the Arab for the fifty that were promised.



CHAPTER XL - THE HISTORY OF A MAN OF LEARNING.



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

"Before you make your final choice," answered Imlac, "you ought to 
examine its hazards, and converse with some of those who are grown 
old in the company of themselves.  I have just left the observatory 
of one of the most learned astronomers in the world, who has spent 
forty years in unwearied attention to the motion and appearances of 
the celestial bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless 
calculations.  He admits a few friends once a month to hear his 
deductions and enjoy his discoveries.  I was introduced as a man of 
knowledge worthy of his notice.  Men of various ideas and fluent 
conversation are commonly welcome to those whose thoughts have been 
long fixed upon a single point, and who find the images of other 
things stealing away.  I delighted him with my remarks.  He smiled 
at the narrative of my travels, and was glad to forget the 
constellations and descend for a moment into the lower world.

"On the next day of vacation I renewed my visit, and was so 
fortunate as to please him again.  He relaxed from that time the 
severity of his rule, and permitted me to enter at my own choice.  
I found him always busy, and always glad to be relieved.  As each 
knew much which the other was desirous of learning, we exchanged 
our notions with great delight.  I perceived that I had every day 
more of his confidence, and always found new cause of admiration in 
the profundity of his mind.  His comprehension is vast, his memory 
capacious and retentive, his discourse is methodical, and his 
expression clear.

"His integrity and benevolence are equal to his learning.  His 
deepest researches and most favourite studies are willingly 
interrupted for any opportunity of doing good by his counsel or his 
riches.  To his closest retreat, at his most busy moments, all are 
admitted that want his assistance; 'For though I exclude idleness 
and pleasure, I will never,' says he, 'bar my doors against 
charity.  To man is permitted the contemplation of the skies, but 
the practice of virtue is commanded.'"

"Surely," said the Princess, "this man is happy."

"I visited him," said Imlac, "with more and more frequency, and was 
every time more enamoured of his conversation; he was sublime 
without haughtiness, courteous without formality, and communicative 
without ostentation.  I was at first, great Princess, of your 
opinion, thought him the happiest of mankind, and often 
congratulated him on the blessing that he enjoyed.  He seemed to 
hear nothing with indifference but the praises of his condition, to 
which he always returned a general answer, and diverted the 
conversation to some other topic.

"Amidst this willingness to be pleased and labour to please, I had 
quickly reason to imagine that some painful sentiment pressed upon 
his mind.  He often looked up earnestly towards the sun, and let 
his voice fall in the midst of his discourse.  He would sometimes, 
when we were alone, gaze upon me in silence with the air of a man 
who longed to speak what he was yet resolved to suppress.  He would 
often send for me with vehement injunction of haste, though when I 
came to him he had nothing extraordinary to say; and sometimes, 
when I was leaving him, would call me back, pause a few moments, 
and then dismiss me."



CHAPTER XLI - THE ASTRONOMER DISCOVERS THE CAUSE OF HIS UNEASINESS.



"AT last the time came when the secret burst his reserve.  We were 
sitting together last night in the turret of his house watching the 
immersion of a satellite of Jupiter.  A sudden tempest clouded the 
sky and disappointed our observation.  We sat awhile silent in the 
dark, and then he addressed himself to me in these words:  'Imlac, 
I have long considered thy friendship as the greatest blessing of 
my life.  Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and 
knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.  I have 
found in thee all the qualities requisite for trust - benevolence, 
experience, and fortitude.  I have long discharged an office which 
I must soon quit at the call of Nature, and shall rejoice in the 
hour of imbecility and pain to devolve it upon thee.'

"I thought myself honoured by this testimony, and protested that 
whatever could conduce to his happiness would add likewise to mine.

"'Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit.  I 
have possessed for five years the regulation of the weather and the 
distribution of the seasons.  The sun has listened to my dictates, 
and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds at my 
call have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my 
command.  I have restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated 
the fervours of the crab.  The winds alone, of all the elemental 
powers, have hitherto refused my authority, and multitudes have 
perished by equinoctial tempests which I found myself unable to 
prohibit or restrain.  I have administered this great office with 
exact justice, and made to the different nations of the earth an 
impartial dividend of rain and sunshine.  What must have been the 
misery of half the globe if I had limited the clouds to particular 
regions, or confined the sun to either side of the equator?'"



