Punch,  47 (1864), 177.

Conservative Magazines

Anon

Genre:

Essay

Subjects:

Periodicals, Politics, Environmentalism, Industry, Utilitarianism, Railways, Pollution, Progress


    Criticises a 'long dreary correspondence' received from a correspondent who 'babbles o' green fields' and generally laments the destruction of the natural environment by industry. Considers the correspondent to be 'an unsocial, ungenial, ridiculous old curmudgeon' and presents the correspondent's argument that to sustain 'poetic faculty and the spiritual mind amongst us' a 'compromise should be struck with the utilitarian proclivity of the age by transferring, to the most beautiful portions of the British scenery still remaining, the various powder-mills and magazines'. Thinks the correspondent 'can't keep pace with these railroad times', and rejects his complaints about polluted rivers and his refusal to accept the 'situation which the inexorable logic of material utilitarianism imposes on him'.



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