to be drawn. "Let the nation," he solemnly proclaims, "_but yield a
day's faith to its own genius, and that day will suffice for
triumph!_... Our development," he continues, "depends upon our faith
in what we are, and in our independence of foreign judgment." One
would think Mr Sims was fighting over again the war of independence.
Or has some old speech of Mr O'Connell's on the repeal of the union
got shuffled amongst his papers? One expects the sentence to close
with the reiterated quotation,--

"Who would be _free_, themselves must strike the blow!"

As the freedom Mr Sims is struggling for, is the release from superior
genius, superior intelligence, from philosophy and taste, we may
surely congratulate him, at least, on his own personal attainment of
it. He has "struck the blow" for himself--whatever blow was necessary.
He is free. Free, and as barren, as the north wind. Free as the loose
and blinding sand upon a gusty day--and about as pleasing and as
profitable. His "Views and Reviews" demonstrate in every page that he
has quite liberated himself from all those fetters and prejudices
which, in Europe, go under the name of truth and common sense.

Mrs or Miss Margaret Fuller--the titlepage does not enable us to
determine which is the correct designation, but, in the absence of
proof to the contrary, we shall bestow, what we hope we shall not
offend a lady who has written upon "Woman in the Nineteenth Century"
by still calling the more honourable title--Mrs Margaret Fuller has
touched upon the same theme in her papers upon literature and art.
She, too, sighs impatiently after a national literature. In an essay
devoted to the subject, she thus commences:--"It does not follow,
because many books are written by persons born in America, that there
exists an American literature. Before such can exist, _an original
idea must animate this nation_, and fresh currents of life must call
into life fresh thoughts along its shores."--(Vol. ii. p. 122.)

An original idea!--and such as is to animate a whole nation! Certainly
it sounds fit and congruous that the new world, as their continent has
been called, should give us a new truth; and yet, as this new world
was, in fact, peopled by inhabitants from the old, who have carried on
life much in the same way as it has been conducted in the ancient
quarters of the globe, we fear there is little more chance of the
revelation of a great original idea in one hemisphere than the ot