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SCOTT, PH.D. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN -LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN “ BOSTON AND NEW YORK CopyRIGnT, 1891, _ By LEACH, SHEWELL fl ‘ SN eee en te aa PREFACE. Although a cheap edition of Johnson’s “ Rasselas ” stands in small need of recommendation to teachers of English literature, a few words regarding the character- istic features of the present volume may not be entirely out of place. ‘1. The Text.—The standard text of Rasselas, or at all events the most carefully edited text which has appeared up to the present time, is that issued in 1879 from the Clarendon Press,.Oxford. The same plates, without change in any particular, were used in G. Birk- beck Hill’s edition of 1887. This text, in all its essential features, is the one here reproduced. The most notice- able departures from it will be found in the orthog- raphy, which has been made to conform to American ‘usage, and in two verbal corrections, called for by the ;context and sanctioned by the Oxford edition of 1825. These last consist in the substitution of “could” for “can,” line 3, p. 180, and of “offers” for “offered,” line ili 5 I i BG £ < iv PREFACE. 26, p. 191. In speaking of these small matters, it is assumed that, other things being equal, a text represent- ing Johnsonian usage will be preferred to one which represents the caprice of the editor or of the type- setter.’ } 2. The Introduction. —Three short essays have been placed at the beginning of the book. One, a sketch of Johnson’s life, is for students who cannot by any possibility get access to other and more extensive bio- graphical materials; a second, on methods of study, is intended to be suggestive to teachers and to encourage them to exercise independence in the planning of class- room work; a third, on aids to the study of “ Rasselas,” will, it is hoped, be found of service to teacher and student alike wherever proper library facilities are not lacking. 3. The Notes. — These, purposely reduced to very small compass, have been made still more compact, where possible, by grouping together cognate subjects under a single head. Johnson’s peculiarities of diction, for example, have been arranged in alphabetical order and called Note 1. The references are made by means of raised figures in the text. It is coming to be evident. 1 The existence of no less than five hundred errors of the grossest char- acter in a popular edition of ‘‘ Rasselas”” which appears under the sanction of a noted English scholar, should emphasize the value of a trustworthy text. PREFACE. Vv to all progressive teachers of English literature that the introduction of reference libraries into our high schools is bringing about a rapid shrinkage in the value of mis- cellaneous annotation. The notes of the present volume may be taken as representing one stage in the process of eliminating waste material. Frep N. Scort. ANN ARBOR, MicH., November 15, 1891. CONTENTS. PAGE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH : : i ; : ; ; 1 METHODS OF STUDY . : : ; ; : . : 12 AIDS TO THE STUDY OF RASSELAS . : ; ; : 19 CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE : : y ; é i 25 -HisToRY OF RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA .. : 27 Notes . ; : ‘ ; ; p : : : « 520% APPENDIX A. : ; : - ‘ . : : . 208 APPENDIX B . : : ; , : ; ; ‘ tap) eae APPENDIX C . h : : ; : : ‘ , SRE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. —__.¢——_—_. THERE are men celebrated in the world of literature about whose personal characteristics we know almost nothing at all. We know so little of the most famous of the ancients, Homer, that we cannot be sure any such man ever existed. We know so little about Shakespeare, the most famous of the moderns, that certain persons of our day, perhaps not the wisest persons of our day, have ventured to deny to him the authorship of his own works. But Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the ‘‘ History of Rasselas,” is not one of these vague personalities, these dusky shadows whom we see flit- ting through the twilight of a distant past. Thanks to his biographer, Boswell, readers can know as much about John- son, at one period of his life, as about the most bewritten, the most persistently interviewed, of the public men of to-day. He can know even more; for no interviewer of our time pos- sesses the rare ability, which was Boswell’s, of revealing in every deft touch of description, in every scrap of anecdote and shred of conversation, the inmost character of the man whose life heis reporting. Boswell’s ‘‘ Life of Johnson” is one of those books that every man, at some time in his life, should . find leisure to read through from cover to cover. There he will see, drawn with infinite patience and minuteness of detail, the character which here can be sketched only in rough out- lines. oe RASSELAS. Samuel Johnson was born on the 18th of September, 1709, in Lichfield, a small town about a hundred miles northwest of London. He was a sickly child, inheriting disorders that made his life, after his twentieth year, one long misery. Disease left its mark upon both mind and body. One serious effect of his ailments was loss of sight in one eye; another was asort of St. Vitus’ dance which at intervals forced him, wherever “he might be, to perform a series of ridiculous motions with feet and hands; a third result was a disposition, which sometimes came dangerously near insanity, of profound melancholy. Notwithstanding these maladies, Johnson, unlike Pope, grew into a man of huge bulk and enormous strength. Itis related of him that once, finding a stranger in his chair at the theatre, he picked up both man and chair and threw them into the pit. But he never learned to wield his strength with grace, and remained all his life, in outward appearance, clumsy, awkward, and uncouth. The son of a bookseller, Johnson picked up, among the volumes in his father’s shop, the beginning of a vast store of miscellaneous information. His memory was remarkable. He seemed to absorb without effort whatever came in his way. At the age of eighteen, when he went to Oxford, he knew, so he afterwards said, as much as at fifty-three. He remained but fourteen months at the University — months of bitterness, poverty, and seclusion. ‘I L was miserably poor,” was his report of it years afterwards, ‘and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit.” He was as proud as he was poor, and once when some unknown friend left a pair of new shoes at his door, indignantly flung them away. In 1731, when his father died, leaving to his son an inheritance of but twenty pounds, Johnson was thrown upon his own re- sources. For some years he lived, as Boswell characterized one period of it, a life of ‘‘ complicated misery.” Fora time BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3 he taught in a grammar school, where he was wholly unsuc- cessful. Now and then he had a chance to do a little writing. His first publication, a translation of Father Lobo’s “ Travels in Abyssinia,” is of peculiar significance for this sketch, inas- much as it suggested the idea and supplied some of the mate- rial for the story of Rasselas. The translation, published in 1735, brought in to the translator a little over threepence a page, a sum total of five guineas. In the same year Johnson married a widow twenty years his senior, whose only recom- mendations, so far as his friends could see, were that she appreciated his talents and was possessed of a small sum of money. ‘The money was probably soon spent in an unfortu- nate attempt to found a boys’ school at Edial, near Lichfield. At one time but three pupils were in attendance at the ‘‘academy,” one of the three, however, being that David Garrick who is now remembered as the most eminent of English actors. When, after a year and a half, the unsuc- cessful venture was abandoned, Johnson, with Garrick as his companion, set out for London, in order, as his letter of intro- duction read, ‘‘ to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed in some translation.” He could not well have sought*employment worse paid or more precarious. The lives of poor.and unbefriended writers in the great me- tropolis were at this period miserable in the extreme. The prices paid by the publishers for the work of such men was less than that paid to ordinary day-laborers. The hope of most authors was fixed upon pleasing some wealthy man by dedicating a book to him, thus securing a patron who would give money to his flatterer as to an object of charity. To ignoble devices of this sort, Johnson, always of an independ- ent spirit, maintained an unconquerable aversion. His only resource was hard, unremitting labor, and to this his sluggish, indolent nature was constitutionally indisposed. Living in a 4 RASSELAS. wretched garret when he could afford it, or walking the street when he could not, at times in dread of arrest and imprison- ment for debt, hungry, ill-clad, ill-paid, despised, Johnson endured for nearly a score of years all the horrors of Grub Street. Years afterward he could not speak of that period of his life without bursting into tears. His hardships left a per- manent impress upon his habits both of mind and of body. The appearance and character of the man when he had at last worked his way from obscurity to fame, from the companion- ship of the penniless and the outcast to intercourse on a com- mon footing with men of wealth and distinction, are thus graphically portrayed by Macaulay : — : ‘« Johnson came among them the solitary specimen of a past age, the last survivor of the genuine race of Grub Street hacks; the last of that generation of authors whose abject misery and whose dissolute manners had furnished inexhaust- ible matter to the satirical genius of Pope. From nature he had received an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, and an irritable temper. The manner ‘in which the earlier years of his manhood had been passed had given to his demeanor, and even to his moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civilized beings who were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners in society, made him, in the opinion of those with whom he lived during the last twenty years of his life, a com- plete original. An original he was, undoubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed full information concerning those who shared his early hardships, we should probably find that what we call his singularities of manner were, for the BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 5) most part, failings which he had in common with the class to which he belonged. He ate at Streatham Park as he had been used to eat at St. John’s Gate, when he was ashamed to show his ragged clothes. He ate as it was natural that a man should eat, who, during the greater part of his life, had passed the morning in doubt whether he should have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early life had accustomed him to bear privations with fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation. He could fast; but when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine. But when he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms of that same moral disease which raged with such deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse. The roughness and violence which he showed in society were to be expected from a man whose temper, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the bitterest calam- ities, by the want of meat, of fire, and of clothes, by the importunity of creditors, by the insolence of booksellers, by the derision of fools, by the insincerity of patrons, by that bread which is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope which makes the heart sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to eminence and command.” Much of Johnson’s literary work during this long struggle for recognition and a livelihood was done for the Gentleman’s Magazine, a periodical still in existence; but these articles being unsigned, as was then-the custom, brought him no rep- utation. Still his fame was growing all through this period of his life. A satire entitled ‘‘ London,” published in book form _ in 1738, attracted the attention of Pope. ‘Ten years later a 6 RASSELAS. second satire, ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes,” was fairly well received. The Rambler, a series of essays after the type set by the Spectator, begun in 1750, and published every Tuesday and Saturday until his wife’s death in 1752, established his name as an essayist. But the work which finally crowned his success, broke down the barriers of wealth and prejudice, and made him the foremost man of letters of his day, was the famous ‘‘ Dictionary of the English Language.” Johnson, issu- ing the prospectus of this work in 1747, addressed it, after the manner of the day, to Lord Chesterfield, at that time the most distinguished nobleman in England. The earl sent a small some of money, and then for seven years forgot John- son’s very existence. When, however, the Dictionary, an assured success, was on the point of appearing, Lord Chester- field, as Johnson said, ‘fell a-scribbling in the World about it.” Then Johnson took his revenge. He wrotethe noble lord that famous letter into which he packed the gathered scorn of all those years of suffering and disappointment : — ‘ ae Bt Dee Fie 9? PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 57 we landed safely 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 5 that I was ignorant, considered me as a novice whom they hada 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 10 -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 with- out benefit to himself? I can easily conceive that all 15 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 them- selves; and the knowledge which they had, and which you wanted, they might as effectually have shown by 20 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 25 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.” . 