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 my 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 lutanist 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 within 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 desires, 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 ye 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.

CHAP.  III.

THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHING.

On the next day, his old instructor, imagining that he had now made himself acquainted with his disease of mind, was in hope of curing it by counsel, and officiously sought an opportunity of conference, which the prince, having long considered him, as one whose intellects were exhausted, was not very willing to afford:  “Why,” said he, “does this man thus obtrude upon me? shall I be never suffered to forget those lectures, which pleased, only while they were new, and to become new again, must be forgotten?” He then walked into the wood, and composed himself to his usual meditations, when, before his thoughts had taken any settled form, he perceived his pursuer at his side, and was, at first, prompted, by his impatience, to go hastily away; but, being unwilling to offend a man, whom he had once reverenced, and still loved, he invited him to sit down with him on the bank.