from the exercise of virtue, and begin
to suspect that I was rather impelled by resentment than led by devotion
into solitude. I have been long comparing the evils with the advantages
of society, and resolve to return into the world to-morrow."

They accompanied him back to the city, on which, as he approached it, he
gazed with rapture.

A day or two later Rasselas was relating his interview with the hermit
at an assembly of learned men, who met at stated intervals to compare
their opinions.

"The way to be happy," said one of them, "is to live according to
nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which
every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by
precept, but engraven by design, not instilled by education, but infused
at our nativity."

When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed
the consciousness of his own beneficence.

"Sir," said the prince, with great modesty, "as I, like all the rest of
mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed
upon your discourse. I doubt not the truth of a position which so
learned a man has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is
to live according to nature."

"When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the philosopher,
"I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to
afford. To live according to nature is to act always with due regard to
the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and
effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal
felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the
present system of things."

The prince soon found that this was a sage whom he should understand
less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed, and was silent; and the
philosopher, supposing him satisfied, departed with the air of a man who
had co-operated with the present system.

_IV.--Happiness They Find Not_

Rasselas returned home full of reflections, and finding that Imlac
seemed to discourage a continuance of the search, began _to_ discourse
more freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself.

"We will divide the task between us," said she. "You shall try what is
to be found in the splendour of courts, and I will range the shades of
humbler life."

Accordingly, the prince appeared next day, with a splendid retinue, at
the court of the bassa. But he soon found that the