CHAPTER XLII - THE OPINION OF THE ASTRONOMER IS EXPLAINED AND 
JUSTIFIED.



"I SUPPOSE he discovered in me, through the obscurity of the room, 
some tokens of amazement and doubt, for after a short pause he 
proceeded thus:-

"'Not to be easily credited will neither surprise nor offend me, 
for I am probably the first of human beings to whom this trust has 
been imparted.  Nor do I know whether to deem this distinction a 
reward or punishment.  Since I have possessed it I have been far 
less happy than before, and nothing but the consciousness of good 
intention could have enabled me to support the weariness of 
unremitted vigilance.'

"'How long, sir,' said I, 'has this great office been in your 
hands?'

"'About ten years ago,' said he, 'my daily observations of the 
changes of the sky led me to consider whether, if I had the power 
of the seasons, I could confer greater plenty upon the inhabitants 
of the earth.  This contemplation fastened on my mind, and I sat 
days and nights in imaginary dominion, pouring upon this country 
and that the showers of fertility, and seconding every fall of rain 
with a due proportion of sunshine.  I had yet only the will to do 
good, and did not imagine that I should ever have the power.

"'One day as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I 
felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the 
southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation.  In the 
hurry of my imagination I commanded rain to fall; and by comparing 
the time of my command with that of the inundation, I found that 
the clouds had listened to my lips.'

"'Might not some other cause,' said I, 'produce this concurrence?  
The Nile does not always rise on the same day.'

"'Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, 'that such objections 
could escape me.  I reasoned long against my own conviction, and 
laboured against truth with the utmost obstinacy.  I sometimes 
suspected myself of madness, and should not have dared to impart 
this secret but to a man like you, capable of distinguishing the 
wonderful from the impossible, and the incredible from the false.'

"'Why, sir,' said I, 'do you call that incredible which you know, 
or think you know, to be true?'

"'Because,' said he, 'I cannot prove it by any external evidence; 
and I know too well the laws of demonstration to think that my 
conviction ought to influence another, who cannot, like me, be 
conscious of its force.  I therefore shall not attempt to gain 
credit by disputation.  It is sufficient that I feel this power 
that I have long possessed, and every day exerted it.  But the life 
of man is short; the infirmities of age increase upon me, and the 
time will soon come when the regulator of the year must mingle with 
the dust.  The care of appointing a successor has long disturbed 
me; the night and the day have been spent in comparisons of all the 
characters which have come to my knowledge, and I have yet found 
none so worthy as thyself.'"



CHAPTER XLIII - THE ASTRONOMER LEAVES IMLAC HIS DIRECTIONS.



"'HEAR, therefore, what I shall impart with attention, such as the 
welfare of a world requires.  If the task of a king be considered 
as difficult, who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he 
cannot do much good or harm, what must be the anxiety of him on 
whom depends the action of the elements and the great gifts of 
light and heat?  Hear me, therefore, with attention.

"'I have diligently considered the position of the earth and sun, 
and formed innumerable schemes, in which I changed their situation.  
I have sometimes turned aside the axis of the earth, and sometimes 
varied the ecliptic of the sun, but I have found it impossible to 
make a disposition by which the world may be advantaged; what one 
region gains another loses by an imaginable alteration, even 
without considering the distant parts of the solar system with 
which we are acquainted.  Do not, therefore, in thy administration 
of the year, indulge thy pride by innovation; do not please thyself 
with thinking that thou canst make thyself renowned to all future 
ages by disordering the seasons.  The memory of mischief is no 
desirable fame.  Much less will it become thee to let kindness or 
interest prevail.  Never rob other countries of rain to pour it on 
thine own.  For us the Nile is sufficient.'

"I promised that when I possessed the power I would use it with 
inflexible integrity; and he dismissed me, pressing my hand.  'My 
heart,' said he, 'will be now at rest, and my benevolence will no 
more destroy my quiet; I have found a man of wisdom and virtue, to 
whom I can cheerfully bequeath the inheritance of the sun.'"

