eachery and witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to be
angry, he set himself to think on proper methods for getting a livelihood
in this strange country. Accordingly he applied himself to some people
whom he saw at work in a neighbouring wood: these people conducted him to
a town that stood at a little distance from the wood, where, after some
adventures, he married a woman of great beauty and fortune. He lived
with this woman so long that he had by her seven sons and seven
daughters. He was afterwards reduced to great want, and forced to think
of plying in the streets as a porter for his livelihood. One day as he
was walking alone by the sea-side, being seized with many melancholy
reflections upon his former and his present state of life, which had
raised a fit of devotion in him, he threw off his clothes with a design
to wash himself, according to the custom of the Mahometans, before he
said his prayers.

After his first plunge into the sea, he no sooner raised his head above
the water but he found himself standing by the side of the tub, with the
great men of his court about him, and the holy man at his side. He
immediately upbraided his teacher for having sent him on such a course of
adventures, and betrayed him into so long a state of misery and
servitude; but was wonderfully surprised when he heard that the state he
talked of was only a dream and delusion; that he had not stirred from the
place where he then stood; and that he had only dipped his head into the
water, and immediately taken it out again.

The Mahometan doctor took this occasion of instructing the sultan that
nothing was impossible with God; and that He, with whom a thousand years
are but as one day, can, if He pleases, make a single day--nay, a single
moment--appear to any of His creatures as a thousand years.

I shall leave my reader to compare these Eastern fables with the notions
of those two great philosophers whom I have quoted in this paper; and
shall only, by way of application, desire him to consider how we may
extend life beyond its natural dimensions, by applying ourselves
diligently to the pursuit of knowledge.

The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool
are by his passions. The time of the one is long, because he does not
know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because he
distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts; or, in
other words, because the one is al