Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia | Page 2

festivity; the
musicians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their
activity before the princes, in hopes that they should pass their lives in
blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose
performance was thought able to add novelty to luxury. Such was the
appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded, that
they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and
as those on whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to
return, the effect of longer experience could not be known. Thus every
year produced new scenes of delight, and new competitors for
imprisonment.
The palace stood on an eminence, raised about thirty paces above the
surface of the lake. It was divided into many squares or courts, built
with greater or less magnificence according to the rank of those for
whom they were designed. The roofs were turned into arches of
massive stone, joined by a cement that grew harder by time, and the
building stood from century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and
equinoctial hurricanes, without need of reparation.
This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none but some
ancient officers, who successively inherited the secrets of the place,
was built as if Suspicion herself had dictated the plan. To every room
there was an open and secret passage; every square had a
communication with the rest, either from the upper storeys by private
galleries, or by subterraneous passages from the lower apartments.
Many of the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of
monarchs had deposited their treasures. They then closed up the
opening with marble, which was never to be removed but in the utmost
exigences of the kingdom, and recorded their accumulations in a book,
which was itself concealed in a tower, not entered but by the Emperor,
attended by the prince who stood next in succession.
CHAPTER II

--THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

Here the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to know the soft
vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skilful to
delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can enjoy. They
wandered in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of security.
Every art was practised to make them pleased with their own condition.
The sages who instructed them told them of nothing but the miseries of
public life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of
calamity, where discord was always racing, and where man preyed
upon man. To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were
daily entertained with songs, the subject of which was the Happy
Valley. Their appetites were excited by frequent enumerations of
different enjoyments, and revelry and merriment were the business of
every hour, from the dawn of morning to the close of the evening.
These methods were generally successful; few of the princes had ever
wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full conviction
that they had all within their reach that art or nature could bestow, and
pitied those whom nature had excluded from this seat of tranquillity as
the sport of chance and the slaves of misery.
Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with each
other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in the twenty-sixth
year of his age, began to withdraw himself from the pastimes and
assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. He
often sat before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to taste the
dainties that were placed before him; he rose abruptly in the midst of
the song, and hastily retired beyond the sound of music. His attendants
observed the change, and endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure.
He neglected their officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent
day after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he
sometimes listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed
the fish playing in the streams, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures
and mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the
herbage, and some sleeping among the bushes. The singularity of his

humour made him much observed. One of the sages, in whose
conversation he had formerly delighted, followed him secretly, in hope
of discovering the cause of his disquiet. Rasselas, who knew not that
any one was near him, having for some time fixed his eyes upon the
goats that were browsing among the rocks, began to compare their
condition with his own.
"What," said he, "makes the difference between man and all the rest of
the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same
corporal necessities with myself: he is hungry, and crops the