The Prince heard this narration with very serious regard; but the 
Princess smiled, and Pekuah convulsed herself with laughter.  
"Ladies," said Imlac, "to mock the heaviest of human afflictions is 
neither charitable nor wise.  Few can attain this man's knowledge 
and few practise his virtues, but all may suffer his calamity.  Of 
the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and 
alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason."

The Princess was recollected, and the favourite was abashed.  
Rasselas, more deeply affected, inquired of Imlac whether he 
thought such maladies of the mind frequent, and how they were 
contracted.



CHAPTER XLIV - THE DANGEROUS PREVALENCE OF IMAGINATION.



"DISORDERS of intellect," answered Imlac, "happen much more often 
than superficial observers will easily believe.  Perhaps if we 
speak with rigorous exactness, no human mind is in its right state.  
There is no man whose imagination does not sometimes predominate 
over his reason who can regulate his attention wholly by his will, 
and whose ideas will come and go at his command.  No man will be 
found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannise, and 
force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.  
All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity, but while 
this power is such as we can control and repress it is not visible 
to others, nor considered as any deprivation of the mental 
faculties; it is not pronounced madness but when it becomes 
ungovernable, and apparently influences speech or action.

"To indulge the power of fiction and send imagination out upon the 
wing is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent 
speculation.  When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour 
of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of inquiry 
will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety.  He who has nothing 
external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own 
thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is 
pleased with what he is?  He then expatiates in boundless futurity, 
and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present 
moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible 
enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion.  The 
mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all 
combinations, and riots in delights which Nature and fortune, with 
all their bounty, cannot bestow.

"In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all 
other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in 
weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite 
conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is 
offended with the bitterness of truth.  By degrees the reign of 
fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious and in time despotic.  
Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten 
upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.

"This, sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the hermit has 
confessed not always to promote goodness, and the astronomer's 
misery has proved to be not always propitious to wisdom."

"I will no more," said the favourite, "imagine myself the Queen of 
Abyssinia.  I have often spent the hours which the Princess gave to 
my own disposal in adjusting ceremonies and regulating the Court; I 
have repressed the pride of the powerful and granted the petitions 
of the poor; I have built new palaces in more happy situations, 
planted groves upon the tops of mountains, and have exulted in the 
beneficence of royalty, till, when the Princess entered, I had 
almost forgotten to bow down before her."

"And I," said the Princess, "will not allow myself any more to play 
the shepherdess in my waking dreams.  I have often soothed my 
thoughts with the quiet and innocence of pastoral employments, till 
I have in my chamber heard the winds whistle and the sheep bleat; 
sometimes freed the lamb entangled in the thicket, and sometimes 
with my crook encountered the wolf.  I have a dress like that of 
the village maids, which I put on to help my imagination, and a 
pipe on which I play softly, and suppose myself followed by my 
flocks."

"I will confess," said the Prince, "an indulgence of fantastic 
delight more dangerous than yours.  I have frequently endeavoured 
to imagine the possibility of a perfect government, by which all 
wrong should be restrained, all vice reformed, and all the subjects 
preserved in tranquillity and innocence.  This thought produced 
innumerable schemes of reformation, and dictated many useful 
regulations and salutary effects.  This has been the sport and 
sometimes the labour of my solitude, and I start when I think with 
how little anguish I once supposed the death of my father and my 
brothers."

"Such," said Imlac, "are the effects of visionary schemes.  When we 
first form them, we know them to be absurd, but familiarise them by 
degrees, and in time lose sight of their folly."



CHAPTER XLV - THEY DISCOURSE WITH AN OLD MAN.



THE evening was now far past, and they rose to return home.  As 
they walked along the banks of the Nile, delighted with the beams 
of the moon quivering on the water, they saw at a small distance an 
old man whom the Prince had often heard in the assembly of the 
sages.  "Yonder," said he, "is one whose years have calmed his 
passions, but not clouded his reason.  Let us close the 
disquisitions of the night by inquiring what are his sentiments of 
his own state, that we may know whether youth alone is to struggle 
with vexation, and whether any better hope remains for the latter 
part of life."

Here the sage approached and saluted them.  They invited him to 
join their walk, and prattled awhile as acquaintance that had 
unexpectedly met one another.  The old man was cheerful and 
talkative, and the way seemed short in his company.  He was pleased 
to find himself not disregarded, accompanied them to their house, 
and, at the Prince's request, entered with them.  They placed him 
in the seat of honour, and set wine and conserves before him.

