The New Orleans crescent., 1868-06-28
LITERARY SIGNS.

have almost banished the legitimate drama
from the stage, are beginning to have their
counterparts in literatnre. The hunger for
nudity, which enriched theatrical managers
who were shrewd enough to divine it. and
prompt and skilhul in gratifying it. promises
to enrich those writers and publishers who
may display in reference to it, similar
shrewdness, promptness and skill Let not
the innocent reader suppose that the nudity
here meant, is nudity in the sense of nature
unadorned and unexaggerated, or of nature
as bodied forth in forms of classical truth
and beauty by the artists chisel or brush. 1t
Is nudity in the sense of a nakedness which
outrages the sacred modesty of nature, which
attempts to turn nature inside out, so to
speak, and to desecrate every recess in the
temple of her awful and inserutable mystic
ries. With all their pretense to candor and
explicitness, the professors of the "Black
Crook literature depend for their effects
upon tie monstrous reveries of demoralized
imagination, or upon the equally monstFous
discoveries of prurient inquiry. And when
most veracious, seemingly, they are, in fact,
only telling that most dangerous of lies-the
lie that is couehed in half truth. Among the
latest signs of the progress of this literature,
ere the issue of an English edition of Walt
Whitman's poems by respectable London
publisher the favorable mention of the book
by several literary periodicals in England,
and the admission by all of them that the
circle of Walt Whitmans admirers in that
country is widening among class, not COM
monty accounted gross and vulgar, but re-
puted as, conventonally at least, cultivated,
refined, and discriminating. Quite consis-
tently, Hepworth Dixon is, through the Lon
don Athen@um, the warmest eulogist, among
English critics, Of that moral. intellectual and
literary anomaly, the author of 'Leayes of
Grass" Dixon own book, spiritual Wives,
reveals in him, If not the greatness, grossness
and shamelessness OF Whitman's genius, sall-
cious qualities which differ from his lusty
sensuosity and indecency only as the buzzird
differs'from the vulture or the jackal from the
hon. He, indeed, would seem ambitious
and well content to take the humblest posi-
ton in a literary triumvirate composed Of
Whitman, Swinburne and Dixon.
1t is impossible TO suppose that theincreas-
ing appreciation of Walt Whitman, in both
England and the United States, is not accom-
panied by sociological conditions which are
in some measure reflected in his writings
And when We consider the utter badness and
barrenness Of the greater part of his effusions,
if judged by the poetical sense, or by any test
of the beautiful in imagery or in sound and
rhythm, it is impossible not to conclude that
the secret of his attraction for intellectual and
educated people lies in his philosophy, aud
not in his poetry so-called. 1t can be, surely
nothing else which has won him the admira-
ton, almost the veneration, of that splendid
but icy transcendentalist, whose whole heart
is in his brain, Ralph Waldo Emerson. And
what is Walt Whitmau's philosophy, is no.
where so strikingly and comprehensively set
forth as in three of his own poems. In one
of these he describes himselfas hankering
gross, mystical, nude, one of the roughs,
kosmos, disorderly, feshy, sensual no more
modest than immodest." In another, he
speaks thus " of the visages of things, and
of the piercing through to the accepted hells
beneath"
OF ugl ness-To me there is just as much in It
ss there is in beauiy-And nov the ugliness Of
human beings is acceptable to me.
OF detected persOns-rO me, detected persons
are rot, in sey respect, worse than undeteeted
peTsOns--and are not in any respect worse than /
an myself.
OF criminsls--To me, any Judge, or any juror, is
EQUALLY crininal-snd any reputable person is
also-snd the president is also.
And the third is about "the terrible doubt
OF appearance" and runs in these words:
TIE skies of day and night-colors, densities,
torms-Maybe these are (as doubtless they are)
oDly appsrlions, and the real something has yet
u he known;
Msyb seeming to me what they are (as doubt
less they indeed but seem) as from my present
point Of view And might prove (as Of course
they would uauRht of what they appear, or
nsught nyhow, from entirely changed points Of
view.
There is no philosophy in all this, any
reader who still cherishes the essentials of
logical and ethical integrity, would be ready
TO exclaim, but it is only proclamation of
moial chaos and intellectual disorganization
And be would be very close to the mark. Walt
Whitman's philosophy if it may be SO de-
nominated, is not new. 1t is the revival of
an oriental creed which is older than his
tory.-a creed which grew out of philosophi-
cal skeptieism and despair-a creed which
rebels against natures distinctions and CO.
ordinations, rejects moral determinations,
md seeks tranquility, if not happiness, in
serene indifference and rational nihilism.
MILITARY APPOINTMENTS FOR THs PARISHES
Uron the recon peBdation Of his excelency Gov