a fever. My views, my purposes, my hopes are at an end: I am now a
lonely being, disunited from society."

"Sir," said the prince, "mortality is an event by which a wise man can
never be surprised: we know that death is always near, and it should,
therefore, always be expected." "Young man," answered the philosopher,
"you speak like one that has never felt the pangs of separation." "Have
you then forgot the precepts," said Rasselas, "which you so powerfully
enforced? Has wisdom no strength to arm the heart against calamity?
Consider, that external things are naturally variable, but truth and
reason are always the same." "What comfort," said the mourner, "can
truth and reason afford me? Of what effect are they now, but to tell me,
that my daughter will not be restored?"

The prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult misery with
reproof, went away, convinced of the emptiness of rhetorical sound, and
the inefficacy of polished periods and studied sentences.

CHAP. XIX.

A GLIMPSE OF PASTORAL LIFE.

He was still eager upon the same inquiry: and having heard of a hermit,
that lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile, and filled the whole
country with the fame of his sanctity, resolved to visit his retreat,
and inquire, whether that felicity, which publick life could not afford,
was to be found in solitude; and whether a man, whose age and virtue
made him venerable, could teach any peculiar art of shunning evils, or
enduring them?

Imlac and the princess agreed to accompany him, and, after the necessary
preparations, they began their journey. Their way lay through the
fields, where shepherds tended their flocks, and the lambs were playing
upon the pasture. "This," said the poet, "is the life which has been
often celebrated for its innocence and quiet; let us pass the heat of
the day among the shepherds' tents, and know, whether all our searches
are not to terminate in pastoral simplicity."

The proposal pleased them, and they induced the shepherds, by small
presents and familiar questions, to tell their opinion of their own
state: they were so rude and ignorant, so little able to compare the
good with the evil of the occupation, and so indistinct in their
narratives and descriptions, that very little could be learned from
them. But it was evident, that their hearts were cankered with
discontent; that they considered themselves, as condemned to labour for
the luxury of the rich, and looked up, with stupid