fforts; but, resolving to weary, by
perseverance, him whom he could not surpass in speed, he pressed on till
the foot of the mountain stopped his course.

Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own useless impetuosity.
Then, raising his eyes to the mountain, "This," said he, "is the fatal
obstacle that hinders, at once, the enjoyment of pleasure, and the
exercise of virtue. How long is it that my hopes and wishes have flown
beyond this boundary of my life, which, yet, I never have attempted to
surmount!"

Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse; and remembered, that,
since he first resolved to escape from his confinement, the sun had
passed twice over him in his annual course. He now felt a degree of
regret, with which he had never been before acquainted. He considered,
how much might have been done in the time which had passed, and left
nothing real behind it. He compared twenty months with the life of man.
"In life," said he, "is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy, or
imbecility of age. We are long, before we are able to think, and we soon
cease from the power of acting. The true period of human existence may
be reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away the
four and twentieth part. What I have lost was certain, for I have
certainly possessed it; but of twenty months to come, who can assure
me?"

The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was long
before he could be reconciled to himself. "The rest of my time," said
he, "has been lost, by the crime or folly of my ancestors, and the
absurd institutions of my country; I remember it with disgust, yet
without remorse: but the months that have passed, since new light darted
into my soul, since I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have been
squandered by my own fault. I have lost that which can never be
restored: I have seen the sun rise and set for twenty months, an idle
gazer on the light of heaven: in this time, the birds have left the nest
of their mother, and committed themselves to the woods and to the skies:
the kid has forsaken the teat, and learned, by degrees, to climb the
rocks, in quest of independent sustenance. I only have made no advances,
but am still helpless and ignorant. The moon, by more than twenty
changes, admonished me of the flux of life; the stream, that rolled
before my feet, upbraided my inactivity. I sat feasting on intellectual
luxury, regardless alike of the examples of th