ne. I had yet only the will to do good, and did not
imagine that I should ever have the power.

"'One day, as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt,
in my mind, a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern
mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my
imagination, I commanded rain to fall, and, by comparing the time of my
command with that of the inundation, I found, that the clouds had
listened to my lips.'

"Might not some other cause," said I, "produce this concurrence? the
Nile does not always rise on the same day.

"'Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, 'that such objections could
escape me: I reasoned long against my own conviction, and laboured
against truth with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of
madness, and should not have dared to impart this secret, but to a man
like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impossible,
and the incredible from the false.'

"Why, sir," said I, "do you call that incredible, which you know, or
think you know, to be true?

"'Because,' said he, 'I cannot prove it by any external evidence; and I
know, too well, the laws of demonstration, to think that my conviction
ought to influence another, who cannot, like me, be conscious of its
force. I, therefore, shall not attempt to gain credit by disputation. It
is sufficient, that I feel this power, that I have long possessed, and
every day exerted it. But the life of man is short, the infirmities of
age increase upon me, and the time will soon come, when the regulator of
the year must mingle with the dust. The care of appointing a successour
has long disturbed me; the night and the day have been spent in
comparisons of all the characters which have come to my knowledge, and I
have yet found none so worthy as thyself.'

CHAP. XLIII.

THE ASTRONOMER LEAVES IMLAC HIS DIRECTIONS.

"'Hear, therefore, what I shall impart, with attention, such as the
welfare of the world requires. If the task of a king be considered as
difficult, who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do
much good or harm, what must be the anxiety of him, on whom depends the
action of the elements, and the great gifts of light and heat!--Hear me,
therefore, with attention.

"'I have diligently considered the position of the earth and sun, and
formed innumerable schemes, in which I changed their situation. I have
sometimes turned aside the axis of the earth, and so