another, and wifdom furely directs us to take the leaft evil in the choice of life."

"The caufes of good and evil, anfwered Imlac, are fo various and uncertain, so often entangled! with each other, fo diverfified by various relations, and fo much fubject to accidents which cannot be forefeen, that he who would fix his condition upon inconteftible reafons of preference, muft live and die enquiring and deliberating."

"But furely, faid Raffelas, the wife men, to whom we liften with reverence and wonder, chofe that mode of life for themfelves which they thought moft likely to make them happy."

"Very few, faid the poet, live by choice. Every man is placed in his prefent condition by causes which acted without his forefight, 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, faid 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 leifure: furely happiness is somewhere to be found."

CHAP. XVII.

THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUNG MEN OF
SPIRIT AND GAIETY.

R

ASSELAS rose next day, and refolved to begin his experiments upon life. "Youth, cried he, is the time of gladnefs: I will join myfelf to the young men, whofe only business is to gratify

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their

their defires, and whofe time is all spent in a fucceffion of enjoyments."

To fuch focieties he was readily admitted, but a few days brought him back weary and difgufted. Their mirth was without images; their laughter without motive; their pleasures were grofs and fenfual, 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 foon concluded, that he should never be happy in a courfe of life of which he was afhamed. He thought it unfuitable to a reasonable being to act without a plan, and to be fad or cheerful only by chance. "Happiness, said he, must be fomething folid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty."

But his young companions had gained fo much of his regard by their frankness and courtesy, that he could not leave them without warning and remonftrance. " My friends, faid he, I have seriously confidered our manners and our prospects, and find that we have miftaken our own intereft. The first years of man muft make provifion for the laft. He that never thinks never can be wife. Perpetual levity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it may fire the fpirits for an hour, will make life fhort or miferable. Let us confider that youth is of no long duration, and that in maturer age, when the enchantments of fancy fhall ceafe, and phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts but the esteem of wife men, and the means of doing good. Let us, therefore,

therefore, ftop, while to ftop is in our power: let us live as men who are fome time to grow old, and to whom it will be the moft dreadful of all evils not 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 a while in filence one upon another, and at last drove him away by a general chorus of continued laughter.

The consciousness that his fentiments were just, and his intentions kind, was scarcely fufficient to fupport him against the horror of derifion. But he recovered his tranquillity, and perfued his fearch.

CHA P. XVIII.

THE PRINCE FINDS A WISE AND HAPPY MAN.

AS he was one day walking in the street, he faw 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 fchool of declamation, in which profeffors read lectures to their auditory. He fixed his eye upon a fage raised above the reft, who difcourfed with great energy on the government of the paffions. His look was venerable, his action graceful, his pronunciation clear, and his diction elegant. He fhewed, with great strength of fentiment, and variety of illuftration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the parent of paffion, ufurps the dominion of the mind, nothing enfues

but the natural effect of unlawful government, perturbation and confufion; that the betrays the fortreffes of the intellect to rebels, and excites her children to fedition against reafon their lawful fovereign. He compared reafon to the fun, of which the light is conftant, uniform, and lafting; and fancy to a meteor, of bright but tranfitory luftre, irregular in its motion, and delufive in its direction.

He then communicated the various precepts given from time to time for the conquest of paffion, and difplayed the happiness of those who had obtained the important victory, after which man is no longer the flave of fear, nor the fool of hope; is no more emaciated by envy, inflamed by anger, emafculated by tenderness, or depreffed by grief; but walks on calmly through the tumults or privacies of life, as the fun perfues alike his course through the calm or the ftormy sky.

He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable by pain or pleasure, who looked with indifference on thofe modes or accidents to which the vulgar give the names of good and evil. He exhorted his hearers to lay afide their prejudices, and arm them felves against the shafts of malice or miffortune, by invulnerable patience; concluding, that this state only was happiness, and that this happiness was in every one's power.

Raffelas liftened to him with the veneration due to the inftructions of a fuperiour being, and, waiting for him at the door, humbly implored the liberty of vifiting fo great a master of true wifdom. The lecturer hesitated a moment, when Raffelas put a

purfe

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

"I have found, faid the prince, at his return to Imlac, a man who can teach all that is neceffary to be known, who, from the unfhaken throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the fcenes of life changing beneath him. He fpeaks, and attention. watches his lips. He reafons, and conviction closes his periods. This man fhall be my future guide: I will learn his doctrines, and imitate his life."

"Be not too hafty, faid Imlac, to truft, or to admire, the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men."

Raffelas, who could not conceive how any man could reafon fo forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own arguments, paid his vifit in a few days, and was denied admiffion. 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 philofopher in a room half darkened, with his eyes mifty, and his face pale. "Sir, faid he, you are come at a time when all human friendship is uselefs; what I fuffer cannot be remedied, what I have loft cannot be fupplied. My daughter, my only daughter, from whofe 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 difunited from fociety."

Sir, faid the prince, mortality is an event by which a wife man can never be furprised: we know that death is always near, and it fhould therefore always be expected." Young man, answered E 4

the.