pelled obedience. Why did foolish indulgence prevail upon me? Why did I not speak, and refuse to hear ?” "Great princess," faid Imlac, "do not reproach yourself for your virtue, or confider that as blameable by which evil has accidentally been caufed. Your tenderness for the timidity of Pekuah was generous and kind. When we act according to our duty, we commit the event to him by whofe laws our actions are governed, and who will fuffer none to be finally punifhed for obedience. When, in prospect of fome good, whether natural or moral, we break the rules prescribed us, we withdraw from the direction of fuperior wisdom, and take all confequences upon ourselves. Man cannot fo far know the connexion of caufes and events, as that he may K. 6 venture venture to do wrong in order to do right. When we perfue our end by lawful means, we may always confole our miscarriage by the hope of future recompence. When we confult only our own policy, and attempt to find a nearer way to good, by overleaping the fettled boundaries of right and wrong, we cannot be happy even by fuccefs, because we cannot efcape the confciousness of our fault: but, if we miscarry, the disappointment is irremediably embittered. How comfortless is the forrow of him who feels at once the pangs of guilt, and the vexation of calamity which guilt has brought upon him? Confider, princefs, what would have been your condition, if the lady Pekuah had entreated to accompany you, and being compelled to stay in the tents, had been been carried away; or how would you have borne the thought, if you had forced her into the Pyramid, and she had died before you in agonies of terrour ?” "Had either happened," faid Nekayah, "I could not have endured life till now I fhould have been tortured to madness by the remembrance of fuch cruelty, or must have pined away in abhorrence of myself.' "This at least," said Imlac, "is the present reward of virtuous conduct, that no unlucky confequence can oblige us to repent it." CHAP. XXXV. THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF PEKUAH. NEKAYAH being thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil is infupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. She was, from that time, delivered from the violence of tempeftuous forrow, and funk into filent pensiveness and gloomy tranquillity. She fat from morning to evening recollecting all that had been done or faid by her Pekuah, treasured up with care every trifle on which Pekuah had fet an accidental value, and which might recal to mind any little incident or carelefs converfation. The fentiments of her, whom she now expected to fee no more, more, were treafured in her memory as rules of life, and fhe deliberated to no other end than to conjecture on any occafion what would have been the opinion and counsel of Pekuah. The women by whom fhe was attended, knew nothing of her real condition, and therefore fhe could not talk to them but with caution and referve. She began to remit her curiofity, having no great care to collect notions which fhe had no convenience of uttering. Raffelas endeavoured first to comfort, and afterwards to divert her; he hired musicians, to whom she semed to listen," but did not hear them, and procured mafters to inftruct her in various arts, whose lectures, when they visited her again, were again to be repeated. She had loft her taste of pleasure, and her ambition of excellence. And her mind, though |