from the more laborious
duties of society. In monasteries the weak and timorous may be happily
sheltered, the weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate. Those retreats
of prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of 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 of the gums which embalmed them, they yet remain without corruption.«
    »I know not, said Rasselas, what pleasure the sight of the catacombs can
afford; but, since nothing else is offered, I am resolved to view them, and
shall place this with many other things which I have done, because I would do
something.«
    They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited the catacombs. When
they were about to descend into the sepulchral caves, »Pekuah, said the
princess, we are now again invading the habitations of the dead; I know that you
will stay behind; let me find you