Tintern Abbey

"All this is to say that destitutes are salvational figures in the Picturesque. They represent the landed gentry's desire for self-sufficiency, even as they betray their anxieties about accomplishing this ideal during a period of vast economic and social transformations. From an ideological standpoint Ruskin's nobly Picturesque old labourer or Wordsworth's leechgatherer are subject to criticism, for one might say that as long as destitutes are idealised, as long as they are represented as uncomplaining and unconscious of their suffering, no one would be inclined to change their social conditions. Nonetheless, it is impossible to remain unmoved by Ruskin's description of the Calais tower or fail to appreciate the sheer efficacy of the strategy of practitioners of the Picturesque in pinning their ideals onto destitute figures, for in a surprisingly modern way they resolve the problems of identification with ego ideals and the violence that this may bring forth. It is thus that they salvage for themselves an area where the mind can gloat in its freedom and enjoy the sheer playfulness of semi-erotic longings, without confronting the 'dark side of landscape', which the Sublime deepens to tragic proportions."
Raimonda Modiano, 'The Legacy of the Picturesque: landscape, property and ruins' (p. 208), 'Politics of the Picuresque' ed. Steven Copley and Peter Garside, 1994, pub.  Cambridge University Press, Great Britain.