here, 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. He interested the prince in a
project of flying, and undertook to construct a pair of wings, in which
he would himself attempt an aerial flight. But, alas! when in a year's
time the wings were ready, and their contriver waved them and leaped
from the little promontory on which he had taken his stand, he merely
dropped into the lake, his wings only serving to sustain him in the
water.

The prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, and he soon forgot
any disappointment he had felt in the society and conversation of a new
artist--a poet called Imlac--who delighted him by the narrative of his
travels and dealings with men in various parts of Africa and Asia.

"Hast thou here found happiness at last?" asked Rasselas. "Tell me,
without reserve, art thou content with thy condition, or dost thou wish
to be again wandering and inquiring? All the inhabitants of this valley
celebrate their lot, and at the annual visit of the emperor invite
others to partake of their felicity. Is this felicity genuine or
feigned?"

"Great prince," said Imlac, "I shall speak the truth. I know not one of
all your attendants who does not lament the hour when he entered this
retreat. I am less unhappy than the rest, because I have a mind replete
with images, which I can vary and combine at pleasure. The rest, whose
minds have no impression but the present moment, are either corroded by
malignant passions, or sit steeped in the gloom of perpetual vacancy."

"What passions can infect those," said the prince, "who have no rivals?
We are in a place where impotence precludes malice, and where all envy
is repressed by community of enjoyments."

"There may be community of material possessions," said Imlac, "but there
can never be community of love or of esteem. It must happen that one
will please more than another. He that knows himself despised will
always be envious, and still more envious and malevolent if he is
condemned to live in the presence of those who despise him. The
invitations by which the inhabitants of the valley allure others to a
state which they feel to be wretched proceed from the natural malignity
of hopeless misery. I look with pity on the crowds who are annually
soliciting admission to captivity, and wish that it were lawful for me
to warn