Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia | Page 6

the walls of his prison, and spared to
search by new toils for interstices which he knew could not be found,
yet determined to keep his design always in view, and lay hold on any
expedient that time should offer.
CHAPTER VI
--A DISSERTATION ON THE ART OF FLYING.

Among the artists that had been allured into the Happy Valley, to
labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a
man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanic powers, who had
contrived many engines both of use and recreation. By a wheel which
the stream turned he forced the water into a tower, whence it was
distributed to all the apartments of the palace. He erected a pavilion in
the garden, around which he kept the air always cool by artificial
showers. One of the groves, appropriated to the ladies, was ventilated

by fans, to which the rivulets that ran through it gave a constant motion;
and instruments of soft music were played at proper distances, of which
some played by the impulse of the wind, and some by the power of the
stream.
This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas who was pleased with
every kind of knowledge, imagining that the time would come when all
his acquisitions should be of use to him in the open world. He came
one day to amuse himself in his usual manner, and found the master
busy in building a sailing chariot. He saw that the design was
practicable upon a level surface, and with expressions of great esteem
solicited its completion. The workman was pleased to find himself so
much regarded by the Prince, and resolved to gain yet higher honours.
"Sir," said he, "you have seen but a small part of what the mechanic
sciences can perform. I have been long of opinion that, instead of the
tardy conveyance of ships and chariots, man might use the swifter
migration of wings, that the fields of air are open to knowledge, and
that only ignorance and idleness need crawl upon the ground."
This hint rekindled the Prince's desire of passing the mountains. Having
seen what the mechanist had already performed, he was willing to
fancy that he could do more, yet resolved to inquire further before he
suffered hope to afflict him by disappointment. "I am afraid," said he to
the artist, "that your imagination prevails over your skill, and that you
now tell me rather what you wish than what you know. Every animal
has his element assigned him; the birds have the air, and man and
beasts the earth." "So," replied the mechanist, "fishes have the water, in
which yet beasts can swim by nature and man by art. He that can swim
needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is
to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance
to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You
will be necessarily up-borne by the air if you can renew any impulse
upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure."
"But the exercise of swimming," said the Prince, "is very laborious; the
strongest limbs are soon wearied. I am afraid the act of flying will be
yet more violent; and wings will be of no great use unless we can fly

further than we can swim."
"The labour of rising from the ground," said the artist, "will be great, as
we see it in the heavier domestic fowls; but as we mount higher the
earth's attraction and the body's gravity will be gradually diminished,
till we shall arrive at a region where the man shall float in the air
without any tendency to fall; no care will then be necessary but to
move forward, which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir, whose
curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a
philosopher, furnished with wings and hovering in the sky, would see
the earth and all its inhabitants rolling beneath him, and presenting to
him successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the
same parallel. How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the
moving scene of land and ocean, cities and deserts; to survey with
equal security the marts of trade and the fields of battle; mountains
infested by barbarians, and fruitful regions gladdened by plenty and
lulled by peace. How easily shall we then trace the Nile through all his
passages, pass over to distant regions, and examine the face of nature
from one extremity of the earth to the other."
"All this," said the Prince, "is much to be desired, but I am afraid that
no man will be able to breathe in these regions of speculation