08 “ HISTORY OF RASSELAS, “Tn this company,” said Imlac, “I arrived at Agra, the capital of Indostan, 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 29 whom I had travelled, applied to me for recommenda- tions to the ladies of the court. I was surprised at their confidence of solicitation, and gently reproached them with their practices on the road. They heard me with cold indifference, and showed no tokens of shame or sorrow. 23 “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. - ~ oe wa E > tty ? im. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 59 “ 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 assembles afforded 5 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 at once pastoral and warlike; who live without 10 any settled habitation; whose only wealth is their flocks and herds; and who have yet carried on through all ages ~ an hereditary war with all mankind, though they neither covet nor envy their possessions.” Pat 60 : HISTORY OF RASSELAS, CHAPTER X. IMLAC’S HISTORY CONTINUED. A DISSERTATION UPON POETRY. “ Wherever I went, I found that poetry was con- sidered 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 5 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 gradu- ally attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a 10 novelty, and retained the credit by consent, which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the prov- _ ince 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 15 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 1s commonly observed at the early writers are in possession of nature, an 20 followers of art; that the first excel in stréng invention,! and the latter in elegance and refinem PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 61 “JT was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fra- ternity. I read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, and was able to repeat by memory the volumes that are suspended in the mosque of Mecca.” But I soon found that no man was ever great by imitation. My desire of 5 excellence impelled me to transfer my attention to ~— nature and to life. Nature was to be my subject, and jnen to be my auditors: I could never describe what I had not seen; I could not hope to move those with de- light or terror, whose interests and opinions I did not 10 understand. Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw everything with a new purpose; my sphere of attention was sud- denly magnified; no kind of knowledge was to be over- looked. I ranged mountains and deserts for images and 15 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 sum- 20 4 Pate te (To s post nothing a pal ever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, must be / ' familiar to his imagination : he must be conversant with all that is awfully vast or cal) permed The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of 25 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 62 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, reader with remote allusions and unexpected instruc- tion. “ All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to study; and every country which I have surveyed has 5 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 these mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of something which I had 10 never beheld before, or never heeded.” “The business of a poet,” said Imlac, “is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general hn properties.and large appearances. He doés not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades 15 in the verdure of the forest: he is to exhibit in his por- traits 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 0 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 Tifé) His character requires that he estimate” ~ __25 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 ene PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. . 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 con- ' tent himself with the slow progress of his name, contemn the applause of his own time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpre- ter 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 10 place. “His labor is not yet atan end; he must know many languages and many sciences; and, that his style may be worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and grace 15 of harmony.” or HISTORY OF RASSELAS, CHAPTER XI. IMLAC’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED. A HINT ON PILGRIMAGE. Imac now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceed- ing to aggrandize his own profession, when the prince eried out, “Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a poet. Proceed with thy nar- 5 ration.” “To be a poet,” said Imlac, “is indeed very difficult.” “So difficult,” returned the prince, “that I will at present hear no more of his labors. Tell me whither you went when you had seen Persia.”’ 10 “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 west- ern nations of Europe; the nations which are now in possession of all power and all knowledge; whose armies 15-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 20 may not be obtained: a thousand arts, of which we never heard, are continually laboring for their convenience PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. and pleasure; and whatever their,own climat denied them is supplied by their commerce.” “By what means,” said the prince, “are the Europe- ans thus powerful; or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the 5 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 10 ; 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 y | know not what reason can be given, but the unsearchable will of the Supreme Being.” 15 “When,” said the prince with a sigh, “shall I be able to visit Palestine, and mingle with this mighty conflu- ence of nations? ‘Till that happy moment shall arrive, let me fill up the time with such representations as thou canst give me. Iam not ignorant of the motive that 20 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 25 visitants to Palestine; for many numerous and learned sects in Europe concur to censure pilgrimage as super- stitious, or deride it as ridiculous.” “ You know,” said the prince, “ how little my life has made me acquainted with diversity of opinions; it will HISTORY OF RASSELAS, PO long! to hear the arguments on both sides; you, mat have considered them, tell me the result.” “ Pilgrimage,” said Imlac, “like many other acts of piety, may be reasonable or superstitious, according to 5 the principles upon which it is performed. Long jour- _neys in search of truth are not commanded. Truth, such as is necessary to the regulation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought: Change of place is no nat- ural cause of the increase of piety, for it inevitably 10 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 be- 15 ginning; and I believe no man surveys those awful scenes without some confirmation of holy resolutions. That the Supreme Being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another, is the dream of idle super- stition; but that some places may operate upon our own 20 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 Pales- tine, will, perhaps, find himself mistaken; yet he may go thither without folly: he who thinks they will be 25 more pee pardoned, dishonors 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 eee nations happier than we?” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. “There is so much infelicity,” said the poet, “in the world, that scarce any man has leisure from his own dis- tresses to estimate the comparative happiness of others, © Knowledge i is certainly one-of_the-mearis ot~ 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 in- 10 clined to conclude that if nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we grow more happy as our minds take a wider range. “In enumerating the particular comforts of life, we shall find many advantages on the side of the Europeans. 15 They cure wounds and diseases with which we languish and perish. We suffer inclemencies of weather which ex 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 20 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 their mountains, and bridges laid over their rivers. And, if we descend to the privacies of life, their habitations are 25 more As 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 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, ehe facility with which separated friends interchange their thoughts.” “The Europeans,” answered Imlac, “are less unhappy than we, but they are not happy. Human life is every- » 5 where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 69 CHAPTER XII. THE STORY OF IMLAC CONTINUED. “JT am not yet willing,” said the prince, “to suppose that happiness is so parsimoniously distributed to mor- tals; 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 resentment; 5 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 10 and pious, and would repay to my age what their child- hood 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 quietly away in the soft reciprocation of pro- 15 tection 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 20 many regions of Asia; in the more civilized kingdoms as a trader, and among the barbarians of the mountains T0 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, asa 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 sof my adventures. Often did I figure to myself those with whom I had sported away the gay hours of dawn- ing life, sitting round me in its evening, wondering at my tales, and listening to my counsels. “ When this thought had taken possession of my mind, 10 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. i5 I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations; some brought thither by the love of knowledge, some by the hope of gain, and 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 20 Cairo, it is possible to obtain at the same time the gratt- fications 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. 25 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 PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. T1 to add to the felicity and honor of the nation. But I was soon convinced that my thoughts were vain. My father had been dead fourteen years, having divided his wealth among my brothers, who were removed to some other provinces. Of my companions, the greater part 5 were 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 disappointments, and endeavored 10 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 15 my conversation, but rejected my suit because my father was a merchant. “Wearied at last with solicitation and repulses, I resolved to hide myself forever from the world, and /depend no longer on the opinion or caprice of others. 20 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 favor; and I resigned myself with joy to perpetual con- finement.”’ 25 “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 the valley celebrate their lot, and at the annual visit te HISTORY OF RASSELAS, of the emperor, invite others to partake of their felicity.” “Great Prince,” said Imlac, “1 shall speak the truth ; _ I know not one of all your attendants, who does not <<" 5 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 knowl- edge which begins to fade from my memory, and by — 10 recollection of the incidents of my past life. Yet all this ends in the sorrowful consideration that my acquire- ments 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 cor- 15 roded 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 impo- tence precludes malice, and where all envy is repressed 20 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 V than another; he that knows himself despised, will 25 always be envious; and still more envious and malevo- lent, 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 PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. lo 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 5 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 10 from the happy valley. I have examined the mountains 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 15 of life.” “Sir,” answered the poet, “your escape will be diffi- _ cult, 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 foam- 20 ing with tempests, and boiling with whirlpools: you ’ will be sometimes overwhelmed by the waves of vio- lence, and sometimes dashed against the rocks of treachery. Amidst wrongs and frauds, competitions and anxieties, you will wish a thousand times for these 25 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 evi- T4 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, dent that thy former state was better than this. What- ever be the consequence of my experiment, lam resolved to judge with mine own eyes of the various conditions of men, and then to make deliberately my choice of life.” 5s “JT 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.” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. td CHAPTER XIII. RASSELAS DISCOVERS THE MEANS OF ESCAPE, THE prince now dismissed his favorite to rest; but the narrative of wonders and novelties filled his mind with perturbation. He revolved all that he had heard, and prepared innumerable questions for the morning. Much of his uneasiness was now removed. He hada 5 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 10 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. 15 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; “knowl- 20 edge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength. I can burst the gate, but 76 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 5 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 antiq- uity,” said Imlac, “that human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals; let us, therefore, not 10 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’ labor upward till we shall issue up beyond the prominence.” , 15 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 20 clambered with great fatigue among crags and brambles, and returned without having discovered any part that favored their design. The second and the third day were spent in the same manner, and with the same frustration. But, on the fourth, they found a small cavern, concealed "95 by a thicket, where they resolved to make their experi- ment. Imlac procured instruments proper to hew stone and remove earth, and they fell to their work on the next _ day with more eagerness than vigor: they were presently exhausted by their efforts, and sat down to pant upon the - PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. grass. The prince, for a moment, appeared to be di couraged. “Sir,” said his companion, “practice will enable us to continue our labor for a longer time; mark, however, how far we have advanced, and you will find Ae that our toil will some time have an end. Great works 5“; are performed, not by strength, but perseverance: yon- / der palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigor three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.” 10 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 Ras- selas considered as a good omen. “Do not disturb your / mind,” said Imlac, “with other hopes or fears than rea-. 15) son may suggest: if you are pleased with prognostics of * good, you will be terrified likewise with tokens of evil, " and your whole life will be a prey to superstition. Whatever facilitates our work is more than an omen, it is a cause of success. This is one of those pleasing sur- 20 prises which often happen to active resolution. Many (~ things difficult to design prove easy to performance.” HISTORY OF RASSELAS, CHAPTER XIV. RASSELAS AND IMLAC RECEIVE AN UNEXPECTED VISIT. Turvy 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 before the mouth of the 5 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 10 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 that you had any better reason for the preference than a cooler shade, or more fragrant bank; nor followed you with any other 15 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. Iam equally weary of confinement with yourself, and not less desirous of knowing what is done or suffered in the world. Permit — 20 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.” | PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 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 5 the meantime, she should watch lest any other straggler should, by chance or curiosity, follow them to the moun- ~ tain. At length their labor was at an end; they saw light beyond the prominence, and, issuing to the top of the 10 » mountain, beheld the Nile, yet a narrow current, wan- / dering beneath them. The prince looked round with rapture, anticipated all the pleasure of travel, and in thought was already trans- ported beyond his father’s dominions. Imlac, though 15 very joyful at his escape, had less expectation of pleas- ure 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 20 valley. He informed his sister that the way was open, and that nothing now remained but to prepare for their departure. Ce HISTORY OF RASSELAS, CHAPTER XV. THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS LEAVE THE VALLEY AND SEE MANY WONDERS. Tum prince and princess had jewels sufficient to make them rich, whenever they came into a place of com- merece, which, by Imlac’s direction, they hid in their clothes; and, on the night of the next full moon, all left 5 the valley. ‘The princess was followed only by a single favorite, who did not know whither she was going. They clambered through the cavity, and began to go down on the other side. The princess and her maid turned their eyes towards every part, and, seeing nothing 10 to bound their prospect, considered themselves as in dan- ger 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 ap- 15 proached 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 20 had been imperceptibly drawn forward too far to return. In the morning they found some shepherds in the field, | PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 81 who set 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 flavor than the products 5 of the valley. . They travelled forward by easy journeys, being all unaccustomed to toil or 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, 10 where Imlac was diverted with the admiration which his companions expressed at the diversity of manners, sta- tions, and employments. Their dress was such as might not bring upon them the suspicion of having anything to conceal; yet the 15 prince, wherever he came, expected to be obeyed, and the princess was frighted because those that came into her presence did not prostrate themselves before her. Imlae was forced to observe them with great vigilance, lest they should betray their rank by their unusual be- 20 havior, and detained them several weeks in the first vil- lage, to accustom them to the sight of common mortals. By degrees the royal wanderers were taught to under- stand that they had for a time laid aside their dignity, and were to expect only such regard as liberality and 25 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 Ce us HISTORY OF RASSELAS, new, were gratified equally at all places, and therefore remained for some months at the port, without any incli- nation to pass further. Imlac was content with their stay, because he did not think it safe to expose them, unprac- 5 tised 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 pas- 10 sage 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. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 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, “1s the place where travellers and merchants assemble from all the corners of the earth. You will here find men of every character, and every occupation. Commerce 1s here honorable: I will act asa 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 will see all the conditions of humanity, and enable yourself 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 pre- vailed over habit, but that they wondered to see them- selves pass undistinguished along the street, and met by the lowest of the people without reverence or notice. The princess could not at first bear the thought of being levelled with the vulgar, and for some days continued in 10 15 her chamber, where she was served by her favorite 20 Pekuah as in the palace of the valley. Imlac, who understood traffic, sold part of the jewels va HISTORY OF RASSELAS, me next day, and hired a house, which he adorned with such ,magnificence, that he was immediately considered asamerchant of great wealth. His politeness attracted many acquaintance,! and his generosity made him courted 5 by many dependents. His table was crowded by men of every nation, who all admired his knowledge, and solicited his favor. His companions, not being able to mix in the conversation, could make no discovery * of their ignorance or surprise, and were gradually initiated in the 10 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, fora long time, comprehend what the merchants did with small pieces of gold and silver, or why things of so little 15 use should be received as equivalent to the necessaries of life. They studied the language two. years, while Imlac was preparing to set before them the various ranks and con- ditions of mankind. He grew acquainted with all who 20 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 being now able to converse with fluency, and having learned the caution necessary to be observed 23 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, penanse all appeared to him equally happy. Wherever he went he met gayety and kindness, and heard the song of joy or PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. the laugh of carelessness. He began to be world overflowed with universal plenty, and th was withheld either from want or merit; tha hand showered liberality, and every heart melted benevolence ; “‘and who then,” says he, “ will be suffere to be wretched ? ” Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was unwill- ing to crush the hope of inexperience, till one day, having sat a while silent, “I know not,” said the prince, “ what can be the reason that I am more unhappy than any of 10 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 clouds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself, and am only loud and 15 merry to conceal my sadness.” “‘Kvery man,” said Imlac, ‘‘ may, by examining his own mind, guess what passes in the minds of others; when you feel that your own gayety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to suspect that of your companions not 20 to_be Sincere. Envy is commonly reciprocal. We are long? before we are convinced that happiness is neverto ~*~ 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 25 such sprightliness of air and volatility of fancy, as might have suited beings of a higher order, formed to inhabit serener regions inaccessible to care or sorrow; yet, believe me, prince, there was not one who did not dread the moment when solitude should deliver him to the 30 tyranny of reflection.” STORY OF RASSELAS, id the prince, “may be true of others, since of me; yet, whatever be the general infelicity , one condition is more happy than another, and om surely directs us to take the least evil in the oice of life.” “The causes of good and evil,” answered Imlae, “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 10 who would fix his condition upon incontestible reasons ‘of ede 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 15 lite for themselves which they thought most likely to make them happy.” “Very few,” said the poet, “live by choice. ( Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not 20 always willingly co-operate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does pel think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.’ “JT am pleased to think,” said the prince, “that my birth has given me at least one advantage over others, 25 by enabling me to determine for myself. I have here the world before me; I will review it at leisure: surely happiness is anmeuhers to be found.” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 87 CHAPTER XVII. THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUNG MEN OF SPIRIT AND GAYETY. RASSELAS rose next day, and resolved to begin his experiments upon life. “ Youth,” cried he, “is the time of gladness: I will join myself to the young men whose only business is to gratify their desires, and whose time is all spent in a succession of enjoyments.” 5 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 10 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 wasashamed. He 15 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 20 regard by their frankness and courtesy, that he could 88 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 mis- taken our own interest. The first years of man must 5 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 maturer age, 10 when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and phan- toms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts but the esteem of wise men, and the means of doing good. Let us, therefore, stop, while to stop is in our power: let us live as men who are some- 15 time to grow old, and to whom it will be the most dread- ful 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 90 at last drove him away by a general chorus of continued laughter. The consciousness that his sentiments were just, and his intentions kind, was scarcely sufficient to support him against the horror of derision. But he-recovered his tranquillity, and pursued his search, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 89 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 5 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 pronun- ciation clear, and his diction elegant. He showed, with great strength of sentiment and variety of illustration, 10 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 be- 15 trays the fortresses of the intellect to rebale and excites her children to sedition against reason their lawful sov- ereign. 