"Sir," said the Princess, "an evening walk must give to a man of 
learning like you pleasures which ignorance and youth can hardly 
conceive.  You know the qualities and the causes of all that you 
behold - the laws by which the river flows, the periods in which 
the planets perform their revolutions.  Everything must supply you 
with contemplation, and renew the consciousness of your own 
dignity."

"Lady," answered he, "let the gay and the vigorous expect pleasure 
in their excursions:  it is enough that age can attain ease.  To me 
the world has lost its novelty.  I look round, and see what I 
remember to have seen in happier days.  I rest against a tree, and 
consider that in the same shade I once disputed upon the annual 
overflow of the Nile with a friend who is now silent in the grave.  
I cast my eyes upwards, fix them on the changing moon, and think 
with pain on the vicissitudes of life.  I have ceased to take much 
delight in physical truth; for what have I to do with those things 
which I am soon to leave?"

"You may at least recreate yourself," said Imlac, "with the 
recollection of an honourable and useful life, and enjoy the praise 
which all agree to give you."

"Praise," said the sage with a sigh, "is to an old man an empty 
sound.  I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation 
of her son, nor wife to partake the honours of her husband.  I have 
outlived my friends and my rivals.  Nothing is now of much 
importance; for I cannot extend my interest beyond myself.  Youth 
is delighted with applause, because it is considered as the earnest 
of some future good, and because the prospect of life is far 
extended; but to me, who am now declining to decrepitude, there is 
little to be feared from the malevolence of men, and yet less to be 
hoped from their affection or esteem.  Something they may yet take 
away, but they can give me nothing.  Riches would now be useless, 
and high employment would be pain.  My retrospect of life recalls 
to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time 
squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and vacancy.  I 
leave many great designs unattempted, and many great attempts 
unfinished.  My mind is burdened with no heavy crime, and therefore 
I compose myself to tranquillity; endeavour to abstract my thoughts 
from hopes and cares which, though reason knows them to be vain, 
still try to keep their old possession of the heart; expect, with 
serene humility, that hour which nature cannot long delay, and hope 
to possess in a better state that happiness which here I could not 
find, and that virtue which here I have not attained."

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

The Princess suspected that age was querulous and malignant, and 
delighted to repress the expectations of those who had newly 
entered the world.  She had seen the possessors of estates look 
with envy on their heirs, and known many who enjoyed pleasures no 
longer than they could confine it to themselves.

Pekuah conjectured that the man was older than he appeared, and was 
willing to impute his complaints to delirious dejection; or else 
supposed that he had been unfortunate, and was therefore 
discontented.  "For nothing," said she, "is more common than to 
call our own condition the condition of life."

Imlac, who had no desire to see them depressed, smiled at the 
comforts which they could so readily procure to themselves; and 
remembered that at the same age he was equally confident of 
unmingled prosperity, and equally fertile of consolatory 
expedients.  He forbore to force upon them unwelcome knowledge, 
which time itself would too soon impress.  The Princess and her 
lady retired; the madness of the astronomer hung upon their minds; 
and they desired Imlac to enter upon his office, and delay next 
morning the rising of the sun.



CHAPTER XLVI - THE PRINCESS AND PEKUAH VISIT THE ASTRONOMER.



THE Princess and Pekuah, having talked in private of Imlac's 
astronomer, thought his character at once so amiable and so strange 
that they could not be satisfied without a nearer knowledge, and 
Imlac was requested to find the means of bringing them together.

This was somewhat difficult.  The philosopher had never received 
any visits from women, though he lived in a city that had in it 
many Europeans, who followed the manners of their own countries, 
and many from other parts of the world, that lived there with 
European liberty.  The ladies would not be refused, and several 
schemes were proposed for the accomplishment of their design.  It 
was proposed to introduce them as strangers in distress, to whom 
the sage was always accessible; but after some deliberation it 
appeared that by this artifice no acquaintance could be formed, for 
their conversation would be short, and they could not decently 
importune him often.  "This," said Rasselas, "is true; but I have 
yet a stronger objection against the misrepresentation of your 
state.  I have always considered it as treason against the great 
republic of human nature to make any man's virtues the means of 
deceiving him, whether on great or little occasions.  All imposture 
weakens confidence and chills benevolence.  When the sage finds 
that you are not what you seemed, he will feel the resentment 
natural to a man who, conscious of great abilities, discovers that 
he has been tricked by understandings meaner than his own, and 
perhaps the distrust which he can never afterwards wholly lay aside 
may stop the voice of counsel and close the hand of charity; and 
where will you find the power of restoring his benefactions to 
mankind, or his peace to himself?"

