t I am sometimes afraid, lest I indulge my quiet by criminal
negligence, and voluntarily forget the great charge with which I am
intrusted. If I favour myself in a known errour, or am determined, by my
own ease, in a doubtful question of this importance, how dreadful is my
crime!"

"No disease of the imagination," answered Imlac, "is so difficult of
cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt: fancy and
conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their
places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the
dictates of the other. If fancy presents images not moral or religious,
the mind drives them away when they give it pain, but when melancholick
notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without
opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or banish them. For this
reason, the superstitious are often melancholy, and the melancholy
almost always superstitious.

"But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your better
reason: the danger of neglect can be but as the probability of the
obligation, which, when you consider it with freedom, you find very
little, and that little growing every day less. Open your heart to the
influence of the light, which, from time to time, breaks in upon you:
when scruples importune you, which you, in your lucid moments know to be
vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or to Pekuah, and keep
this thought always prevalent, that you are only one atom of the mass of
humanity, and have neither such virtue nor vice, as that you should be
singled out for supernatural favours or afflictions."

CHAP. XLVII.

THE PRINCE ENTERS, AND BRINGS A NEW TOPICK.

"All this," said the astronomer, "I have often thought, but my reason
has been so long subjugated by an uncontroulable and overwhelming idea,
that it durst not confide in its own decisions. I now see how fatally I
betrayed my quiet, by suffering chimeras to prey upon me in secret; but
melancholy shrinks from communication, and I never found a man before,
to whom I could impart my troubles, though I had been certain of relief.
I rejoice to find my own sentiments confirmed by yours, who are not
easily deceived, and can have no motive or purpose to deceive. I hope
that time and variety will dissipate the gloom that has so long
surrounded me, and the latter part of my days will be spent in peace."

"Your learning and virtue," said Imlac, "may justly give you hopes."