DEMOCRATIC ART 257 



after another, and for ever occupied in dyspeptic amours with 

 dyspeptic women.' l 



After this fashion, with superfluous reiteration, and con- 

 siderable asperity, Whitman pours forth his deep-felt conviction 

 of America's spiritual inadequacy. 



But what does he demand in lieu of those ' most dismal 

 phantasms, which usurp the name of religion ; ' in lieu of 

 ' the magician's serpent, money-making ; ' in lieu of the 

 ' Sahara of frivolous and petty cities ; ' in lieu of ' paste-pot 

 'work,' and ' dapper little gentlemen,' and 'tinkling rhymes,' 

 and * dyspeptic amours ' ? Democracy in the cradle, in its 

 stronghold, as it seems, is infected with these congenital 

 diseases. Let us attempt to analyse what he proposes, and 

 how he thinks the vital forces of the future are to be 

 developed. 



Whitman maintains that the cardinal elements of national 

 greatness are robust character, independent personality, 

 sincere religiousness. He contends that the democratic idea, 

 properly grasped and sytematically applied to conduct, will 

 suffice to reconstitute society upon a sound basis, and to 

 supply the modern nations with the ideality they lack. 



Of all this, and these lamentable conditions, to breathe into them the 

 breath recuperative of sane and heroic life, I say a new founded literature 

 not merely to copy and reflect existing surfaces, or pander to what is 

 called taste not only to amuse, pass away time, celebrate the beautiful, 

 the refined; the past, or exhibit technical, rhythmic, or grammatical 

 dexterity but a literature underlying life, religious, consistent with 

 science, handling the elements and forces with competent power, teaching 

 and training men and, as perhaps the most precious of its results, 

 achieving the redemption of women out of those incredible holds and 

 webs of silliness, millinery, and every kind of dyspeptic depletion and 

 thus insuring to The States a strong and sweet female race, a race of 

 perfect mothers is what is needed. 



1 ' Dyspeptic amours with dyspeptic women,' is a fine motto for the 

 American society novel. So is another of Whitman's phrases : ' The sly 

 settee and the adulterous, unwholesome couple,' for the modern French 

 novel. 



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