To this no reply was attempted, and Imlac began to hope that their 
curiosity would subside; but next day Pekuah told him she had now 
found an honest pretence for a visit to the astronomer, for she 
would solicit permission to continue under him the studies in which 
she had been initiated by the Arab, and the Princess might go with 
her, either as a fellow-student, or because a woman could not 
decently come alone.  "I am afraid," said Imlac, "that he will soon 
be weary of your company.  Men advanced far in knowledge do not 
love to repeat the elements of their art, and I am not certain that 
even of the elements, as he will deliver them, connected with 
inferences and mingled with reflections, you are a very capable 
auditress."  "That," said Pekuah, "must be my care.  I ask of you 
only to take me thither.  My knowledge is perhaps more than you 
imagine it, and by concurring always with his opinions I shall make 
him think it greater than it is."

The astronomer, in pursuance of this resolution, was told that a 
foreign lady, travelling in search of knowledge, had heard of his 
reputation, and was desirous to become his scholar.  The 
uncommonness of the proposal raised at once his surprise and 
curiosity, and when after a short deliberation he consented to 
admit her, he could not stay without impatience till the next day.

The ladies dressed themselves magnificently, and were attended by 
Imlac to the astronomer, who was pleased to see himself approached 
with respect by persons of so splendid an appearance.  In the 
exchange of the first civilities he was timorous and bashful; but 
when the talk became regular, he recollected his powers, and 
justified the character which Imlac had given.  Inquiring of Pekuah 
what could have turned her inclination towards astronomy, he 
received from her a history of her adventure at the Pyramid, and of 
the time passed in the Arab's island.  She told her tale with ease 
and elegance, and her conversation took possession of his heart.  
The discourse was then turned to astronomy.  Pekuah displayed what 
she knew.  He looked upon her as a prodigy of genius, and entreated 
her not to desist from a study which she had so happily begun.

They came again and again, and were every time more welcome than 
before.  The sage endeavoured to amuse them, that they might 
prolong their visits, for he found his thoughts grow brighter in 
their company; the clouds of solitude vanished by degrees as he 
forced himself to entertain them, and he grieved when he was left, 
at their departure, to his old employment of regulating the 
seasons.

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

As their familiarity increased, they invited him often to the house 
of Imlac, where they distinguished him by extraordinary respect.  
He began gradually to delight in sublunary pleasures.  He came 
early and departed late; laboured to recommend himself by assiduity 
and compliance; excited their curiosity after new arts, that they 
might still want his assistance; and when they made any excursion 
of pleasure or inquiry, entreated to attend them.

By long experience of his integrity and wisdom, the Prince and his 
sister were convinced that he might be trusted without danger; and 
lest he should draw any false hopes from the civilities which he 
received, discovered to him their condition, with the motives of 
their journey, and required his opinion on the choice of life.

"Of the various conditions which the world spreads before you which 
you shall prefer," said the sage, "I am not able to instruct you.  
I can only tell that I have chosen wrong.  I have passed my time in 
study without experience - in the attainment of sciences which can 
for the most part be but remotely useful to mankind.  I have 
purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of 
life; I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, 
and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.  If I have obtained 
any prerogatives above other students, they have been accompanied 
with fear, disquiet, and scrupulosity; but even of these 
prerogatives, whatever they were, I have, since my thoughts have 
been diversified by more intercourse with the world, begun to 
question the reality.  When I have been for a few days lost in 
pleasing dissipation, I am always tempted to think that my 
inquiries have ended in error, and that I have suffered much, and 
suffered it in vain."

