ABSTRACT
To have been at Newcastle, and men of curiosity too, without seeing a coal-pit, would have been a sin of the most unpardonable nature.’ 1 The motives of the tourist who wrote this in 1780 were at the same time romantic, economic, aesthetic and practical. A patriotism which delighted in the sight of the country's manufacturing and engineering achievements went hand in hand with an imagination which was nurtured on discussions of the distinction between romantic and picturesque, and sought for gloom and terror as conducive to true emotion, anxious to experience that sense of vastness and power which Burke had taught to be the essence of the sublime. Thus the traveller to the Lakes would turn aside to descend the Cheshire salt-mines or visit the Lancashire cotton-mills; expeditions to Devon or Cornwall to make the round of the tin- and copper-mines were almost as popular as journeys to Snowdonia; and after visiting the great country houses of the Midlands, the potteries or the Derby silk-mills proved almost equally rewarding.
