d the winds whistle, and the sheep bleat: sometimes freed
the lamb entangled in the thicket, and, sometimes, with my crook,
encountered the wolf. I have a dress like that of the village maids,
which I put on to help my imagination, and a pipe, on which I play
softly, and suppose myself followed by my flocks."

"I will confess," said the prince, "an indulgence of fantastick delight
more dangerous than yours. I have frequently endeavoured to image the
possibility of a perfect government, by which all wrong should be
restrained, all vice reformed, and all the subjects preserved in
tranquillity and innocence. This thought produced innumerable schemes of
reformation, and dictated many useful regulations and salutary edicts.
This has been the sport, and sometimes the labour, of my solitude; and I
start, when I think, with how little anguish I once supposed the death
of my father and my brothers."

"Such," said Imlac, "are the effects of visionary schemes; when we first
form them, we know them to be absurd, but familiarize them by degrees,
and, in time, lose sight of their folly."

[a] See Traite Medico-philosophique sur l'Alienation Mentale, par
Pinel. Dr. Willis defined, in remarkable accordance with this case
in Rasselas, insanity to be the tendency of a mind to cherish one
idea, or one set of ideas, to the exclusion of others.--ED.

CHAP. XLV.

THEY DISCOURSE WITH AN OLD MAN.

The evening was now far past, and they rose to return home. As they
walked along the bank of the Nile, delighted with the beams of the moon
quivering on the water, they saw, at a small distance, an old man, whom
the prince had often heard in the assembly of the sages. "Yonder," said
he, "is one whose years have calmed his passions, but not clouded his
reason: let us close the disquisitions of the night, by inquiring, what
are his sentiments of his own state, that we may know whether youth
alone is to struggle with vexation, and whether any better hope remains
for the latter part of life."

Here the sage approached and saluted them. They invited him to join
their walk, and prattled awhile, as acquaintance that had unexpectedly
met one another. The old man was cheerful and talkative, and the way
seemed short in his company. He was pleased to find himself not
disregarded, accompanied them to their house, and, at the prince's
request, entered with them. They placed him in the seat of honour, and
set wine and conserves before him. "Sir," said the