“’One day, as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt, in my mind, a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation.  In the hurry of my imagination, I commanded rain to fall, and, by comparing the time of my command with that of the inundation, I found, that the clouds had listened to my lips.’

“Might not some other cause,” said I, “produce this concurrence? the Nile does not always rise on the same day.

“‘Do not believe,’ said he, with impatience, ’that such objections could escape me:  I reasoned long against my own conviction, and laboured against truth with the utmost obstinacy.  I sometimes suspected myself of madness, and should not have dared to impart this secret, but to a man like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impossible, and the incredible from the false.’

“Why, sir,” said I, “do you call that incredible, which you know, or think you know, to be true?

“‘Because,’ said he, ’I cannot prove it by any external evidence; and I know, too well, the laws of demonstration, to think that my conviction ought to influence another, who cannot, like me, be conscious of its force.  I, therefore, shall not attempt to gain credit by disputation.  It is sufficient, that I feel this power, that I have long possessed, and every day exerted it.  But the life of man is short, the infirmities of age increase upon me, and the time will soon come, when the regulator of the year must mingle with the dust.  The care of appointing a successour has long disturbed me; the night and the day have been spent in comparisons of all the characters which have come to my knowledge, and I have yet found none so worthy as thyself.’

CHAP.  XLIII.

THE ASTRONOMER LEAVES IMLAC HIS DIRECTIONS.

“’Hear, therefore, what I shall impart, with attention, such as the welfare of the world requires.  If the task of a king be considered as difficult, who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do much good or harm, what must be the anxiety of him, on whom depends the action of the elements, and the great gifts of light and heat!—­Hear me, therefore, with attention.

“’I have diligently considered the position of the earth and sun, and formed innumerable schemes, in which I changed their situation.  I have sometimes turned aside the axis of the earth, and sometimes varied the ecliptick of the sun:  but I have found it impossible to make a disposition, by which the world may be advantaged; what one region gains, another loses by an imaginable alteration, even without considering the distant parts of the solar system, with which ye are unacquainted.  Do not, therefore, in thy administration of the year, indulge thy pride by innovation; do not please thyself with thinking, that thou canst make thyself renowned to all future ages, by disordering the seasons.  The memory of mischief is no desirable fame.  Much less will it become thee to let kindness or interest prevail.  Never rob other countries of rain to pour it on thine own.  For us the Nile is sufficient.’