Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
difficulty. But as presents and civilities gained him more familiarity,
he found that almost every man who stood high in his employment hated all
the rest and was hated by them, and that their lives were a continual
succession of plots and detections, stratagems and escapes, faction and
treachery. Many of those who surrounded the Bassa were sent only to
watch and report his conduct: every tongue was muttering censure, and
every eye was searching for a fault.
At last the letters of revocation arrived: the Bassa was carried in
chains to Constantinople, and his name was mentioned no more.
“What are we now to think of the prerogatives of power?” said Rasselas to
his sister: “is it without efficacy to good, or is the subordinate degree
only dangerous, and the supreme safe and glorious? Is the Sultan the
only happy man in his dominions, or is the Sultan himself subject to the
torments of suspicion and the dread of enemies?”
In a short time the second Bassa was deposed. The Sultan that had
advanced him was murdered by the Janissaries, and his successor had other
views or different favourites.
CHAPTER XXV
THE PRINCESS PURSUES HER INQUIRY WITH MORE DILIGENCE THAN SUCCESS.
THE Princess in the meantime insinuated herself into many families; for
there are few doors through which liberality, joined with good humour,
cannot find its way. The daughters of many houses were airy and
cheerful; but Nekayah had been too long accustomed to the conversation of
Imlac and her brother to be much pleased with childish levity and prattle
which had no meaning. She found their thoughts narrow, their wishes low,
and their merriment often artificial. Their pleasures, poor as they
were, could not be preserved pure, but were embittered by petty
competitions and worthless emulation. They were always jealous of the
beauty of each other, of a quality to which solicitude can add nothing,
and from which detraction can take nothing away. Many were in love with
triflers like themselves, and many fancied that they were in love when in
truth they were only idle. Their affection was not fixed on sense or
virtue, and therefore seldom ended but in vexation. Their grief,
however, like their joy, was transient; everything floated in their mind
unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way
to another, as a second stone, cast into the water, effaces and confounds
the circles of the first.
With these girls she played as with inoffensive animals, and found them
proud of her countenance and weary of her company.
But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and her affability easily
persuaded the hearts that were swelling with sorrow to discharge their
secrets in her ear, and those whom hope flattered or prosperity delighted
often courted her to partake their pleasure.
The Princess and her brother commonly met in the evening in a private
summerhouse on the banks of the Nile, and related to each other the
occurrences of the day. As they were sitting together the Princess cast
her eyes upon the river that flowed before her. “Answer,” said she,
“great father of waters, thou that rollest thy goods through eighty
nations, to the invocations of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me
if thou waterest through all thy course a single habitation from which
thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint.”
“You are then,” said Rasselas, “not more successful in private houses
than I have been in Courts.” “I have, since the last partition of our
provinces,” said the Princess, “enabled myself to enter familiarly into
many families, where there was the fairest show of prosperity and peace,
and know not one house that is not haunted by some fury that destroys
their quiet.
“I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded that there it
could not be found. But I saw many poor whom I had supposed to live in
affluence. Poverty has in large cities very different appearances. It
is often concealed in splendour and often in extravagance. It is the
care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the
rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is
lost in contriving for the morrow.
“This, however, was an evil which, though frequent, I saw with less pain,
because I could relieve it. Yet some have refused my bounties; more
offended with my quickness to detect their wants than pleased with my
readiness to succour them; and others, whose exigencies compelled them to
admit my kindness, have never been able to forgive their benefactress.
Many, however, have been sincerely grateful without the ostentation of
gratitude or the hope of other favours.”
CHAPTER XXVI
THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON PRIVATE LIFE.
NEKAYAH, perceiving her brother’s attention fixed, proceeded in her
narrative.
“In families where there is or is not poverty there is commonly discord.
If a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great family, a family likewise is
a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions. An
unpractised observer expects the love of parents and children to be
constant and equal. But this kindness seldom continues beyond the years
of infancy; in a short time the children become rivals to their parents.
Benefits are allowed by reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy.
“Parents and children seldom act in concert; each child endeavours to
appropriate the esteem or the fondness of the parents; and the parents,
with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children. Thus,
some place their confidence in the father and some in the mother, and by
degrees the house is filled with artifices and feuds.
