RASSEL A S. CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY. YE who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of Ábis sinia. Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty emperor, in whose dominions the father of waters begins his course; whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over the world the harvests of Egypt. According to the custom which has descended from age to age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abissinian royalty, till the order of succession should call him to the throne. of prey by the mountains which confined them. On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures, on another all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns: the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the diversities of the world were brought together. The blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded. The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with the necessaries of life; and all delights and superfluities were added at the annual visit which the emperor paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound of music; and during eight days, every one that resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of time. Every desire was immediately granted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians exThe place, which the wisdom or policy of anti- erted the power of harmony, and the dancers quity had destined for the residence of the Abissi- showed their activity before the princes, in hopes nian princes, was a spacious valley in the kingdom that they should pass their lives in blissful captiof Amhara, surrounded on every side by moun-vity, to which those only were admitted whose tains, of which the summits overhang the middle part. The only passage by which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it had long been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massy, that no man, without the help of engines, could open or shut them. From the mountains on every side rivulets descended, that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice, till it was heard no more. The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals that bite the grass, or browse the shrubs, whether wild or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts performance was thought able to add novelty to luxury. Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to return, the effect of longer experience could not be known. Thus every year produced new scenes of delight, and new competitors for imprisonment. The palace stood on an eminence, raised about thirty paces above the surface of the lake. It was divided into many squares, or courts, built with greater or less magnificence, according to the rank of those for whom they were designed. The roofs were turned into arches of massy stone, joined by a cement that grew harder by time; and the building stood from century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and equinoctial hurricanes, without need of reparation." This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none but some ancient officers, who successively inherited the secrets of the place, was built as if Suspicion herself had dictated the plan. To every room there was an open and secret passage; every square had a communication with the rest, either from the upper stories by private galleries, or by subterraneous passages from the lower apartments. Many of the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of monarchs had reposited their treasures. They then closed up the opening with marble, which was never to be removed but in the utmost exigencies of the kingdom; and recorded their accumulations in a book, which was itself concealed in a tower, not entered but by the emperor, attended by the prince who stood next in succession. CHAPTER II. THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY. HERE the sons and daughters of Abissinia lived only to know the soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skilful to delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can enjoy. They wandered in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of security. Every art was practised to make them pleased with their own condition. The sages who instructed them told them of nothing but the miseries of public life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where discord was always raging, and where man preyed upon man. To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained with songs, the subject of which was the happy valley. Their appetites were excited by frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and revelry and merriment were the business of every hour, from the dawn of morning to the close of the evening. These methods were generally successful: few of the princes had ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full conviction that they had all within their reach that art or nature could bestow, and pitied those whom nature had excluded from this seat of tranquillity, as the sport of chance and the slaves of misery. Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with each other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, began to withdraw himself from the pastimes and assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. He often sat before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to taste the dainties that were placed before him: he rose abruptly in the midst of the song, and hastily retired beyond the sound of music. His attendants observed the change, and endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure: he neglected their officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent day after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the fish playing in the stream, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures and mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the herbage, and some sleeping among the bushes. The singularity of his humour made him much observed. One of the sages, in whose conversation he had formerly delighted, followed him secretly, in hope of discovering the cause of his disquiet. Rasselas, who knew not that any one was near him, having for some time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were browsing among the rocks, began to compare their condition with his own. "What," said he, "makes the difference between man and all the rest of the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same corporal necessities with myself: he is hungry, and crops the grass; he is thirsty, and drinks the stream; his thirst and hunger are appeased; he is satisfied, and sleeps; he rises again and is hungry; he is again fed, and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty, like him, but when thirst and hunger cease, I am not at rest; I am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, satisfied with fulness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy: I long again to be hungry, that I may again quicken the attention. The birds peck the berries of the corn, and fly away