animals, whose motions are regulated by instinct; they obey their guide and are happy. Let us therefore, at length, cease to difpute, and learn to live; throw away the incumbrance of precepts, which they who utter them with fo much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with us this fimple and intelligible maxim, That deviation from nature is deviation from happiness." When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence. "Sir," said the prince, with great modefty," as I, like all the rest of mankind, am defirous of felicity, my clofeft attention has been fixed upon your discourse: I doubt not the truth of a pofition which a man fo learned has fo confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to nature ?" "When "When I find young men fo humble and fo docile," faid the philofopher, "I can deny them no information which my ftudies have enabled me to afford. To live according to nature, is to act always with due regard to the fitness arifing from the relations and qualities of caufes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of univerfal felicity; to co-operate with the general difpofition and tendency of the present fyftem of things." The prince foon found that this was one of the fages whom he fhould understand lefs as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent, and the philofopher, fuppofing him fatisfied, and the reft vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-operated with the present system. CHA P. XXIII. THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN THEM THE WORK OF OBSERVATION. RA ASSELAS returned home full of reflections, doubtful how to direct his future fteps. Of the way to happiness he found the learned and fimple equally ignorant; but, as he was yet young, he flattered himself that he had time remaining for more experiments, and further enquiries. He communicated to Imlac his obfervations and his doubts, but was answered by him with new doubts, and remarks that gave him no comfort. He therefore difcourfed more frequently and freely with his fifter, who had yet the fame hope hope with himself, and always affisted him to give some reason why, though he had been hitherto fruftrated, he might fucceed at last. "We have hitherto," faid fhe, "known but little of the world: we have never yet been either great or mean. In our own country, though we had royalty, we had no power, and in this we have not yet feen the private receffes of domeftick peace. Imlac favours not our search, left we fhould in time find him mistaken. We will divide the task between us you fhall try what is to be found in the fplendour of courts, and I will range the fhades of humbler life. Perhaps command and authority may be the fupreme bleffings, as they afford moft opportunities of doing good: |