man, that perhaps there is scarcely one that does not purpose to
close his life in pious abstraction, with a few associates serious
as himself."

"Such," said Pekuah, "has often been my wish, and I have heard the
Princess declare that she should not willingly die in a crowd."

"The liberty of using harmless pleasures," proceeded Imlac, "will
not be disputed, but it is still to be examined what pleasures are
harmless. The evil of any pleasure that Nekayah can image is not
in the act itself but in its consequences. Pleasure in itself
harmless may become mischievous by endearing to us a state which we
know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts
from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning,
and of which no length of time will bring us to the end.
Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use but
that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state
of future perfection to which we all aspire there will be pleasure
without danger and security without restraint."

The Princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the astronomer,
asked him whether he could not delay her retreat by showing her
something which she had not seen before.

"Your curiosity," said the sage, "has been so general, and your
pursuit of knowledge so vigorous, that novelties are not now very
easily to be found; but what you can no longer procure from the
living may be given by the dead. Among the wonders of this country
are the catacombs, or the ancient repositories in which the bodies
of the earliest generations were lodged, and where, by the virtue