his hand, which he received with a mixture of joy and wonder.

"I have found," said the prince, at his return to Imlac, "a man who can teach all that is necessary to be known, who, from the unfhaken throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the scenes of life changing beneath him. He speaks, and attention watches his lips. He reafons, and conviction clofes his periods. This man shall be my future guide: I will learn his doctrines, and imitate his life."

"Be not too hafty," said Imlac, "to truft, or to admire, the teachers of morality they discourse like angels, but they live like men."

Raffelas, who could not conceive how any man could reafon fo forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own arguments, paid his vifit in a few days, and was denied admiffion. He had now

learned the power of money, and made his way by a piece of gold to the inner apartment, where he found the philofopher in a room half darkened, with his eyes misty, and his face pale. "Sir," faid he, " you are come at a time when all human friendship is useless; what I fuffer cannot be remedied, what I have loft cannot be fupplied. My daughter, my only daughter, from whofe tendernefs I expected all the comforts of my age, died last night of a fever. My views, my purposes, my hopes are at an end: I am now a lonely being difunited from fociety."

Sir," faid the prince, "mortality is an event by which a wife man can never be furprised: we know that death is always near, and it should therefore always Young man," anfwered the philofopher, "you speak like

be expected."

one

one that has never felt the pangs of feparation.' "Have you then forgot the precepts," said Raffelas, "which you fo powerfully enforced? Has wifdom no ftrength to arm the heart against calamity? Confider that external things are naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the fame." "What comfort," faid the mourner, " can truth and reafon afford me? of what effect are they now, but to tell me, that my daughter will not be restored ?"

The prince, whofe humanity would not fuffer him to infult mifery with reproof, went away convinced of the emptinefs of rhetorical found, and the inefficacy of polished periods and studied fentences.

С НА Р. XIX.

A GLIMPSE OF PASTORAL LIFE.

HE was ftill eager upon the fame enquiry; and having heard of a hermit, that lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile, and filled the whole country with the fame of his fanctity, refolved to vifit his retreat, and enquire whether that felicity, which publick life could not afford, was to be found in folitude; and whether a man, whofe age and virtue made him venerable, could teach any peculiar art of fhunning evils, or enduring them?

Imlac and the princefs agreed to accompany him, and, after the neceffary preparations, they began their journey. Their way lay through the fields, where fhepherds

G

fhepherds tended their flocks, and the lambs were playing upon the pasture. "This," faid the poet, "is the life which has been often celebrated for its innocence and quiet; let us pafs the heat of the day among the fhepherds tents, and know whether all our fearches are not to terminate in paftoral fimplicity."

The proposal pleased them, and they induced the fhepherds by fmall presents and familiar questions, to tell their opinion of their own ftate: they were fo rude and ignorant, fo little able to compare the good with the evil of the occupation, and fo indiftinct in their narratives and defcriptions, that very little could be learned from them. But it was evident, that their hearts were cankered with discontent; that they confidered themselves as condemned to labour for the luxury of the rich. and looked up

with