"That I want nothing," said the prince, "or that I know not what I want,
is the cause of my complaint. If I had only known a want, I should have
a certain wish, and that wish would excite endeavour for its
satisfaction. I have already enjoyed too much. Give me something to
desire."

"Sir," said the old man, "if you had seen the miseries of the world, you
would know how to value your present state."

"Now," said the prince, "you have given me something to desire. I shall
long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is
necessary to happiness."

_II.--The Escape Into the Outer World_

The stimulus of this new desire--the desire of seeing the world--soon
had its effect in making Rasselas no longer gloomy and unsociable.
Considering himself as master of a secret stock of happiness, he
affected to be busy in all the assemblies and schemes of diversion,
because he supposed the frequency of his presence necessary to the
success of his purposes. He retired gladly to privacy, because in
picturing to himself that world which he had never seen he had now a
subject of thought.

Thus passed twenty months of his life; he busied himself so intensely in
visionary bustle that he forgot his real solitude. But one day the
consciousness of his own folly and inaction pierced him deeply. He
compared twenty months with the life of man. "The period of human
existence," said he, "may be reasonably estimated at forty years, of
which I have mused away the four-and-twentieth part."

These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he passed four
months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves. Then,
awakening to more vigorous exertion, he for a few hours regretted his
regret, and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means of
escaping from the Valley of Happiness.

He now found that it would be very difficult to effect that which it was
very easy to suppose effected. He passed week after week in clambering
the mountains, but found all the summits inaccessible by their
prominence. The iron gate was not only secured with all the power of
art, but was always watched by successive sentinels. In these fruitless
researches he spent ten months. The time, however, passed cheerfully
away, for he met a thousand amusements which beguiled his labour and
diversified his thought.

A little while afterwards he began to cherish hopes of escaping from the
valley by quite a different way. Among the artists allowed t