"Room in Brooklyn" (1932), by Edward Hopper
In The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton describes the city dweller's need to travel in the countryside by referencing the poems of William Wordsworth, who
"... proposed that nature - which he took to comprise, among other elements, birds, streams, daffodils and sheep - was an indispensable corrective to the psychological damage inflicted by life in the city.
The poet accused cities of fostering a family of life-destroying emotions: anxiety about our position in the social hierarchy, envy at the success of others, pride and a desire to shine in the eyes of strangers. City dwellers had no perspective, he alleged, they were in thrall to what was spoken of in the street or at the dinner table. However well provided for, they had a relentless desire for new things, which they did not genuinely lack and on which their happiness did not depend. And in this crowded, anxious sphere, it seemed harder than it did on an isolated homestead to begin sincere relationships with others."
An excerpt from Wordsworth's "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey":
[Nature] can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our chearful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
