verence who moft deferve it: for he that lives well cannot be despised.

"Many other evils infeft private life. Some are the flaves of fervants whom they have trufted with their affairs. Some are kept in continual anxiety to the caprice of rich relations, whom they cannot please, and dare not offend. Some hufbands are imperious, and fome wives perverfe: and, as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one may often make many miferable."

"If fuch be the general effect of marriage, faid the prince, I fhall, for the future, think it dangerous to connect my intereft with that of another, lest I should be unhappy by my partner's fault."

"I have met, faid the princefs, 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 fondnefs, and are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no ufe, by childish amufements, or vicious delights. They act as beings under the constant sense of fome known inferiority, that fills their minds with rancour, and their tongues with cenfure. They are peevish at home, and malevolent abroad; and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their bufinefs and their pleasure to disturb that fociety which debars them from its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting fympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tafting the balm of pity, is a ftate more gloomy than foli

litude;

tude: it is not retreat, but exclufion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleafures."

"What then is to be done? faid Raffelas; the more we enquire, the lefs we can refolve. Surely he is most likely to pleafe himself that has no other inclination to regard."

T

DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS.

HE converfation had a fhort pause. The prince, having confidered his fifter's obfervations, told her, that she had furveyed life with prejudice, and fuppofed mifery where fhe did not find it. "Your narrative, fays he, throws yet a darker gloom upon the profpects of futurity: the predictions of Imlac were but faint fketches of the evils painted by Nekayah. I have been lately convinced that quiet is not the daughter of grandeur, or of power: that her prefence is not to be bought by wealth, nor enforced by conqueft. It is evident, that as any man acts in a wider compafs, he must be more expofed to oppofition from enmity or miscarriage from chance; whoever has many to please or to govern, must use the ministry of many agents, fome of whom will be wicked, and fome ignorant; by fome he will be mifled, and by others betrayed. If he gratifies one he will offend another: thofe that are not favoured wi! think themselves injured; and, fince favours can be conferred but upon few, the greater number will be always difcontented."

4

"The

"The discontent, faid the princess, which is thus unreasonable, I hope that I fhall always have fpirit to defpife, and you, power to repress."

.

"Discontent, answered Raffelas, will not always be without reafon under the moft juft and vigilant administration of publick affairs. None, however attentive, can always difcover that merit which indigence or faction may happen to obfcure; and none, however powerful, can always reward it. Yet, he that fees inferiour defert advanced above him, will naturally impute that preference to partiality or caprice; and, indeed, it can fcarcely be hoped that any man, however magnanimous by nature, or exalted by condition, will be able to perfift for ever in the fixed and inexorable justice of diftribution: he will fometimes indulge his own affections, and fometimes thofe of his favourites; he will permit fome to please him who can never ferve him; he will difcover in those whom he loves, qualities which in reality they do not poffefs; and to thofe, from whom he receives pleasure, he will in his turn endeavour to give it. Thus will recommendations fometimes prevail which were purchased by money, or by the more deftructive bribery of flattery and fervility.

"He that has much to do will do fomething wrong, and of that wrong muft fuffer the confequences; and, if it were poffible that he fhould always act rightly, yet when fuch numbers are to judge of his conduct, the bad will cenfure and obftruct him by malevolence, and the good fometimes by mistake.

<< The

"The highest ftations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of happineis, which I would willingly believe to have fled from thrones and palaces to feats of humble privacy and placid obfcurity. For what can hinder the fatisfaction, or intercept the expectations, of him whofe abilities are adequate to his employments, who fees with his own eyes the whole circuit of his influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he trufts, and whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear? Surely he has nothing to do but to love and to be loved, to be virtuous and to be happy."

"Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness, faid Nekayah, this world will never afford an opportunity of deciding. But this, at leaft, may be maintained, that we do not always find vifible happiness in proportion to vifible virtue. All natural, and almost all political evils, are incident alike to the bad and good: they are confounded in the mifery of a famine, and not much diftinguished in the fury of a faction; they fink together in a tempeft, and are driven together from their country by invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of confcience, a fteady profpect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience; but remember that patience muft fuppofe pain."

CHA P. XXVIII.

RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CON

"DEA

VERSATION.

EAR princefs, faid Raffelas; you fall into the common errours of exaggeratory declamation, by producing, in a familiar difquifition, examples of national calamities, and fcenes of extenfive misery, which are found in books rather than in the world, and which, as they are horrid, are ordained to be rare. Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by mifrepresentations. I cannot bear that querulous eloquence which threatens every city with a fiege like that of Jerufalem, that makes famine attend on every flight of locufts, and fufpends peftilence on the wing of every blast that issues from the fouth.

"On neceffary and inevitable evils, which overwhelm kingdoms at once, all difputation is vain: when they happen they must be endured. But it is evident, that these burfts of univerfal diftrefs are more dreaded than felt; thousands and ten thoufands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domeftick evils, and fhare the fame pleasures and vexations, whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country perfue their enemies, or retreat before them. While courts are difturbed with inteftine competitions, and ambaffadors are negociating in foreign countries, the fmith ftill plies his anvil, and the hufbandman drives his plow forward; the neceffaries of life are required and ob

tained;