The Star in the West

20 THE STAR IN THE WEST repletion ; the variety of the dishes is extraordinary in delicacy and piquancy as well as in number . The morals of a nation can with fair accuracy be gauged from the condition of its arts and literature , and in what a state are ours ? Our music the jangling ditties of the streets , our paintings , posters and be dizened Jewesses ; and our literature , heroically vulgar , vulgarly obscene , and obscenely insipid . Morals , the nation has none , merely a better art in disguising than in former times , that is all . We no longer can produce a Swift , a Congreve , or a Dryden , a Smollett , a Lever , or a Sterne , and yet our writers are legion — and as feculent as the flabby prostitutes of the street . The facetiae of the fifteenth century , “ Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles ,” “ The Decameron ,” “ The Heptameron ,” “ The Nights of Straparola ," “ Brantôme , ” etc. , etc. , are not only masterpieces for all time , but are pure , even chaste , compared with the the virginal lusts that are becoming so fashionable in our modern literature , whose maidens are Lesbians , and whose heroes are satyrs . Europa is no longer satisfied with her bull , but seeks an ichor - maddened elephant ; Leda disdains her swan , and burns for a straddling ostrich ; the goat of lechery sits enthroned o'er us , and is fast coupling with the mind of the nation , and spawning offspring effeminate , lustful , and degenerate . Tribades with their evil - smelling kisses swarm over our pages , heroines are no longer satisfied with mere men , but must strain to their breasts legless monsters ; whilst a hero will listen to his loved one snorting in the arms of some lusty Păthān . Such literature is revolting , not in its mere descriptions , for these are nothing to the student , being generally but poorly described realities , but