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

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

The sage confessed to Imlac that since he had mingled in the gay 
tumults of life, and divided his hours by a succession of 
amusements, he found the conviction of his authority over the skies 
fade gradually from his mind, and began to trust less to an opinion 
which he never could prove to others, and which he now found 
subject to variation, from causes in which reason had no part.  "If 
I am accidentally left alone for a few hours," said he, "my 
inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are 
chained down by some irresistible violence; but they are soon 
disentangled by the Prince's conversation, and instantaneously 
released at the entrance of Pekuah.  I am like a man habitually 
afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at 
the dread which harassed him in the dark; yet, if his lamp be 
extinguished, feels again the terrors which he knows that when it 
is light he shall feel no more.  But I am sometimes afraid, lest I 
indulge my quiet by criminal negligence, and voluntarily forget the 
great charge with which I am entrusted.  If I favour myself in a 
known error, or am determined by my own ease in a doubtful question 
of this importance, how dreadful is my crime!"

"No disease of the imagination," answered Imlac, "is so difficult 
of cure as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt; fancy 
and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift 
their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from 
the dictates of the other.  If fancy presents images not moral or 
religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain; but 
when melancholy notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the 
faculties without opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or 
banish them.  For this reason the superstitious are often 
melancholy, and the melancholy almost always superstitious.

"But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your better 
reason; the danger of neglect can be but as the probability of the 
obligation, which, when you consider it with freedom, you find very 
little, and that little growing every day less.  Open your heart to 
the influence of the light, which from time to time breaks in upon 
you; when scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments 
know to be vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or to 
Pekuah; and keep this thought always prevalent, that you are only 
one atom of the mass of humanity, and have neither such virtue nor 
vice as that you should be singled out for supernatural favours or 
afflictions."



CHAPTER XLVII - THE PRINCE ENTERS, AND BRINGS A NEW TOPIC.



"ALL this," said the astronomer, "I have often thought; but my 
reason has been so long subjugated by an uncontrollable and 
overwhelming idea, that it durst not confide in its own decisions.  
I now see how fatally I betrayed my quiet, by suffering chimeras to 
prey upon me in secret; but melancholy shrinks from communication, 
and I never found a man before to whom I could impart my troubles, 
though I had been certain of relief.  I rejoice to find my own 
sentiments confirmed by yours, who are not easily deceived, and can 
have no motive or purpose to deceive.  I hope that time and variety 
will dissipate the gloom that has so long surrounded me, and the 
latter part of my days will be spent in peace."

"Your learning and virtue," said Imlac, "may justly give you 
hopes."

Rasselas then entered, with the Princess and Pekuah, and inquired 
whether they had contrived any new diversion for the next day.  
"Such," said Nekayah, "is the state of life, that none are happy 
but by the anticipation of change; the change itself is nothing; 
when we have made it the next wish is to change again.  The world 
is not yet exhausted:  let me see something to-morrow which I never 
saw before."

"Variety," said Rasselas, "is so necessary to content, that even 
the Happy Valley disgusted me by the recurrence of its luxuries; 
yet I could not forbear to reproach myself with impatience when I 
saw the monks of St. Anthony support, without complaint, a life, 
not of uniform delight, but uniform hardship."

"Those men," answered Imlac, "are less wretched in their silent 
convent than the Abyssinian princes in their prison of pleasure.  
Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an adequate and 
reasonable motive.  Their labour supplies them with necessaries; it 
therefore cannot be omitted, and is certainly rewarded.  Their 
devotion prepares them for another state, and reminds them of its 
approach while it fits them for it.  Their time is regularly 
distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left 
open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades 
of listless inactivity.  There is a certain task to be performed at 
an appropriated hour, and their toils are cheerful, because they 
consider them as acts of piety by which they are always advancing 
towards endless felicity."

"Do you think," said Nekayah, "that the monastic rule is a more 
holy and less imperfect state than any other?  May not he equally 
hope for future happiness who converses openly with mankind, who 
succours the distressed by his charity, instructs the ignorant by 
his learning, and contributes by his industry to the general system 
of life, even though he should omit some of the mortifications 
which are practised in the cloister, and allow himself such 
harmless delights as his condition may place within his reach?"

