However, we must not jump to the conclusion that the American Puritans were as freely inclined to the practice of music as their brethren across the sea. As a matter of fact, they had no musical life whatsoever. There are some points in the psychology and condition of the New England colonists which may help to explain this seeming anomaly. A large proportion of the people of England were Puritans merely because it was not safe or convenient for them to be anything else, and they changed their moral and theological complexions just as soon as a change in fashion rendered the transformation desirable. Many of the most prominent members of the Parliamentary party were drawn into the movement more through political ambition or democratic ideals than for religious reasons. Cromwell's famous 'Trust in God and keep your powder dry' might well express the mental attitude of more than a few of them. Even among the religious leaders were a goodly number whose only desire was to reform what they considered the ritualistic abuses in the English church of their time and who had not the slightest ambition to suppress the harmless pleasures of life or the ordinary manifestations of human instincts. The New England Puritans, on the other hand, were a select group of people who were driven across an inhospitable ocean to the barren shores of a strange land by the indomitable zeal of their convictions, the stern intractability of their consciences and the adamantine obstinacy of their independence. They were not Puritans merely in externals; they were Puritans to the core. Their view of life was uncompromisingly serious. The world was not to them a place for dalliance; it was a place for work, for the earnest sowing of seeds that might bring forth a harvest of grace and godliness, a harvest worthy to be garnered by the Master into His eternal storehouse. So, however kindly they may have looked upon music, they could not conscientiously have allowed it to engage much of their attention. They could with consistence postpone the gratification of their musical tastes to the next world, where, for all eternity, the practice of music would be their chief occupation. Besides, the life of the first settlers in New England was not such as to encourage any indulgence in unnecessary relaxation. What with the stubborn barrenness of the soil, the ferocity of the Indians, and the extreme inclemency of the climate, they had little opportunity for the cultivation of those gentler arts toward which by taste and temperament they were not, in any case, very strongly inclined.