"Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness, faid Nekayah, this world will never afford an opportunity of deciding. But this, at least, may be maintained, that we do not always find visible happiness in proportion to visible virtue. All natural and almost all political evils, are incident alike to the bad and good: they are confounded in the misery of a famine, and not much diftinguished in the fury of a faction; they fink together in a tempeft, and are driven together from their country by invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of confcience, afteady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience; but remember that patience muft fuppofe pain." CHAP. CHAP. XXVIII. Raffelas and Nekayah continue their converfation. "D EAR princefs, faid Raffelas, you fall into the common er rours of exaggeratory declamation, by producing, in a familiar disquisition, examples of national calamities, and scenes of extensive mifery, which are found in books rather than in the world, and which, as they are horrid, are ordained to be rare. Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by mifrepresentations. I cannot bear that querelous eloquence which threatens every city with a fiege like that of Jeru falem, falem, that makes famine attend on every flight of locufts, and fufpends peftilence on the wing of every blaft that iffues from the fouth. "On neceffary and inevitable evils, which overwhelm kingdoms at once, all disputation is vain: when they happen they must be endured. But it is evident, that these burfts of univerfal distress are more dreaded than felt: thousands and ten thousands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domeftick evils, and fhare the fame pleafures and vexations whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country perfue their enemies, or retreat before them. While courts are difturbed with inteftine competitions, and ambassadours are ne gotiating gotiating in foreign countries, the fmith ftill plies his anvil, and the hufbandman drives his plow forward; the neceffaries of life are required and obtained, and the fucceffive business of the feafons continues to make its wonted revolutions." "Let us ceafe to confider what, perhaps, may never happen, and what, when it fhall happen, will laugh at human fpeculation. We will not endeavour to modify the motions of the elements, or to fix the deftiny of kingdoms. It is our bufinefs to confider what beings like us may perform; each labouring for his own happiness, by promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of others. "Mar "Marriage is evidently the dictate of nature; men and women were made to be companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be perfuaded but that marriage is one of the means of happiness." "I know not, faid the princefs, whether marriage be more than one of the innumerable modes of human mifery. When I fee and reckon the various forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of lafting difcord, the diverfities of temper, the oppofitions of opinion, the rude collifions of contrary defire where both are urged by violent inpulfes, the obftinate contests of disagreeing virtues, where both are fupported by consciousness of good intention, I am fometimes difpofed to think with the feverer cafuifts of moft nations, that marriage VOL. II. C |