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 -20 motion, and delusive in its direction. He then communicated the various precepts given 90 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, , from time to time for the conquest of passion, and dis- / played the happiness of those who had obtained the “) important victory, after which man is no longer the ‘| slave of fear, nor the fool of hope; is no more emaciated - Bby 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 ya course through the calm or, the stormy sky. sed ee He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable 10 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 ; 15 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 20 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. “T have found,” said the prince at his return to Imlae, “ 9 man who can teach all that is necessary to be known, 25 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 ie” 7 PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 91 “ 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 hisown 5 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 10 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 15 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 j 1s anevent by which a wise man can neyer.be sul surprised: we know that 20 > ~ 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, 25 “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 92 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 s emptiness of rhetorical sound, and the inefficacy of polished periods and studied sentences. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 93 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, 5 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 jour- 10 ney. ‘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, 15 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 their opinion of their own state. They were so 20\ ) tude and ignorant, so little able to compare the good ~ with the evil of the occupation, and so indistinct in 94 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, — be Se, their narratives and descriptions, that very little could be learned from them; but it was evident that their hearts were cankered eh discontent, that they con- ' sidered themselves as condemned to labor for the luxury 5of the rich, and looked up with stupid malevolence . toward those that were placed above them. \...).)\° The princess pronounced with vehemence, that ae : would never suffer these envious savages to be her com- panions, and that she should not soon be desirous of 10 seeing any more specimens of rustic happiness; but could not believe that all the accounts of primeval pleasures were fabulous, and was yet in doubt whether life had anything that could be justly preferred to the placid gratifications of fields and woods. She hoped that : 15 the time would come, when, with a few virtuous and 3 elegant companions, she should gather flowers planted by her own hand, fondle the lambs of her own ewe, and listen without care, among brooks and breezes, to one of her maidens réading in the shade. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 95 CHAPTER XxX. THE DANGER OF tec yt ea 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 5 diligently cut away, to open walks where the shades were darkest; the boughs of opposite trees were arti- ficially interwoven; seats of flowery turf were raised in vacant spaces; and a rivulet, that wantoned along the side of a winding path, had its banks sometimes opened 10 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 15 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 20 still further, beheld a stately palace built upon a hill, surrounded with woods. The laws of Eastern hospi- tality allowed them to enter, and the master welcomed them like a man liberal and wealthy. 96 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 5 his respect. When they offered to depart, he entreated their stay, and was the next day still more unwilling to dismiss them than before. They were easily persuaded to stop, and civility grew up in time to freedom and. confidence. 10 The prince now saw ail the domestics cheerful, and all the face of nature smiling round the place, and could not forbear to hope he should find here what he was seeking; but when he was congratulating the master upon his possessions, he answered with a sigh, “My 15 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 ; 20 but as the favor of the great is uncertain, I know not how soon my defenders may be persuaded to share the : plunder with the Bassa. I have sent my treasures. into a distant country, and, upon the first alarm, am prepared to follow them. Then will my enemies riot’ in my 25 mansion, and enjoy the gardens which I have planted. e They all joined in lamenting his danger, and depre- cating his exile; and the princess was so much disturbed with the tumult of grief and indignation, that she retired to her apartment. 30 They continued with their kind inviter a few days longer, and then went forward to find the hermit. * PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 97 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 composed the 5 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 im- proved by human labor, that the cave contained several apartments appropriated to different uses, and often 10 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 papers, on the other mechanical instruments of 15 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 happi- ness. They saluted him with great respect, which he repaid 20 like a man not unaccustomed to the forms of courts. “My children,” said he, “if you have lost your way, you BS Ot. HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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.” - 5 They thanked him, and, entering, were pleased wit 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 10 the esteem of his guests, and the princess repented of 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 15 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 from all apparent evil.” , 0 “He will remove most certainly from evil,” said the prince, “ who shall devote himself to that solitude which — you have recommended by your example.” “T have indeed lived fifteen years in solitude,” said the hermit, “but have no desire that my example should 25 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 dis- | custed by the preferments of a younger officer, and feeling that my vigor was beginning to decay, I was PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 99 resolved to close my life in peace, having found the world full of snares, discord, and misery. I had onee escaped from the pursuit of the enemy by the shelter of this cavern, and therefore chose it for my final resi- dence. I employed artificers to form it into chambers, 5 and stored it with all that.I was likely to want. “For some time after my retreat, I rejoiced like a tempest-beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbor, being delighted with the sudden change of the noise and hurry of war to stillness and repose. When the 10 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 15 is disturbed with a thousand perplexities of doubt and vanities of imagination, which hourly prevail upon me, be- cause 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 20 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 25 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 ofa solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.” 100 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 5 he approached it, he gazed with rapture. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 101 CHAPTER XXII. THE HAPPINESS OF A LIFE LED ACCORDING TO NATURE. Rassexas 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 5 often continued till neither controvertist! remembered upon what question they began. Some faults were almost general among them: every one was desirous to dictate to the rest, and every one was pleased to hear the genius or knowledge of another depreciated. 10 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 15 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 labor of individuals, and considered retirement as a 20 desertion of duty. Others readily allowed that there was a time when the claims of the public were satisfied, 4 —) 5 102 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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, ina 5 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, “1s so strongly impressed, that the longest experience is not able to efface it. Of the 10 present state, whatever it be, we feel, and are forced to confess, the misery; yet, when the same state is again at a, distance, imagination paints it as desirable. But the time will surely come, when desire will be no longer our torment, and no man shall be wretched but by his own 15 fault. “This,” said a philosopher, who had heard him with tokens of great impatience, “is the present condition of 'awise man. The time is already come, when none are wretched but by their own fault. Nothing is more idle 90 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 fo that universal and Wnalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed ; which is ngt written on it by precept, but , % engraven by destiny, not 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, anid act or suffer as the reason of — things shall alternately prescribe. Other men me an PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 103 amuse themselves with subtle definitions, or intricate satiocinations. 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 ani- mals, whose motions are regulated by instinct: they 5 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, 10 —that deviation from nature is deviation from happi- -—~ aa Ch ‘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, 15 “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.” 20 “When I find young men so humble and so docile,” said the philosopher, “I can deny them no information Pete which my studies have enabled me to afford. — To live Ly according to nature, is to act always with due regard to | the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of 25 | i causes and effects; to concur with the great and un- / changeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate A with the general disposition and tendency of the present / system of things.” | The prince soon found that this was one of the sages (104, : HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 5 with the present system. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 105 CHAPTER XXIII. THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN THEM THE WORK OF OBSERVATION. RAssELAS returned home full of reflections, doubtful 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 in- 5 quiries. 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 10 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 ormean. In 15 our own country, though we had royalty, we had no power; and in this, we have not yet seen the private recesses of domestic peace. Imlac favors not our search, lest we should in time find him mistaken. We will di- vide the task between us; you shall try whatis to be found 20 in the splendor of courts, and I will range the shades of 106 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, humbler life. Perhaps command and authority may be the supreme blessings, as they afford most opportuni- ties of doing good; or, perhaps, what this world can give may be found in the modest habitations of middle s fortune too low for great designs, and too high for penury and distress.” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 107 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 5 officers, and frequent conversation with the Bassa him- self. 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 10 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 subordi- nation this sublime delight can be in one nation but the 15 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 incommunica- ble content.” 20 These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found 108 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, no solution of the difficulty. But as presents and civili- ties gained him more familiarity, he found that almost every man who stood high in employment hated all the rest, and was hated by them, and that their lives were a 5 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. 10 At last the letters of revocation arrived, the Bassa was carried in chains to Constantinople, and his name was mentioned no more. | « What are we now to think of the prerogatives of power,” said Rasselas to his sister; “ is it without any 15 efficacy to good ? or, is the subordinate degree only dan- gerous, 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 ?” 9 In a short time the second Bassa was deposed; the Sultan that had advanced him was murdered by the Jani- zaries, and his successor had other views and different favorites. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. /@ e409 CHAPTER XXvV. THE PRINCESS PURSUES HER INQUIRY WITH MORE DILIGENCE THAN SUCCESS. THE princess, in the mean time, insinuated?! herself into many families; for there are few doors through which liberality, joined with good humor, cannot find its way. The daughters of many houses were airy? and cheerful; but Nekayah had been too long accustomed to 5 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 pleas- ures, poor as they were, could not be preserved pure, 10 but were embittered by petty competitions and worth- less 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, 15 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 vexa- tion. Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; everything floated in their mind unconnected with the 20 past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to 110 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, another, as a second stone east into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first. | With these girls she played as with inoffensive ani- mals, and found them proud of her countenance,’ and 5 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, 10 often courted her to partake ? their pleasures. The princess and her brother commonly met in the evening, in a private summer house on the bank of the Nile, and related to each other the occurrences of the day. As they were sitting together, the princess cast 15 her eyes upon the river that flowed before her. ‘ An- swer,” said she, “great Father ‘of Waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invoca- tions of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habita- 20 tion from which thou does not hear the murmurs of com- plaint ?” “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 prin- 25 cess, “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. “J did not seek ease among the poor, because I con- — cluded that there it could not be found. But I’saw 4 PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. LTE many poor, whom I had ‘supposed to live in affluence. Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances: it is often concealed in splendor, and often in extrava- gance. It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest; they support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for the morrow. “This, 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 10 quickness to detect their wants, than pleased with my readiness to succor them; and others, whose exigencies compelled them to admit my kindness, have never been able to forgive their benefactress. Many, however, have _ been sincerely grateful, without the ostentation of grati- 15 tude, or the hope of other favors.” 7 or 12. HISTORY OF RASSELAS, e CHAPTER XXVI. THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON PRIVATE LIFE. NEKAYAH, perceiving her brother’s attention fixed, proceeded in her narrative. “Tn families where there is or is not poverty, there is commonly discord: if a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, 5 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 chil- L 10 dren become rivals to their parents; benefits are allayed? by reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy. “Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temp- — 15 tation, 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. cGig .. “The opinions of children and parents, of the young : . “09 and the old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary “ effects of hope and despondence, of expectation and e¢. ae PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 113 perience, without crime or folly on either side. The colors of life in youth and age appear different, as the face of nature in spring and winter. And how can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false ? 5 “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 progres- sion; the youth expects to force his way by genius, vigor, and precipitance. The.old_man pays regard to 10 riches, and the youth reverenees—virtue-——The old man deifies prudence; the youth commits himself to magna- nimity and chance. The young man, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and therefore acts with openness and candor; but his father, having suffered 15 the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often ' allured to practise it. Age looks with anger on the te- merity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupu- -losity of age. ‘Thus parents and children, for the greater part, live on to love less and less; and, if those whom 20 nature has thus closely united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for tenderness and consola- tion ?” “Surely,” said the prince, “you must have been unfor- tunate in your choice of acquaintance: I am unwilling to 25 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 tit HISTORY OF RASSELAS, and evil cannot well agree; and the evil can yet less agree with one another; even the virtuous fall some- times to variance, when their virtues are of different kinds, and tending to extremes. In general, those 5 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 ca- 10 price of rich relations, whom they cannot please, and dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious,-and some wives perverse: and, as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one may 15 often make many iniserable.” “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.” 0 “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 25 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 rancor and their — - tongues with censure. They are peevish at home, and. 4 malevolent abroad; and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to disturb that — : PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 115 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 with- out tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude: it is not retreat, but exclusion from man- 5 kind. 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 10 / regard.” iG HISTORY OF RASSELAS, CHAPTER XXVIL DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS. Tue conversation hada short pause. The prince, hav- ing considered his sister’s observations, told her that she had surveyed life with prejudice, and supposed misery where she did not find it. “Your narrative,” says he, 5 “throws yet a darker gloom upon the prospects of futu- rity; 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, 10 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, 15 and some ignorant; by some he will be misled, and by others betrayed. If he gratifies one he will offend another ; those that are not favored will think themselves injured; and, since favors can be conferred but upon few, the greater number will be always discontented.” 2 «The discontent,” said the princess, “which is thus unreasonable, I hope that I shall always have spirit to- despise, and you power to repress.” + PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 117 “Discontent,” answered Rasselas, “ will not always be without reason, under the most just and vigilant adminis- tration of public affairs. None, however attentive, can always discover that merit which ,indigence or faction may happen to obscure; and none, however powerful, 5 can always reward it. Yet he that sees inferior desert advanced above him, will naturally impute that pref- erence 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 10 forever in the fixed and inexorable justice of distribu- tion: he will sometimes indulge his own affections, and sometimes those of his favorites; he will permit some to please him who can never serve him; he will discover in those whom he loves, qualities which in reality they 15 do not possess; and to those from whom he receives pleasure, he will in his turn endeavor to give it. Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail which were pur- chased by money, or by the more destructive bribery of flattery and servility. 20 “He that has 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 25 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 118 : HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 s 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 10 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 15 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 - ean afford is quietness of conscience and a steady pros-. pect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure 20 calamity -with patience; but remember that patience 4 must suppose pain.” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 119 CHAPTER XXVIII. RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION. “DEAR princess,” said Rasselas, “ you fall into the common errors of exaggeratory declamation, by produ- cing, 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 5 they are horrid, are ordained to be rare. Let us not im- agine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrep- resentations. I cannot bear that querulous eloquence which threatens every city with a siege like that of Jerusalem,” that makes famine attend on every flight 10 of locusts, and suspends pestilence on the wing of every blast that issues from the south. “On necessary and inevitable evils which overwhelm kingdoms at once, all disputation is vain: when they hap- pen they must beendured. But it is evident, that these 15 bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt ; thousands and ten thousands flourish in youth and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domes- tic evils, and share the same pleasures and vexations, whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the 20 armies of their country pursue their enemies or retreat before them. While courts are disturbed with intestine T20 Ge, HISTORY OF RASSELAS, competitions, and ambassadors are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil, and the hus- bandman drives his plough forward; the necessaries of life are required and obtained ; and the successive busi- 5 ness of the seasons continues to make its wonted revo- lutions. “Tet us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen, and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not endeavor to modify 10 the motions of the elements, or to fix the destiny of king- doms. It is our business to consider what beings like us may perform; each laboring for his own happiness, by promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happl- ness of others. : 15 “Marriage is evidently the dictate of nature; men an women are made to be companions of each other; and therefore I cannot be persuaded but that marriage 1s one of the means of happiness.” Sb 5: “I know not,” said the princess, “whether marriage 99 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 last- ing discord, the diversities of temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where 95 both are urged by violent impulses, the obstinate con- ; tests of disagreeing virtues where both are supported by consciousness of good intention, [ 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 in- © bedi é i OB irre inp site SELENE EON % PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 121 dulged, entangle themselves with - indissoluble com- pacts.” “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 5 both be worst. Thus it happens when wrong opinions are entertained, that they mutually destroy each other, and leave the mind open to truth.” “T did not expect,” answered the princess, “to hear that imputed to falsehood which is the consequence only 10 of frailty. To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their extent, and various in their parts. Where we see or conceive the whole at once, we readily note the discriminations, and decide the preference; but of two systems, of which 15 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 our- 20 selves, 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 his opinion.” — 95 “Let us not add,” said the prince, “to the other evils of life the bitterness of controversy, nor endeavor to vie with each other in subtilties of argument. We are em- ployed in asearch, of which both are equally to enjoy the “Success, or suffer by the miscarriage; it is therefore fit # 1220 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, that we assist each other. You surely conclude too hastily from the infelicity of marriage against its institu- tion: will not the misery of life prove equally that life cannot be the gift of Heaven? ‘The world must be peo- 5 pled by marriage, or peopled without it.” “How the world is to be peopled,” returned Nekayah, “is not my care, and needs not be yours. I see no dan- ger that the present generation should omit to leave suc- cessors behind them: we are not now inquiring for the 10 world, but for ourselves.” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 123 CHAPTER XXIX. THE DEBATE OF MARRIAGE CONTINUED. “Tue good of the whole,” says Rasselas, “is the same ' with the good of allits 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 con- 5 venience 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. 10 “JT 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 repent- ance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in 15 the ardor of desire, without judgment, without foresight, without inquiry after conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgment, or purity of sentiment ? “Such is the common process of marriage. A youth 20 and maiden, meeting by chance or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, 124 | HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 5 what nothing but voluntary blindness before had con- cealed: 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 10 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. 15 “Surely all these evils may be avoided by that delib- eration and delay which prudence prescribes to irrevo- cable 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 20 experience, and wider views will allow better opportuni- ties of inquiry and selection: one advantage, at least, will be certain; the parents will be visibly older than their clara “What reaSon cannot collect,” said Nekayah, “and 25 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 comprehen- — siveness of knowledge, made their suftrages ? worthy of SAG, es PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 125 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 con- tracted on both sides; when life has been planned into method, and the mind has long enjoyed the contempla- _tion of its own prospects. “Tt 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 10 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 15 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 offen labors 20 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. When- ever I shall seek a wife, it shall be my first question, 25 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 investiga- tion, and make logic ridiculous ; cases where something cn 126 : HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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. 