ce of the lake. It was divided into many squares or courts, built
with greater or less magnificence, according to the rank of those for
whom they were designed. The roofs were turned into arches of massy
stone, joined by a cement that grew harder by time, and the building
stood, from century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and
equinoctial hurricanes, without need of reparation.

This house, which was so large, as to be fully known to none, but some
ancient officers, who successively inherited the secrets of the place,
was built, as if suspicion herself had dictated the plan. To every room
there was an open and secret passage, every square had a communication
with the rest, either from the upper stories, by private galleries, or,
by subterranean passages, from the lower apartments. Many of the columns
had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of monarchs had reposited
their treasures. They then closed up the opening with marble, which was
never to be removed, but in the utmost exigencies of the kingdom; and
recorded their accumulations in a book, which was itself concealed in a
tower not entered, but by the emperour, attended by the prince, who
stood next in succession.

CHAP. II.

THE DISCONTENT OP RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

Here the sons and daughters of Abissinia, lived only to know the soft
vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skilful
to delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can enjoy. They
wandered in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of
security. Every art was practised, to make them pleased with their own
condition. The sages, who instructed them, told them of nothing but the
miseries of publick life, and described all beyond the mountains, as
regions of calamity, where discord was always raging, and where man
preyed upon man.

To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were daily
entertained with songs, the subject of which was the happy valley. Their
appetites were excited, by frequent enumerations of different
enjoyments, and revelry and merriment was the business of every hour,
from the dawn of morning, to the close of even.

These methods were, generally, successful; few of the princes had ever
wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full
conviction, that they had all within their reach that art or nature
could bestow, and pitied those, whom fate had excluded from this seat of
tranquillity, as the sp