friendship, and partook of all their projects and pleasures; his
respect kept him attentive, and the activity of Rasselas did not
leave much time unengaged. Something was always to be done; the
day was spent in making observations, which furnished talk for the
evening, and the evening was closed with a scheme for the morrow.

The sage confessed to Imlac that since he had mingled in the gay
tumults of life, and divided his hours by a succession of
amusements, he found the conviction of his authority over the skies
fade gradually from his mind, and began to trust less to an opinion
which he never could prove to others, and which he now found
subject to variation, from causes in which reason had no part. "If
I am accidentally left alone for a few hours," said he, "my
inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are
chained down by some irresistible violence; but they are soon
disentangled by the Prince's conversation, and instantaneously
released at the entrance of Pekuah. I am like a man habitually
afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at
the dread which harassed him in the dark; yet, if his lamp be
extinguished, feels again the terrors which he knows that when it
is light he shall feel no more. But I am sometimes afraid, lest I
indulge my quiet by criminal negligence, and voluntarily forget the
great charge with which I am entrusted. If I favour myself in a
known error, or am determined by my own ease in a doubtful question
of this importance, how dreadful is my crime!"

"No disease of the imagination," answered Imlac, "is so difficult
of cure as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt; fancy
and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift
their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from