5 Wretched would be the pair above all names of wretch- edness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason, every morning, all the minute detail of a domestic day. “Those who marry at an advanced age, will probably escape the encroachments of their children; but, in - 49 dimunition of this advantage, they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helpless, to a guardian’s mercy ; OF, if that should not happen, they must at least go out of the world before they see those whom they loved best either wise or great. | 1s “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 20 by long cohabitation, as soft bodies, by continual attri- tion, conform their surfaces to each other. c “1 believe it will be found that those who marry late > are best pleased with their children, and those who marry early, with their partners.” | 0 “The union of these two affections,” said Rasselas, “ would produce all that could be wished. Perhaps there is a time when marriage might unite them, a time neither too early for the father, nor too late for the husband.” “Every hour,” answered the princess, “ confirms my _ prejudice in favor of the position so often uttered. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 127 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 5 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 endeavors to do more than is allowed to humanity. Flatter not yourself with contrarieties of pleasure. Of the blessings set before 10. 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.” 28. 3, HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 dis- couraged from further search.” 5 “It seems to me,” said Imlae, “that while you_are making the choice of life, you neglect to live. } You wan- der about a single city, which, however large’ and diver- sified, can now afford few novelties, and forget that you are in a country, famous among the earliest monarchies 10 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 15 of industry and power, before which all European mag- _ nificence 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 cone. a though uncertainly, what it has destroyed.” 20 “My curiosity,” said Rasselas, “does not very stg a lead me to survey piles of stone, or mounds of earth my business is with man. I came hither, not to measure PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 129 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 5 times which never can return, and heroes whose form of life was different from all that the present condition of mankind requires or allows ?” ) “To know anything,” returned the poet, “we must : _ know its effects; to see men we must see their works, 10 | , that we may shan what reason has dictated, or passion, has incited, and find what are the most powerful motives BY of action. To yudge 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/15 7 that no mind is much employed upon the present ; recol- lection 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 20 the past, for the cause must have been before the effect. _ “The present state of things is the consequence of the former, and itis natural to inquire what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or the evil that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the study of history 25 is not prudent ; if we are intrusted with the care of others, it is not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is crimie—~~ nal; and he may properly be charged with evil, who re- piesa to learn how he might prevent it. “There is no part of history so generally useful as that 130 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, which relates the progress of the human mind, the grad- , ual improvement, of reason, nthe. _successive advances of "science, t the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance, which | are the light and darkness of thinking beings, the ex- 5 tinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world. If accounts of battles and inva- sions 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. 10 “Hxample is always more efficacious than precept. A soldier is formed in war, and a painter must copy pic- tures. In this contemplative life has the advantage, — great actions are seldom seen, but the labors of art are always at hand, for those who desire to know what art 15 has been able to perform. ‘When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed. Here be- gins the true use of such contemplation; we enlarge our 20 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 25 defects.” “JT 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,” PRINCE OF AYBSSINIA. 131 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 great- est 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.” 132 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 every- 5 thing remarkable, stopped from time to time and con- versed 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 10 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 in- tended to co-extend its duration with that of the world: he showed that its gradual diminution gave it such 15 stability as defeated all the common attacks of the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by earth- quakes themselves, the least resistible of natural vio- lence. A concussion that should shatter the Pyramid would threaten the dissolution of the continent. | : 20 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, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 133 climbed up to the first passage, when the favorite 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 5 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 forever.” She spoke, and threw her arms round the neck of her mistress. 10 “Tf all your fear be of apparitions,” said the prince, “J 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 Imlae, “I will . not undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and 15 / unvaried testimony of all ages, and of all nations. i. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom appa- / | ritions of the dead are not related and believed. This j opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth: 20 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. 25 “Yet I do not mean to add new terrors to those which have already seized upon Pekuah. There can be no rea- son 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 134 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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. Remem- 5 ber that you are the companion of the princess of Abyssinia.” “Tf 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 10 know I dare not disobey you: I must go if you com- mand me; but, if I once enter, I never shall come back.” The princess saw that her fear was too strong for ex- postulation or reproof, and embracing her, told her that 15 she should stay in the tent till their return. Pekuah was yet not satisfied, but entreated the princess not to — pursue so dreadful a purpose as that of entering the recesses of the 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.” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 135 CHAPTER XXXII. THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID. Prxvau descended to the tents, and the rest entered the Pyramid: they passed through the galleries, sur- veyed the vaults of marble, and examined the chest in which the body of the founder is supposed to have been reposited.1 They then sat down in one of the most 5 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. 10 “Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive. It secured a wealthy and timorous nation from the incur- sions of barbarians, whose unskilfulness in arts made it easier for them to supply their wants by rapine than by industry, and who from time to time poured in upon the 15 habitations of peaceful commerce, as vultures descend upon domestic fowl. Their celerity and fierceness made the wall necessary, and their ignorance made it effi- cacious. “ But for the Pyramids no reason has ever been given 20 adequate to the cost and labor of the work. The narrow- ness of the chambers proves that it could afford no 136 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 5 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, - to that he may not be soon reduced to form another wish. | “T consider this mighty structure as a monument of - the insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king whose / power is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all * yeal and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the in erection of a pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life, by seeing thousands laboring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another. Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate 20 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 !” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 137 =e CHAPTER XXXIIi. OD iy? THE PRINCESS MEETS WITH AN UNEXPECTED a MISFORTUNE. / THEY rose up, and Putweniad through the cavity at which they had entered, and the princess prepared for her favorite a long narrative of dark labyrinths and costly rooms, and of the different impressions which the varieties of the way had made upon her. But when 5 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 aoiieattee 10 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 15 before them, when the approach of some Turkish horse- //** men 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.” 20, The princess was overpowered with surprise and grief, 188. HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 Imlae, “what can you hope from violence or valor? the Arabs 5 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 10 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. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 139 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 cuard, imagining many expedients by which the loss of 5 Pekuah might have been prevented, and resolving to do something for her recovery, though none could find any thing proper to be done. Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women attempted to comfort her by telling her that all had their 10 troubles, and that lady Pekuah had enjoyed much happi- ness in the world for a long time, and might reasonably expect achange of fortune. They hoped that some good would befall her wheresoever she was, and that their mistress would find another friend who might supply 15 her place. The princess made them no answer, and they continued the form of condolence, not much grieved in their hearts that the favorite was lost. Next day the prince presented to the Bassa a memorial 20 of the wrong which he had suffered, and a petition for redress. The Bassa threatened to punish the robbers, ae 10 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 5 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. 10 Imlac then endeavored 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 15 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 20 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 endeavored 95 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 favorite to stay behind her. “Had not my fondness,” said she, “ lessened my author- . 9. b R Sy hetetneeS De eR DAC ah icc aR od a ck PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 141 ity, 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 com- mand 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 your- self for your virtue, or consider that as blamable by which evil has accidentally been caused. ‘Your tender- ness for the timidity of Pekuah was generous and kind. When we act according to our duty, we commit the event to him by whose laws our actions are governed, and who will suffer none to be finally punished for obedience. When, in prospect of some good, whether natural or moral, we break the rules prescribed us, we withdraw from the direction of superior wisdom, and take all con- Sequences 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 10 15 end by lawful means, we may always console our mis- 20 carriage by the hope of future recompense. When we consult only our own policy, and attempt to find a nearer way to good, by overleaping the settled boundaries of right and wrong, we cannot be happy even by success, because we cannot escape the consciousness of our fault: 25 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 youy con- on 142° HISTORY OF RASSELAS, dition, 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 8 died before you in agonies of terror.” “Had either happened,” said Nekayah, “1 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.” 10 “This at least,” said Imlac, “is the present reward of virtuous conduct, that no unlucky consequence can oblige us to repent it.” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 143 CHAPTER XXXYV. THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF PEKUAH. NeEkAYAH 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. 