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"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 to the caprice of rich relations, whom they cannot please and dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious, and 5 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 often make many miserable."'

"If such be the general effect of marriage," said 10 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."

"I have met," said the princess, "with many who live single for that reason, but I never found that their 15 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 no use, by childish amusements or vicious delights. They act as beings under the constant sense 20 of some known inferiority that fills their minds with rancor, and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home and malevolent abroad, and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them from 25 its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has 30 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 regard."

5

CHAPTER XXVII.

DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS.

THE Conversation had a short pause. The prince, having considered his sister's observations, told her that she had surveyed life with prejudice, and supposed misery where she did not find it. "Your narraIo tive," says he, "throws yet a darker gloom upon the prospects of futurity. 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 15 is not to be bought by wealth 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 20 many agents, some of whom will be wicked 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 25 greater number will be always discontented."

"The discontent," said the princess, "which is thus unreasonable, I hope that I shall always have spirit to despise, and you power to repress.

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"Discontent," answered Rasselas, "will not always 30 be without reason under the most just or vigilant

administration of public affairs. None, however attentive, can always discover that merit which indigence. or faction may happen to obscure, and none, however powerful, can always reward it. Yet he that sees inferior desert advanced above him, will naturally impute 5 that preference 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 forever in fixed and inexorable justice of distribution. He will sometimes indulge his own affections ΙΟ 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 do not possess, and to those from whom he receives pleasure, he will in his turn endeavor to 15 give it. Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail which were purchased by money, or by the more destructive bribery of flattery and servility.

"He that has much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong must suffer the consequences; and 20 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 good sometimes by mistake.

"The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be 25 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 satisfaction or intercept the expectations of him whose abilities are adequate to his employments, 30 who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of his influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom

ΙΟ

he trusts, 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 5 perfect goodness," said Nekayah, "this world will never 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 10 alike to the bad and good; they are confounded in the misery of 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 can afford is quietness of con15 science, a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience, but remember that patience must suppose pain."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

20

RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR

CONVERSATION.

"DEAR princess," said Rasselas, "you fall into the common errors of exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a familiar disquisition examples of national calamities, and scenes of extensive misery which are 25 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 misrepresentations, I cannot bear that querulous eloquence which threatens every city with a siege likę

that of Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on every flight 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 5 happen they must be endured. But it is evident that these 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 domestic evils, and share the same pleasures 10 and vexations, whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country pursue their enemies or retreat before them. While courts are disturbed with intestine competitions, and ambassadors are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still 15 plies his anvil and the husbandman drives his plow forward; the necessaries of life are required and obtained, and the successive business of the seasons continues to make its wonted revolutions.

"Let us cease to consider what perhaps may never 20 happen, and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not endeavor to modify the motions of the elements or to fix the destiny of kingdoms. It is our business to consider what beings like us may perform, each laboring for his own happi- 25 ness by promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of others.

"Marriage is evidently the dictate of nature; men and women were made to be companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be persuaded but that 30 marriage is one of the means of happiness.'

"I know not," said the princess, "whether marriage

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