Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse; and remembered, that, since he first resolved to escape from his confinement, the sun had passed twice over him in his annual course.  He now felt a degree of regret, with which he had never been before acquainted.  He considered, how much might have been done in the time which had passed, and left nothing real behind it.  He compared twenty months with the life of man.  “In life,” said he, “is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy, or imbecility of age.  We are long, before we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power of acting.  The true period of human existence may be reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away the four and twentieth part.  What I have lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed it; but of twenty months to come, who can assure me?”

The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was long before he could be reconciled to himself.  “The rest of my time,” said he, “has been lost, by the crime or folly of my ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my country; I remember it with disgust, yet without remorse:  but the months that have passed, since new light darted into my soul, since I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have been squandered by my own fault.  I have lost that which can never be restored:  I have seen the sun rise and set for twenty months, an idle gazer on the light of heaven:  in this time, the birds have left the nest of their mother, and committed themselves to the woods and to the skies:  the kid has forsaken the teat, and learned, by degrees, to climb the rocks, in quest of independent sustenance.  I only have made no advances, but am still helpless and ignorant.  The moon, by more than twenty changes, admonished me of the flux of life; the stream, that rolled before my feet, upbraided my inactivity.  I sat feasting on intellectual luxury, regardless alike of the examples of the earth, and the instructions of the planets.  Twenty months are passed; who shall restore them?”

These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he passed four months, in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, and was awakened to more vigorous exertion, by hearing a maid, who had broken a porcelain cup, remark, that what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.

This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself, that he had not discovered it, having not known, or not considered, how many useful hints are obtained by chance, and how often the mind, hurried by her own ardour to distant views, neglects the truths that lie open before her.  He, for a few hours, regretted his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means of escaping from the valley of happiness.

CHAP.  V.

THE PRINCE MEDITATES HIS ESCAPE.