"This," said Imlac, "is a question which has long divided the wise 
and perplexed the good.  I am afraid to decide on either part.  He 
that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a 
monastery.  But perhaps everyone is not able to stem the 
temptations of public life, and if he cannot conquer he may 
properly retreat.  Some have little power to do good, and have 
likewise little strength to resist evil.  Many are weary of the 
conflicts with adversity, and are willing to eject those passions 
which have long busied them in vain.  And many are dismissed by age 
and diseases from the more laborious duties of society.  In 
monasteries the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered, the 
weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate.  Those retreats of 
prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of 
man, that perhaps there is scarcely one that does not purpose to 
close his life in pious abstraction, with a few associates serious 
as himself."

"Such," said Pekuah, "has often been my wish, and I have heard the 
Princess declare that she should not willingly die in a crowd."

"The liberty of using harmless pleasures," proceeded Imlac, "will 
not be disputed, but it is still to be examined what pleasures are 
harmless.  The evil of any pleasure that Nekayah can image is not 
in the act itself but in its consequences.  Pleasure in itself 
harmless may become mischievous by endearing to us a state which we 
know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts 
from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, 
and of which no length of time will bring us to the end.  
Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use but 
that it disengages us from the allurements of sense.  In the state 
of future perfection to which we all aspire there will be pleasure 
without danger and security without restraint."

The Princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the astronomer, 
asked him whether he could not delay her retreat by showing her 
something which she had not seen before.

"Your curiosity," said the sage, "has been so general, and your 
pursuit of knowledge so vigorous, that novelties are not now very 
easily to be found; but what you can no longer procure from the 
living may be given by the dead.  Among the wonders of this country 
are the catacombs, or the ancient repositories in which the bodies 
of the earliest generations were lodged, and where, by the virtue 
of the gums which embalmed them, they yet remain without 
corruption."

"I know not," said Rasselas, "what pleasure the sight of the 
catacombs can afford; but, since nothing else is offered, I am 
resolved to view them, and shall place this with my other things 
which I have done because I would do something."

They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited the 
catacombs.  When they were about to descend into the sepulchral 
caves, "Pekuah," said the Princess, "we are now again invading the 
habitations of the dead; I know that you will stay behind.  Let me 
find you safe when I return."  "No, I will not be left," answered 
Pekuah, "I will go down between you and the Prince."

They then all descended, and roved with wonder through the 
labyrinth of subterraneous passages, where the bodies were laid in 
rows on either side.



CHAPTER XLVIII - IMLAC DISCOURSES ON THE NATURE OF THE SOUL.



"WHAT reason," said the Prince, "can be given why the Egyptians 
should thus expensively preserve those carcases which some nations 
consume with fire, others lay to mingle with the earth, and all 
agree to remove from their sight as soon as decent rites can be 
performed?"

"The original of ancient customs," said Imlac, "is commonly 
unknown, for the practice often continues when the cause has 
ceased; and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is vain to 
conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain.  
I have long believed that the practice of embalming arose only from 
tenderness to the remains of relations or friends; and to this 
opinion I am more inclined because it seems impossible that this 
care should have been general; had all the dead been embalmed, 
their repositories must in time have been more spacious than the 
dwellings of the living.  I suppose only the rich or honourable 
were secured from corruption, and the rest left to the course of 
nature.

"But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed the soul 
to live as long as the body continued undissolved, and therefore 
tried this method of eluding death."

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

"The Egyptians would doubtless think erroneously," said the 
astronomer, "in the darkness of heathenism and the first dawn of 
philosophy.  The nature of the soul is still disputed amidst all 
our opportunities of clearer knowledge; some yet say that it may be 
material, who, nevertheless, believe it to be immortal."

"Some," answered Imlac, "have indeed said that the soul is 
material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it 
who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of reason enforce 
the immateriality of mind, and all the notices of sense and 
investigations of science concur to prove the unconsciousness of 
matter.

"It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in matter, or 
that every particle is a thinking being.  Yet if any part of matter 
be devoid of thought, what part can we suppose to think?  Matter 
can differ from matter only in form, density, bulk, motion, and 
direction of motion.  To which of these, however varied or 
combined, can consciousness be annexed?  To be round or square, to 
be solid or fluid, to be great or little, to be moved slowly or 
swiftly, one way or another, are modes of material existence all 
equally alien from the nature of cogitation.  If matter be once 
without thought, it can only be made to think by some new 
modification; but all the modifications which it can admit are 
equally unconnected with cogitative powers."

