"
"And I," said the princess, "will not allow myself any more to play the
shepherdess in my waking dreams. I have often soothed my thoughts with
the quiet and innocence of pastoral employments, till I have, in my
chamber, heard the winds whistle, and the sheep bleat: sometimes freed
the lamb entangled in the thicket, and, sometimes, with my crook,
encountered the wolf. I have a dress like that of the village maids,
which I put on to help my imagination, and a pipe, on which I play
softly, and suppose myself followed by my flocks."
"I will confess," said the prince, "an indulgence of fantastick delight
more dangerous than yours. I have frequently endeavoured to image the
possibility of a perfect government, by which all wrong should be
restrained, all vice reformed, and all the subjects preserved in
tranquillity and innocence. This thought produced innumerable schemes of
reformation, and dictated many useful regulations and salutary edicts.
This has been the sport, and sometimes the labour, of my solitude; and I
start, when I think, with how little anguish I once supposed the death
of my father and my brothers."
"Such," said Imlac, "are the effects of visionary schemes; when we first
form them, we know them to be absurd, but familiarize them by degrees,
and, in time, lose sight of their folly."
[a] See Traite Medico-philosophique sur l'Alienation Mentale, par
Pinel.
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