to the groves, where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise can call the lutanist and the singer; but the sounds that pleased me yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-morrow. I can discover in me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man surely has some latent sense, for which this place affords no gratification; or he has some desires distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be happy." After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon rising, walked towards the palace. As he passed through the fields, and saw the animals around him, "Ye," said he, "are happy, and need not envy me, that walk thus among you, burdened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity; for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses from which ye are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated: surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with pecu. liar enjoyments." With observations like these the prince amused himself as he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life, from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt, and the eloquence with which he bewailed them. He mingled cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find that his heart was lightened. CHAPTER III. THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHING. On the next day, his old instructor, imagining that he had now made himself acquainted with his disease of mind, was in hope of curing it by counsel, and officiously sought an opportunity of conference, which the prince, having long considered him as one whose intellects were exhausted, was not very willing to afford. "Why," said he, " does this man thus intrude upon me? shall I never be suffered to forget these lectures, which pleased only while they were new, and to become new again, must be forgotten ?" He then walked into the wood, and composed himself to his usual meditations; when, before his thoughts had taken any settled form, he perceived his pursuer at his side, and was at first prompted by his impatience to go hastily away; but being unwilling to offend a man whom he had once reverenced, and still loved, he invited him to sit down with him on the bank. The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the change which had been lately observed in the prince, and to inquire why he so often retired 66 from the pleasures of the palace, to loneliness and I considering himself as master of a secret stock of silence. "I fly from pleasure," said the prince, happiness, which he could only enjoy by conceal"because pleasure has ceased to please; I am ing it, he affected to be busy in all the schemes of lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling diversion, and endeavoured to make others pleased to cloud with my presence the happiness of with the state of which he himself was weary. others."-"You, sir," said the sage, are the But pleasures can never be so multiplied or confirst who has complained of misery in the happy tinued as not to leave much of life unemployed; valley. I hope to convince you that your com- there were many hours, both of the night and day, plaints have no real cause. You are here in full which he could spend without suspicion in solitary possession of all the emperor of Abissinia can thought. The load of life was much lightened; bestow; here is neither labour to be endured nor he went eagerly into the assemblies, because he danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that labour supposed the frequency of his presence necessary or danger can procure or purchase. Look round to the success of his purposes; he retired gladly and tell me which of your wants is without sup- to privacy, because he had now a subject of ply: if you want nothing, how are you unhappy?" thought. His chief amusement was to picture "That I want nothing," said the prince, or to himself that world which he had never seen, to that I know not what I want, is the cause of my place himself in various conditions, to be entancomplaint: if I had any known want, I should have gled in imaginary difficulties, and to be engaged in a certain wish; that wish would excite endeavour, wild adventures; but his benevolence always terand I should not then repine to see the sun move minated his projects in the relief of distress, the so slowly towards the western mountains, or to detection of fraud, the defeat of oppression, and lament when the day breaks, and sleep will no the diffusion of happiness. longer hide me from myself. When I see the kids and the lambs chasing one another, I fancy that I should be happy if I had something to pursue. But, possessing all that I can want, I find one day and one hour exactly like another, except that the latter is still more tedious than the former. Let your experience inform me how the day may now seem as short as in my childhood, while nature was yet fresh, and every moment showed me what I never had observed before. I have already enjoyed too much : give me something to desire." The old man was surprised at this new species of affliction, and knew not what to reply, yet was unwilling to be silent. "Sir," said he, "if you had seen the miseries of the world you would know how to value your present state." "Now," said the prince, "you have given me something to desire: I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness." CHAPTER IV. THE PRINCE CONTINUES TO GRIEVE AND MUSE. Thus passed twenty months of the life of Rasselas. He busied himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his real solitude; and, amidst hourly preparations for the various incidents of human affairs, neglected to consider by what means he should mingle with mankind. One day, as he was sitting on a bank, he feigned to himself an orphan virgin robbed of her little portion by a treacherous lover, and crying after him for restitution. So strongly was the image impressed upon his mind, that he started up in the maid's defence, and ran forward to seize the plunderer with all the eagerness of real pursuit. Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt. Rasselas could not catch the fugitive with his utmost efforts: but, resolving to weary by perseverance him whom he could not surpass in speed, he pressed on till the foot of the mountain stopped his course. Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own useless impetuosity. Then raising his eyes to the mountain, "This," said he, "is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise of virtue. How long is it that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of my life, which yet I never have Ar this time the sound of music proclaimed the attempted to surmount!" Struck with this rehour of repast, and the conversation was con- flection, he sat down to muse, and remembered, cluded. The old man went away sufficiently dis- that since he first resolved to escape from his concontented to find that his reasonings had produced finement, the sun had passed twice over him in the only conclusion which they were intended to his annual course. He now felt a degree of reprevent. But in the decline of life, shame and gret with which he had never been before acgrief are of short duration : whether it be that we quainted. He considered how much might have bear easily what we have borne long; or that, been done in the time which had passed, and left finding ourselves in age less regarded, we less re-nothing real behind it. He compared twenty gard others; or that we look with slight regard months with the life of man. "In life," said he, upon afflictions, to which we know that the hand" is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy or of death is about to put an end. The prince, whose views were extended to a wider space, could not speedily quiet his emotions. He had been before terrified at the length of life which nature promised him, because he considered that in a long time much must be endured: he now rejoiced in his youth, because in many years much might be done. This first beam of hope that had been ever darted into his mind, rekindled youth in his cheeks, and doubled the lustre of his eyes. He was fired with the desire of doing something, though he knew not yet, with distinctness, either end or means. He was now no longer gloomy and unsocial; but, imbecility of age. We are long before we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power of acting. The true period of human existence may be reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away the four-and-twentieth part. What I have lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed it; but of twenty months to come who can assure me?" The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was long before he could be reconciled to himself. "The rest of my time," said he, " has been lost by the crime or folly of my ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my country; I remember it with disgust, yet without remorse; but the months that have passed since and diversified his thoughts. He discerned the new light darted into my soul, since I formed a various instincts of animals, and properties of scheme of reasonable felicity, have been squan- plants, and found the place replete with wonders, dered by my own fault. I have lost that which of which he proposed to solace himself with the can never be restored; I have seen the sun rise contemplation, if he should never be able to acand set for twenty months, an idle gazer on the complish his flight; rejoicing that his endeavours, light of heaven: in this time the birds have left though yet unsuccessful, had supplied him with a the nest of their mother, and committed them-source of inexhaustible inquiry. selves to the woods and to the skies; the kid has But his original curiosity was not yet abated: forsaken the teat, and learned by degrees to climb he resolved to obtain some knowledge of the the rocks in quest of independent sustenance. I ways of men. His wish still continued, but his only have made no advances, but am still help-hope grew less. He ceased to survey any longer less and ignorant. The moon, by more than the walls of his prison, and spared to search by twenty changes, admonished me of the flux of new toils for interstices which he knew could life; the stream that rolled before my feet upbraid- not be found, yet determined to keep his design ed my inactivity. I sat feasting on intellectual always in view, and lay hold on any expedient luxury, regardless alike of the examples of the that time should offer. earth and the instructions of the planets. Twenty months are passed, who shall restore them?" These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind: he passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, and was awakened to more vigorous exertion, by hearing a maid who had broken a porcelain cup, remark, that what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted. This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself that he had not discovered it; having not known, or not considered, how many useful hints are obtained by chance, and how often the mind, hurried by her own ardour to distant views, neglects the truths that lie opened before her. He, for a few hours, regretted his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means of escaping from the valley of happiness. CHAPTER V. THE PRINCE MEDITATES HIS ESCAPE. CHAPTER VI. A DISSERTATION ON THE ART OF FLYING. AMONG the artists that had been allured into the happy valley, to labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanic powers, who had contrived many engines both of use and recreation. By a wheel which the stream turned, he forced the water into a tower, whence it was distributed to all the apartments of the palace. He erected a pavilion in the garden, around which he kept the air always cool by artificial showers. One of the groves, appropriated to the ladies, was ventilated by fans, to which the rivulets that ran through it gave a constant motion; and instruments of soft music were played at proper distances, of which some played by the impulse of the wind, and some by the power of the stream. This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas, who was pleased with every kind of knowledge, He now found that it would be very difficult to imagining that the time would come when all his effect that which it was very easy to suppose acquisitions should be of use to him in the open effected. When he looked round about him, he world. He came one day to amuse himself in saw himself confined by the bars of nature, which his usual manner, and found the master busy in had never yet been broken, and by the gate, building a sailing chariot: he saw that the design through which none that once had passed it were was practicable upon a level surface, and with exever able to return. He was now impatient as an pressions of great esteem solicited its completion. eagle in a grate. He passed week after week The workman was pleased to find himself so in clambering the mountains, to see if there was much regarded by the prince, and resolved to gain any aperture which the bushes might conceal, yet higher honours. "Sir," said he, "you have but found all the summits inaccessible by their seen but a small part of what the mechanic sciprominence. The iron gate he despaired to open; ence can perform. I have been long of opinion, for it was not only secured with all the power of that instead of the tardy conveyance of ships and art, but was always watched by successive sen- chariots, man might use the swifter migration of tinels, and was by its position exposed to the per-wings; that the fields of air are open to knowpetual observation of all the inhabitants. ledge, and that only ignorance and idleness need crawl upon the ground." He then examined the cavern through which the waters of the lake were discharged; and, This hint rekindled the prince's desire of passlooking down at a time when the sun shone ing the mountains. Having seen what the mestrongly upon its mouth, he discovered it to be chanist had already performed, he was willing to full of broken rocks, which, though they permitted fancy