or by fubterranean paffages from the lower apartments. Many of the columns had unfufpected cavities, in which a long race of monarchs had repofited their treasures. They then clofed 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 emperour, attended by the prince who ftood next in fucceffion.

CHA P. II.

THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE

HER

HAPPY VALLEY.

ERE the fons and daughters of Abiffinia lived only to know the foft viciffitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skilful to delight, and gratified with whatever the fenfes can enjoy. They wandered in gardens of fragrance, and flept in the fortreffes of fecurity. Every art was practifed to make them pleafed with their own condition. The fages who inftructed them, told them of nothing but the miseries of publick life, and defcribed all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where difcord was always raging, and where man preyed.

upon man.

B 5

Το

To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained with fongs, the fubject of which was the happy valley. Their appetites were excited by frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and revelry and merriment was the business of every hour from the dawn of morning to the clofe of even.

These methods were generally fuccessful; few of the princes had ever wifhed to enlarge their bounds, but paffed their lives in full conviction that they had all within their reach that art or nature could bestow, and pitied those whom fate had excluded from this feat of tranquillity, as the fport of chance and the flaves of mifery.

Thus they rofe in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with each other

other and with themselves, all but Raffelas, who in the twenty-fixth year of his age began to withdraw himself from their paftimes and affemblies, and to delight in folitary walks and filent meditation. He often fat before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to tafte the dainties that were placed before him he rofe abruptly in the midst of the fong, and haftily retired beyond the found of mufick. His attendants obferved the change, and endeavoured to renew his love of pleafure: he neglected their officiousness, repulfed their invitations, and spent day after day on the banks of rivulets fheltered with trees, where he fometimes liftened to the birds in the branches, fometimes obferved the fish playing in the ftream, and anon caft B 6

his

his eyes upon the paftures and mountains filled with animals, of which fome were biting the herbage, and fome fleeping among the bushes.

This fingularity of his humour made him much obferved. One of the Sages, in whofe converfation he had formerly delighted, followed him fecretly, in hope of discovering the cause of his difquiet. Raffelas, who knew not that any one was near him, having for fome time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were brousing among the rocks, began to compare their condition with his

own.

"What," faid he, "makes the difference between man and all the reft of the animal creation? Every beast that strays befide me has the

fame