always near, and it should therefore always
be expected.« »Young man, answered the philosopher, you speak like one that has
never felt the pangs of separation.« »Have you then forgot the precepts, said
Rasselas, which you so powerfully enforced? Has wisdom no strength to arm the
heart against calamity? Consider, that external things are naturally variable,
but truth and reason are always the same.« »What comfort, said the mourner, can
truth and reason afford me? of what effect are they now, but to tell me, that my
daughter will not be restored?«
    The prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult misery with
reproof, went away convinced of the emptiness of rhetorical sound, and the
inefficacy of polished periods and studied sentences.
 

                                  Chapter XIX

                           A Glimpse of pastoral life

He was still eager upon the same inquiry; and, having heard of a hermit, that
lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile, and filled the whole country with
the fame of his sanctity, resolved to visit his retreat, and inquire whether
that felicity, which publick life could not afford, was to be found in solitude;
and whether a man, whose age and virtue made him venerable, could teach any
peculiar art of shunning evils, or enduring them.
    Imlac and the princess agreed to accompany him, and, after the necessary
preparations, they began their journey. Their way lay through fields, where
shepherds tended their flocks, and the lambs were playing upon the pasture.
»This, said the poet, is the life which has been often celebrated for its
innocence and quiet: let us pass the heat of the day among the shepherds' tents,
and know whether all our searches are not to terminate in pastoral simplicity.«
    The proposal pleased them, and they induced the shepherds, by small presents
and familiar questions, to tell their opinion of their own state: they were so
rude and ignorant, so little able to compare the good with the evil of the
occupation, and so indistinct in their narratives and descriptions, that very
little could be learned from them. But it was evident that their hearts were
cankered with discontent; that they considered themselves as condemned to labour
for the luxury of the rich, and looked up with stupid malevolence toward those
that were placed above them.
    The princess pronounced with vehemence, that she would never suffer these
envious savages to be her companions, and that she should not soon be desirous
of seeing any more specimens of rustick happiness; but could not believe that
all the accounts of primeval pleasures were fabulous, and