shall not require me to make wings for any but ourselves. Why, said Rasselas, should you envy others so great an advantage? All skill ought to be exerted for universal good; every man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the kindness that he has received. -If men were all virtuous, returned the artist, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds, neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas, could afford any security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the wind, and light at once with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region that was rolling under them. Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on the coast of the Southern Sea. » The prince promised secrecy, and waited for the performance, not wholly hopeless of success. He visited the work from time to time, observed its progress, and remarked many ingenious contrivances to facilitate motion, and unite levity with strength. The artist was every day more secret, et que vous n'exigerez jamais que je fasse des ailes pour d'autres que pour nous. Pourquoi, dit le prince, priver les autres d'un si grand avantage? On doit toujours travailler dans l'intérêt de tous. Il n'y a pas un seul homme qui n'ait des obligations à ses semblables, et il faut rendre le bien qu'on en a reçu. -Si les hommes étaient tous vertueux, reprit l'artiste, je m'empresserais de leur apprendre à voler; mais où serait la sécurité des bons, si les méchans pouvaient à leur gré tomber sur eux du haut des airs? Contre des armées voguant sur les nuages, quels remparts, quelles montagnes, quelles mers offriraient un abri? Une bande de barbares, amenée du nord sur l'aile des vents, pourrait fondre avec une irrésistible violence sur la capitale d'une contrée fertile placée au-dessous de sa route. L'enceinte même de notre vallée, retraite des princes et séjour du bonheur, pourrait être violée par l'irruption soudaine de quelques unes des nations nues et sauvages qui fourmillent sur les côtes de la mer du Sud.» Le prince promit le secret, et attendit l'exécution non sans espoir. Il allait de temps en temps voir le travail, étudiait ses progrès, et remarquait plusieurs dispositions ingénieuses destinées à faciliter la manœuvre des ailes en unissant la légèreté à la force. L'artiste se persuadait chaque jour davantage certain that he should leave vultures and eagles behind him, and the contagion of his confidence upon the prince. seized In a year the wings were finished, and, on a morning appointed, the maker appeared furnished for flight on a little promontory: he waved his pinions awhile to gather air, then leaped from his stand, and in an instant dropped into the lake. His wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained him in the water, and the prince drew him to land, half dead with terror and vexation. CHAPTER VII. THE PRINCE FINDS A MAN OF LEARNING. THE prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, having suffered himself to hope for a happier event, only because he had no other means of escape in view. He still persisted in his design to leave the happy valley by the first opportunity. His imagination was now at a stand; he had no prospect of entering into the world, and, notwithstanding all his endeavours to support que son mécanisme laisserait les vautours et les aigles bien loin derrière lui, et cette confiance finit par s'emparer également du prince. Au bout d'un an le travail fut terminé, et au jour fixé, le mécanicien, muni de son appareil, se rendit sur un petit promontoire. Là, après avoir balancé quelque temps ses ailes, il prit son élan, et alla tomber droit dans le lac. Ses ailes, qui n'avaient pu lui servir dans l'air, le soutinrent sur l'eau, d'où le prince parvint à le ramener sur la rive à moitié mort de dépit et de peur. CHAPITRE VII. LE PRINCE RENCONTRE UN SAVANT. RASSELAS ne fut pas trop affligé de ce résultat, dont il n'avait mieux auguré que faute d'avoir alors en vue d'autres moyens de fuir, et il persista dans son projet de quitter l'heureuse vallée à la première occasion. Mais son imagination restait en défaut. Il n'apercevait aucune voie pour pénétrer dans le monde, et malgré sa ferme résolution, le découragement vint himself, discontent by degrees preyed upon him, and he began again to lose his thoughts in sadness, when the rainy season, which in these countries is periodical, made it inconvenient to wander in the woods. The rain continued longer and with more violence than had been ever known; the clouds broke on the surrounding mountains, and the torrents streamed into the plain on every side, till the cavern was too narrow to discharge the water. The lake overflowed its banks, and all the level of the valley was covered with the inundation. The eminence on which the palace was built, and some other spots of rising ground, were all that the eye could now discover. The herds and flocks left the pastures, and both the wild beasts and the tame retreated to the mountains. . This inundation confined all the princes to domestic amusements, and the attention of Rasselas was particularly seized by a poem, which Imlac rehearsed, upon the various condition of humanity. He commanded the poet to attend him in his apartment, and recite his verses a second time; then entering into familiar talk, he thought himself happy in having found a man who knew the world so well, and |