5 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 10 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 15 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 care to collect notions which she had no convenience of uttering. MRasselas endeavored first to comfort, and afterwards to divert her; 20 he hired musicians, to whom she seemed to listen, but did not hear them, and procured masters to instruct her in od 144 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 5 the image of her friend. Imlae 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 10 willing to come into her presence. She observed his back- wardness, 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 15 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 gayety which life 20 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 25 from the world with all its flatteries and deceits, and will hide myself in solitude, without any other care than — to compose my thoughts, and regulate my hours by a . constant succession of innocent occupations, till with | a mind purified from all earthly desires, I shall enter 30 into that state to which all are hastening, and in which ~ I hope again to enjoy the friendship of Pekuah.” “dl PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 145 “Do not entangle your mind,” said Imlae, “ by irrey- ocable determinations, nor increase the burden of life by a voluntary accumulation of misery: the weariness of retirement will continue or increase when the loss of Pekuah is forgotten. That you have been deprived of 5 one pleasure, is no very good réason for rejection of the a ee SE | 4 7 “Since Pekuah was taken from me,” said the princess, “T have no pleasure to reject or to retain. She that has no one to love or trust has little to hope. She wants the 10 radical principle of happiness. We may, perhaps, allow, that what satisfaction this world can afford, must arise from the conjunction of wealth, knowledge, and good- ness: wealth is nothing but as it is bestowed, and™~ (knowledge nothing but as it is communicated} they 15 “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 with- out a partner, and goodness may be practised in retire- ment.” 20 “ How far solitude may admit goodness or advance it, -I shall not,” replied Imlac, “dispute at present. Re- member 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 25 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 ) 146. HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 Sus, 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 com- fort, do as the savages would have done, had they put 10 out their eyes when it was dark. Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual ne something is hourly lost, and something ‘acquired. To nee much at once is incon- venient to either, but while the vital powers remain uninjured, nature will find the means of reparation. 15 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; 20 commit yourself again to the current of the world; Pekuah will vanish by degrees: you will meet in your way some other favorite, or learn to diffuse yourself in general conversation.” “ At least,” said the prince, “do not despair before all 25 remedies have been tried; the inquiry after the unfor- tunate lady is still continued, and shall be carried on with yet greater diligence, on condition that you will promise to wait a veut for the event, without aye unal- terable resolution.” Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made y : PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 147 the promise to her brother, who had been advised 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. 148 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, CHAPTER XXXVI. PEKUAH IS STILL REMEMBERED. THE PROGRESS OF SORROW. NEKAYAH, seeing that nothing was omitted for the recovery of her favorite, and having, by her promise, set her intention of retirement at a distance, began imper- ceptibly to return to common cares and common pleas- sures. 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. 10 She then appointed a certain hour of the day for med. itation 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 15 suffered any important and pressing avocation to delay the tribute of daily tears... She then yielded to less occa- sions; sometimes forgot what she was indeed afraid to remember, and at last wholly released herself from the duty of periodical affliction. : 290 Her real love of Pekuah was yet not diminished. A thousand occurrences brought her back to memory, and : PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 149 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 5 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 itsélf is the cause of misery ? Why should we endeavor to attain that of which the possession cannot be secured ? 10 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.” : 150 | HISTORY OF RASSELAS, CHAPTER XXXVILI. THE PRINCESS HEARS NEWS OF PEKUAH. In seven months, one of the messengers, who had been sent away upon the day when the promise was drawn _ ,from the princess, returned, after many unsuccessful rambles, from the borders of Nubia, with an account that 5 Pekuah was in the hands of an Arab chief, who pos- sessed a castle or fortress on the extremity of Egypt. The Arab, whose revenue was plunder, was willing to ~ ‘restore her, with her two attendants, for two hundred ounces of gold. 10 The price was no subject of debate. The princess was in ecstasies when she heard that her favorite was alive, and might so cheaply be ransomed. She could not think of delaying for a moment Pekuah’s happiness or her own, but entreated her brother to send back the messen- 15 ger with the sum required. Inmlac 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 them- 20 selves in the power of the Arab, by going into his dis- trict, 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, : PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 151 It is difficult to negotiate where neither will trust. But Imlac, after some deliberation, directed the messen- ger 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 favorite embraced each other with transport too violent to be expressed, and went out "together to, pour the tears of tenderness in secret, and exchange professions of kindness and gratitude. After a few hours they returned into the refectory of the con- vent, where, in the presence of the prior and his breth- ren, the prince required of Pekuah the history of her adventures, or 20 25 152 HISTORY OF RASSELAS CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE ADVENTURES OF THE LADY PEKUAH. «Ar 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 5 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. 10 ‘*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 15 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, 90 and from time to time looked on me for succor. I knew not to what condition we were doomed, nor could conjec- — se a at a5 . x ; CERIO En ene at? SRE Ne ae ee pis hb ture where would be the place of our captivity, or whence ~ PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. ; 1538 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 ardor of desire, or caprice of cruelty. I, however, kissed my maids, and 5 endeavored to pacify them by remarking that we were yet treated with decency, and that, since we were now carried beyond pursuit, there was no danger of violence to our lives. “When we were to be set again on horseback, my 10 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 15 of the troop were stationed. Their tents were pitched _ and their fires kindled, and our chief was welcomed as a man much beloved by his dependants. “We were received into a large tent, where we found women who had attended their husbands in the expedi- 20 tion. 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 25 remission of distress which nature seldom denies. Order- ing myself therefore to be undressed, I observed that the women looked very earnestly upon me, not expect- ing, 1 suppose, to see me so submissively attended. When my upper vest was taken off, they were apparently fo 7 1pe HISTORY OF RASSELAS, struck with the splendor of my clothes, and one of them timorously laid her hand upon the embroidery. She then went out, and in a short time came back with another woman, who seemed to be of higher rank and 5 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 io chief of the troop came towards me. I rose up to receive him, and he bowed with great respect. ‘ Tilus- trious 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 IJ, ‘your 15 women have deceived themselves and you; I am not a princess, but an unhappy stranger, who intended soon to — have left this country, in which I am now to be im- prisoned forever.’ —‘ Whoever or whencesoever you are,’ returned the Arab, ‘your dress, and that of your servants, 90 show your rank to be high and your wealth to be great. Why should you, who can so easily procure your ransom, think yourself in danger of perpetual captivity ? The purpose of my incursions is to increase my riches, or, more properly, to gather tribute. The sons of Ishmael os 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.’ — PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. ToS “¢ 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 rever- . ence or pity, excellence like yours had been exempt from 5 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 pass- 10 port 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 of money, I began now to think my danger less, 15 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; 20 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 contend- ing to be more officious than the other, and my maids 25 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 honor- ably treated. 156 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, “JT 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 5 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, 10 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 ob- 15 served to me, that buildings are always best preserved in places little frequented and difficult of access: for, when once a country declines from its primitive splendor, the more inhabitants are left, the quicker ruin will be made. Walls supply stones more easily than quarries, and 20 palaces and temples will be demolished, to make stables of granite and cottages of porphyry.” PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. Lot CHAPTER XXXIX. THE ADVENTURES OF PEKUAH CONTINUED. “ We wandered about in this manner for some weeks, whether, as our chief pretended, for my gratification, or, as I rather suspected, for some convenience of his own. I endeavored to appear contented, where sullenness and resentment would have been of no use, and that endeavor 5 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 10 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 15 — the country merely to get riches. Avarice is an uniform and tractable vice: other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind; that which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another; but to the favor of the covetous there is a 20 ready way; bring money, and nothing is denied. “At last we came to the dwelling of our chief, a Looe, HISTORY OF RASSELAS, strong and spacious house built with stone in an island of the Nile, which les, 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 5 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 unpur- sued. You may now repose in security; here are few pleasures, but here is no-danger.’ He then led me into 10 the inner apartments, and seating me on the richest couch, bowed to the ground. His women, who con- sidered 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 15 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 20 windings of the stream. In the day I wandered from one place to another, as the course of the sun varied the splendor of the prospect, and saw many things which I had never seen before. The crocodiles and river-horses * are common in this unpeopled region, and I often 25 looked upon them with terror, though I knew that 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. : us PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 159 “At night the Arab always attended me to a tower set apart for celestial observations, where he endeavored to teach me the names and courses of the stars. I had no ereat 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 tedious- ness 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 com- pose 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 eee that we should all enjoy at the end of our captivity.” = 5 “There were women in your Arab’s haat said the 20 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 25 160 | HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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 5 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. | 10 “Their business was only needlework, in which I and my maids sometimes helped them; but you know that the mind will easfly straggle from the fingers, nor will you suspect that captivity and absence from Nekayah could receive solace from silken flowers. 