The Express.
London, England, 1847-11-02 00:00:00

THE LITERATURE OF THE LOWER ORDERS.

BATCH ENS SECOND.
We proceed with oar examination of the literature
of the lower claws. The batch of publications which we
intend to look into and report upon to-day do not differ
essentially in the forms which they assume, or in the morali-
ties which they teach by example and recommend by senti-
ment and success, from the sirailar principles which we
pointed out in the first. The vicious tendencies of both are
most unquestionable—as our notices will bat too suffi-
ciently demonstrate. But, on the whole, they illus-
trate another of the poisonous aspects which this noxious
literature presents. The issues of the Salisbury-square press
—the subject of our former examination and reprobation—
deal, as we said, chiefly with the grotesque and the horrible;
with the deeds and misdeeds of robbers, murderers, pirates,
smugglers, and other low ruffianism, of various kinds—all of
which are decked out in alluring colours, with en halo of
romance thrown around them, and the whole crowned with
an impress of reckless and successful adventure, which pos-
sesses a dangerous fascination for youths ill.trained,
untrained, and uncontrolled. These stories. highly-
wrought and picturesque, appeal most potently to
warm and active imaginations—and produce • peril-
ous ferment in restless, reckless, discontented minds.
The group of publications more immediately under our notice
to-day have a still more insidious and deleterious influence.
They act more directly and openly upon the worst passions,
stimulating them to precocious and unnatural activity, and
exercise an unsettling and disturbing power over the moral
consciousness of the reader. The former deal principally in
the criminal—the latter in the licentious and the blu-
phemous ; and in both to • much larger extent than those
not conversant with them have any conception of, or than we,
with a due regard to the properties, can make
them acquainted with through the medium of our
columns. We denounce the impurity, but we cannot
soil our pages with it—not even as a warning. Those
imperil the sanctity of the sentiments which hold men to-
gether in society, by investing crime, outrage, violence, dis-
obedience to the laws, with the attributes of heroism and the
sanction of success. These poison the very fountains of
human life, by confounding conscience, confusing the sense
of right and wrong, and by corrupting and inflaming those
paselons whose regulation and co-ordination with duty con-
stitute the basis of morale, and offer the only guarantee for
the peace and well-being of the social body. Not that these
evil tendencies are unmixed and uniform in character.
Far from that: the whole mess of this low lite-
rature is a chaos of corruption. Prurient passion
and irreligious sentiment are not absent in that
department which delights most in the murderous and
the terrible. Nor is the horrible proscribed from the arena
of guilty passions and audacious reasonings. But they are
not made the essential and especial elements, and somethiug
like demarcation, although the difference exists more in the
forms than in the spirit or intention, may therefore be
adopted.
The batch of serials under coasideration, and the perusal
of which has induced the above observations, are—Reynolds's
Miscellany of Romance; General Literature, Science,
and Art ; Gretna Green, or all for love,- by Mrs.
George W. M. Reynolds ; The Mysteries of Lon-
don ; Chelles—the llvitertes of the Old Castles of
France Martin the Foundling—the two latter, transla-
tions from the French—The People's Periodical; The
Reasoner, edited by G. J. Holyoake. The two first of these
works hardly require any particular notice. They are
amongst the least unhealthy and fcetid of their clue. Their
distinctions are negative. Their only redeeming feature is
the partial absence of the more active of the deleterious ele-
ments which characterise their compeers. Their looseness,
warmth of colouring in the criminal scenes, and the false
glow cart around guilty indu:gencies, are their bane ; but,
unfortunately, these qualities are hardly sufficient to
separate them from much of the literature of the day,
which aspires to different rank, and proposes to itself a
higher kind of audience. They as the productions appa-
rently of man and wife. Other works of kindred character
are contemporaneously proceeding from the same pens—
Foust, The Drunkard's Curse, Wagner, the Wehr
Wolf, &c. —all of them possessing the same general
characteristics.
The Mysteries of the Old Castles of France is full of
the most exciting aad disgusting intrigues and amours, and
of that spurious sentiment which is corrupting the very
heart of society in Paris. Martin, the Foundling, our
readers already know too well as the moat disgusting pro-
diction of a writer who was markable for his purity,
In these peony numbers—largely circulated and almost uni-
venally devoured by eagerfensak readers—his moat obscene'!
and intoxicating details are reproduced with all the minute
fidelity of which the English language is capable. And this
very fidelity is flaunted forth as the chief recommendation of
this edition. The translations current in the superior ranks
are expurgated: but, in spite of that necessary care for the
taste and better feeling of the educated English reader, the
tale is utterly disgusting. With these cheaper issues, how-
ever, the advertisements announce that all the objectionable
passages are " left in," and this is made to appear as an ad-
vantage to the purchaser, and is probably so considered. To
each of our readers as have toiled through Eugene
Sue's dullest and most popular work " The Mysteries
of Paris," The Mysteries of Loudon, now lying
before us, will be sufficiently explained. If it be
possible to conceive of anything more miserable, murderous,
almond, and reprehensible than the succession of scenes
which constitute that darling of the Parisian boulevarts—
that grosser conception will give an ilea of what the mute-
ries of the modern Babylon are like. TAePeople'sPeriodical
belongs to the Salisbury-square type, and is made up of the
same species of material. The Reasoner demands a larger
share of attention. This is a weekly issue of sixteen pages Bvo,
price 2d. It is written with considerable ability, and for
its avowed object—the dissemination of infidelity—conducted
with no small amount of tact. It addressee itself to that
large and constantly increasing class in English society—the
class of artisans and others who have some amount of native
intelligence, 'adjust enough of education to require • reason
for their beliefs and opinions, but who have not enjoyed that
Owe and consecutive education which is necessary to enable
one to follow up • chain of argumentation ; man who, in the
awakening consciousness of their own intelligence, are dis-
posed to deny the authority of tradition—who demand to be
dealt with logically, and who are yet incompetent to use is
higher formila. To mislead such persona, the torte and
manner of the Reasoner is admirably calculated. It is calm,
affectedly dispainionate, impersonal ; piques itself upon
being scrupulously erect is its statement of facts,