Summary

The speaker declares that a country-house "appears" both "sacred and innocent," free from the troubles that affect life in the city (2, 4). She compares life in the countryside to the ideal world that humanity enjoyed in the Garden of Eden and to the Golden Age described by Plato in The Republic. She imagines an ideal world in which no one envies anyone else's money and where there is no infidelity. They foraged for their food rather than hunting or raising animals. They lived in ideal harmony, relying only on what humans naturally have access to.

The speaker welcomes "dearest solitude" (29). She concludes that life in the countryside is only "rude" and uncivilized if people are too uncivilized to appreciate it (31). People ought to "despise" the idea of having many possessions and participating in society (36). By believing her "fate" to be the best one possible, she...