that he could do more; yet resolved to inthe stream to flow through many narrow pas-quire farther before he suffered hope to afflict him sages, would stop any body of solid bulk. He returned discouraged and dejected; but, having now known the blessing of hope, resolved never to despair. In these fruitless researches he spent ten months. The time, however, passed cheerfully away; in the morning he rose with new hope, in the evening applauded his own diligence, and in the night slept sound after his fatigue. Hemet a thousand amusements, which beguiled his labour | by disappointment. "I am afraid," said he to the artist, "that your imagination prevails over your skill, and that you now tell me rather what you wish than what you know. Every animal has his element assigned him; the birds have the air, and man and beast the earth." "So," replied the mechanist, “fishes have the water, in which yet beasts can swim by nature, and man by art. He that can swim needs not despair to fly to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to : swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air, if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure." "But the exercise of swimming," said the prince, "is very laborious; the strongest limbs are soon wearied: I am afraid the act of flying will be yet more violent; and wings will be of no great use, unless we can fly further than we can swim." "The labour of rising from the ground," said the artist, "will be great, as we see it in the heavier domestic fowls; but, as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at a region where the man shall float in the air without any tendency to fall; no care will then be necessary but to move forward, which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir, whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished with wings, and hovering in the sky, would see the earth, and all its inhabitants, rolling beneath him, and presenting to him successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the same parallel. How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the moving scene of land and ocean, cities and deserts! to survey with equal security the marts of trade, and the fields of battle; mountains infested by barbarians, and fruitful regions gladdened by plenty and lulled by peace! How easily shall we then trace the Nile through all his passages, pass over to distant regions, and examine the face of nature from one extremity of the earth to the other." this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on the coast of the southern sea!" The prince promised secrecy, and waited for the performance, not wholly hopeless of success. He visited the work from time to time, observed its progress, and remarked many ingenious contrivances to facilitate motion, and unite levity with strength. The artist was every day more certain that he should leave vultures and eagles behind him, and the contagion of his confidence seized upon the prince. In a year the wings were finished; and, on a morning appointed, the maker appeared furnished for flight on a little promontory: he waved his pinions a while to gather air, then leaped from his stand, and in an instant dropped into the lake. His wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained him in the water; and the prince drew him to land half dead with terror and vexation. CHAPTER VII. THE PRINCE FINDS A MAN OF LEARNING. THE prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, having suffered himself to hope for a happier event only because he had no other means of escape in view. He still persisted in his design to leave the happy valley by the first opportunity. His imagination was now at a stand; he had no prospect of entering into the world; and, notwithstanding all his endeavours to support himself, discontent, by degrees, preyed upon him; and he began again to lose his thoughts in sad when the rainy season, which in these countries is periodical, made it inconvenient to wander in the woods. "All this," said the prince, "is much to be desired, but I am afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these regions of speculation and tran-ness, quillity. I have been told that respiration is difficult upon lofty mountains; yet from these precipices, though so high as to produce great tenuity of air, it is very easy to fall; therefore I suspect, that from any height, where life can be supported, there may be danger of too quick descent." Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome. If you will favour my project, I will try the first flight at my own hazard. I have considered the structure of all volant animals, and find the folding continuity of the bats' wings most easily accommodated to the human form. Upon this model I shall begin my task to-morrow; and, in a year, expect to tower into the air beyond the malice and pursuit of man. But I will work only on this condition, that the art shall not be divulged, and that you shall not require me to make wings for any but ourselves." "Why," said Rasselas, "should you envy others so great an advantage? All skill ought to be exerted for universal good; every man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the kindness that he has received." "If men were all virtuous," returned the artist, "I should with great alacrity teach them to fly. But what would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds, neither walls, mountains, nor seas, could afford security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the wind, and light with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region. Even The rain continued longer and with more violence than had ever been known: the clouds broke on the surrounding mountains, and the torrents streamed into the plain on every side, till the cavern was too narrow to discharge the water. The lake overflowed its banks, and all the level of the valley was covered with the inundation. The eminence on which the palace was built, and some other spots of rising ground, were all that the eye could now discover. The herds and flocks left the pasture, and both the wild beasts and the tame retreated to the mountains. This inundation confined all the princes to domestic amusements; and the attention of Rasselas was particularly seized by a poem, which Imlac rehearsed, upon the various conditions of humanity. He commanded the poet to attend him in his apartment, and recite his verses a second time; then, entering into familiar talk, he thought himself happy in having found a man who knew the world so well, and could so skilfully paint the scenes of life. He asked a thousand questions about things, to which, though common to all other mortals, his confinement from childhood had kept him a stranger. The poet pitied his ignorance, and loved his curiosity, and entertained him from day to day with novelty and instruction, so that the prince regretted the necessity of sleep, and longed till the morning should renew his pleasure. As they were sitting together, the prince commanded Imlac to relate his history, and to tell by |