them a care and concern for the distressed. It elevates their ideas. It raises in them a sense of their own dignity and importance as human beings, which sets them above every thing that is little and trifling, and above all idle parade and show. Fond as they are of the animal-creation, you do not see them lavishing their caresses on lap-dogs, to the contempt of the poor and miserable of their own species. You never see them driving from shop to shop to make up a morning's amusement by examining and throwing out of order the various articles of tradesmen, giving them great trouble, and buying nothing in return. You never find them calling upon those, whom they know to be absent from their homes, thus making their mimic visits, and leaving their useless cards. Nothing, in short, so ridiculous or degrading is known among them. Their pursuits are rational, useful, and dignified: and they may be said in general to exhibit a model for the employment of time, worthy of the character they profess.

MISCEL

MISCELLANEOUS

PARTICULARS

RELATIVE TO THE

QUAKER S.

CHAPTER I.

Quakers a happy people-subordinate causes of this happiness-namely, their comfortable situation— their attachment to domestic life—their almost constant employment—this happiness not broken, like that of others, by an interruption of the routine of constituted pleasures-or by anger and other passions-or by particular inquiries and notions about religion.

If a person were to judge of the Quakers by the general gravity of their countenances, and were to take into consideration, at the same time, the circumstance that they never partook of the amusements of the world, in which he placed a part of his own pleasures, he would be induced to conclude that they had dull and gloomy minds, and that they

could

could not be upon the whole a happy pecple. Such a conclusion, however, would be contrary to the fact. On my first acquaintance with them, I was surprised, seeing the little variety of their pursuits, at the happiness, which they appeared to enjoy; but as I came to a knowledge of the constitution and state of the Society, the solution of the problem became easy.

It will not be difficult to develop the subordinate causes of this happiness*. To show the first of these, I shall view the Society in the three classes of the rich, the middle, and the poor. Of the rich I may observe, that they are not so affluent in general as the rich of other bodies. Of the middle, that they are upon the whole in better circumstances than others of the same class in life. Of the poor, that they are not so poor as others in a similar condition. Now the rich in the Society have of course as many of the com

* Religion, which includes positive virtues and an absence from vices, joined to a peaceful conscience and a well-grounded hope of a better life, is the first and greatest cause of happiness, and may belong to all: but I confine myself in this chapter to such causes as may be called subordinate, and in which the Quakers are more particularly concerned.

forts