the highest military rank. At last, being disgusted by the preferments
of a younger officer, I resolved to close my life in peace, having found
the world full of snares, discord, and misery. For some time after my
retreat I rejoiced like a tempest-beaten sailor at his entrance into the
harbour. When the pleasure of novelty went away, I employed my hours in
examining the plants and minerals of the place. But that inquiry is now
grown tasteless and irksome, and I have been for some time unsettled and
distracted. I am sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure
myself from vice but by retiring 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