"Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness,"
said Nekayah, "this world will never afford an opportunity of
deciding. But this, at least, may be maintained, that we do not
always find visible happiness in proportion to visible virtue. All
natural and almost all political evils are incident alike to the
bad and good; they are confounded in the misery of a famine, and
not much distinguished in the fury of a faction; they sink together
in a tempest and are driven together from their country by
invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience
and a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to
endure calamity with patience, but remember that patience must
oppose pain."



CHAPTER XXVIII--RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION.



"Dear Princess," said Rasselas, "you fall into the common errors of
exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a familiar disquisition
examples of national calamities and scenes of extensive misery
which are found in books rather than in the world, and which, as
they are horrid, are ordained to be rare. Let us not imagine evils
which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations. I
cannot bear that querulous eloquence which threatens every city
with a siege like that of Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on
every flight of locust, and suspends pestilence on the wing of
every blast that issues from the south.