George Cruikshank, "London Going Out of Town, or, The March of Bricks & Mortar," 1829.

 As England moved from an agrarian society to an urban one, people began to lament the loss of nature.  Leading caricaturist George Cruikshank animates the building blocks of industry--shovels and bricks move into and erode the countryside while personified haystacks look on in horror. Not surprising, the Industrial Revolution had a major impact on Romantic poetry by authors including William Blake and William Wordsworth. Nostalgia for the pastoral also resonates in  literature of the long nineteenth century by authors including Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell.