The New York herald., 1868-05-17

The revival and unprecedented license of the
ballet of the Black Crook school, with its
nudities and shameless movements and the
glare of its spectacular accessories, find their
counterpart in what may not improperly be
called the Black Crook literature of the day,
and especially in those forms of it presented
by almost all the reviews, magazines and other
periodicals.
A vast and discreditable change has been
wrought in the character of periodical litera-
ture. Fifty years ago, in France, Great Britain
and the United States, many writer's of strong,
well disciplined, well stored heads, of warm,
earnest hearts and of high, benevolent pur-
poses-writers fully capable of what are sup
posed to be more enduring works than articles
in reviews and magazines-availed themselves
of periodical literature as one Of the readiest
means of reaching and affecting the greatest
number of minds and Of forming and guiding
progressive popular opinion. The moral as
well as the literary tone of periodical literature
was pure so long as its principal contributors
remained true to their originally high standard
of cOnscientiousness, culture and intelligence.
OF late, however, even some of the great
French, English and American quarterlies
have sadly deteriorated; and the legion of
monthly, fortnightly and weekly publications
which now compete with their bulkier rivals
and with each other have, with rare excep-
tions, become 80 demoralzed by the conta-
gious Influences Of the day as to deserve con-
demnation as fragrant examples of Black Crook
literature.
The evil which we signalize has been aggra-
waited within comparatively short period by
the adoption in France and in the United States
of custom which was first introduced not
long ago in London. Almost every great
London publisher now deems it necessary to
have magazine of his own. He finds that it
pays, if only as a vehicle for advertising his
other publications. provided that the articles
which it contains pander to the corrupted
tastes of the public. Made, like Peter Pindar's
razors, expressly to sell, they must be market
able articles. The publishers in London,
Paris, New York, Philadelphia and Boston
almost all agree in aiming to supply the in
creasing demand for what is popularity termed
''the sensational" This element is most con-
spicuously introduced into the 'serial stories"
which are now universally deemed indispen-
sable to the success of magazine.
These stories are the direct offspring of the
roman. feui1etOn which invaded the French
newspapers during the reign of Louis Philippe.
The teuslleton, as the lower part of the French
journal, separated by line of demarcation
from the politics and news, was called, used
formerly to be devoted to literature and lite
rary criticism; but after its small, short col
continued from day to day, each fragment sur
passing its predecessor in exaggeration of
style and incident, it expanded into the roman
.teuilJetoss, in which all sorts of literary mon
strosities were perpetrated. La PresSe, the
journal of Emile de Girardin, first brought the
roman.feuiUeton into vogue. 1t did more
than any other journal to excite greedy spirit
of gain in those writer's whose talents it en-
slaved and injured. Like other wholesale
houses in the journal line, it used to order
from Alexandra Dumas, for rinstance-romances
by the square yard or the square foot Dumas,
ophile Gautier, and even George Sand were
called upon-as Charles Dickens, and the Troll
lopes and Reades, and Ainsworths and Brad
dons, and the other innumerable writer's of serial
stories in English and American periodicals are
now called upon-not to portray life as itreally
is but to present it as a series of startling Incl
dents and contrasts, intermingled with crimes
of every hue. We have already had occasion
to describe the productions of the French
feuillet0nists as either a horrid nightmare of
disjointed masses of grossness and crime, or
the very midsummer madness of affectation Of
macy. And the same description we must
likewise apply to the greater part of the serial
sensational stories of recent English and Ameri-
can magazines.
Black Crook literature is almost too good q
name for this species of frivolous and corrupt
counterplots, its kaleidoscope representations
of all possible varieties of sin and its awful
disclosures of the vulgarity and wickedness of
low life in crowded cities. Moreover, its au-
thors are no longer required to make snch
amends as are possible by cloaking their inde-
cencies with tasteful style. Their rhetoric
is often as contemptibly wretched as their
morality. The elegant diction of Theophile
Gautier's "Mlle. de Maupin, and other immoral
writings issued by the French press, might al
most seem to justify the parodox of Burke-that
''vice loses half its guilt by losing all its de-
formity )" but this utterly fails Of being appli-
cable to many Of the exaggerated and revolt
ing portraitures Of social iniquity, the hideous
developments Of the evil propensities Of man,
paraded and advertised as the chief attractions
Of certain English and American periodicals.
This Black Crook periodical literature has