THE HISTORY O F RASSE LAS, PRINCE OF ABISSINIA. CHA P. XXVI. The princefs continues her remarks upon private life. NE EK AYAH perceiving her brother's attention fixed, proceeded in her narrative. "In families, where there is or is not poverty, there is commonly dif cord: if a kingdom be, as Imlac tells VOL. II. B us, us, a great family, a family likewife is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions. An unpractised obferver expects the love of parents and children to be constant and equal; but this kindness feldom continues beyond the years of infancy: in a fhort time the children become rivals to their parents. Benefits are allayed by reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy. "Parents and children feldom act in concert: each child endeavours to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet lefs temptation, betray each other to their children; thus fome place their confidence in the father, and fome in the mother, and, by degrees, the houfe is filled with artifices and feuds. "The |