ever pleasing,
and that all naturally avoid the contagion of misery. To hear complaints
is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy; for who would cloud,
by adventitious grief, the short gleams of gaiety which life allows us?
or who, that is struggling under his own evils, will add to them the
miseries of another?

"The time is at hand, when none shall be disturbed any longer by the
sighs of Nekayah: my search after happiness is now at an end. I am
resolved to retire from the world, with all its flatteries and deceits,
and will hide myself in solitude, without any other care than to compose
my thoughts, and regulate my hours by a constant succession of innocent
occupations, till, with a mind purified from all earthly desires, I
shall enter into that state, to which all are hastening, and in which I
hope again to enjoy the friendship of Pekuah."

"Do not entangle your mind," said Imlac, "by irrevocable determinations,
nor increase the burden of life by a voluntary accumulation of misery:
the weariness of retirement will continue or increase, when the loss of
Pekuah is forgotten. That you have been deprived of one pleasure, is no
very good reason for rejection of the rest."

"Since Pekuah was taken from me," said the princess, "I have no pleasure
to reject or to retain. She that has no one to love or trust has little
to hope. She wants the radical principle of happiness. We may, perhaps,
allow that what satisfaction this world can afford, must arise from the
conjunction of wealth, knowledge, and goodness. Wealth is nothing, but
as it is bestowed, and knowledge nothing, but as it is communicated:
they must, therefore, be imparted to others, and to whom could I now
delight to impart them? Goodness affords the only comfort, which can be
enjoyed without a partner, and goodness may be practised in retirement."

"How far solitude may admit goodness, or advance it, I shall not,"
replied Imlac, "dispute at present. Remember the confession of the pious
hermit. You will wish to return into the world, when the image of your
companion has left your thoughts." "That time," said Nekayah, "will
never come. The generous frankness, the modest obsequiousness, and the
faithful secrecy of my dear Pekuah, will always be more missed, as I
shall live longer to see vice and folly."

"The state of a mind, oppressed with a sudden calamity," said Imlac, "is
like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the new-created earth, who,
when the firs