wisdom. The lecturer hesitated a moment, when Rasselas put a purse
of gold into his hand, which he received with a mixture of joy and
wonder.

"I have found," said the Prince at his return to Imlac, "a man who
can teach all that is necessary to be known; who, from the unshaken
throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the scenes of life
changing beneath him. He speaks, and attention watches his lips.
He reasons, and conviction closes his periods. This man shall be
my future guide: I will learn his doctrines and imitate his life."

"Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the teachers
of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men."

Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man could reason so
forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own arguments, paid his
visit in a few days, and was denied admission. He had now learned
the power of money, and made his way by a piece of gold to the
inner apartment, where he found the philosopher in a room half
darkened, with his eyes misty and his face pale. "Sir," said he,
"you are come at a time when all human friendship is useless; what
I suffer cannot be remedied: what I have lost cannot be supplied.
My daughter, my only daughter, from whose tenderness I expected all
the comforts of my age, died last night of a fever. My views, my
purposes, my hopes, are at an end: I am now a lonely being,
disunited from society."

"Sir," said the Prince, "mortality is an event by which a wise man
can never be surprised: we know that death is always near, and it
should therefore always be expected." "Young man," answered the