obtaining it for himself. In the assembly where you passed the

last night there appeared such sprightliness of air and volatility
of fancy as might have suited beings of a higher order, formed to

inhabit serener regions, inaccessible to care or sorrow; yet,
believe me, Prince, was there not one who did not dread the moment

when solitude should deliver him to the tyranny of reflection."
"This," said the Prince, "may be true of others since it is true of

me; yet, whatever be the general infelicity of man, one condition
is more happy than another, and wisdom surely directs us to take

the least evil in the CHOICE OF LIFE."
"The causes of good and evil," answered Imlac, "are so various and

uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by
various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be

foreseen, that he who would fix his condition upon incontestable
reasons of preference must live and die inquiring and

deliberating."
"But, surely," said Rasselas, "the wise men, to whom we listen with

reverence and wonder, chose that mode of life for themselves which
they thought most likely to make them happy."

"Very few," said the poet, "live by choice. Every man is placed in
the present condition by causes which acted without his foresight,

and with which he did not always willingly co-operate, and
therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of

his neighbour better than his own."
"I am pleased to think," said the Prince, "that my birth has given

me at least one advantage over others by enabling me to determine
for myself. I have here the world before me. I will review it at

leisure: surely happiness is somewhere to be found."
CHAPTER XVII - THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUNG MEN OF SPIRIT AND

GAIETY.
RASSELAS rose next day, and resolved to begin his experiments upon

life. "Youth," cried he, "is the time of gladness: I will join
myself to the young men whose only business is to gratify their

desires, and whose time is all spent in a succession of
enjoyments."

To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few days brought
him back weary and disgusted. Their mirth was without images,

their laughter without motive; their pleasures were gross and
sensual, in which the mind had no part; their conduct was at once

wild and mean - they laughed at order and at law, but the frown of
power dejected and the eye of wisdom abashed them.

The Prince soon concluded that he should never be happy in a course
of life of which he was ashamed. He thought it unsuitable to a

reasonable being to act without a plan, and to be sad or cheerful
only by chance. "Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and

permanent, without fear and without uncertainty."
But his young companions had gained so much of his regard by their

frankness and courtesy that he could not leave them without warning
and remonstrance. "My friends," said he, "I have seriously

considered our manners and our prospects, and find that we have
mistaken our own interest. The first years of man must make

provision for the last. He that never thinks, never can be wise.
Perpetual levity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it

may fire the spirits for an hour, will make life short or
miserable. Let us consider that youth is of no long duration, and

that in mature age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and
phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no

comforts but the esteem of wise men and the means of doing good.
Let us therefore stop while to stop is in our power: let us live

as men who are some time to grow old, and to whom it will be the
most dreadful of all evils to count their past years by follies,

and to be reminded of their former luxuriance of health only by the
maladies which riot has produced."

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

The consciousness that his sentiments were just and his intention
kind was scarcely sufficient to support him against the horror of

derision. But he recovered his tranquillity and pursued his
search.

CHAPTER XVIII - THE PRINCE FINDS A WISE AND HAPPY MAN.
AS he was one day walking in the street he saw a spacious building

which all were by the open doors invited to enter. He followed the
stream of people, and found it a hall or school of declamation, in

which professors read lectures to their auditory. He fixed his eye
upon a sage raised above the rest, who discoursed with great energy

on the government of the passions. His look was venerable, his
action graceful, his pronunciation clear, and his diction elegant.

He showed with great strength of sentiment and variety of
illustration that human nature is degraded and debased when the

lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the
parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues

but the natural effect of unlawful government, perturbation, and
confusion; that she betrays the fortresses of the intellect to

rebels, and excites her children to sedition against their lawful
sovereign. He compared reason to the sun, of which the light is

constant, uniform, and lasting; and fancy to a meteor, of bright
but transitory lustre, irregular in its motion and delusive in its

direction.
He then communicated the various precepts given from time to time

for the conquest of passion, and displayed the happiness of those
who had obtained the important victory, after which man is no

longer the slave of fear nor the fool of hope; is no more emaciated
by envy, inflamed by anger, emasculated by tenderness, or depressed

by grief; but walks on calmly through the tumults or privacies of
life, as the sun pursues alike his course through the calm or the

stormy sky.
He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable by pain or

pleasure, who looked with indifference on those modes or accidents
to which the vulgar give the names of good and evil. He exhorted

his hearers to lay aside their prejudices, and arm themselves
against the shafts of malice or misfortune, by invulnerable

patience: concluding that this state only was happiness, and that
this happiness was in every one's power.

Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to the
instructions of a superior being, and waiting for him at the door,

humbly implored the liberty of visiting so great a master of true
wisdom. The lecturer hesitated a moment, when Rasselas put a purse

of gold into his hand, which he received with a mixture of joy and
wonder.

"I have found," said the Prince at his return to Imlac, "a man who
can teach all that is necessary to be known; who, from the unshaken

throne of rationalfortitude, looks down on the scenes of life
changing beneath him. He speaks, and attention watches his lips.

He reasons, and conviction closes his periods. This man shall be
my future guide: I will learn his doctrines and imitate his life."

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

Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man could reason so
forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own arguments, paid his

visit in a few days, and was denied admission. He had now learned
the power of money, and made his way by a piece of gold to the

inner apartment, where he found the philosopher in a room half
darkened, with his eyes misty and his face pale. "Sir," said he,

"you are come at a time when all human friendship is useless; what
I suffer cannot be remedied: what I have lost cannot be supplied.

My daughter, my only daughter, from whose tenderness I expected all
the comforts of my age, died last night of a fever. My views, my

purposes, my hopes, are at an end: I am now a lonely being,
disunited from society."

"Sir," said the Prince, "mortality is an event by which a wise man
can never be surprised: we know that death is always near, and it

should therefore always be expected." "Young man," answered the
philosopher, "you speak like one that has never felt the pangs of

separation." "Have you then forgot the precepts," said Rasselas,
"which you so powerfully enforced? Has wisdom no strength to arm

the heart against calamity? Consider that external things are
naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the same."

"What comfort," said the mourner, "can truth and reason afford me?
Of what effect are they now, but to tell me that my daughter will

not be restored?"
The Prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult misery