“Your learning and virtue,” said Imlac, “may justly give you hopes.”

Rasselas then entered with the princess and Pekuah, and inquired, whether they had contrived any new diversion for the next day?  “Such,” said Nekayah, “is the state of life, that none are happy, but by the anticipation of change:  the change itself is nothing:  when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.  The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something to-morrow, which I never saw before.”

“Variety,” said Rasselas, “is so necessary to content, that even the happy valley disgusted me by the recurrence of its luxuries; yet I could not forbear to reproach myself with impatience, when I saw the monks of St. Anthony support, without complaint, a life not of uniform delight, but uniform hardship.”

“Those men,” answered Imlac, “are less wretched in their silent convent, than the Abissinian princes in their prison of pleasure.  Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an adequate and reasonable motive.  Their labour supplies them with necessaries; it, therefore, cannot be omitted, and is certainly rewarded.  Their devotion prepares them for another state, and reminds them of its approach, while it fits them for it.  Their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless inactivity.  There is a certain task to be performed at an appropriated hour; and their toils are cheerful, because they consider them as acts of piety, by which they are always advancing towards endless felicity.”

“Do you think,” said Nekayah, “that the monastick rule is a more holy and less imperfect state than any other?  May not he equally hope for future happiness, who converses openly with mankind, who succours the distressed by his charity, instructs the ignorant by his learning, and contributes, by his industry, to the general system of life:  even though he should omit some of the mortifications which are practised in the cloister, and allow himself such harmless delights, as his condition may place within his reach.”

“This,” said Imlac, “is a question which has long divided the wise, and perplexed the good.  I am afraid to decide on either part.  He that lives well in the world, is better than he that lives well in a monastery.  But, perhaps, every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick life; and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat.  Some have little power to do good, and have, likewise, little strength to resist evil.  Many are weary of their conflicts with adversity, and are willing to eject those passions which have long busied them in vain.  And many are dismissed, by age and disease, from the more laborious duties of society.  In monasteries, the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered, the weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate.  Those retreats of prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of man, that, perhaps, there is scarcely one that does not propose to close his life in pious abstraction with a few associates, serious as himself.”