Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

other's attention fixed, p

torn with factions and exposed to revolutions. An unpractised observer expects the love of parents and children to be constant and equal. But this kindness seldom c

the parents; and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children. Thus, some place th

cy, of expectation and experience, without crime or folly on either side. The colours of life in youth and age appear different, as th

old man deifies prudence; the youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance. The young man, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and therefore acts with openness and candour; but his father; having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect and too often allured to practise it. A

oice of acquaintance. I am unwilling to believe that the most tender

the good and the evil cannot well agree, and the evil can yet less agree with one another. Even the virtuous fall sometimes to variance, when their virtues

by the caprice of rich relations, whom they cannot please and dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious and some wives perverse, and, as it is alw

hall for the future think it dangerous to connect my interest with

ghts. They act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority that fills their minds with rancour and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home and malevolent abroad, and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them

quire the less we can resolve. Surely he is most likely t