But whatever reasons may have induced them to quit the country, and to settle in the towns, no temporal advantages can make up to them, as a society, the measure of their loss.  For when we consider that the Quakers never partake of the amusements of the world; that their worldly pleasures are chiefly of a domestic nature; that calmness, and quietude, and abstraction from worldly thoughts, to which rural retirement is peculiarly favourable, is the state of mind which they themselves acknowledge to be required by their religion, it would seem that the country was peculiarly the place for their habitations.

It would seem, also as if, by this forsaking of the country, they had deprived themselves of many opportunities of the highest enjoyment of which they are capable as Quakers.  The objects in the country are peculiarly favourable to the improvement of morality in the exercise of the spiritual feelings.  The bud and the blossom, the rising and the falling leaf, the blade of corn and the ear, the seed time and the harvest, the sun that warms and ripens, the cloud that cools and emits the fruitful shower; these, and an hundred objects, afford daily food for the religious growth of the mind.  Even the natural man is pleased with these.  They excite in him natural ideas, and produce in him a natural kind of pleasure.  But the spiritual man experiences a sublimer joy.  He sees none of these without feeling both spiritual improvement and delight.  It is here that he converses with the Deity in his works:  It is here that he finds himself grateful for his goodness—­that he acknowledges his wisdom—­that he expresses his admiration of his power.

The poet Cowper, in his contemplation of a country life, speaks forcibly on this subject.

“O friendly to the best pursuits of man, Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace, Domestic life, in rural leisure pass’d!  Few know thy value, and few taste thy sweets; Though many boast thy favours, and affect To understand and choose these for their own But foolish man forgoes his proper bliss, Ev’n as his first progenitor, and quits, Though plac’d in Paradise, (for earth has still Some traces of her youthful beauty left,) Substantial happiness for transient joy.  Scenes form’d for contemplation, and to nurse The growing seeds of wisdom, that suggest By every pleasing image they present, Reflections, such as meliorate the heart, Compose the passions, and exalt the mind."

William Penn, in the beautiful letter which he left his wife and children before his first voyage to America, speaks also in strong terms upon the point in question.