pen to obfcure; and none, however powerful, can always reward it. Yet, he that fees inferiour desert advanced above him, will naturally impute 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 perfift for ever in the fixed and inexorable justice of distribution: 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 discover 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

"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 highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of happiness, which I would willingly believe to have. fled from thrones and palaces to seats 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

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 visible happiness in proportion to visible 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 quietnefs of confcience, a fteady profpect of a happier ftate; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience; but remember that patience must suppose pain."

CHAP.

CHA P. XXVIII.

RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION.

"DE

EAR princefs, faid Raffelas, you fall into the common errours of exaggeratory declamation, by producing, in a familiar difquifition, examples of national calamities, and scenes of extenfive mifery, 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 iffues from the fouth.

"On

"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 bursts of universal diftrefs are more dreaded than felt; thoufands and ten thousands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domestick 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 disturbed with inteftine competitions, and ambaffadors are negociating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil, and the husbandman drives his plow forward; the neceffaries of life are required and obtained; and the fucceffive bufinefs of the seasons continues to make its wonted revolutions.

"Let