15 “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 20 read. They had no ideas 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 25 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 intercepting the tale.” . “ How,” said Rasselas, “can the Arab, whom you repre- | ; . PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 161 sented as aman 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 5 and ignoble beauty which may subsist without sprightli- ness 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, 10 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 tedi- 15 ousness 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 20 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, 25 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 162 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, intellectual famine, to lose such a banquet as Pekuah’s conversation ? ” “JT am inclined to believe,” answered Pekuah, “ that he was for some time in suspense; for, notwithstanding 5 his promise, whenever I proposed to despatch a messen- ger to Cairo, he found some excuse for delay. While I was detained in his house, he made many incursions into the neighboring countries ; and, perhaps, he would have refused to discharge me, had his plunder been equal to 10 his wishes. He returned always courteous, related his adventures, delighted to hear my observations, and endeavored to advance my acquaintance with the stars. When I importuned him to send away my letters, he soothed me with professions of honor and sincerity ; and 15 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 20 island of the Nile. “T grew at last hopeless and dejected, and cared so little to entertain him, that he for a while more fre- quently talked with my maids. That he should fall in love with them or with me, might have been equally 25 fatal, and 1 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 PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 163 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 favorite’s relation, rose and embraced her, and Rasselas gave her a hundred ounces of gold, which she presented to the Arab for the fifty that were promised. 164 | HISTORY OF RASSELAS, CHAPTER XL. THE HISTORY OF A MAN OF LEARNING. Tuery 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 5 science, and pass the rest of his days in literary solitude. “Before you make your final choice,” answered Imlac, “vou 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 10 of the most learned astronomers in the world, who has spent forty years in unwearied attention to the motions and appearances of the celestial bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless calculations. He admits a few friends.»nce a month, to hear his deductions and enjoy 15 his diseeveve@s. 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 20 delighted him with my remarks; he smiled at the narra- tive of my travels, and was glad to forget the constella- tions, and descend for a moment into the lower world. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 165 “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 reten- 10 tive, his discourse is methodical, and his expression clear. “His integrity and benevolence are equal to his learn- ing. His deepest researches and most favorite studies are willingly interrupted for any opportunity of doing good by his counsel or his riches. To his closest retreat, 15 at his most busy moments, all are admitted that want his assistance : ‘For though I exclude idleness and pleas- ure, 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.’ ” 20 “ Surely,” said the princess, “this man is happy.” “J visited him,” said Imlac, “with more a..d more frequency, and was every time more enamoured of his conversation; he was sublime without haughtiness, courteous without formality, and communicative without 25 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 Or of his condition, to which he always returned a general 3 u D> OL 10 166 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, answer, and diverted the conversation to some other topic. . “ Amidst this willingness to be pleased and labor to please, I had quickly reason to imagine that some pain- ful 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 injunctions of haste, though, when I came to him, he had nothing extraordinary to say; and sometimes, when I was leaving him, would call me back, pause a few mo- ments, and then dismiss me. PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 167 CHAPTER XLI. THE ASTRONOMER DISCOVERS! THE CAUSE OF HIS UNEASINESS. “ Ar last the time came when the secret burst his reserve. We were sitting together last night in the turret of his house, watching the emersion! of a satellite of Jupiter. A sudden tempest clouded the sky, and dis- appointed our observation. We sat awhile silent in the 5 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 rae eens is weak and useless, and knowledge without _\integrity is dangerous and dreadful. I have found in 10 \ 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.’ 15 “T thought myself honored 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 eredit. I have possessed for five years the regulation of 20 the weather, and the distribution of the seasons; the sun 168 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 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,* 5 and mitigated the fervors of the crab.1 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 adminstered this great office with exact 10 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 ?’ PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 169 CHAPTER XLII. THE OPINION OF THE ASTRONOMER IS EXPLAINED AND JUSTIFIED. “TI 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 : — “ 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.’ 10 “Might not some other cause,’ said I, ‘produce this concurrence ? the Nile does not always rise on the same day.’ ‘¢¢T)o not believe, ’ said he with impatience, ‘that cnek objections could escape me: I reasoned long against my 15 own conviction, and labored 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 20 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 25 to think that my conviction ought to influence another, — who cannot like me be conscious of its force. Ithere- — fore 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, ~ PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 171 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 5 found none so worthy as thyself.’ 172 HISTORY OF RASSELAS. CHAPTER XUITI. THE ASTRONOMER LEAVES IMLAC HIS DIRECTIONS. «¢Hyar, 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 5 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. “ 196 HISTORY OF RASSELAS, whatever perishes is destroyed by the solution of its contexture, and separation of its parts; nor can we con- ceive how that which has no parts, and therefore , admits no solution, can be naturally corrupted. or-impaired. vy 5 “I know not,” said Rasselas, “how to conceive any- — thing without extension; what is extended must have parts, and you allow that whatever has pale may be — destroyed.” E “Consider your own conceptions,” replied Imlae, ~ 10 “and the difficulty will be less. You will find sub- stance without extension. An ideal form is no less real than material bulk; yet an ideal form has no ex- tension. It is no less certain, when you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses the idea of a pyramid, 15 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 lacera- tion? Asis the effect, such is the cause: as thought, such is the power that thinks; a power impassive * and 20 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 unperishable, it receives from a superior nature 25 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.’ ~ PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. SUT “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 forever. Those that 5 _ 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 10 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. 198 HISTORY OF RASSELAS. CHAPTER XLIX. THE CONCLUSION, IN WHICH NOTHING IS CONCLUDED. Ir 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 5 being under water gave them no invitation to any excur- sions, and, being well supplied with materials for talk, they diverted themselves with comparisons of the dif- ferent forms of life which they had observed, and with various schemes of happiness which each of them had 10 formed. Pekuah was never so much charmed with any place as the Convent of St. Anthony, where the Arab re- stored her to the princess, and wished only to fill it with pious maidens, and to be made prioress of the 15 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 - geiences, and then proposed to found a college of 20 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 com- PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 199 munication 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 5 could never fix the limits of his dominion, and was always adding to the number of his subjects. 5] wa . eo » t . a Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be driven | along’ the stream of life, without directing their course oto any particular port. 10 Of these wishes that they had formed they well knew ‘that none could be obtained. ‘They deliberated awhile what was to be done, and resolved, when the inunda- tion should cease, to return to Abyssinia. NOTES. I. — DICTION. TueE following words are peculiar to Johnson or are used by him in an unfamiliar sense : — Abstracted. For “ abstract.” Accommodations. Defined by Johnson as ‘“ Conveniences, things requisite to ease and refreshment.” Acquaintance. For “acquaintances.” Africk. For ‘ Africa.” Airy. Applied toa person’s disposition. Consult the ‘dictionary. Allay. Commonly used in Johnson’s time for “ alloy.” Consult the dictionary for the etymology of each word. ‘Character. In the sense of ‘“ the part one has to play.” Chariot. Consult the dictionary for the two meanings of this term. Civil. In the sense of “ civilized.” Collected. ‘ Thoughtful.” Condition. ‘ Rank,” or ‘ position.” Contagion. ‘‘ Contagion of his confidence,” ‘‘ contagion of mis- ery.” Consult the dictionary for the plain and the metaphorical meaning of the word. Controvertist, ‘ Disputant.” Countenance. In the sense of “ favor,” ‘ good-will.” Crab. Consult the dictionary under ‘ cancer.” Discover. In the sense of ‘‘ to show,” “‘ to exhibit.” Discovery. In the sense of ‘ disclosure,” ‘‘ revelation.” Dog-star. Consult the dictionary under this word and “ Sirius.” ‘““To restrain the rage of the dog-star,” is a poetical expression borrowed from the Latin writers, for ‘‘ to moderate the heat of the dog-days.” 201 202 RASSELAS. Elegance. ‘ Refinement,” “ culture.” Emersion. An astronomical term. Consult the dictionary. - Engine. ‘“ Apparatus,” or ‘‘ machinery.” Excursion. ‘ Digression.” Grate. Used once by Johnson in the sense of “ be for which it is perhaps a misprint. Humor. “Mood” is more common at the present day except in such phrases as “ good-humor,” “ill-humor,” and the like. Image. “To imagine.” Images. “ Flights of imagination.” Impassive. ‘ Not susceptible of suffering.” Indiscerptible. Defined by J onneam: ‘‘incapable of being broken or destroyed by dissolution of parts.” Insinuate. Defined by Johnson, ‘‘to push gently into favor or regard.” Now commonly used in a bad sense. Intellects. ‘‘ Mental faculties.’’ Invention. Any product of the imagination; now confined almost entirely to mechanical devices, though retained in its broader meaning in many rhetorics. Levity. “Lightness.” The technical instead of the common term. Lonely. ‘‘ Desirous of being alone.” Long. Used predicatively to denote duration of time. ‘‘ We are long before we are able to think,” for “‘it is a long time before.” Mean. ‘“ Ordinary.” Mine. Any subterranean passage. ‘‘ Tunnel,” is at the present time the common word for a passage-way bored through a moun- tain. Naval. ‘ Belonging to ships.” Now coming to be almost exclu- sively used in the sense of ‘‘ belonging to the navy.” \ Nice. ‘‘ Exact,’’ a meaning to which this abused adjective should be confined for the next few generations. att Partake. ‘.Partake of” is now somewhat more common. . Persist. ‘‘ Persist to rate.” ‘‘ Persist in rating,” would “be the modern expression. Presently. ‘Immediately.” ‘ By and by,” is the more common signification. Proper. ‘ Peculiar,” “‘ belonging exclusively to the thing specified.” NOTES. 208 Recollect. Sometimes used in the sense of ‘to bring to one’s senses.” ‘‘ The Princess was recollected.” Reparation. “Repair.” Reparation is now commonly used to mean “satisfaction for injury done.” j Ruggedness. ‘ Rudeness.’’ Sequester. ‘‘ Seclude.” Subtle. ‘ Sly.” Suffrage. ‘ Opinions,” “testimony.” Superfluities. ‘Excess,’ ‘ overflow” (of the lake), ‘ luxuries” (“ delights and superfluities ’’). Transcendental. Defined by Johnson, “ general; pervading many particulars.” ‘‘ Transcendental truths,” would thus be those which have wide application. Volent. Having wings. Il, — FATHER OF WATERS. ‘‘The natives call the Nile Abavi, that is, the Father of Waters.” — Loxo’s Abyssinia. The name is often applied to the Mississippi. III. — ABYSSINIA. RASSELAS. THE HAPPY VALLEY. For the description of Abyssinian life and scenery, Johnson de- pended partly upon the ‘‘ Voyage to Abyssinia” of Father Lobo, partly upon his own imagination. The name Rasselas was suggested by a similar name Rassela (Ras, “a head;” sela christos, ‘‘for the sake of Christ”) which occurs in Lobo’s narrative. The Happy Val- ley was a pleasing fiction. Lobo records that ‘‘ on the barren summit of Ambaguexa, in the kingdom of Amhara, the princes of the blood- royal passed their melancholy life, being guarded by officers who treated them often with great rigor and severity.” The religion of the Abyssinians is a very corrupt form of Christianity. Johnson, for the sake of his story, has portrayed a state of culture and intelli- gence such as never existed among them. Consult the article ‘¢ Abyssinia” in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Iv. — SOURCE OF THE NILE. By the explorations of Speke in 1858 and 1862, and of Stanley in 1875, the Victoria Nyanza* was definitely established as the head reservoir of the Nile. 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