THE CHEAP LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

REVIEW.

[from the London and Weekly Dispatch]

The Language of the Walls, and a Voice from the Shop windows. By One Who Thinks Aloud.— Tweedle, Strand.
" It is almost impossible to conceive the continual flood of deadly matter that issues from the putrid fountains of the cheap literary press of London. We have endeavoured to show the demoralizing influence of the newspaper press in its ungodly connexion with quacks, and their malpractices upon the public. Whatever evil there may be connected with the newspaper press, it always possesses a counterbalancing power in the editorial department. There may be occasional prostitution of editorial talent ; but, upon the whole, the leaders are generally characterized by a manly tone, sound sense, and healthy morality. The public have, therefore, both the bane and the antidote. The sickening and demoralizing stuff which flows in a regular tide from the cheap press of London unfortunately has no such a counteracting power ; here the poison is allowed to kill and destroy without any check. We look upon the prostitution of the press among a free people as one of the greatest evils which could possibly befall a nation. It is an easy matter to create a morbid taste, and foster a prurient desire for those pictures that excite the passions and work upon the feelings. Like every other vicious system, it creates an insatiable desire in the mind, and the more it feeds upon such menial verbiage the more it desires. The youthful mind of a nation requires every possible care in its proper development ; and the direction of its moral energies is a matter of the utmost importance. The press of the present century has necessarily superseded the fireside instruction of the previous age, when a great portion of the legendary lore of the country was transmitted from father to son, and garnished with the moral reflections of parental wisdom founded upon the experience of age. The highly poetical, and in many cases harmless, superstitions of the last century, with their train of supernatural agencies, have been substituted by the vilest trash imaginable. At the present time there are not less than 1,000,000, cheap periodicals issued from the London press weekly. These works will be read by at least two millions and a half of the people. The greatest number of these are works of fiction, stale romance, caricatures of humanity, pictures of illicit love and low life, with disgusting scenes of infamy. The heroes and heroines of several of these works are taken from the ranks of notorious vagabonds and the nymphs of the pave. Many of these tales are clothed in the genteel language of the swell mob; and vice is made fascinating by gallantry and bombastic bravado. The youthful mind of the rising generation is taught the folly of virtue and the beauty of vice. Female modesty is undermined by being made familiar with indelicate representations of human action and unholy passion * * * It would be impossible to calculate the mischievous influence this class of works must exercise over the youthful mind in the under stratum of society. Boys are enabled to perfect themselves in the poetical profession of robbery, and the accomplishments of either rude or refined blackguardism; and qualify themselves for the knighthood of the hempen collar, or to become inmates of our penal academies. Many of the jackals who are the purveyors for this class of mental food have matriculated in dens of infamy and passed all the degrees of vice and folly ; they are therefore well and practically acquainted with the matters of which they write.

There is still another class of cheap literature, which is even more dangerous to to the morals of the people. These are of a more philosophical character, and are generally read by a more reflecting class. These works contain a revival of the doctrine of Voltaire, and others of the same class, wherein vice is made subservient to man's best interest, and virtue a thing only to be used when it don't run in opposition to our pleasures or worldly advantages. The writers of this class of literature have learned to look upon society through a false medium. They assume to themselves a perfection which they deny to all others, and dictate to mankind from the high vantage ground of their own infallibility. With them all religion is a mere mockery, and yet they insidiously endeavour to establish one of their own ! The true animus of their undigested system is to make pleasure the sole rule of life; and that man has no higher destiny then again becoming a part of the earth of which he is composed. These writers call revealed religion superstition, and because they cannot define it at the bar of their judgment, they cannot suppose how others are able to comprehend a truth which they cannot see or understand ; and yet, with a marvellous consistency, they believe in the perfection of human nature by being inoculated with their peculiar ideas. These men, by reasoning themselves into the belief of the non-existence of a universal Creator, necessarily reason themselves into gods, and assume the directing power of as many divinities in their own little spheres. This must be a necessary consequence in men who believe mind to be a part of matter, and themselves to be the perfection of the system."

 South Australian Register 21 July 1855,