CHAP. XXIV.

THE PRINCE EXAMINES THE HAPPINESS

R

OF HIGH STATIONS.

ASSELAS applauded the defign, and appeared next day with a splendid retinue at the court of the Baffa. He was foon diftinguished for his magnificence, and admitted, as a prince whose curiofity had brought him from diftant countries, to an intimacy with the great officers, and frequent converfation with the Baffa himself.

He was at first inclined to believe, that the man must be pleased with his own condition, whom all approached with reverence, and heard with obedience, and who had the power to extend his edicts to a whole kingdom. There

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"There can be no pleasure," said he, "equal to that of feeling at once the joy of thousands all made happy by wife administration. Yet, fince, by the law of fubordination, this fublime delight can be in one nation but the lot of one, it is furely reasonable to think, that there is fome fatisfaction more popular and acceffible, and that millions can hardly be fubjected to the will of a fingle man, only to fill his particular breaft with incommunicable content."

These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found no folution of the difficulty. But as prefents and civilities gained him more familiarity, he found that almost every man who ftood high in employment hated all the reft, and was hated by them, and that their lives were a continual fucceffion of plots and detec

detections, ftratagems and escapes, faction and treachery. Many of those who furrounded the Baffa, were fent only to watch and report his conduct; every tongue was muttering cenfure, and every eye was searching for a fault.

At laft the letters of revocation arrived, the Baffa was carried in chains to Conftantinople, and his name was mentioned no more.

"What are we now to think of the prerogatives of power," faid Raffelas to his fifter;" is it without any efficacy to good? or, is the fubordinate degree only dangerous, and the fupreme fafe and glorious? Is the Sultan the only happy man in his dominions? or, is the Sultan himself fubject to the torments of fufpicion, and the dread of enemies ?"

In a fhort time the fecond Baffa was depofed. The Sultan, that had advanced him, was murdered by the Janifaries, and his fucceffor had other views and different favourites.

CHA P. XXV.

THE PRINCESS PERSUES HER ENQUIRY

T

WITH MORE DILIGENCE THAN

SUCCESS.

HE princefs, in the mean time, infinuated herself into many famihies; for there are few doors, through which liberality, joined with good humour, cannot find its way. The daughters of many houses were airy and cheerful, but Nekayah had been too long accuftomed to the converfation of Imlac and her brother, to be much pleased with childish levity and prattle which had no meaning. She found their thoughts narrow, their wifhes low, and their merriment often artificial. Their pleasures, poor as they were, could not be preserved pure, but were embittered