Having little to divert attention, or diverfify thought, they find themselves uneafy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they fhall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness before had concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.

"From thofe early marriages proceeds likewise the rivalry of parents and children: the fon is eager to enjoy the world before the father is willing to forfake it, and there is hardly room at once for two generations. The daughter begins to bloom before the mother can be content to fade, and neither can forbear to wifh for the abfence of the other.

"Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation and delay which prudence prefcribes to irrevocable choice. In the variety and jollity of youthful pleasures life may be well enough fupported without the help of a partner. Longer time will increase experience, and wider views will allow better opportunities of inquiry and felection: one advantage, at leaft, will be certain; the parents will be visibly older than their children."

"What reafon cannot collect, faid Nekayah, and what experiment has not yet taught, can be known only from the report of others. I have been told that late marriages are not eminently happy. This is a question too important to be neglected, and I have often proposed it to those, whose accuracy of remark, and comprehenfiveness of knowledge, made their fuffrages worthy of regard. They have generally determined, that it is dangerous for a man and woman to fufpend their fate upon each VOL. XI.

G

other,

other, at a time when opinions are fixed, and habits are established; when friendships have been contracted on both fides, when life has been planned into method, and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its own profpects.

"It is fcarcely poffible that two travelling through the world under the conduct of chance, fhould have been both directed to the fame path, and it will not often happen that either will quit the track which custom has made pleafing. When the defultory levity of youth has fettled into regularity, it is foon fucceeded by pride afhamed to yield, or obftinacy delighting to contend. And even though mutual efteem produces mutual defire to please, time itself, as it modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines likewife the direction of the paffions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to the manners. Long customs are not eafily broken: he that attempts to change the courfe of his own life, very often labours in vain; and how fhall we do that for others, which we are feldom able to do for ourfelves?

.." But furely, interpofed the prince, you fuppofe the chief motive of choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I fhall feek a wife, it fhall be my first queftion, whether he be willing to be led by reafon ?"

"Thus it is, faid Nekayah, that philofophers are deceived. There are a thousand familiar difputes which reafon never can decide; questions that elude investigation, and make logick ridiculous; cafes where fomething must be done, and where little can be faid. Confider the ftate of mankind, and inquire how few can be fuppofed to act upon any occafions,

occafions, whether small or great, with all the reafons of action prefent to their minds. Wretched would be the pair above all names of wretchednefs, who should be doomed to adjuft by reason, every morning, all the minute detail of a domestick day.

"Those who marry at an advanced age, will probably escape the encroachments of their children; but, in diminution of this advantage, they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helplefs, to a guardian's mercy: or, if that should not happen, they must at least go out of the world before they see those whom they love beft either wife or great.

"From their children, if they have lefs to fear, they have lefs also to hope, and they lose, without equivalent, the joys of early love, and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant, and minds fufceptible of new impreffions, which might wear away their diffimilitudes by long cohabitation, as foft bodies, by continual attrition, conform their furfaces to each other.

"I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children, and those who marry early with their partners."

“The union of these two affections, faid Raffelas, would produce all that could be wifhed. Perhaps there is a time when marriage might unite them, a time neither too early for the father, nor too late for the husband."

"Every hour, anfwered the princess, confirms my prejudice in favour of the pofition fo often uttered by the mouth of Imlac, That nature fets her gifts on the right hand and on the left.' Thofe conditions, which flatter hope and attract defire, are fo confti

tuted, that, as we approach one, we recede from another. There are goods fo oppofed that we cannot feize both, but, by too much prudence, may pafs between them at too great a distance to reach either. This is often the fate of long confideration ; he does nothing who endeavours to do more than is allowed to humanity. Flatter not yourself with contrarieties of pleasure. Of the bleffings fet before you make your choice, and be content. No man can tafte the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his fcent with the flowers of the fpring: no man can, at the fame time, fill his cup from the fource and from the mouth of the Nile."

CHAP. XXXIX.

IMLAC ENTERS, AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION.

H

ERE Imlac entered, and interrupted them. "Imlac, faid Raffelas, I have been taking from the princess the difmal hiftory of private life, and am almost difcouraged from further fearch."

"It seems to me, faid Imlac, that while you are making the choice of life, you neglect to live. You wander about a fingle city, which, however large and diverfified, can now afford few novelties, and forget that you are in a country, famous among the earliest monarchies for the power and wisdom of its inhabitants; a country where the sciences firft dawned that illuminate the world, and beyond which the arts cannot be traced of civil fociety or domestick life.

"The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of industry and power, before which all

European

European magnificence is confeffed to fade away. The ruins of their architecture are the schools of modern builders, and from the wonders which time has fpared we may conjecture, though uncertainly, what it has destroyed."

My curiofity, faid Raffelas, does not very strongly lead me to furvey piles of stone, or mounds of earth; my business is with man. I came hither not to measure fragments of temples, or trace choaked aqueducts, but to look upon the various scenes of the present world."

"The things that are now before us, faid the princefs, require attention, and deferve it. What have I to do with the heroes or the monuments of ancient times? with times which never can return, and heroes, whofe form of life was different from all that the prefent condition of mankind requires or allows ?"

"To know any thing, returned the poet, we must know its effects; to fee men we must fee their works, that we may learn what reafon has dictated, or paffion has incited, and find what are the most powerful motives of action. To judge rightly of the present we must oppose it to the past; for all judgment is comparative, and of the future nothing can be known. The truth is, that no mind is much employed upon the prefent: recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. Our paffions are joy and grief, love and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief the past is the object, and the future of hope and fear; even love and hatred respect the paft, for the caufe muft have been before the effect.