THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.
HERE the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to know the soft
vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skilful to
delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can enjoy. They wandered
in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of security. Every
art was practised to make them pleased with their own condition. The
sages who instructed them told them of nothing but the miseries of public
life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity,
where discord was always racing, and where man preyed upon man. To
heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained
with songs, the subject of which was the Happy Valley. Their appetites
were excited by frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and
revelry and merriment were the business of every hour, from the dawn of
morning to the close of the evening.
These methods were generally successful; few of the princes had ever
wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full conviction
that they had all within their reach that art or nature could bestow, and
pitied those whom nature had excluded from this seat of tranquillity as
the sport of chance and the slaves of misery.
Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with each
other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in the twenty-sixth
year of his age, began to withdraw himself from the pastimes and
assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. He
often sat before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to taste the
dainties that were placed before him; he rose abruptly in the midst of
the song, and hastily retired beyond the sound of music. His attendants
observed the change, and endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure. He
neglected their officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent day
after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he
sometimes listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the
fish playing in the streams, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures and
mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the herbage, and
some sleeping among the bushes. The singularity of his humour made him
much observed. One of the sages, in whose conversation he had formerly
delighted, followed him secretly, in hope of discovering the cause of his
disquiet. Rasselas, who knew not that any one was near him, having for
some time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were browsing among the
rocks, began to compare their condition with his own.
“What,” said he, “makes the difference between man and all the rest of
the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same
corporal necessities with myself: he is hungry, and crops the grass; he
is thirsty, and drinks the stream; his thirst and hunger are appeased; he
is satisfied, and sleeps; he rises again, and is hungry; he is again fed,
and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty, like him, but when thirst and
hunger cease, I am not at rest. I am, like him, pained with want, but am
not, like him, satisfied with fulness. The intermediate hours are
tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry that I may again quicken
the attention. The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to
the groves, where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and
waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise
can call the lutist and the singer; but the sounds that pleased me
yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-morrow. I
can discover in me no power of perception which is not glutted with its
proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man surely has some
latent sense for which this place affords no gratification; or he has
some desire distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be
happy.”
After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon rising, walked
towards the palace. As he passed through the fields, and saw the animals
around him, “Ye,” said he, “are happy, and need not envy me that walk
thus among you, burdened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy
your felicity; for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses
from which you are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I sometimes
shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated:
surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with
peculiar enjoyments.”
With observations like these the Prince amused himself as he returned,
uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him
to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some
solace of the miseries of life from consciousness of the delicacy with
which he felt and the eloquence with which he bewailed them. He mingled
cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find
that his heart was lightened.