"I will confess," said the Prince, "an indulgence of fantastic
delight more dangerous than yours. I have frequently endeavoured
to imagine the possibility of a perfect government, by which all
wrong should be restrained, all vice reformed, and all the subjects
preserved in tranquillity and innocence. This thought produced
innumerable schemes of reformation, and dictated many useful
regulations and salutary effects. This has been the sport and
sometimes the labour of my solitude, and I start when I think with
how little anguish I once supposed the death of my father and my
brothers."

"Such," said Imlac, "are the effects of visionary schemes. When we
first form them, we know them to be absurd, but familiarise them by
degrees, and in time lose sight of their folly."



CHAPTER XLV--THEY DISCOURSE WITH AN OLD MAN.



The evening was now far past, and they rose to return home. As
they walked along the banks of the Nile, delighted with the beams
of the moon quivering on the water, they saw at a small distance an
old man whom the Prince had often heard in the assembly of the
sages. "Yonder," said he, "is one whose years have calmed his
passions, but not clouded his reason. Let us close the
disquisitions of the night by inquiring what are his sentiments of
his own state, that we may know whether youth alone is to struggle
with vexation, and whether any better hope remains for the latter