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"What," faid he, " makes the difference between man and all the reft of the animal creation? Every beast that flrays befide me has the fame corporal neceffities with myself; he is hungry and crops the grafs, he is thirsty and drinks the ftream, his thirst and hunger are appeafed, he is fatisfied and fleeps; he rifes again and is hungry, he is again fed and is at reft. I am hungry and thirsty like him, but when thirst and hunger cease I am not at reft; I am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, fatiffied with fulness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry that I may again quicken my attention. The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves where they fit in feeming happinefs on the branches, and waste their

lives in tuning one unvaried series of founds. I likewife can call the lutanift and the finger, but the founds that pleased me yesterday weary me to day, and will grow yet more wearifome to morrow. I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has furely fome latent fenfe for which this place affords no gratification, or he has fome defires diftinct from fenfe which must be fatisfied before he can be happy."

After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon rifing, walked towards the palace. As he paffed through the fields, and faw the animals around him, "Ye, faid he, are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among you, bur

thened

thened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity; for it is not the felicity of man. I have many diftreffes from which ye are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I fometimes fhrink at evils recollected, and fometimes start at evils anticipated: furely the equity of providence has ballanced peculiar fufferings with peculiar enjoyments."

With obfervations like thefe the prince amufed himself as he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that difcovered him to feel fome complacence in his own perfpicacity, and to receive fome folace of the miseries of life, from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt, and the eloquence with which he bewailed them.

He min

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gled cheerfully in the diverfions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find that his heart was lightened.

CHA P. III.

The wants of him that wants. nothing.

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N the next day his old inftructor, now imagining that he had now made himself acquainted with his difease of mind, was in hope of curing it by counfel, and officioufly fought an opportunity of conference, which the prince, having long confidered him as one whofe intellects were exhausted, was not very willing to afford: "Why, faid he, does this man thus intrude upon me; fhall I be never

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fuffered to forget thofe lectures which pleased only while they were new, and to become new again must be forgotten?" He then walked into the wood, and compofed himself to his usual meditations; when before his thoughts had taken any fettled form, he perceived his persuer at his fide, and was at first prompted by his impatience to go haftily away; but, being unwilling to offend a man whom he had once reverenced and ftill loved, he invited him to fit down with him on the

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The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the change which had been lately obferved in the prince, and to enquire why he fo often retired from the pleasures of the palace, to loneliness and filence. "I fly from pleasure, faid the

VOL. I.

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prince,

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