paffes in the minds of others: when you feel that your own gaiety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to fufpect that of your companions not to be fincere. Envy is commonly reciprocal. We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it poffeffed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself. In the affembly, where you paffed the laft night, there appeared fuch fprightlinefs of air, and volatility of fancy, as might have fuited beings of an higher order, formed to inhabit ferener regions, inacceffible to care or forrow: yet, believe me, prince, there was not one who did not dread the moment when folitude fhould deliver him to the tyranny of reflection."

"This," faid the prince, " may be true of others, fince it is true of me; yet, whatever

I

whatever be the general infelicity of man, one condition is more happy than another, and wisdom furely directs us to take the least evil in the choice of life."

"The causes of good and evil," anfwered Imlac, "are fo various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by various relations, and fo much fubject to accidents which cannot be foreseen, that he who would fix his condition upon incontestable reafons of preference, must 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 themselves which they thought most likely to make them happy."

Very few," faid the poet, " live by

choice. Every man is placed in his

prefent

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 leisure: furely happiness is fomewhere to be found."

CHAP. XVII.

THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUNG

R

MEN OF SPIRIT AND GAIETY.

ASSELAS rofe next day, and refolved to begin his experiments upon life. Youth," cried he, " is the time of gladnefs: I will join myself to the young men, whose only business is to gratify 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 fhould never be happy in a course of life of which he was ashamed. 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 franknefs and courtesy, that he could not leave them without warning and remonftrance. "My friends," faid he, "I have seriously confidered our manners and our profpects, and find that we have mistaken our own interest. The first years of man must make provifion for

the