h to resist
evil. Many are weary of their conflicts with adversity, and are willing
to eject those passions which have long busied them in vain. And many
are dismissed, by age and disease, from the more laborious duties of
society. In monasteries, the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered,
the weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate. Those retreats of
prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of man,
that, perhaps, there is scarcely one that does not propose to close his
life in pious abstraction with a few associates, serious as himself."

"Such," said Pekuah, "has often been my wish; and I have heard the
princess declare, that she should not willingly die in a crowd."

"The liberty of using harmless pleasures," proceeded Imlac, "will not be
disputed; but it is still to be examined, what pleasures are harmless.
The evil of any pleasure that Nekayah can image, is not in the act
itself, but in its consequences. Pleasure, in itself harmless, may
become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be
transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that, of
which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no
length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous
in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the
allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all
aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without
restraint."

The princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the astronomer, asked
him, whether he could not delay her retreat, by showing her something
which she had not seen before.

"Your curiosity," said the sage, "has been so general, and your pursuit
of knowledge so vigorous, that novelties are not now very easily to be
found; but what you can no longer procure from the living, may be given
by the dead. Among the wonders of this country are the catacombs, or the
ancient repositories, in which the bodies of the earliest generations
were lodged, and where, by the virtue of the gums which embalmed them,
they yet remain without corruption."

"I know not," said Rasselas, "what pleasure the sight of the catacombs
can afford; but, since nothing else offers, I am resolved to view them,
and shall place this with many other things which I have done, because I
would do something."

They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited the catacombs.
When they were