“The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, are
naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and despondency, of
expectation and experience, without crime or folly on either side. The
colours of life in youth and age appear different, as the face of Nature
in spring and winter. And how can children credit the assertions of
parents which their own eyes show them to be false?
“Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the
credit of their lives. The old man trusts wholly to slow contrivance and
gradual progression; the youth expects to force his way by genius,
vigour, and precipitance. The old man pays regard to riches, and the
youth reverences virtue. The old man deifies prudence; the youth commits
himself to magnanimity and chance. The young man, who intends no ill,
believes that none is intended, and therefore acts with openness and
candour; but his father; having suffered the injuries of fraud, is
impelled to suspect and too often allured to practise it. Age looks with
anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the
scrupulosity of age. Thus parents and children for the greatest part
live on to love less and less; and if those whom Nature has thus closely
united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for tenderness
and consolations?”
“Surely,” said the Prince, “you must have been unfortunate in your choice
of acquaintance. I am unwilling to believe that the most tender of all
relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural necessity.”
“Domestic discord,” answered she, “is not inevitably and fatally
necessary, but yet it is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole
family is virtuous; the good and the evil cannot well agree, and the evil
can yet less agree with one another. Even the virtuous fall sometimes to
variance, when their virtues are of different kinds and tending to
extremes. In general, those parents have most reverence who most deserve
it, for he that lives well cannot be despised.
“Many other evils infest private life. Some are the slaves of servants
whom they have trusted with their affairs. Some are kept in continual
anxiety by the caprice of rich relations, whom they cannot please and
dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious and some wives perverse,
and, as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom or
virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one
makes many miserable.”
“If such be the general effect of marriage,” said the Prince, “I shall
for the future think it dangerous to connect my interest with that of
another, lest I should be unhappy by my partner’s fault.”
“I have met,” said the Princess, “with many who live single for that
reason, but I never found that their prudence ought to raise envy. They
dream away their time without friendship, without fondness, and are
driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by
childish amusements or vicious delights. They act as beings under the
constant sense of some known inferiority that fills their minds with
rancour and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home and
malevolent abroad, and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their
business and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them
from its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be
fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without
tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not
retreat but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but
celibacy has no pleasures.”
“What then is to be done?” said Rasselas. “The more we inquire the less
we can resolve. Surely he is most likely to please himself that has no
other inclination to regard.”
CHAPTER XXVII
DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS.
THE conversation had a short pause. The Prince, having considered his
sister’s observation, told her that she had surveyed life with prejudice
and supposed misery where she did not find it. “Your narrative,” says
he, “throws yet a darker gloom upon the prospects of futurity. The
predictions of Imlac were but faint sketches of the evils painted by
Nekayah. I have been lately convinced that quiet is not the daughter of
grandeur or of power; that her presence is not to be bought by wealth nor
enforced by conquest. It is evident that as any man acts in a wider
compass he must be more exposed to opposition from enmity or miscarriage
from chance. Whoever has many to please or to govern must use the
ministry of many agents, some of whom will be wicked and some ignorant,
by some he will be misled and by others betrayed. If he gratifies one he
will offend another; those that are not favoured will think themselves
injured, and since favours can be conferred but upon few the greater
number will be always discontented.”
“The discontent,” said the Princess, “which is thus unreasonable, I hope
that I shall always have spirit to despise and you power to repress.”
“Discontent,” answered Rasselas, “will not always be without reason under
the most just and vigilant administration of public affairs. None,
however attentive, can always discover that merit which indigence or
faction may happen to obscure, and none, however powerful, can always
reward it. Yet he that sees inferior desert advanced above him will
naturally impute that preference to partiality or caprice, and indeed it
can scarcely be hoped that any man, however magnanimous by Nature or
exalted by condition, will be able to persist for ever in fixed and
inexorable justice of distribution; he will sometimes indulge his own
affections and sometimes those of his favourites; he will permit some to
please him who can never serve him; he will discover in those whom he
loves qualities which in reality they do not possess, and to those from
whom he receives pleasure he will in his turn endeavour to give it. Thus
will recommendations sometimes prevail which were purchased by money or
by the more destructive bribery of flattery and servility.