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more crimes than they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redrefs, fet themfelves at ease by indifcriminate negligence, and presently forget the requeft when they lofe fight of the petitioner.

Imlac then endeavoured to gain fome intelligence by private agents. He found many who pretended to an exact knowledge of all the haunts of the Arabs, and to regular correfpondence with their chiefs, and who readily undertook the recovery of Pekuah. Of thefe, fome were furnished with money for their journey, and came back no more; fome were liberally paid for accounts which a few days difcovered to be falfe. But the princefs would not fuffer any means, however improbable, to be left untried. While fhe was doing fomething fhe kept her hope alive. As one expedient failed, another was fuggefted; when one meffenger returned unfuccefsful, another was difpatched to a different

quarter.

Two months had now paffed, and of Pekuah nothing had been heard; the hopes which they had endeavoured to raife in each other grew more languid, and the princefs, when fhe faw nothing more to be tried, funk down inconfolable in hopeless dejection. A thousand times fhe reproached herself with the eafy compliance by which she permitted her favourite to ftay behind her. "Had not my fondness, said fhe, leffened my authority, Pekuah had not dared to talk of her terrours. She ought to have feared me more than fpectres. A fevere look would have overpowered her; a peremptory command would have compelled obedience. Why did foolish indulgence prevail upon me? Why did I not speak, and refufe to hear ?"

2

"Great

"Great princess, faid Imlac, do not reproach yourself for your virtue, or confider that as blameable by which evil has accidentally been caused. Your tenderness for the timidity of Pekuah was generous and kind. When we act according to our duty, we commit the event to him by whofe laws our actions are governed, and who will fuffer none to be finally punished for obedience. When, in prospect of fome good, whether natural or moral, we break the rules prescribed us, we withdraw from the direction of fuperior wisdom, and take all confequences upon ourselves. Man cannot fo far know the connexion of caufes and events, as that he may venture to do wrong in order to do right. When we perfue our end by lawful means, we may always confole our miscarriage by the hope of future recompence. When we confult only our own policy, and attempt to find a nearer way to good, by overleaping the fettled boundaries of right and wrong, we cannot be happy even by fuccefs, because we cannot escape the confcioufnefs of our fault: but, if we mifcarry, the disappointment is irremediably embittered. How comfortlefs is the forrow of him who feels at once the pangs of guilt, and the vexation of calamity which guilt has brought upon him?

Confider, princefs, what would have been your condition, if the lady Pekuah had entreated to accompany you, and being compelled to stay in the tents, had been carried away; or how would you have borne the thought, if you had forced her into the pyramid, and she had died before you in agonies of terrour?"

"Had

"Had either happened, faid Nekayah, I could not have endured life till now: I fhould have been tortured to madness by the remembrance of fuch cruelty, or must have pined away in abhorrence of myfelf."

"This at leaft, faid Imlac, is the prefent reward of virtuous conduct, that no unlucky confequence can oblige us to repent it."

СНАР.

XXXIV.

THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF PEKUAH.

EKAYAH being thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil is infupportable but that which is accompanied with confcioufnefs of wrong. She was, from that time, delivered from the violence of tempeftuous forrow, and funk into filent penfivenefs and gloomy tranquillity. She fat from morning to evening recollecting all that had been done or faid by her Pekuah, treafured up with Care every trifle on which Pekuah had fet an accidental value, and which might recal to mind any little incident or carelefs converfation. The fentiments of her, whom he now expected to fee no more, were treasured in her memory as rules of life, and the deliberated to no other end than to conjecture on any occafion what would have been the opinion and counfel of Pekuah.

The women, by whom he was attended, knew nothing of her real condition, and therefore she could not talk to them but with caution and referve. She began to remit her curiofity, having no great care

to

to collect notions which fhe had no convenience of uttering. Raffelas endeavoured firft to comfort, and afterwards to divert her; he hired musicians, to whom she seemed to liften, but did not hear them, and procured masters to inftruct her in various arts, whofe lectures, when they vifited her again, were again to be repeated. She had loft her tafte of pleasure, and her ambition of excellence. And her mind, though forced into fhort excurfions, always recurred to the image of her friend.

Imlac was every morning earnestly enjoined to renew his inquiries, and was afked every night whether he had yet heard of Pekuah, till not being able to return the princefs the answer that fhe defired, he was lefs and lefs willing to come into her prefence. She obferved his backwardness, and commandedhim to attend her. "You are not, faid fhe, to confound impatience with refentment, or to fuppofe that I charge you with negligence, because I repine at your unfuccefsfulness. I do not much wonder at your abfence; I know that the unhappy are never pleafing, and that all naturally avoid the contagion of mifery. To hear complaints is wearifome alike to the wretched and the happy; for who would cloud, by adventitious grief, the fhort gleams of gaiety which life allows us? or who, that is ftruggling under his own evils, will add to them the miferies of another?

"The time is at hand, when none fhall be disturbed any longer by the fighs of Nekayah: my fearch after happiness is now at an end. I am refolved to retire from the world with all its flatteries and deceits, and will hide myself in folitude without VOL. XI. H

any

any other care than to compofe my thoughts, and regulate my hours by a conftant fucceffion of innocent occupations, till, with a mind purified from all earthly defires, I fhall enter into that ftate, to which all are haftening, and in which I hope again to enjoy the friendship of Pekuah."

"Do not entangle your mind, faid Imlac, by irrevocable determinations, nor increase the burthen of life by a voluntary accumulation of mifery: the wearinefs of retirement will continue or increase when the lofs of Pekuah is forgotten. That you have been deprived of one pleafure, is no very good reason for rejection of the reit."

"Since Pekuah was taken from me, faid the princefs, I have no pleafure to reject or to retain. She that has no one to love or truft has little to hope. She wants the radical principle of happiness. We may, perhaps, allow that what fatisfaction this world can afford, muft arife from the conjunction of wealth, knowledge, and goodnefs: wealth is nothing but as it is beftowed, and knowledge nothing but as it is communicated: they must therefore be imparted to others, and to whom could I now delight to impart them? Goodnefs affords the only comfort which can be enjoyed without a partner, and goodnefs may be practifed in retirement."

"How far folitude may admit goodness, or advance it, I shall not, replied Imlac, difpute at prefent. Remember the confeffion of the pious hermit. You will wish to return into the world, when the image of your companion has left your thoughts." "That time, faid Nekayah, will never come. The generous frankness, the modeft obfequiousness, and

the

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