"But the materialists," said the astronomer, "urge that matter may 
have qualities with which we are unacquainted."

"He who will determine," returned Imlac, "against that which he 
knows because there may be something which he knows not; he that 
can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged certainty, is 
not to be admitted among reasonable beings.  All that we know of 
matter is, that matter is inert, senseless, and lifeless; and if 
this conviction cannot he opposed but by referring us to something 
that we know not, we have all the evidence that human intellect can 
admit.  If that which is known may be overruled by that which is 
unknown, no being, not omniscient, can arrive at certainty."

"Yet let us not," said the astronomer, "too arrogantly limit the 
Creator's power."

"It is no limitation of Omnipotence," replied the poet, "to suppose 
that one thing is not consistent with another, that the same 
proposition cannot be at once true and false, that the same number 
cannot be even and odd, that cogitation cannot be conferred on that 
which is created incapable of cogitation."

"I know not," said Nekayah, "any great use of this question.  Does 
that immateriality, which in my opinion you have sufficiently 
proved, necessarily include eternal duration?"

"Of immateriality," said Imlac, "our ideas are negative, and 
therefore obscure.  Immateriality seems to imply a natural power of 
perpetual duration as a consequence of exemption from all causes of 
decay:  whatever perishes is destroyed by the solution of its 
contexture and separation of its parts; nor can we conceive how 
that which has no parts, and therefore admits no solution, can be 
naturally corrupted or impaired."

"I know not," said Rasselas, "how to conceive anything without 
extension:  what is extended must have parts, and you allow that 
whatever has parts may be destroyed."

"Consider your own conceptions," replied Imlac, "and the difficulty 
will be less.  You will find substance without extension.  An ideal 
form is no less real than material bulk; yet an ideal form has no 
extension.  It is no less certain, when you think on a pyramid, 
that your mind possesses the idea of a pyramid, than that the 
pyramid itself is standing.  What space does the idea of a pyramid 
occupy more than the idea of a grain of corn? or how can either 
idea suffer laceration?  As is the effect, such is the cause; as 
thought, such is the power that thinks, a power impassive and 
indiscerptible."

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

"He surely can destroy it," answered Imlac, "since, however 
imperishable, it receives from a superior nature its power of 
duration.  That it will not perish by any inherent cause of decay 
or principle of corruption, may be shown by philosophy; but 
philosophy can tell no more.  That it will not be annihilated by 
Him that made it, we must humbly learn from higher authority."

The whole assembly stood awhile silent and collected.  "Let us 
return," said Rasselas, "from this scene of mortality.  How gloomy 
would be these mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he 
should never die; that what now acts shall continue its agency, and 
what now thinks shall think on for ever.  Those that lie here 
stretched before us, the wise and the powerful of ancient times, 
warn us to remember the shortness of our present state; they were 
perhaps snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the CHOICE 
OF LIFE."

"To me," said the Princess, "the choice of life is become less 
important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of 
eternity."

They then hastened out of the caverns, and under the protection of 
their guard returned to Cairo.



CHAPTER XLIX - THE CONCLUSION, IN WHICH NOTHING IS CONCLUDED.



IT was now the time of the inundation of the Nile.  A few days 
after their visit to the catacombs the river began to rise.

They were confined to their house.  The whole region being under 
water, gave them no invitation to any excursions; and being well 
supplied with materials for talk, they diverted themselves with 
comparisons of the different forms of life which they had observed, 
and with various schemes of happiness which each of them had 
formed.

Pekuah was never so much charmed with any place as the Convent of 
St. Anthony, where the Arab restored her to the Princess, and 
wished only to fill it with pious maidens and to be made prioress 
of the order.  She was weary of expectation and disgust, and would 
gladly be fixed in some unvariable state.

The Princess thought that, of all sublunary things, knowledge was 
the best.  She desired first to learn all sciences, and then 
proposed to found a college of learned women, in which she would 
preside, that, by conversing with the old and educating the young, 
she might divide her time between the acquisition and communication 
of wisdom, and raise up for the next age models of prudence and 
patterns of piety.

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

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

Of those wishes that they had formed they well knew that none could 
be obtained.  They deliberated awhile what was to be done, and 
resolved, when the inundation should cease, to return to Abyssinia.