and ten I will pass in foreign countries; I shall be learned, and, therefore, shall be honoured; every city will shout at my arrival, and every student will solicit my friendship.  Twenty years thus passed will store my mind with images, which I shall be busy through the rest of my life in combining and comparing.  I shall revel in inexhaustible accumulations of intellectual riches; I shall find new pleasures for every moment, and shall never more be weary of myself.  I will, however, not deviate too far from the beaten track of life, but will try what can be found in female delicacy.  I will marry a wife beautiful as the Houries, and wise as Zobeide; with her I will live twenty years within the suburbs of Bagdat, in every pleasure that wealth can purchase and fancy can invent.  I will then retire to a rural dwelling, pass my last days in obscurity and contemplation, and lie silently down on the bed of death.  Through my life it shall be my settled resolution, that I will never depend upon the smile of princes; that I will never stand exposed to the artifices of courts; I will never pant for publick honours, nor disturb my quiet with affairs of state.  Such was my scheme of life, which I impressed indelibly upon my memory.

The first part of my ensuing time was to be spent in search of knowledge; and I know not how I was diverted from my design.  I had no visible impediments without, nor any ungovernable passions within.  I regarded knowledge as the highest honour and the most engaging pleasure; yet day stole upon day, and month glided after month, till I found that seven years of the first ten had vanished, and left nothing behind them.  I now postponed my purpose of travelling; for why should I go abroad while so much remained to be learned at home?  I immured myself for four years, and studied the laws of the empire.  The fame of my skill reached the judges; I was found able to speak upon doubtful questions, and was commanded to stand at the footstool of the calif.  I was heard with attention, I was consulted with confidence, and the love of praise fastened on my heart.

I still wished to see distant countries, listened with rapture to the relations of travellers, and resolved some time to ask my dismission, that I might feast my soul with novelty; but my presence was always necessary, and the stream of business hurried me along.  Sometimes I was afraid lest I should be charged with ingratitude; but I still proposed to travel, and, therefore, would, not confine myself by marriage.

In my fiftieth year I began to suspect that the time of travelling was past, and thought it best to lay hold on the felicity yet in my power, and indulge myself in domestick pleasures.  But at fifty no man easily finds a woman beautiful as the Houries, and wise as Zobeide.  I inquired and rejected, consulted and deliberated, till the sixty-second year made me ashamed of gazing upon girls.  I had now nothing left but retirement, and for retirement I never found a time, till disease forced me from publick employment.