Rural Britain, except in its picturesqueness, with the peer, the squire and the parson, Giles and Hodge, and their ploughs and their flocks and herds, as objects of the landscape, has been beyond the interests of those within whose vision there are mainly pitheads, chimney-stacks or tramp steamers, of people who are street-bound, of a population whose minds function urbanly and suburbanly.
Source: wiktionary