as these have been frequently resorted to, they will have got into the habit as the necessary enjoyments of life.  Take away then from persons in such habits the power of these their ordinary gratifications, and you will make them languid, and even wretched.  There will be a wide chasm, which they will not know how to fill up; a dull vacuum of time, which will make their existence insipid; a disappointment, which will carry with it a lacerating sting.  In some of the higher circles of life, accustomed to such rounds of pleasure, who does not know that the Sunday is lamented as the most cruel interrupter of their enjoyments?—­No shopping in the morning—­no theatre or route in the evening—­Nothing but dull heavy church stares them in the face.  But I will not carry this picture to the length to which I am capable.  I shall only observe that, where persons adopt a routine of constituted pleasures, they are creating fictitious wants for themselves, and making their own happiness subject to interruption, and putting it into the power of others.  The Quakers, however, by the total rejection of all the amusements included in the routine alluded to, know nothing of the drawbacks or disadvantages described.

The Quakers again are exempt from several of the causes of uneasiness, which attach to the world at large.  Some go to the gaming-table, and ruin themselves and their families, and destroy the peace of their minds.  But the Quakers are never found injuring their fortunes or their happiness by such disreputable means.

Others disturb the harmony of their lives by intemperate sallies of passion.  It has been well observed, that, whatever may be the duration of a man’s anger, so much time he loses of the enjoyment of his life.  The Quakers, however, have but few miserable moments on this account.  A due subjugation of the passions has been generally instilled into them from early youth.  Provocation seldom produces in them any intemperate warmth, or takes away, in any material degree, from the apparent composure of their minds.

Others again, by indulging their anger, are often hurried into actions of which the consequences vex and torment them, and of which they often bitterly repent.  But the Quakers endeavour to avoid quarrelling, and therefore they often steer clear of the party and family feuds of others.  They avoid also, as much as possible, the law, so that they have seldom any of the lawsuits to harass and disturb them, which interrupt the tranquillity of others by the heavy expence, and by the lasting enmities they occasion.

The Quakers again are exempt from many of the other passions which contribute to the unhappiness of the world at large.  Some men have an almost boundless ambition.  They are desirous of worldly honours, or of eminent stations, or of a public name, and pursue these objects in their passage through life with an avidity which disturbs the repose of their minds.  But the Quakers scarcely know any such feeling as that of ambition, and of course scarcely any of the torments that belong to it.  They are less captivated by the splendour of honours than any other people, and they had rather live in the memory of a few valuable friends, than be handed down to posterity for those deeds, which generally constitute the basis of public character.