Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
surfaces 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,” said Rasselas, “would produce all
that could be wished. 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,” answered the Princess, “confirms my prejudice in favour of
the position so often uttered by the mouth of Imlac, that ‘Nature sets
her gifts on the right hand and on the left.’ Those conditions which
flatter hope and attract desire are so constituted that as we approach
one we recede from another. There are goods so opposed that we cannot
seize both, but by too much prudence may pass between them at too great a
distance to reach either. This is often the fate of long consideration;
he does nothing who endeavours to do more than is allowed to humanity.
Flatter not yourself with contrarieties of pleasure. Of the blessings
set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the
fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the
spring; no man can at the same time fill his cup from the source and from
the mouth of the Nile.”
CHAPTER XXX
IMLAC ENTERS, AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION.
HERE Imlac entered, and interrupted them. “Imlac,” said Rasselas, “I
have been taking from the Princess the dismal history of private life,
and am almost discouraged from further search.”
“It seems to me,” said Imlac, “that while you are making the choice of
life you neglect to live. You wander about a single city, which, however
large and diversified, 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 first dawned that
illuminate the world, and beyond which the arts cannot be traced of civil
society or domestic life.
“The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of industry and power
before which all European magnificence is confessed to fade away. The
ruins of their architecture are the schools of modern builders; and from
the wonders which time has spared we may conjecture, though uncertainly,
what it has destroyed.”
“My curiosity,” said Rasselas, “does not very strongly lead me to survey
piles of stone or mounds of earth. My business is with man. I came
hither not to measure fragments of temples or trace choked aqueducts, but
to look upon the various scenes of the present world.”
“The things that are now before us,” said the Princess, “require
attention, and deserve it. What have I to do with the heroes or the
monuments of ancient times—with times which can never return, and heroes
whose form of life was different from all that the present condition of
mankind requires or allows?”
“To know anything,” returned the poet, “we must know its effects; to see
men, we must see their works, that we may learn what reason has dictated
or passion has excited, 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 present; recollection
and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. Our passions 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 past, for the cause must have been before the effect.
“The present state of things is the consequence of the former; and it is
natural to inquire what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or
the evils that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the
study of history is not prudent. If we are entrusted with the care of
others, it is not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal;
and he may properly be charged with evil who refused to learn how he
might prevent it.
“There is no part of history so generally useful as that which relates to
the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason, the
successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and
ignorance (which are the light and darkness of thinking beings), the
extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the
intellectual world. If accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly
the business of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not to be
neglected; those who have kingdoms to govern have understandings to
cultivate.
“Example is always more efficacious than precept. A soldier is formed in
war, and a painter must copy pictures. In this, contemplative life has
the advantage. Great actions are seldom seen, but the labours of art are
always at hand for those who desire to know what art has been able to
perform.
“When the eye or the imagination is struck with any uncommon work, the
next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was
performed. Here begins the true use of such contemplation. We enlarge
our comprehension by new ideas, and perhaps recover some art lost to
mankind, or learn what is less perfectly known in our own country. At
least we compare our own with former times, and either rejoice at our
improvements, or, what is the first motion towards good, discover our
defects.”
“I am willing,” said the Prince, “to see all that can deserve my search.”
“And I,” said the Princess, “shall rejoice to learn something of the
manners of antiquity.”
“The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and one of the most
bulky works of manual industry,” said Imlac, “are the Pyramids: fabrics
raised before the time of history, and of which the earliest narratives
afford us only uncertain traditions. Of these the greatest is still
standing, very little injured by time.”
“Let us visit them to-morrow,” said Nekayah. “I have often heard of the
Pyramids, and shall not rest till I have seen them, within and without,
with my own eyes.”
CHAPTER XXXI
THEY VISIT THE PYRAMIDS.
THE resolution being thus taken, they set out the next day. They laid
tents upon their camels, being resolved to stay among the Pyramids till
their curiosity was fully satisfied. They travelled gently, turned aside
to everything remarkable, stopped from time to time and conversed with
the inhabitants, and observed the various appearances of towns ruined and
inhabited, of wild and cultivated nature.
