Northern periodicals.
We are pleased to learn that the publication of
Godey's Lady's Book has been discontinued in all of our Southern cities.
This was the last lingering parasite of Northern literature that continued, even after the war, to twine around our Southern tree, and suck the vigor of its life away to sustain its own pestiferous existence.
When we recollect the character and number of the
Northern weekly and periodicals which used to infest the
South, we are lost in wonder that such a nuisance should ever have been permitted in our borders.
There was
Harper's Weekly, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Paper, and the worse than worthless host of the same abominable kind, which was sold at every bookstore and agency in our Southern cities, and scattered broadcast over the whole
South.
If there had been no other objection to these things than their entire want of literary merit of any kind, that would have been sufficient.
The miserable stuff they were crowded with was enough to nancoato any human being of common sense and ordinary taste, Compared with the
English literary weeklies, what a contract ! And yet those weakly nuisances were permitted to invade the whole
South, and make a lodgment in every Southern dwelling.
But the literature of the
Northern cities, shocking as it was, was perfectly beautiful by the side of their morality.
Some of them contained Illustrations which were quite in keeping with the contents of the letter bag exposed at the
battle of Manassas.
In others there was an insidious vain of abolitionism, radloallam, socialism, red-republicanism, woman's rights, and spiritualism, which was enough of itself to demand their extermination.
Now if it be true, as no doubt it is, that the literature of a nation has a more important influence upon its character than its laws, what good will this war do the
South if we do not provide, by some penalties, against the future purchase and sale of Northern periodicals?
There is no other article of Northern production which can be half as injurious.
It would be suicidal enough in all consolence to purchase hereafter of the
North any article which we can produce ourselves, or which can be obtained in any other part of the world; it would be not only ruin to our independence, but foul ingratitude to our noble dead, thus to surrender the fruits of their matchless valor and self-sacrifice; but worst of all, more destructive to ourselves and dishonoring to them would be the continued introduction of Northern literature.
What can be, what must be, the literature of those massas who make such private revelations of their real characters in the letter-bags at
Manassas ! It is for them, and not for the more educated and refined classes of
America, that the great bulk of the
Northern literature is published.
The slimy serpents which have so long drawn their disgusting length through the fields and gardens of the
South, must never again be permitted to defile this part of the
American Continent.
We mean Northern literature ! That which has merit intellectually, and is not patronized by the
Manassas school of literate, is, in general, tainted with abolitionism.
We must have literary periodicals of our own. The South has scholars as well as soldiers, and ought not to look beyond her own limits for our supply.
