al faculties: it is not pronounced madness, but
when it becomes ungovernable, and apparently influences speech or
action.

"To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the
wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent
speculation. When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour of
excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of inquiry will,
sometimes, give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external
that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must
conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He
then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls, from all imaginable
conditions, that which, for the present moment, he should most desire;
amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his
pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites
all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights, which nature
and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.

"In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other
intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or
leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on
the luscious falsehood, whenever she is offended with the bitterness of
truth. By degrees, the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first
imperious, and in time despotick. Then fictions begin to operate as
realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in
dreams of rapture or of anguish.

"This, sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the hermit has
confessed not always to promote goodness, and the astronomer's misery
has proved to be not always propitious to wisdom."

"I will no more," said the favourite, "imagine myself the queen of
Abissinia. I have often spent the hours, which the princess gave to my
own disposal, in adjusting ceremonies, and regulating the court; I have
repressed the pride of the powerful, and granted the petitions of the
poor; I have built new palaces in more happy situations, planted groves
upon the tops of mountains, and have exulted in the beneficence of
royalty, till, when the princess entered, I had almost forgotten to bow
down before her."

"And I," said the princess, "will not allow myself any more to play the
shepherdess in my waking dreams. I have often soothed my thoughts with
the quiet and innocence of pastoral employments, till I have, in my
chamber, hear