When they came to the Great Pyramid they were astonished at the extent of
the base and the height of the top. Imlac explained to them the
principles upon which the pyramidal form was chosen for a fabric intended
to co-extend its duration with that of the world: he showed that its
gradual diminution gave it such stability as defeated all the common
attacks of the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by earthquakes
themselves, the least resistible of natural violence. A concussion that
should shatter the pyramid would threaten the dissolution of the
continent.
They measured all its dimensions, and pitched their tents at its foot.
Next day they prepared to enter its interior apartments, and having hired
the common guides, climbed up to the first passage; when the favourite of
the Princess, looking into the cavity, stepped back and trembled.
“Pekuah,” said the Princess, “of what art thou afraid?”
“Of the narrow entrance,” answered the lady, “and of the dreadful gloom.
I dare not enter a place which must surely be inhabited by unquiet souls.
The original possessors of these dreadful vaults will start up before us,
and perhaps shut us in for ever.” She spoke, and threw her arms round
the neck of her mistress.
“If all your fear be of apparitions,” said the Prince, “I will promise
you safety. There is no danger from the dead: he that is once buried
will be seen no more.”
“That the dead are seen no more,” said Imlac, “I will not undertake to
maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of
all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions
of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps
prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only
by its truth: those that never heard of one another would not have agreed
in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is
doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence,
and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears.
“Yet I do not mean to add new terrors to those which have already seized
upon Pekuah. There can be no reason why spectres should haunt the
Pyramid more than other places, or why they should have power or will to
hurt innocence and purity. Our entrance is no violation of their
privileges: we can take nothing from them; how, then, can we offend
them?”
“My dear Pekuah,” said the Princess, “I will always go before you, and
Imlac shall follow you. Remember that you are the companion of the
Princess of Abyssinia.”
“If the Princess is pleased that her servant should die,” returned the
lady, “let her command some death less dreadful than enclosure in this
horrid cavern. You know I dare not disobey you—I must go if you command
me; but if I once enter, I never shall come back.”
The Princess saw that her fear was too strong for expostulation or
reproof, and, embracing her, told her that she should stay in the tent
till their return. Pekuah was not yet satisfied, but entreated the
Princess not to pursue so dreadful a purpose as that of entering the
recesses of the Pyramids. “Though I cannot teach courage,” said Nekayah,
“I must not learn cowardice, nor leave at last undone what I came hither
only to do.”
CHAPTER XXXII
THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID.
PEKUAH descended to the tents, and the rest entered the Pyramid. They
passed through the galleries, surveyed the vaults of marble, and examined
the chest in which the body of the founder is supposed to have been
deposited. They then sat down in one of the most spacious chambers to
rest awhile before they attempted to return.
“We have now,” said Imlac, “gratified our minds with an exact view of the
greatest work of man, except the wall of China.
“Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive. It secured a wealthy
and timorous nation from the incursions of barbarians, whose
unskilfulness in the arts made it easier for them to supply their wants
by rapine than by industry, and who from time to time poured in upon the
inhabitants of peaceful commerce as vultures descend upon domestic fowl.
Their celerity and fierceness made the wall necessary, and their
ignorance made it efficacious.
“But for the Pyramids, no reason has ever been given adequate to the cost
and labour of the work. The narrowness of the chambers proves that it
could afford no retreat from enemies, and treasures might have been
reposited at far less expense with equal security. It seems to have been
erected only in compliance with that hunger of imagination which preys
incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some employment.
Those who have already all that they can enjoy must enlarge their
desires. He that has built for use till use is supplied must begin to
build for vanity, and extend his plan to the utmost power of human
performance that he may not be soon reduced to form another wish.
“I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the insufficiency of
human enjoyments. A king whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures
surmount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the
erection of a pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of