1 Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
2 … According to the custom which has descended from age to age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty, till the order of succession should call him to the throne.
3 The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which the summits overhang the middle part. 4 The only passage by which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, [and the] outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massive that no man, without the help of engines, could open or shut them.
5 From the mountains on every side rivulets descended that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water. 6 This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice till it was heard no more.
In Sentence 6, what is meant by “superfluities”?
- Excess water (correct answer)
- Non-native fish and fowl
- Minor noblemen or their children
- Functionaries
- Dignitaries
Explanation: Knowing that “superfluous” describes something excess or unnecessary would help with this question, but context clues can also give you the answer. In Sentence 6, we see that these “superfluities” are carried by a stream and fall “with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice.” In other words, the sentence is describing excess water that drains from the lake and falls in the form of roaring waterfalls. Passage adapted from Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia (1759)